Ask me about poker!

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twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Ytlaya posted:

One thing I've wondered about regarding online poker (as someone who knows very little about poker in general): Is it possible to write a program where you input stuff like your hand and what other people are doing and the program tells you the optimal play? It seems like this should be possible absent the human/psychological factor involved in real world play, but I'm assuming it's not for some reason.

What do you mean by optimal play? There's a variety of calculations that are useful to know that you can automate, as well as record/review databases of yours and others' hands, but it's not clear to me what optimal play could mean in poker.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2016 20:21

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:51

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Jeza posted:

I remember seeing a short documentary about Phil Ivey and that guy was just really a gambling addict. He bet money on everything, just didn't give a poo poo. It was only exciting for him with money on the line, and he'd bet on anything.

Phil Gordon has an observation that being a good poker player means you have to separate the value that the chips represent as money and the value that the chips represent as your ability to win more chips. Assuming you've applied proper bank roll management, you need to be prepared to risk whatever is in front of you, and that seems to produce a lot of great poker players who make terrible financial decisions (see earlier Rounders discussion).

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 20:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Sheep-Goats posted:

E: One last thing I want to say is that poker is not really a card game. Poker is betting game (I prefer the term "pricing game" but I think that term can be misleading to laypeople). This is why poker with play money is not poker, the meaningful part of the game has been made meaningless, and without real money at stake, even if it's just a tiny bit, there is no game at all left, it's just seeing card combos come out with no meaning attached to them at all.

You can definitely run a free poker tournament, and you're still playing poker and winning it will require much or all of the same skill as a tournament you paid to get into (presuming participants actually want to win, games where the people playing aren't actually trying to win aren't typically fun, but that's not unique to poker).

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 19:36

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Murgos posted:

Lol. No. 90% of the field will immediately go all in on the first hand*. 90% of everyone left after the first hand goes all in on the second hand with the winnings from the first hand. This continues until 2 people are left and they do heads up by going all in until one pushes the other out.

*Note that the people who didn't go all in aren't playing either, they've just left the table after looking at their hole cards.

e: Every now and then there is a nit who thinks they'll just wait out the carnage and jump in with their mad skillz and clean up. No, by the time the field has thinned out they are so far behind on chips they just get put all in every time they bet until the odds take over and they too are cleaned out.

I mean, I've played no stakes poker games that didn't play this way. Why would anyone show up to coin flip for no prize? That seems very tedious.

Imaduck posted:

Free poker websites are terrible for learning how to play poker correctly.

This is almost always true.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 23:11

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Murgos posted:

Yeah, sorry, 90% was me being dramatic. It doesn't matter though if you can count on even 1 person (much less 2 or 3) going all in on any two cards then your only recourse is also to go all in or fold away your stack. So, it becomes a game of going all in on coin flips until you get enough coin flips your way to build a big enough stack to get to heads up. At that point the heads up can be pretty fun, but not really because there is no risk. You just hop into the next free tourney starting in .01 seconds regardless of if you win or lose.

Playing in free online tournaments where there are effectively arbitrary opportunities to play is definitely not a way to get good poker behavior.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2016 21:22

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Terrorforge posted:

Is this true even if the stacks are of vastly different size? If they're at 7bb, should my play not be affected by whether I have 14bb or 140bb?

In a tournament, your stack will always impact your decisions, because you have to consider what's going to happen in the next hand (and particularly what's going to happen between now and the next time you pay blinds, and now and the next time the prize you are eligible increases). In a cash game, at any time you're not in a hand you can just put more money on the table, so in any given hand you shouldn't care about how much money you'll have left over. If you do care, that's a sign you need to play at lower stakes. A person sitting at a cash game with 14 bb needs to either get up or put more money on the table.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 22:31

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

I don't understand check calling here. We've got like 13 M, a good hand that is unlikely to improve with more cards, the only thing I'm thinking about is whether I should muck this hand and wait for the bubble or over-bet.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 18:25

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Both of these posts seem predicated on MP being likely to bluff here, but I don't see what you think MP's plan is here. They weren't planning on taking it down pre-flop with a min-raise. There's a bunch (7 if they are playing with 10) of <10 M stacks on the table, I don't think their plan could have been "inflate the value of the pot, so that when I likely miss the flop, my likely out of position bluff continuation bet will be even more expensive than it would be otherwise, and it will be even more obvious that I'm making a continuation bet rather than a mediocre hand that happened to connect". I think it's likely they were either trying to induce a squeeze from the little stacks, or hoping a small stack would call and MP can push them out on the flop. That they wound up in a hand with the two biggest stacks was just an accident, and they either made something or are looking to get out. There's no reason to make the incredibly obvious continuation bet here against the two players that can actually afford to call unless you think you are actually good here. Which isn't to say it's impossible for MP to bet with a worse hand here, it's easy to see any Jx betting here AJ, KJ seem unlikely, 77-TT can bet here.

Also we don't know anything about the button, they could be on any sort of nonsense two pair draw, in position and with by far the biggest stack

I don't know the venue, maybe it's reasonable to expect people to make the most ham-fisted bluffs possible here.

twodot fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Mar 15, 2017

# ¿ Mar 15, 2017 20:54

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 08:51

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Subjunctivitis posted:

Glad to see a good poker thread pop up. I occasionally read 2+2, but it's mostly for site/software news/updates.

Poker is 100% a money game. In "The Theory of Poker" David Sklansky notes (correctly) that poker would be a boring game for boring/bored people comparing no-money poker to a coin flip or a dice roll (I'm paraphrasing), since you could call down or shove all day long with no risk or challenge, and it's money creates that risk and challenge. By contrast, I love playing tien len, but that's a card game that definitely doesn't need money in order for it to be challenging and fun.

This is real dumb, it's possible to make dumb, thoughtless moves in any game with "no risk" so long as you don't care about the outcome of the game. Other bluffing/price setting games exist, but no one blathers about how playing those games without money versus playing for quarters is a fundamental change. I'm going to go with Phil Gordon on this:

quote:

I can play my �A� game at any stake. I regularly play 1-2 and 100-200 on the same day and it makes no difference to me.

http://freakonomics.com/2008/04/18/phil-gordon-answers-your-poker-questions/
edit:
It does turn out that, practically speaking, most people don't care about games, and the only way to motivate most people to play poker properly is to make them pay for it, but that's on those people, not the game.

twodot fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jun 15, 2017

# ¿ Jun 15, 2017 18:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about poker!