Saturday, February 18th: Chaos reigns
Wow - some past few days. Major upheaval, as I'm sure most people are aware at Party (my primary stomping grounds, although I've been known to play at Stars and UB when I find a good game.) Also somewhat ironic that it comes right on the heels of my post about how much I value table selection -- well a HUGE detriment to my ability to find good tables quickly came in the form of the Party "up"grade. PAHUD no longer shows data on observed tables, meaning I either have to revert to using my buddy list, or even just looking up all the people at the table in my PT DB, which is incredibly time-consuming. I much preferred the days when I could just open 10 tables, and pick the fishiest ones. I guess I can still do that, except now it takes me about 15 minutes to do that, instead of 30 seconds. And when the game inevitably goes sour, or breaks up, I have to start that process all over again. I might have to actually learn how to play poker. I'll actually be somewhat interested to see what this does to my winrate. Really too bad, because I had really just started to really find my stride playing 6 to 8 20/40 and 30/60 shorthanded tables. I'm going to make a bold statement here that might come back to haunt me George Tenet-style, but I don't know if there are more than a handful of other people who were beating the 20 and 30 games as profitably as was I -- this isn't to say that I don't acknowledge there are plenty of more skilled players out there than me. But simply considering the totality of the situation -- e.g. my penchant for datamining (dead for now, i suppose) and careful table and seat selection -- I don't think there are many other players out there (on a sheer $ / hand basis) pulling in more from the 20 and 30 games than me. But like I said, I may get a rude awakening when the new Party client puts a huge monkey wrench in my table selection strategies.
I'm actully trying my best to reserve judgement about the new Party software. Because I've found the tables to be fishier than usual since the upgrade...perhaps because so many of the sharks are also taking some time to see how this shakes out, so I'm spared from their multi-tabling. Who knows -- perhaps in the long run this will actually end up being good for online poker (and hence for me). I guess it will have the effect of reducing the advantage the good players (who presumably use all the tools at their disposal like I do) have over the fish. If that is indeed the case, then I guess you can see why it makes sense for party. The slower the fish lose their money, the more raked hands are played, and the more revenue for Party. I suppose if the fish stick around longer and have happier stories to tell to their fish buddies that encourage a greater number of them to try their hand online, then things might pan out in the long run. That being said, since I am myself one of the aforementioned takers-of-fish-money, in the short-term this sucks.
Anyway, enough talk about Party for now -- I used this new upgrade as an excuse to take a little break from the games for a few days until this all shakes out. And decided, like any poker degenerate, to simply head over to Atlantic City to fill the void. I met a college friend of mine and reluctantly sat at the blackjack tables with him (surprisingly, i found my old card-counting hobby, even though I was very much out of practice, came back rather quickly). Anyway, I heard some comments at the blackjack table (and also some in the poker room while I was there) that reminded me of something I had always wanted to address. I've often wondered about the most important qualities a person can have that will make him a successful poker player. And one of the 'answers' I've discussed at length with friends is how stunned I am at how many people just don't "get" the mathematical and probabilistic underpinnings of games of chance. Allow me to elaborate. At the blackjack table, a friendly older lady beside me (who came to AC rather regularly) got dealt two 8's against a dealer 9. Exasperated, she simply hit, drew a ten and busted. She then turned to the rest of us and explained that even though she knows "the book says to always split 8's, I don't do it against a dealer 9 or Ten -- I mean, what's the point, odds are I'm just going to draw two tens and then I'll lose twice as much when the dealer also draws a ten." When the dealer in fact turned over her hole card Queen, the lady explained: "see, I told you, I would have lost double." She had been quoting the infamous "book" all night long. Now before you write the above nonsense off to senility or mere simple-mindedness, here's another story: I was heading to AC a couple years ago with a friend from law school who also has an MBA from Wharton, one of the most academically prestigious (especially quantitatively) schools on the planet. Smart guy. Anyway, we were talking blackjack and he was going on and on about how he had memorized "the book", but that his game was "a little more aggressive than the book," and he proceeded to enumerate a list of different scenarios where he liked to deviate from what "the book" advised.
Let me stop and take a deep breath here. DO YOU F*&KING UNDERSTAND WHAT "THE BOOK" IS???? This goes out both to you older blackjack lady, and Wharton MBA. "The book" isn't some haphazard set of recommendations that deviate from author to author (like in poker, I guess). It is, by definition, optimal. OPTIMAL -- DO YOU GET IT?!?? It's the result of hundreds of millions of simulated hands, and represents (unless you're card-counting, which trust me, neither one of these two had the foggiest idea of how to do) the optimal play for every scenario. To say that you deviate from the book in certain circumstances, or that you're "more aggressive" than the book is akin to donning a neon T-shirt that says "I do not understand that when I deviate from 'the book', I am giving up EV -- aka losing money." Anyway, why do I bring up these examples? Because I think it demonstrates perfectly the type of person (and I'm sure you all know a few) who will never, never, become a good poker player. They just don't get "it." What do I mean by "it"? Well, I've had trouble coming up with a good definition, but roughly speaking it's the fundamental nature of long-term probability and randomness. I have several good friends in law school who are some of the smartest people I know, and will make outstanding lawyers, but who will NEVER amount to anything at the poker table, because they seem completely unable to understand probability -- try explaining pot odds to them, and they'll look at you like you've got 2 heads. I was playing in a friendly home game once, and one guy criticized another's play after a hand was over, incredulous that he had folded to a double-pot-sized bet with his gutshot straight. The critic's rationale: "but dude, what if you made your straight??" Yes, folks, that is what we are up against: it's "I don't have the proper odds to call a bet of that size", versus "dude, but what if you made your straight." And the most baffling part about it is (and I know it's hard to believe after that example) these are really smart, Ivy League guys making those comments. It's not a matter of low intelligence or mathematical prowess (most of these guys will proudly boast about their 5 in AP calculus or 780 SAT quant score). It's that they just don't get "it." And frankly, I don't even know if "it" is teachable. Actually, I take that back -- I think it is, but for a certain subset of people it will take an awful lot of work to "unlearn" years of ass-backwards thinking. I know this topic is probably a little more sore for me than most because I was a probability major in college, and get exasperated when people don't really get things that always seemed to come rather naturally to me. On the other end of the spectrum, of course, you have high school dropouts who would get destroyed in a Billy Madison Academic decathlon but, for whatever reason, simply take to the mathematical side of games of chance like fish to water. So there you have it -- while I can't quite put my finger on what "it" really is, it's something that's always struck me as something the people who really excel at the game have, and those who don't do not.
I'm actully trying my best to reserve judgement about the new Party software. Because I've found the tables to be fishier than usual since the upgrade...perhaps because so many of the sharks are also taking some time to see how this shakes out, so I'm spared from their multi-tabling. Who knows -- perhaps in the long run this will actually end up being good for online poker (and hence for me). I guess it will have the effect of reducing the advantage the good players (who presumably use all the tools at their disposal like I do) have over the fish. If that is indeed the case, then I guess you can see why it makes sense for party. The slower the fish lose their money, the more raked hands are played, and the more revenue for Party.
Anyway, enough talk about Party for now -- I used this new upgrade as an excuse to take a little break from the games for a few days until this all shakes out. And decided, like any poker degenerate, to simply head over to Atlantic City to fill the void. I met a college friend of mine and reluctantly sat at the blackjack tables with him (surprisingly, i found my old card-counting hobby, even though I was very much out of practice, came back rather quickly). Anyway, I heard some comments at the blackjack table (and also some in the poker room while I was there) that reminded me of something I had always wanted to address. I've often wondered about the most important qualities a person can have that will make him a successful poker player. And one of the 'answers' I've discussed at length with friends is how stunned I am at how many people just don't "get" the mathematical and probabilistic underpinnings of games of chance. Allow me to elaborate. At the blackjack table, a friendly older lady beside me (who came to AC rather regularly) got dealt two 8's against a dealer 9. Exasperated, she simply hit, drew a ten and busted. She then turned to the rest of us and explained that even though she knows "the book says to always split 8's, I don't do it against a dealer 9 or Ten -- I mean, what's the point, odds are I'm just going to draw two tens and then I'll lose twice as much when the dealer also draws a ten." When the dealer in fact turned over her hole card Queen, the lady explained: "see, I told you, I would have lost double." She had been quoting the infamous "book" all night long. Now before you write the above nonsense off to senility or mere simple-mindedness, here's another story: I was heading to AC a couple years ago with a friend from law school who also has an MBA from Wharton, one of the most academically prestigious (especially quantitatively) schools on the planet. Smart guy. Anyway, we were talking blackjack and he was going on and on about how he had memorized "the book", but that his game was "a little more aggressive than the book," and he proceeded to enumerate a list of different scenarios where he liked to deviate from what "the book" advised.
Let me stop and take a deep breath here. DO YOU F*&KING UNDERSTAND WHAT "THE BOOK" IS???? This goes out both to you older blackjack lady, and Wharton MBA. "The book" isn't some haphazard set of recommendations that deviate from author to author (like in poker, I guess). It is, by definition, optimal. OPTIMAL -- DO YOU GET IT?!?? It's the result of hundreds of millions of simulated hands, and represents (unless you're card-counting, which trust me, neither one of these two had the foggiest idea of how to do) the optimal play for every scenario. To say that you deviate from the book in certain circumstances, or that you're "more aggressive" than the book is akin to donning a neon T-shirt that says "I do not understand that when I deviate from 'the book', I am giving up EV -- aka losing money." Anyway, why do I bring up these examples? Because I think it demonstrates perfectly the type of person (and I'm sure you all know a few) who will never, never, become a good poker player. They just don't get "it." What do I mean by "it"? Well, I've had trouble coming up with a good definition, but roughly speaking it's the fundamental nature of long-term probability and randomness. I have several good friends in law school who are some of the smartest people I know, and will make outstanding lawyers, but who will NEVER amount to anything at the poker table, because they seem completely unable to understand probability -- try explaining pot odds to them, and they'll look at you like you've got 2 heads. I was playing in a friendly home game once, and one guy criticized another's play after a hand was over, incredulous that he had folded to a double-pot-sized bet with his gutshot straight. The critic's rationale: "but dude, what if you made your straight??" Yes, folks, that is what we are up against: it's "I don't have the proper odds to call a bet of that size", versus "dude, but what if you made your straight." And the most baffling part about it is (and I know it's hard to believe after that example) these are really smart, Ivy League guys making those comments. It's not a matter of low intelligence or mathematical prowess (most of these guys will proudly boast about their 5 in AP calculus or 780 SAT quant score). It's that they just don't get "it." And frankly, I don't even know if "it" is teachable. Actually, I take that back -- I think it is, but for a certain subset of people it will take an awful lot of work to "unlearn" years of ass-backwards thinking. I know this topic is probably a little more sore for me than most because I was a probability major in college, and get exasperated when people don't really get things that always seemed to come rather naturally to me. On the other end of the spectrum, of course, you have high school dropouts who would get destroyed in a Billy Madison Academic decathlon but, for whatever reason, simply take to the mathematical side of games of chance like fish to water. So there you have it -- while I can't quite put my finger on what "it" really is, it's something that's always struck me as something the people who really excel at the game have, and those who don't do not.
posted by Blog Administrator at 2:21 PM
4 Comments:
As always, a great read. The same sorts of thing baffle me day in day out. In my last post I was rambling on about what I think is some relatively basic limit hold'em strategy that is helping me tremendously.
One of those techniques I've taken up recently is showing down some junk in the beginning of a session in the hope of getting paid off later.
What amazes me day in day out is that people fall for that strategy constantly. They refuse to believe you EVER have a hand. You think you'd learn after I turn over the nuts but no, they continue to call you down in disbelief.
This is slightly different from what you're saying about highly intelligent people not getting some of the most basic principles of poker. Where I think my utter amazement coincides with your own is that many players out there simply fail to grasp some basic play.
Of course, who am I to make these criticisms. I may not be an advanced player but still, I feel I do the basics right.
How do players who have probably been playing poker for a long time continue to make fundamental mistakes? Oh well, no point in complaining because they're the folks who pay us off :)
Best of Luck!
I'm going to be in NY/Nj on business this thursday...interested in another day in AC? Just drop me a line.
I think what "It" is is a willingness to remove all your assumptions about the game and become humble enough to learn it from the ground up. It doesn't take a math genius to do this, but it does take a little less ego. Most people will just take the first grain of wisdom thrown at them about Poker, and will run with it as its law.
Some don't even know what "The Book" is, let alone where to get a copy of it.
Case in point: A semi-regular 1/2NL home game I attend which includes a contractor supply business owner, a pharmacist, a golf pro and a newspaper owner which are all friends of mine. They say and I quote, "You have to call before the flop, otherwise how do you know if your cards are any good."
Pot odds? Domination? Right out the window with those.
Nice reminder to some and to others whom would actually benefit from your advice, well, they'll never show up to read your entry on "The Book" to begin with.
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