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Geeks and Poker?
Best ID Ever! asks: "Poker, a fascinating intersection of math, game theory, and observation of human behavior, is currently exploding in popularity due to televised high-stakes tournaments such as the World Poker Tour and Binion's 2003 World Series of Poker. Many of today's top professional players have nerdly roots such as Mathematicians, chess prodigies, or backgammon champions. A few pros, including 2000 champion Chris Ferguson, even used to play poker in the IRC poker community. This year's World Series final event, which began Saturday and lasts through the week, drew 2600 participants, more than three times the number of participants in 2003. How many Slashdot readers play poker, and what do you think of Poker's upswing?"
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
I hardly even know her!
/good/ thing (tm) :)
actually, that's probably a
fp?
Poker, Blackjack or other such games are the only sort of gambling I would be remotely willing to participate in because it involves much more than straight chance as involved in slots, roulette or craps. Sure statistics come into play, but nothing forces the stats to hold consistently.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Actually, I'm not really THAT great, but the I do enjoy game theory, as it was my emphasis in my Math degree, so Poker comes fairly naturally to me.
I love its popularity. The more that play, the more I can win!
How many Slashdot readers play poker
All those who aren't posting anymore, because they're too skint to pay the ISP bill now...
I used to play poker but, I played 1 to many times where I lost my pants literally and gave up.
Evolution or ID?
I played poker before it was cool. N00bs.
I wrote a program which gives you the mathmatical odds of whatever winning poker hand you can get depending on what hand you are dealt.
I play K-Poker (comes with KDE). I never lose, because I figured out how to edit the config file so that the lowest dollar amount win is always more than what you "pay" for a re-deal. I'm not the kind of geek they'd want playing in a tournament. =P
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Poker is often counted as "gambling" but to me it's precisely because it's not gambling but rather a game of skill that it's interesting. It's a zero sum game with some randomness so that you need to play for a little while to really see the better player emerge.
The android Data, one of the most popular characters in TNG amongst geeks, is a fanatic poker player. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Where can you get some quality clay chips? I see lots of places selling them, but am suspect about the quality.
t
"Guys, read 'em and weep: All....Reds!"
2003's winner, Chris Moneymaker, qualified to play online and played most of his games online before coming to the big show.
M.I.T. geeks vs Vegas.
True story.
An amazing read.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
I've never understoood the appeal of standing in front of a video poker terminal*, feeding in cash and pushing the little buttons, when I know that the odds are against me. But I have spent many unproductive hours with handheld poker games, and was inspired to come up with a system to lose less often. At the risk of slashdotting my new host, here's my geeky take on How to Lose Less at Video Poker.
It got mixed reviews a year or so ago when the topic came up in a previous Slashdot story, but it still seems to hold up for me -- at least, when there's no real money involved. The main criticism, IIRC, was that my method is very conservative, reducing the chances of a Big Win. Since I'm not the type to plug fifty bucks into a machine in hopes of a Big Win, I'm still happy with the method as it stands, but I'm receptive to comments.
I was hoping to try it out on a trip to Oklahoma, but when I stopped in the so-called Indian Casino in Okmulgee, I found nothing but a bingo parlor (with touch-screen monitors in place of ink daubers) and a couple hundred video 8-liners. Not one real video poker machine to try my luck. I'll have to hit the truck stop in Louisiana again... last time I was there, I played two 25c hands, lost one, won 50c on the other, and cashed out.
* Spending several hours plugging quarters into Pac-Man, however, is another thing entirely.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
But seriously, that's what they play at the world poker tour and that's all me and my friends play. It takes a lot of strategy, and it's also a lot of fun.
This is slashdot, you should at least include a link to the definition of "condom".
Trolling is a art,
PokerRoom.com has a pretty good interface. I'm not sure what OS's it supports (i've used it on Windows). I only play with the virtual money, but it is fun playing Texas Hold'em with other people online. You don't have to submit that much info if you aren't using real money.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
I just started a new position a few weeks ago. Up until recently, we would play Texas Holdem at lunch. I found it was a great opportunity to get to know my colleagues quickly and integrate myself as a memeber of the team.
Unfortunately, it also lead to extended lunch breaks, so the poker I'm disappointed to say, has ended. But the benefits of playing still remain.
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
...drew 2600 participants... :)
Last I checked most of the folks in 2600 were pretty sharp!
As a geek, I prefer playing with John Conway's Life.
I think this is a schnidey attempt to drum up some "grassroots" public interest. Nothing against poker itself, though.
It's pretty bad when you go home for Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Arbor Day ... and right after dinner the table is cleaned and the cards come out. I once left after winning a $50 pot, and 3 years later they still won't let me back at the big boy table. I have to play gold fish with my cousins.
It's amazing to me how many people take poker seriously. No matter how good one is at the game, one cannot really control it. There's a very limited degree of skill involved, and that skill is basically just to maximize your probability of not losing everything you throw on the pile.
I avoid the game like the plague, except when it's small-stakes and for fun with a few friends.
- I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. [strain #2] Thank you
I got verizon, so with get-it-now, i downloaded a poker game. it's quite fun. i love betting like a schmuck only to hope i get four of a kind, only to find i just get a pair :-/
There is little math in playing poker. You just have to learn some values, and then build an intuition. There is, of course, some calculation to be done to arrive at these values, and even some theory you could learn besides. But you don't want to do THAT during the game :-)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Consider that a flush beats a straight. And that a straight beats a three-of-a-kind. Each of these has an increment of ONE over or below the other.
However, the ODDS of getting one over the other is tremendous, sometimes a multiple of the hand that is but one step below it.
So is it possible to take advantage of there being tremendous differences between the odds of hands that have an incriment of only one hierarchical step above each other?
Just something I was wondering about.
Liquor in the rear! Poker is a great game, but to fully experience it you need to play with real humans in the same room. The social and psychological nuances of the game can make it pretty intense for a game played with cards!
http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~rrw1/mor/index.html
The author is an very well respected operational researcher (sadly no poker analysis in these notes). I had the good fortune to be lectured this course a couple of years back and found it incredibly interesting.
I'm sure there are a lot of /.ers who play poker. They all downloaded that free strip poker and played for hours to win.
Or, was that just me
Evolution or ID?
I play poker. Both at home, in tourneys and occasionally on-line. I've been playing some form of poker since I was a teenager (ie 70's). The Hold 'Em craze is like nothing I've seen before. It's brought all kinds of people into poker games that might never have really been interested before.
The problem is, that most home poker games (or those held in bars, etc) are illegal. Maybe, just maybe, the explosive interest in Texas Hold'Em (through the WPT, WSOP - which is down to about 70 players for 2004 now, and other TV events) will lead to a push in every state to legalize card rooms. Most states have legal gambling of some kind (lottery, riverboat casinos, etc) - why not legalize card rooms like California? I've thought about starting a Political Action Committee in my state (IL) to lobby for legalizing cardrooms. It sure seems like time to strike while the iron is hot!
Maybe we can get the libertarians to support this movement!
Real poker, not IRC Poker, means face to face. It makes me leave the computer and the interweb alone for a while, forces interaction with real friends.
I play in-frequently with friends, for 10 pounds made up of 10p pieces, each (15 USD). Usually out beer cost more than the one hundres 10p poker chips.
I find that the quality of my poker face decreases when I lose a lot of hands in poker-for-drinks. This further leads to more drinking, which results in an even worse poker face....
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
Some wise poker advise: "If you don't know who's the sucker at the table, it's you."
This reminds me of a certain Car Talk Puzzler.
there's an excellent article on how poker works at howstuffworks available through the following URL: http://www.howstuffworks.com/poker.htm.
check it out!
I think the real payoff here folks is using your leet geek poker skillz in playing a game of strip poker with a bunch of hotties. :)
Poker? Hell, I don't even know her!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
It's probably all Wheaton's fault. :)
Anyone know of any good books on Chaos theory? I've been thinking a lot about what it might mean for games like blackjack and poker. I've spent a lot of time playing blackjack this week, and it seems inevitable that the cards go on good and bad swings ( and I've made a lot of money this week by playing accordingly).
Don't get me wrong, I am an engineer, but I can't hep wondering if there is some broader priciple at work.
All your base are belong to us!
The last time I played was in Vegas, and I got a royal-freekin-flush (no wild cards, 5 card draw). The bad news was I was playing nickle ante with my then mom-in-law and sister-in-law :-( Right after that I said, "Well, I just used up all my luck, so there is no use in ever gambling again."
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Few sites have Linux compatable clients. The one I play on is http://www.pokerroom.com . Their java client works great on my Linux laptop. Also, they list Linux as a supported OS on their site. The new client now has no limit single table tournaments, Omaha hi lo, low limit, seven card stud; it's nice. They also have play money equivelant games for all their real money stuff. Site does have some connectivity issues from time to time, though. If you want to pratice, this is the site.
Unfortunately, I am just limited to writing a script that will count how many of each hand there is.
Because the NETWORKS are pushing it HARD and forcing airtime, it MUST be popular. That kind of logic is what Clear Channel uses to determine the #1 record. Issue a play list, play the song you want more than any other, then tout it as the most popular based on airtime and push sales...
Speaking of Nascar and Reality shows...OMG they combined them into a Nascar Reality show...we have sunk lower than I thought possible. Nascar, if the drivers keep practicing and soon they will add right turns too...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Slashdotters are way more likely to spend an evening at home playing pocket pool.
could go something like that
Favorite addictive non-computer game:
- poker
- solitaire
- monopoly
- russian roulette
(or something like that)
Jobs? Which jobs?
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~darse/msc-essay/node5.h tml clearly states: The Web Server may be down, too busy, or ...You may wish to try again at a later time.
Heh.
Here's the content:
Game Theoretic Analysis
Preliminary academic research into poker actually started very early in the computer age. In the book ``Theory of Games and Economic Behavior'' (the founding work of game theory [101]), John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern used mathematical models to analyze certain greatly simplified games of ``poker''. Among other things, they demonstrated the fact that bluffing is an absolutely essential component of poker, and that any sound strategy must include bluffing with a certain frequency. While this was interesting, and useful as an example of the application of game theoretic principles, the games studied were too far removed from real poker to be of much practical value.
Other fundamental works into the study of simplified poker were developed by John Nash and Lloyd Shapley [61] and by Samuel Karlin [51, 52]. Collections of related papers on the theory of games are also available [2, 3, 4], as well as an excellent treatise on the analysis of all games [23, 24].
An attempt to adapt these mathematical models to more realistic versions of poker was made by Newman [62], but with only a limited degree of success. More recently, this approach has been revisited and more fully explained by Sakaguchi [71]. Beyond this, there has been little development of the original ideas, probably because they were originally intended as a lesson in the use of game theory, rather than as a serious investigation of poker dynamics.
Consequently, the models which have been developed to date are severely limited with respect to the real game of poker, and are of little use to the practical problem of writing a computer algorithm to play a strong game of poker. Nevertheless, general game theoretic notions can be applied to the practical problem, and the original references may be helpful in directing that method of thought.
There are at least two potentially useful ideas stemming from game theory. The first is the techniques used for determining certain optimal betting strategies. The second is the utilization of optimal bluffing and calling strategies. In both cases, the `pure' solutions to the simplified problems must be adapted to be applicable to the real game, but the underlying principles constitute a solid starting point from which to develop a sound approach.
An optimal betting strategy for pot-limit poker was developed in a paper by William Cutler [32]. Like previous studies, this analysis was based on a simplified poker game with only one betting round and no draw. However, the analysis method is generalized to include games where any number of re-raises are permitted, which is more realistic than the usual no-raise or one-raise scenario. Furthermore, the manner in which the optimal frequencies were computed should still be applicable to a more realistic poker setting, once the effects of multiple betting rounds and the drawing of cards is taken into account.
We now look at two books which undertake a complete game theoretic analysis of real poker games, albeit with limited degrees of success.
...but the casinos can ask you not to return. They have the right to refuse patrons.
Counting cards with the help of a device is illegal.
Some video poker games pay out more than 100% IF you play perfectly all the time and are prepared to wait out the jackpots (read - have a large bankroll to begin with.) Most players DO NOT play perfectly and will take chances that don't pay off.
--
BananaJr6000 calculates the odds in a VM
To get WSOP 2004 updates, hand counts and even video interviews with some of the top players, check out gutshot.co.uk (free reg req).
Poker? I hardly even know her!
I've never really learned to play poker, but I think I'd like to sometime. Though I'm also rather certain that I have no poker face to speak of, so I would have to relegate myself to video poker and online poker games.
>insert witty sig file here
It took College to get me into Poker. I was a freshman at Oklahoma State University, and I soon learned the professors didn't take roll with 300 person classes (in an auditorium), or even the smaller ones. Anyway, in our dorm we'd set up on the pool table and play from 6pm until 6am, and then go eat at chow. I started missing lots of classes and flunked out.
I stopped for a few years, enlisted in the Air Force, and got my act together (determination in life, got married, etc). I still play small time and really like the World Poker Tour on TV. Its lots more fun, to me, to watch.
John
Sounds almost exactly like the Tiltboys. If ever there were a bunch of harder gamblers, I haven't heard about it.
I have been getting together with a group of friends to play poker for a while now. It's a good opportunity to spend time with friends, and get toasty! The No Limit Texas Hold 'Em from TV has definitely polluted our game though. I have been trying to shake things up by introducing different games, like the 5 card Draw I grew up on. Soon, they may be ready for some 7 Card Stud. I can't wait.
-J
Fire in the sky
Many of today's top professional players have nerdly roots such as Mathematicians, chess prodigies, or backgammon champions.
What I love about Poker (and why I am happy it is gaining in popularity) is simply the "reality" of it in that you have real cards, real chips and potentially even real money in your hands. I am contrasting this to the computerized or synthetic elements of online poker or poker video games.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
and that book isn't even about the original MIT team or even the most succesful MIT team. The special that was on the History Channel was better.
If you're in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area and looking for poker games we've got a mailing list for finding them.
We stopped by Binyon's a few weeks ago when they were playing the Super Satellites and it was fun to see the famous stars playing right in front of you.
Poker's a fun game, lots of calculation in your head, you can definately have an advantage if you can calculate odds on the spot. I think that's why many geeks are attracted to it. You also tend to make money based directly on your skills (not in single hands, but averaged out over many hours.) I like poker because it's the only game where you're not playing against the house. You play against other people, who may be better or worse than you. When you play against the house, the house *always* has the advantage.
Most people seem to think the ability to understand probability is why nerds excel at poker. If that were true, most nerds would recognize that probability-wise, they'd be better off not playing at all. This is one reason why many locals in Vegas don't like Comdex - many of the technical types don't gamble because they know better.
Technical people, especially programmers and mathematicians seem to be more adept at identifying patterns in otherwise chaotic sets of data. This works out well at the poker table in being able to spot when someone is on tilt or when they have a good hand.
I'm a big fan of the World Poker Tour. I think the show is extremely interesting and being able to see what cards the players have and how they play them really shows how inutitive and brilliant they are. Compare that with the Celebrity Poker show on Bravo where they act like idiots and make one stupid move after another and you can see there's a lot of skill involved in this game.
I need another reason to drink and smoke and lose money - and ignore the s.o.
from a nanog post Avi In WSOP
:)
Avi is from Akamai, so there is geek for ya
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
I live in a student house filled with computer science nerds (I do of course include myself in that :)). They've recently started playing poker in groups of 4-8 quite often. From my observations its fairly clear that poker serves several purposes other than entertainment, and is probably popular because it has an air of "manliness" about it. e.g. an association with some old western film with rough-edged cowboys sitting in a smoky back-room. The need to separate yourself when playing aids a feeling of individualism and self-importance within the group. I think it will always be popular amongst men for these reasons. I don't join in myself; I like a friendly game of cards, but don't like these silly associations that come with poker (I can always go wrestle a lion or something).
Okay, at the time he was what he defined as a looser too - but he recognised this and "got out" as it were. In the end, it would turn into an 8-24hr a day job
btw, Rounders is probably the best movie I've seen about Poker.
Avi Freedman, Chief Network Scientist for Akamai, just won $90,000 in the 2004 WSOP.
.@.
I've been playing poker for a number of years, and study the game online in twoplustwo.com - where I post as whiskeytown - I also play quite a bit online.
:)
There are some mathheads who are World Class Players...Chris Ferguson is one - a second class of character is the newbie who watches too much WPT/WSOP and thinks he should push all in with 88 - these guys sorta hurt the third class of player - the ones who play you more then the cards.
More then one professional player has griped (unfairly) that no good player would call some of the bluffs they made, and that too many amateurs are diluting the pool in the WSOP main event. It jumped from 700 to over 2200 this year - an incredible jump -
As of today, in the 80 of 2200 players left, 3 of them (including Chris Ferguson) are former WSOP winners, so the cream is still rising but not like it was when there were only 70 players.
I think it'll slowly die out as a fad - esp. since most folks want to play NL these days, and those games never last long - too easy for someone to go broke in one mistake - but it's good for poker -
but all the popularity is very good for tourney players - more money in the pool, and a lot of folks watch TV and don't realize they see a lot more bluffing on there because for one, it's a final table and two, it makes for better ratings then bet, fold action.
Poker is a winning -EV if you're better then most of the other players at the table, and with so many fish, it's not hard to be better anymore
RB
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Texas Hold Em is the ultimate combination of skill and luck. These online games like party poker are some fun but you need to look at your opponents to really play. You can be the best player at the table holding pocket Aces and still get killed with the river card. You can also steal the pot with practically nothing if you know how to bet. I play in a weekly cash tournament. $100 gets you 1000 chips and you play no limit holdem until only 1 player is left. We usually get 6-9 people. If 8 people are in; 3rd place gets their hundred back 2nd gets 250 1st gets 450. I don't think I could do these multi-day games though. I know guys that make a good lviing at it.
Geeks start out with the basic abilities to learn the math, and that gives them a huge advantage when learning poker over the average player. Their learning curve is shallow to understand the game. They also tend to like playing games. They will do very well in games such as blackjack, where the rules are very clear and the math works well. They will also do well in shorter-term play such as poker tournements.
But in poker, the separation between those that can hold their own, and those that excel over the long-term, is human observation. According to poker great Doyle Brunson, poker is a human game, not a numbers game. He had little education, and probably had to struggle to learn the math (which he knows very well).
Just like lawyers need to have legal skills in addition to a litigious client, geeks need human skills in addition to the math to succeed in the long-term.
Blackjack + geeks: teh winz
Poker + geeks: depends on the geek's human skills.
I really doubt geeks get to "Poker" much...mwhaahahaha! Oh but seriously I hear you can make some fat cash from playing online because you can play more than one game at a time. I'm sure I'd just go broke faster though.
Seems like all of my programmer friends play it now, it's a bit more fun and more socially acceptable than LAN parties! We're such dorks we wrote (shameless shameless plug) poker clock software.
...that the folks who consistently make money playing poker professionally year after year are simply extraordinarily lucky?
That's absurd. Part of the appeal of poker is the that "one cannot really control it." But that doesn't mean you're flipping a coin whenever you play.
In fact, poker is a great test of a person's ability to "experience" statistics and probability first-hand... and yet continue to ignore it.
For instance, if you're holding two suited cards in a hold'em game, you've got a 20% chance of the board giving you a flush. But if you got lucky the last time you foolishly played for that result and that result only, you might be convinced you made the correct decision the next hundred times you're faced with the same situation.
You are also completely forgetting about the concept of bluffing in your one sentence assessment of poker.
I'd invite you to play a few sessions with my group, but it just might reinforce your belief in minimizing losses.
i believe thats:
checker, chess, and poker
After all, isn't Bill Gates supposed to have been something of a poker shark at Hah-vahd? Of course, that could be just another one of those myths that have taken on the air of authenticity over time.
NPR actually had a pretty funny commentary on this very topic this week on "All Things Considered", I believe, but i can't seem to find it on the NRP site.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
"There's a very limited degree of skill involved"
Do you have any evidence or support for this statement? As evidence that there is indeed skill involved, consider the tournaments referenced in the post, and the extremely disproportionate number of 'professional players' finishing well. One might consider the fact that professional players can exist at all to be good evidence that, especially over the long term, skill predominates over luck.
One of the more interesting aspects to poker, IMO, is the number of different layers of strategy involved.
* There's knowing the odds of your hand coming out on top, given the information you are aware of.
* There's how those odds compare with how much is in the pot compared to how much you'd need to bet.
* There's knowing how to change your play based on table position.
* There's knowing how to change your play based on chip position.
* Then there's the whole psychological game of both trying to read your opponent's motives while simultaneously attempting to mask or misrepresent your own. Being able to consistantly bluff and steal hands that your cards would not have won is often considered one of the hallmarks of a skilled player.
Yes, for any one given hand of poker, "luck" (ie: randomness) will often prevail, but over the long (or even medium) term, the skill of the players involved far outweighs the moment to moment randomness.
I play poker regularly, usually with friends, and always for enough money that we take it seriously.
This site is run by a casino math professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It contains the odds on all the major casino games, and Java applets that teach you how to play the best odds.
http://www.wizardofodds.com/
One thing I've never looked into, is where the online qualifiers are for the WPT. Is this through some online casino? Which one? Do you have to play with real money or is it a fake game that the winners receive a WPT invite for?
I have had a weekly poker game running for almost 4 years now. Nearly every single participant is a tried and true geek. $20 dollar buy in, 3 raise limit. We play mostly Texas Hold-Em or 7 Card Stud variants like High Chicago.
But in the end it doesn't matter, geek or not, I'll still take your money!
I play a lot of hold 'em poker.. I used to play back in college, but it was hard to get a game going -- only real card players knew how to play...
:-p
I'm happy it's so popular now - it's easier to get a game going, and it's loads of fun to play. I play in home tourneys twice a week for low stakes buy ins ($20 and $10 usually), and I play online a bit too much... I need to stop that
The great thing about it is that while luck comes into play in any given tournament, over the long haul you'll definitely see skillful players rise to the top. One guy who comes to my weekly game consistently finishes in the top 3 and wins at least 3 times as often as anyone else who plays.
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
I recently started playing poker with some friends, and what I find fascinating is the mix of the math skills and people skills that you need to be a good poker player.
The math skills are definitely my strong point, but getting together face to face to play poker gives a geek a way to practice reading body language in an environment where it is perfectly acceptable to stare at a person to figure out what they are thinking. I've never been able to do a quick read on a person's body language, but I play with guys that do, and I hope I'm learning from them.
check out Volcanobox
I have been playing poker for about 3 years - every monday I have a group of guys that come over. It started out as 5-7 of us, now it is not unusuall for me to have 15 people over playing on 2 tables. I enjoy the company and the tensions that happen during a poker game are super fun.
The only bad part is that with the more people that come and play, the more money I seem to lose ): But 40$ for a nights worth of entertainment and some one always brings beer is a good deal most of the time.
Really the only thing that I have learned playing poker is how to lie to my friends.
There's been a thread on NANOG about Avi Freeman at the WSOP. From his website:
# Chief Network Scientist for Akamai: Working on new products, especially around Internet monitoring and availability
# Playing poker every few months (see http://avi.freedman.net/poker.html) - I came in 5th and made the final table of the Pot Limit Omha event at the World Series. ESPN will air it on Aug 31, 2004.
Red or black in roulette will lose if a zero comes up, so you will only win between 46.2% and 48.6% of the time, depending on what kind of wheel you are playing at (single-zero, double-zero, or triple-zero). That means that, on average, you will lose between 2.8% and 7.6% of every wager at the roulette table.
While blackjack and video poker offer you the theoretical ability to turn the odds in your favor, poker odds always favor the more skilled player. Anyone can aspire to become a poker expert, and people do spend large sums of money trying. Some succeed.
Well, I like Poker.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
I listen to Stephen Hawking audiobooks while playing holdem'
most the geeks i know play... and a few are rather serious about it (their own chips, playing local tourneys, weekly game at work, etc).
Just stay sober.
Last year's World Series of Poker winner actually qualfied for the World Series of Poker through an online tournament at Pokerstars.
Moo
I just won my weekly home game tournament last night, and stayed out till 5am with my buddies talking shop.
Poker is a blast, and being a huge fan I just back from Vegas a few days ago and was out there to play poker and to soak in all the excitement surrounding the WSOP. If you are consider poker to be a serious hobby of yours, first get ahold of Positively Fifth Street by James McManus, its an amazing book about poker, Las Vegas crime, and the WSOP, I read it one the way to Vegas, perfect timing, then go out to Vegas during the WSOP.
Here is a list of pros that I saw while on my trip, note that you will NOT see these folks on the strip, just in old downtown, just walk the floor of the Nugget (and check out the re-opened poker room!) and be sure of course to go upstairs in Binion's to see the "the big one" taking place.
people i saw:
james mcmanus
tj cloutie
phil ivey
dave "devilfish" ulliot (played blackjack with him)
jesus chris ferguson (met him)
jonny chan (met him)
scottie nyuewn
kathy liebart
larry flynt
doyle brunson
owner of the ballagio
mel judith
dutch boyd
amir vahidi
gus hanson
simon trumper (beat him in a hand of 2-4)
didnt see:
phil hellmuth
howard lededer
annie duke
Aside from that, I had a blast playing in some tournaments, I recommend the daily no-limit tourny at Sunset Station, it's off the strip and the locals make for some very challenging play.
If you are brand new to the game, I have a few pieces of advice:
1. Do not, do not, do not, learn to play online (learn the rules, fine, but not how to PLAY). Find a small home game in your area (there are several locators on the web) and learn there, the web is a really, really bad place to play poker for a few reasons. For one, if you are playing in the free "play money" games, there are always a few awful players that will call any bet (also known as call stations) these players will make there two pair on the board and sometimes win, leaving you, the new player to think that is the right play. Secondly, if you are playing in the "real money" games, there are going to be players a lot better than you, and you won't have fun learning because you will be focused on not losing your money, poker is not a defensive game.
2. Second piece of advice, never play for money online. Just don't. Don't do it. I play in a home game twice a week, $10 buy-in top three spots pay out, however that's really all I can play, because the game only happens twice a week, so theoretically the most I can lose in one week playing poker is $20. This is not the case online, you could play 24 hours straight, there are always games happening. I consider myself a strong player, I think I could PROBABLY do very well online and even make some money, but the risk of addiction and the fact that if I started I probably wouldn't want to stop has led me to choose to simply not play for a single penny online. I use the free games to brush up on my skills, but like I said before, its not even really that useful do to the low quality of play.
3. Have fun, if you're not having fun, or if you are playing with money that should be going to pay rent, stop playing, find a new hobby. When I walk into a poker game, i consider my buy-in gone, if I make money, fine, but I think of it as paying $10 to sit around and drink beer with my buddies and analyze strategy, whoop and holler at crazy all-ins and for those few hours, act like I am a master pyschologist, economist, and statistician all rolled into one.
Having said all that; I'm All-In.
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
I used to play quite a bit of structured-bet poker in the California card rooms. In California, as opposed to Nevada, the card rooms are smoke free, and the competition is *usually* pretty weak. At tables up to about the 6-12 or sometimes 10-20 range, almost all deals will see a flop. A lot of people will play any pair, regardless of position, and will often play any face card. In Vegas, more people know what they're doing, and a lot of times the deal will be folded around to the blinds. So, in my opinion, California is about as accomodating a place to play as there is, and I got to a point where I could consistently win about $15/hr, over the long run. Not great, but not bad. More practice and higher table limits probably would have improved this number. The problem is that it just gets SO. INCREDIBLY. BORING. If you're playing well, you're going to be folding most of your initial hands because they're just not worth playing. There have been hours where I've sat there and folded all 35 hands that are dealt. For a while you can watch the other players and learn their styles, but when you realize that two guys at the table will play anything to the flop, including 2-7 offsuit, there's not a whole lot else you need to know except that those two people suck and you should be ready to exploit their weakness. Some poker books have stories about men who cut the pockets out of their pants, so they can masturbate at the tables. Perhaps my boredom threshold for masturbating in public is higher, or maybe I just didn't stick with poker long enough, but my decision was that that lifestyle wasn't really the way I wanted to spend my life. For $15/hr, there are a lot of other jobs that don't revolve around being bored and taking other people's rent money. (Yes, I know you shouldn't play with rent money. A lot of people do. And those are usually the players who suck, and who are losing their money to you.) Pot-limit and no-limit are completely different animals, but the risk in those games is enormous. It's trivially easy to lose your entire bankroll in one night. Todd
I've been playing online for a few weeks now at Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson's favorite online poker room FullTiltPoker.com. My chipstack is growing!
The site looks real nice.
Join me sometime. My player name is Otto Parts.
CHEERS!
I don't play poker myself, but I do work for PokerPages and dear god has the site traffic exploded in the past few days. We've done nothing thus far this week but set up new servers and try to bounce load around among them, as the traffic to find news about the WSOP skyrocketed this week. While the size of the WSOP field itself multiplied by three this year, the number of people trying to follow their favorite players in the WSOP has gone up siginificantly more.
What's interesting this year is how most of the pros are going out relatively early, while online qualifiers are quietly making their way through the field. The star of last year's WSOP was Chris Moneymaker, who won his $10000 entry through a satellite tournament on PokerStars. His story must have tripled the traffic to that site overnight last year. Now every online poker site in existence wants to duplicate that, in some cases by sending 300 some players to the main event.
I think that stud is more about odds and less about bravado than Texas Holdem. So I prefer stud.
I've played for several years. Biweekly game we hold tournaments (sometimes two table, sometimes one).
I've played onlin. started at DynamitePoker.com playing freerolls, won afew dollars, built a roll. I cashed several hundred dollars from there. Tried partypoker for a while, now play at pokerstars.com and like it a lot. I'm up/down there, but have been playing on the same $100 buy in for six months.
It's nice. I can play a single table tourney for $5, lasts about an hour, 90 mins. tops (that's if I win). It's fun, but I'm not sure I'd play for big money (too much risk of people colluding/playing as a team with IM).
It has definitely helped me learn the game. In our "live" tournaments, I've done very well (about 3/4 in the money), just because I've played a lot of tourneys.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
http://www.mynameismatt.com/cg I wrote this a while ago if you are interested in buying chips. It gives the rundown on chip manufacturing processes. And yes, I play poker.
I do love card games, got an old poker chip dispenser prominently displayed in my living room...
...drum roll... a university t-shirt. Woo freaking hoo.
My freshman year of college, they had Casino Night after orientation, and whoever won the most "money" would get a prize at the end of the night. I played Blackjack and won $35,000 (which would have covered all my books, tuition, gas, etc.) and my prize was
I shoulda gone to Vegas.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
has some great stories about poker.
I've been playing No Limit Hold'em for a while, here's my experience:
The only way to win consistanty is to play rationally (ie. mathematically) against people who are not playing rationally. Not only do you have to beat your opponents but you have to do it with a large enough percentage to also beat the house's rake (a small amount taken from each hand).
But since the house only takes a rake the odds aren't necessarily against you.
There are basically three ways to play:
Rationally against Rational players: results in you winning N% of hands with N being the number of people at the table. You basically trade pots back and forth. If you play long enough the rake eventually takes all of everyone's money.
Irrationally against Rational players: results in quickly loosing your money. You might get lucky in the short run, but you can't continue playing this way for long. Do it occassionally so that people might think you'll make irrational bets and then might call you when you have the nuts.
Rationally against Irrational players: You'll evetually gather all the money not lost to the rake. The only way to make money in the long term. However, you may still go on looong losing streaks.
I still play Hold`em (mostly rationally), but you eventually get to the point where you've seen all the hands. Now it's mostly a grind.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
There is actually a social networking site for poker addicts like us at http://www.chipleaders.com
The members seem to be all hard-core poker players, but from surprising backgrounds, ranging from Investment Bankers, Doctors, to students.
P.S. I'm yuki@neospace.com for those that want to get in on my network.
And I'm up over $1500. I'm really getting addicted to it, but it's great!
When you have to calculate draw, always calculate the chance NOT to draw, then the chance to draw is 1-chance not to draw.
Let me explain with your example of J and A 1st paragraph. If you have 6 chance to get the correct card out of 47 at the first card, then the chance NOT to draw the correct card is 41/47. AT the second card it is 40/46. At the third, 39/45.
Thus the chance NOT to draw a J or A is 39/45*40/46*41/47=65,7% chance to be completly unlucky. This is quite near from what you calculated by wrong means (38% so 62% of being unlucky).
By the same token you can calculate the chance of getting lucky at the 1st draw (1-41/47=6/47=12%) at the second draw (1-41/47*40/46~1-75%=25%) or at the third draw (1-41/47*40*46*39/45=35%).
Imaginating you have rejected 4 card and have only an A, the chance to get lucky are 3 cards out of 47 at first. So chance to get an A at first draw : 1-44/47=6%) at second draw (1-44/47*43/46~13%) at third draw (1-44/47*43/46*42/45~19%) or at 4th draw (I spare the formula) : 24%.
Somebody with better remmembrance from statistic stops me, but you never calculate "or" (I can get the card at 1st draw OR 2nd draw or 3rd Draw). What you calculate more easily is NOT-AND (chance to get at 5rd draw lucky card = 1 minus the chance NOT to get at 1st*chance not to get at 2nd* chance not to get at 3rd*chance not to get at 4th).
Well maybe I forgot something so feel free to stop me.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A few Friends of mine play poker every Friday and Saturday nights.
:)
It's great fun.
The way we usually play is Texas Hold'em, where each player starts with $10 in quarters, and you play until 1 person runs out of money (if there are 3, if more then until more people run out).
This limits the betting, and gives the fun moves of going all-in and you also can't loose too much. A game usually lasts about an hour. Mix it with some alcohol and you have good times that will keep you awake until sunrise
www.wizardofodds.com
Gambling math, stats, theories, and great newbie information.
I've made a cool 2 grand playing online, from an inital investment of $100. I love the publicity -- more people to pay me. With minimal effort, anyone with a decent head for numbers could learn to make 50k a year playing a 40-hour week. I have a few friends (great gamesmen) who make several times that. Me, I'd rather keep my dayjob and play for fun and profit, but imagine being able to live *anywhere* in the world and make a low US engineer's salary, working whatever hours you want!
My dream is to take vacations of arbitrary length playing poker -- start with some basic bankroll, kick it on the beach in Bali or something, play in an internet cafe, and just keep chilling as long as I'm positive.
In the a 2002 Wired article titled "Hacking Las Vegas," the exploits of a MIT Blackjack Team is detailed for us. It's an interesting read in any case.
In poker (at least most variations), you play against other players, and not against the house (which, I agree with you, always wins)
I know that there's mathematical ways of going about games.
I don't like to use them, unless I can intuit them.
Sure, mathematics can tell you poker odds. But I think it's much more fun if you try to feel the correct decision.
A lot of casinos offer video poker with a "double down" option if you win. Once you've gotten a winning hand (often a pair of jacks or better), you can play "high card wins" with the computer, and equally suited cards are a push.
Now, I've played a bit of nickel video poker, and I can tell you that the odds on a normal nickel video poker machine are not in your favor. The return is maybe 95-98%.
However, the odds on the "double down" portion are exactly even.
So what's the right strategy, if you're playing this game? Once you get into the "double down" portion, you're playing with significantly better odds.
And, just as importantly, is the strategy affected by the weight of an enormous bucket of nickels, should you win?
Todd
One of the methods I'm employing in the rehailitation of my stroke-victim friend is playing poker. We use the Card Lovers Set to help him work with the cards until he's totally rehabilitated. We play 5-Card draw.
but I've been enjoying playing poker on Yahoo!
I think every newbie wants to bluff, but bluffing doesn't really work when the money isn't real and people will just ride out the bets to the bitter end.
My fascination is very recent. I do like the psychological nature of it, but I'd never wager real money. Maybe penny poker or something non threatening to my rent.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
For what it's worth (probably not much!), I never really cared much for playing card games of any kind. Every so often, I get mild amusement playing a few hands of blackjack on a cellphone, computer or PDA - but it quickly gets boring.
I suspect part of it has to do with what you're brought up with as a kid, though. My parents never played cards when I was growing up, and in an ever-so-slight, indirect manner, even dropped a few hints that it was "bad stuff" I didn't want to get caught up in anyway. I played loads of board games, on the other hand.
When I got older, I seemed to run into more and more people playing card games - but I found the barrier to entry rather high. (Amazing how much "lingo" there is in the typical card game. Things everyone else assumed were understood by all were completely lost on me.) Furthermore, it seemed like part of the fascination of at least some card games was mastering a great complexity of rules, despite the deck of cards itself being such a simple, basic thing. I remember being taught how to play several card games that I can't even remember the rules for anymore, because it's been years since I played them. You really have to play some of these games regularly to keep all the rules straight. By contrast, I don't think I'm ever going to forget how to play Scrabble or Risk....
Is that like sex? I read about that in a book once. It was the Commodore Plus/4 Programer's Manual. It goes into great detail about such licentious things as POKE and PEEK.
Great pre-adolescent fun!
do() || do_not();
Now, I like poker, and I have some respect for the people that are able to play at the championship level... But it sickens me that it is being broadcast on ESPN. Since when is poker a sport? Of course, I don't think billiards belongs on ESPN either, but that's another issue. Is there such a shortage of real sporting events that they have to put card games on? I'd rather see highlights from the previous day's sports if nothing else...
I have held monthly poker parties since 1994, long long before the current craze (although I must admit to switching to No Limit Texas Hold 'Em recently due to the attention it gets). I also have played chess forever and it is starting to become en vogue again as well. I guess I'm just ahead of my time...and the world is finally catching up to me. Next thing you know overweight dorks with mismatched clothes and mussed up hair will be hot!
A cousin (by marriage) of mine used to be a player for a card counting group out of southern California, an offshoot of the CalTech branch that was an offshoot of the MIT crowd. They really needed him because he was older, a great salesman, had a really hot wife, and could talk the dotcom talk. It seems that while they had all the card counting math geniuses, it was rather easy for the casinos to spot the geek winning a lot, so they ended up "hiring" players.
He's out now, but played for about three years. They had a twelve page list of card combinations and the resulting plays that he had to memorize. The geeks would head in and populate the tables, counting and looking for hot shoes. When they got the ratio of remaining cards they wanted they called him in and he played the table. Last numbers I remember hearing were that they won something like 52% of the time, and were averaging over 35% return yearly. But that's average. Once they lost over $60k in one trip.
There was a lot more social engineering to it that was his job. Apparently the DoJ looks really hard at someone who walks in, buys tens of thousands in chips, plays a bit, and cashes out. It's called money laundering and it's the best way to get Himler- I mean Ashcroft- on your case. He had to be believable as the dotcom money guy who likes to play. Since he was basically a dotcom money guy it wasn't much of a stretch.
BTW - They don't keep constantly building multi BILLION dollar casinos by letting people out with more than they came in with. Remember, if you consistently won it would be called winning, not gambling.
Last time I played some sit-down Texas Hold'em poker with friends was an intrepid idea on Halloween: Everyone buys a big bag of candy, sits down at the table, and agrees on values thereof (full-size candy bar: 5, mini candy bar: 3, lollipop: 1, etc. etc.).
Within two hours we had thoroughly distributed our candy amongst ourselves, and had a blast doing it. (As well as trying to play a poker face on a wicked sugar high.)
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
I've been working for about a year developing a new on-line poker system, myself primarily working on the customer client. Not too bad work, my career has been in the "game" industry, this is my first foray into the "gaming" industry. Especially with the WPT being televised and the excitment created by WSOP, this is pretty much a booming industry right now.
:)
Having never played poker before this job, I'm now a convert. Especially with the influx of new players, if you read some books and develop even a slight edge, it's quite simple to make money. There are so many people who will play any cards on the offchance they will win, if you use a simple but correct strategy, you will come out ahead in the long run.
Anyway, any geeks or other slashdot types looking to get in to poker, I'd recommend the forums www.unitedpokerform.com or www.twoplustwo.com for some good discussion of the math and strategy behing this very consuming game
If you watch the WSOP or WPT you'll eventually pick up on a prejudice against "internet players" by the "pros". It's a bunch of nonsense. In a given week I play more hands than the average pro does in a year, I just miss out on the staredowns and chip tricks. I am an avid gamer, and I utilize the same critical thinking skills to improve my poker that I did to win at command and conquer or everquest. The WSOP is happening right now, and there's a very good chance an internet player will win it (again).
Also, the mathematics of poker are highly overrated, you can memorize the important numbers in an hour (flush draws, straight draws, pot odds etc).
here. The interesting thing about these guys is they allow you to "cash out" at any time - instantly. They have both multiplayer and "solitaire versions of poker.
You can play for fun or for real money.
Note: online casino play may be illegal in your jurisdiction.
For you poker players that make an occasional Vegas trip, you may be interested in a special that Bellagio offers. If you spend at least 6 hours in the poker room ( monitored by a stamped card given to you by the poker room host ), you can get a room for $200/night on the weekends and $129/night on the weekdays. This may not seem like much of a special, but considering the fact that the typical rate at Bellagio reaches $400-$500 on the weekends, I certainly consider it a great deal...especially when splitting it with a friend. That's where I'll be this weekend!
Personally I play poker a good 3 times a week, at least. I find that not only does it provide me with something to do on a weeknight, but I can also win money. I mean, if you blow $10 at the movies, you leave without the $10, no matter what. Poker can provide the same kind of entertainment for me and I might leave with another 20 or so in my pocket. Sort of a nice little perk...
Roulette(sp?) is the biggest gamble with the highest payout (35-1 if you guess correctly)
I have been playing poker with the same group for over ten years now. We started as an excuse to get out for Monday Night Football, but now the "off season" is getting as busy as the regular season. Just had a special no-limit hold-em tournament last weekend, which was a huge success. We just couldn't get VanPatten to do color commentary, although we have one of our members who dresses as well he could take Vince's place.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No one's said this yet?
Poker? I hardly know her!
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
>:|
(wow, check out his poker face)
Wah!
The biggest growth has been online poker. That has to be the best thing that's happened. You see, playing poker doesn't have to be about sitting next to drunks, spending ungodly hours at the casinos, and controlling your shaking hands anymore. It's all about using technology to your advantage. Read my post http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=107998&cid =9182752 here from a few days ago for more details.
If you are going to 'gamble' for fun anyway, why not make a few bucks doing it instead of losing a few bucks?
First try at this ignored paragraph breaks. Sorry!
---
I used to play quite a bit of structured-bet poker in the California card rooms. In California, as opposed to Nevada, the card rooms are smoke free, and the competition is *usually* pretty weak.
At tables up to about the 6-12 or sometimes 10-20 range, almost all deals will see a flop. A lot of people will play any pair, regardless of position, and will often play any face card. In Vegas, more people know what they're doing, and a lot of times the deal will be folded around to the blinds.
So, in my opinion, California is about as accomodating a place to play as there is, and I got to a point where I could consistently win about $15/hr, over the long run. Not great, but not bad. More practice and higher table limits probably would have improved this number.
The problem is that it just gets SO. INCREDIBLY. BORING. If you're playing well, you're going to be folding most of your initial hands because they're just not worth playing. There have been hours where I've sat there and folded all 35 hands that are dealt. For a while you can watch the other players and learn their styles, but when you realize that two guys at the table will play anything to the flop, including 2-7 offsuit, there's not a whole lot else you need to know except that those two people suck and you should be ready to exploit their weakness.
Some poker books have stories about men who cut the pockets out of their pants, so they can masturbate at the tables. Perhaps my boredom threshold for masturbating in public is higher, or maybe I just didn't stick with poker long enough, but my decision was that that lifestyle wasn't really the way I wanted to spend my life.
For $15/hr, there are a lot of other jobs that don't revolve around being bored and taking other people's rent money. (Yes, I know you shouldn't play with rent money. A lot of people do. And those are usually the players who suck, and who are losing their money to you.)
Pot-limit and no-limit are completely different animals, but the risk in those games is enormous. It's trivially easy to lose your entire bankroll in one night.
Todd
Data was an OK player. He could probably beat you or me hands down ( after all, how can you tell if he's bluffing ? ), but he'd get slaughtered in a world class poker tournament. How do I know? Because in their games, Riker always wins. Riker is the master power player on the Enterprise, not Data. Data never once won a poker hand in TNG, except for the episode where he is back in the 1900s as "a Frenchman" and wins money to finance his timeshift detector.
I suspect that an android would be bad at poker because much of the game is based on how you judge the emotional clues the other players are giving you. Machines are not very good at judging emotional responses ( yet ).
I also only play poker for small stakes with my friends. I also think that skill plays a limited role in poker. However after playing many games it becomes apparent that the luck evens out and only the skill remains.
You are using skill each time you bluff your way into a win, or call a bluff, or bet heavily against someone with a good hand that isn't quite as good as yours, or cut your losses on a pretty good hand that is going to lose. This probably doesn't happen every hand, but these skill events add up over time.
I have noticed that I win more than I lose, and that I can usually point to a few hands each game where I made a judgement call that worked out well. If you lose on a regular basis then you may need to pay more attention to the other players.
Completely wrong.
m l
http://wizardofodds.com/games/slots/slotapx3.ht
NEVADA - Las Vegas
Unlike New Jersey, the Nevada Gaming Control Board does not break down its slot statistics by individual properties. Rather, they are classified by area.
The annual gaming revenue report breaks the Las Vegas market down into two major areas: the Strip and downtown. There is also a very big locals market in Las Vegas and those casinos are shown in the gaming revenue report as the Boulder Strip and North Las Vegas areas.
When choosing where to do your slot gambling, you may to keep in mind the following slot payback percentages for Nevada's fiscal year beginning July 1, 2002 and ending June 30, 2003:
5 Slot Machines
The Strip - 90.32%
Downtown - 91.50%
Boulder Strip - 93.03%
N. Las Vegas - 92.97%
25 Slot Machines
The Strip - 92.59%
Downtown - 94.83%
Boulder Strip - 96.47%
N. Las Vegas - 96.63%
$1 Slot Machines
The Strip - 94.67%
Downtown - 95.35%
Boulder Strip - 96.48%
N. Las Vegas - 97.21%
$1 Megabucks Machines
The Strip - 89.12%
Downtown - 88.55%
Boulder Strip - 87.76%
N. Las Vegas - 89.41%
$5 Slot Machines
The Strip - 95.33%
Downtown - 95.61%
Boulder Strip - 96.53%
N. Las Vegas - 96.50%
All Slot Machines
The Strip - 93.85%
Downtown - 94.32%
Boulder Strip - 95.34%
N. Las Vegas - 95.32%
These numbers reflect the percentage of money returned to the players on each denomination of machine. All electronic machines including slots, video poker and video keno are included in these numbers.
As you can see, the machines in downtown Las Vegas pay out 1% to 2% more than those located on the Las Vegas Strip for the lower denomination 5 and 25 machines. When you get to the $1 and $5 machines the difference is less noticeable but you can clearly see that the downtown casinos always return more than the Strip area casinos. This information is pretty well known by the locals and that's why many of them do their slot gambling away from the Strip unless they are drawn by a special slot club benefit or promotion.
Returns even better than the downtown casinos can be found at some of the other locals casinos along Boulder Highway such as Boulder Station and Sam's Town and also in the North Las Vegas area which would include the Fiesta, Santa Fe and Texas Station casinos. Not only are those numbers among the best returns in the Las Vegas area, they are also among the best payback percentages for anywhere in the United States.
This is one of those exceedingly rare chances where I can actualy post something on /. while at work and consider it work related :-)
I'm the lead programmer for a Poker training package called Poki's Poker Academy.
Poki started as an Artificial Intelligence research project at the University of Alberta, where I did my MSc. We've recently commercialized the AI into the above product.
The UofA
research page is an excellent resource for geeks interested in poker. Our publications look at the math and algorithmics behind writing sophisticated poker AI.
Poker is an incredibly geek friendly game. There is a lot of reward in being able to play analytically. The 'reading' of people is a much smaller part of the game than most folks think -- at the highest levels, the best players simply don't have any easy tells, so there is no point looking for any.
I want to live forever, or die trying.
I read your page. Thanks! It was enlightening. But I have a correction for you. I believe it may change your choice of what to go for on a 2 card flush draw. You said:
1/4 * 1/4 = 1/8 = 12.5%
Actually 1/4 * 1/4 = 1/16 unless I can't remember multiplication as well as I think I can. This translates to 6.25%.
But why is the rum gone?
I mean, you know that the odds suck, and the discussion is all about what sucks least. On top of that, the marginal value of a dollar won is less than that of a dollar lost, generally.
Look at the zombies at the slots - none of them are having any more fun than the pigeons in a rehash of a Skinner experiment.
If lotteries are a tax on the mathematically challenged, what can the explanation be for the mathematically adept undergoing a rigged game?
Poker odds are a little different, in that the relevant factor is the ratio of chumps shovelling cash in / house raking it out. When that ratio > 1 the pros can make a living at a casino but that's not a given by any means. The house takes a big bite out of each pot so there has to be a huge difference in skill to give you a positive expectancy.
Home games get hustled, though. Do you have a circle of acquaintences you trust not to cheat, but feel o.k. about beating?
Not for me.
I've been playing No Limit and Limit Texas Hold Em for about a year. 2 regular live games a week, once a month at the casino, and 4 days or so online (PokerSchool.com). In my opinion it's a simple game. Once you know the odds and percentages, it's simply a matter of whether or not those odds favor the investment in the pot. i.e. if you are an 80% favorite to win the hand, and someone raises you 10% of your chips, call or reraise. I think geeks do well because we are already predisposed to doing well in math and stats. The fun part comes when you need to figure out if you're being bluffed, or drawn in. No amount of math will help you there.
Almost being the key word, and there's no possible source of "extra information" in craps, so it's a great house game. Blackjack used to be the best - you could count cards when you could find a decent 1 or 2 deck game, but now all those are for suckers, as the blackjack always pays 3 to 2 and the dealer hits on soft 17, which really helps the house and makes it basically impossible to get an edge.
That's why I like poker. You don't play the house, you play the other player. If you know what you're doing, you can have far better than the typical less than 1% player edge that's the best case scenario in blackjack.
I went to Vegas recently to play for the first time, and I ended up winning a little. For new players, you have to know when to play - at the low-limit tables, the locals play mornings, and if you're new to poker they'll likely beat you. Weekend nights is a mix of idiots (your prey) and sharks, many of whom are waiting for high-limit tables. If you have a loose high-limit player at your low limit table, trust me - get out. Even if there are 3 total newbies at your table, the "loose" shark will get more of your money than you will of the newbies. I found the best time was afternoons - the locals are gone, and the sharks are still sleeping it off, leaving you and a lot of really stupid people. That's when I did really well. It helps when some moron will take 2-7 unsuited all the way to the river in Hold 'em. It happened to me, it was great. You can't lose.
I don't play games of chance; I prefer to have complete control over all of the variables in any situation where money is on the line.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to admin this NT server bank.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
I bought some chips on ebay from vegas_supplies_gifts.
The chips themselves are very heavy and excellent quality, but the case was cheaply made and the handle broke off after a few months.
The seller refused to replace it, even though it was clear that the case wasn't designed to handle 13lb's of chips.
Really? You stopped playing after your first game of strip poker? That's when I really got going!
Karma: Bad. Mostly because the only moderators that notice me are conservatives.
Just about every online poker site I've seen had some sort of tournament that earned the winner a ticket to the WSOP.
Personally I only know for sure of PokerStars, PokerRoom, and UltimateBet, but I'm sure all the others were the same. But in every case, it was a real money tournament. However, there were satellite tournaments for these as well, with buy-ins as low as $30.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Also, you can win a buy-in to any physical poker tournament of your choosing if you play well enough (though I have not won any sponsorship points yet, it's pretty difficult).
Plus they have content from poker pros that is very worthwhile. It's worth a one month subscription for the Mike Caro articles alone.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
For a great convergence of geeks and poker, try the International Conference on Cognitive Modeling this summer, at which there will be a "pokerbot" competition. It's just what it sounds like, but if you'd like an overview (written for poker players), try my article from Card Player Magazine.
it's actually worse than that. Suppose you've got 3/5 for a clubs flush. Their are 10 remaining clubs in the now 47 card deck. Odds of getting a single club are now 10/47. To get the last one the odds are 9/46. Multiplied together this is about 4%.
First, if you can't see the benefit of playing against calling stations then you are not a strong player. You should be winning even more money from calling stations if you know they are calling stations. You should never be calling when expected value is negative. People don't understand that poker is a long term investment. You can lose hands to calling stations but you should love it becuase in the long run you will win.
Second, playing online is a far better way to play if you are actually a good player. More hands are dealt giving players more chances to hand over their money. Cheating (collusion) is really easy to spot and doesn't give other players a huge advantage.
Isn't that the whole idea of the game?
I never even touched her!
How much is a ticket to the movies? 10 dollars, and it'll get you an hour of entertainment.
How much is an hour's use of a table at a decent pool hall? 10 dollars.
How much money is it to play at the arcade for an hour? Likely much more than 10 dollars.
For a 10 dollar buy in, I can play poker with a group of friends for 4-5 hours. *PLUS* there is the slim chance you may not even lose that money, or come out ahead.
For anyone except a total introvert, a good game of poker is pretty much top entertainment value for your dollar nowadays. You *do* get out of the house once every few days, right?
I know, but his page just ignores the difference between drawing from 47 cards vs drawing from 52 cards. Point well taken, though.
But why is the rum gone?
disclaimer - I don't play very well.
Suppose you start with the best possible cards - AA.
Newbies around the table hold bullshit-crap
Someone is going to get two pair out of the board. You have to hope for another ace or a pair on the board. If that pair does show up, it likely gives trip-bullshit to one of the 7 implacable newbs.
If the newbs all play irrationally, it seems sound play gets drowned in the noise.
The real question here is how geeks can use their skills to win huge on online poker. In the lower level games much of the play is very formulaic (especially in limit holdem). Because the players are so bad (loose and passive) you can almost literally get away with just playing a certain set of hands and almost always come out on top. If you can manage small wins consistently and then start playing several tables simultaneously you could make big bucks.
The key is automation. While you wouldn't need to automate the whole process, you could certainly write an application that would screen out (fold) most hands and only alert you when certain profitable situations arose, allowing you to intervene. If you could play 10+ tables at a time using this type of system I don't think it's unreasonable to make $50+ hr.
Just a thought.
I just began playing poker about 2-3 weeks ago. I don't think I'll be able to add a heck of a lot of insight into the game as I'm just now understanding it, but here are some useful resources:
http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-top-lists
Th is is a site that does a grid-style review of about 40-50 online poker sites. Me, I like EmpirePoker.com.
Play Poker Like the Pros
I found this book to be quite useful as a beginner but post-flop play advice is extremely vague or too caught up on specific situations that do not happen most of the time.
Ken Warren Teaches Texas Hold'em
This is a GREAT book but there are a few critical examples in there where I think his editor should have been hung in effigy. There is one chart that I have yet to figure out what it means, a few areas I don't quite follow what he's saying because if it's read literally, it's logically inconsistent and even a few misspellings. But despite all of these gripes, the best book I've seen on the specific game of Texas Hold 'Em.
He covers all areas of play, tells, betting (when to raise, when to check-raise, when to do none of the above), learning how to calculate outs, probabilities. He even includes "homework lessons" so you can better understand what hands may be profitable for your particular style of play.
I guess I can make some recommendations...
1) Playing for fake money is a great way to get a feel for the game in a general sense but people do not bet and play the same with fake money as they do with real money. I realize this may seem stupendously obvious but don't get your balls all worked up when you take in $1,000 in a night playing 5/10 Hold 'Em on Yahoo Games. These people play like asshats.
2) Speaking of which, don't play on Yahoo Games. Most of the betting sites that will take real money deposits also let you play for fake chips as well. I find that people who will go through the hassle of downloading a client for a specific poker site tend to take a more serious approach to betting and therefore you'll have a better gague of your gameplay.
One advantage of Yahoo, however, is that you cannot simply replenish your chips (AFAIK) by clicking on a few buttons. This means if you see someone with -2,402 chips, they kind of suck and you may want to avoid those tables if you really want to test your chops.
3) Bust out your spreadsheet of choice and label the headings with some of these; date, play/real money, day of week (1-7), month date (1-31), location, game type (texas hold 'em, omaha, etc), low bet, high bet, start time, end time, duration (calculated from the previous two), time of day, start bank, end bank, win/loss (calculated from the previous two), # of large bets per hour, rate per hour, table "looseness" (1-10), secondary expenses, tips to dealer, tips to waitstaff, narrative.
You might wonder what the day of the week and the day of the month have to do with anything. You will find that you do better or worse on certain days for reasons that may be non-obvious to you. For example, federal checks come on the 1st and the 15th, IIRC. Expect to see a better bankroll and profit on these days or even before since people will write checks that do not yet have backing a few days before knowing they'll be covered by the time they're cashed. Days of the week is probably a bit more obvious. Holidays factor in too.
If you're at a real casino you can bring a small notepad to jot these down on and enter into the sheet. If you're playing online you can just enter them in at the end of your gaming session. Generally you can just highlight the last row along with the next e
My
Limekiller
This is the advice:
Some may object that this gives weak players a chance to draw out on you (to beat you against the odds) because you let them stay in. I reply that it is a question of how *much* you win when you win that makes you successful, not how many *times* you win.
Hold'em is a slightly different story if there are ten people at the table, but the basic concept applies.
Yes, bet your premium hands. Just don't necessarily give away your hand strength by doing so. If you can let the other guy do the raising when you have him beat by long odds, you will make more profit more often.
Conversely, if you are sitting in a Hold'em game in late position and you are thinking about limping in (entering the hand for the minimum bet) with an A-10 offsuit, think about raising the pot instead (doubling the amount of money in the pot). The fewer people in that hand, the more likely you are to win it.
This simple advice has helped make me a winning player for a long time now.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Poker is all odds. You should have an idea of odds of winning and the return for your long term investment into the hand at all time. Sure there is an element of reading a player but other than the final tables at major tournaments its all math. Furthermore you never play poker against the house. Sometimes they hire players to sit in games so that they have enough people but they only take a percentage of the pot.
Blackjack, when playing with the best possible odds without card counting, gives the house roughly a 50.5% to 49.5% advantage. It is totally conceivable to win playing blackjack for a short period of time. The house only needs that 1% advatage becuase they have an infinite amount of money. The MIT students that made millions counting cards (read about it in "Bringing Down the House") reversed that small advatange over the house. But still they only had about a 52% to 48% advatange but becuase of investors were able to fight off losing streaks with seemingly endless amounts of cash.
Craps is the ONLY game in Vegas that you can make a bet with even odds. Certain bets in craps actually have a 50/50 pay off with the house and player. Yes it IS true. When you back up a pass line bet or come bet in Vegas you get paid based on the odds of rolling your number versus a 7. Unfortunatley Vegas makes you put a bet out first that doesn't get paid even odds so that is how they make money... that and people making other bets that don't pay even money (ike field or hard bets).
Lastly Roulette has the worst odds of the 4 major table games in Vegas. This one is easy to figure out so I don't need to get into it.
I have been playing poker for a while now (both in casinos and home games) and I would like to make a comment that may sound foolish:
POKER IS NOT GAMBLING
The reason for this is the following: you are not playing a game of no or limited choices (hit or stay), and, more importantly, YOU ARE NOT PLAYING AGAINST THE HOUSE. In poker, you play against other players. The house makes money by taking off a small amount (the "rake") out of each pot.
The term "gambling" itself is a thin line. After all, isn't insurance gambling? You pay money to a company in case your car gets hit, but what if it never does? What about buying stock? What about walking out the front door of your house in the morning? By this same token, poker is not gambling. This assumes that you are a good player and that you play often. The reason it is important to play often is because you can go on a crappy streak of cards (bad luck) for maybe even a hundred hands, but after playing ten thousand hands in a year, the statistics even your "luck" out. All that is left is your playing skill. In fact, all poker gurus will tell you that you should not think "I have played 200 games of poker this year", but rather "I have played ONE game of poker this year, with breaks in between".
This is not just my opinion. In California, casinos are illegal (except on Indian Reservations). But what ARE legal are "card rooms," or pseudo-casinos that just have poker. Blackjack is not allowed at these places. The reason for this is because according to California law, blackjack, roulette, etc are considered "games of chance," while poker is legally a "game of skill," thus not gambling.
Think this is a bunch of garbage? Then why is it that of the 2600 participants in this world series the final 100 will be mostly the same people that were in the final 100 last year? And at the final table, why will there be people that have been in the world series long before espn started showing it? Watch - it will happen. If poker were just luck (like blackjack), then this would be a statistical impossibility.
I play poker every week. It helps me fund all my computer/hardware projects. On the average I net $300/week. I have been playing for 4 years now and learn every day. I would suggest newbies read Doyle Brunsons Supper System. This book has help make my game unbeatable.
Support Texas Troops use TXGoogle
I play in a Tuesday home game run in the home of a Computer Science graduate student from a nearby University. Although some complain about the fact that the chips are all in "power of 2" denominations, that game does in fact draw a great mix of geeks and non-geeks. Occasionally there is geek talk at the table, but more often, it's not.
I have found, actually, that poker in general and home poker in particular are excellent opportunities for geeks to apply their native skills to something new and exciting, while meeting people outside their regular sphere. Also, working on "reading" people, which is central in the higher limits and in "big bet" poker, can help geeks learn the empathy skills that a purely technical focus often neglects.
Finally, for those of you in the Free Software world who would like to see Free Software Internet poker, I urge you to look at Mekensleep's work. While they are creating a general GPL'd engine for online gaming, they are focusing their efforts foremost on poker. I hope some will choose to contribute to the project.
Oh, and if anyone is looking for a home game, be sure to check out this site to find one.
Let's face it, most people playing $20 a hand poker out there don't know squat about statistics. This guy said that he could really clean up in the weird variation games where the odds get skewed compared to standard poker.
Somewhat - but because Vegas is also filled with morons that are interested in poker because of its popularity, there are also lots of fish.
If you play certain hands and avoid dumb, loser hands, you can usually beat anyone at a home game of poker. But in a Casino? I don't like my odds of coming away with any money playing people at a Casino in Vegas.
I did last month, and I'd never played before. I played $3-$6 limit Hold 'em exclusively. At some times of the day, there were decent players, at some times there were sharks like you describe, and at some times there were no sharks and an absolute abundance of the stupidest, math-uninclined, play-any-hand-like-it-was-aces morons. I found afternoons best for that, and it's hard to lose money consistently to those people.
In fact, the idiots call so much you can't bluff. I tried once - I had a nut straight draw and missed it, but there was nothing on the board, I was on the button, and people were all checking on the river so I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) they had nothing. I either bet or raised on the river (can't remember if someone finally bet in front of me), got rid of everyone except one guy who called, and it turned out he had 8's or something equally crappy (compared to my K high or whatever). He was genuinely surprised, and said "I thought you had the straight!" I rolled my eyes and said "So why did you call if you thought you had 8's losing to a straight?" The guy shrugged and said he'd come that far with the 8's... Shit like that pisses you off, but all you have to realize is that 1) you can't bluff all the callers out of the pot in low limit, and 2) when you really do have a hand, you'll get paid well for it.
Personally, I wouldn't know why so many people would play WSOP. I'm sure the majority got in through satellites and such, but still, to me that's like throwing money at a brick wall if you haven't played (and won) in a bunch of tournaments first.
No question. But I think you can make enough to subsidize a vacation if you know what you're doing (I wasn't that good because it was my first time and I played low limit) and keep to a sane limit, while knowing when to play and how to avoid the sharks.
I caught this off of Yahoo news just half an hour ago. Is any of this true?
m pl=story&cid=57 3&ncid=573&e=1&u=/nm/20040519/od_nm/rally_ dc
- (snip) -
Michael Moore Hospitalized
By Gary Finn
NEW YORK (Reuters)
Michael Moore was brought to the Emergency Department for shortness of
breath on a tarp dragged by six firemen. After positioning two gurneys side
by side, we somehow managed to lift him up. His health problems were
obviously due to his weight, which we estimated to be approximately five
hundred pounds.
Attempting to undress him, we lifted his arms to pull his very large shirt
over his head. To our surprise, an asthma inhaler fell out from under his
right armpit. It had been enveloped in the skin.
Reviewing his chest X ray, we noticed a round density in the left chest.
With the help of an assistant, we lifted up his massive left breast to find
a sticky, half-shiny dime. No telling how long it had been there.
Finally, a nurse and two technicians attempted to place a Foley catheter in
his bladder. After spreading apart one tree-trunk leg at a time, they found
a handful of industrial paper towels, apparently being used as a sanitary
napkin. But they also found an even larger surprise lodged between his
buttocks -- a TV remote control.
When I gave a report about the patient to the admitting physician, I tried
to cheer him up by reminding him that if he did a thorough exam, he too
could find buried treasure!
Mr. Moore's family was very happy that we found the remote.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
-- (end snip) --
Here's the link for verification:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?t
Poker, in particular Texas Holdem, is an incredible game and very easy to pick up. What is most interesting is that the complexity of the game is not even unstood by the layperson until after they have played for a while.
I used to play UT and Medal of Honor. Not anymore, after I found out that many of the online poker sites have FREE money tables. So you get to compete against others and it doesn't cost you anything.
A friend of mine just recently started a site:
http://www.aces-wired.com
He's got reviews of several of the Online Casino's
I happen to live near Ga Tech and there are big games going on almost every night.
Plus I learned something else really interesting.
About 40% of the people that I meet playing poker are Self Employed so it a great source for leads for my own business.
Poker is a great analogy for business too.
In poker and in business you've got to learn to play the odds. Know when the odds are in your favor and
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
Many of the people in the poker rooms work for the house. Ostensibly they are they to fill the table, but really, they are there to cheat you blind. Also there are unaffiliatedsyndicates who are also there to cheat you.
How does cheating in poker take place? Fancy card mechanics? No, mainly because that can be detected. They use more subtle tactics, mostly just nickel and diming you to see what they can get away with, then press it. Sometimes its just simple stuff like moving seats so you pay the 'vig' an extra time. Other times its misreading the cards and hoping nobody notices.
And then there is simple collusion between players. If two players agree not to bet against each other, and have a signalling mechanism for who has the better hand, their odds are increased dramatically. A simple way to think about it is that they don't both lose to your winning hands. There are lots of ways to signal, nothing fancy needed. Just fiddle with a stack of chips cutting it to match the cards; anybody who plays much will assure you that regualar players can manipulate chips anyway they want without looking.
The bottom line is, if you are not a shark, you are a mark. Even if you are a shark, you might still be victim of bigger sharks. Not a smart game to get involved with.
As the submitter mentions, poker (especially limit and no-limit hold'em) is a fantastic combination of skills including your ability to read people and math skills (especially your ability to calculate odds on the fly). It truly is a geek game, with many of the game's top players holding advanced degrees in mathematics, statistics, etc.
In fact, I'll be in Vegas starting this weekend to buy in to one of the $1500 tournaments which make up the World Series. Of course I have very little chance of winning, but I figured it was time to roll up a stake, head to vegas and take my shot!
Not a lot of people know there are 33 separate games making up the World Series, not just the grand $10k buy-in No Limit game you see televised on ESPN/etc. Speaking of which, with all the talk about it, it would have been nice for the submitter to include a link to the official WSOP website.
Required poker reading for those interested in getting dealt in:
CardPlayer.com. Poker news, tips and discussions. One of the best of the best. Includes a really good online odds calculator you can use to double check your own math :)
TwoPlusTwo.com. Website run by some of the smartest guys in gambling, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Sklansky has an excellent series of highly-technical poker books for every skill level, including Hold 'Em Poker, Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players, Tournament Poker for Advanced Players, and The Theory of Poker.
Doyle Brunson's Super System. Regarded by many as the bible on poker. Much of the information is outdated about specific games (the nature of the game has changed) but any respectable poker player knows this book.
PhilHellmuth.com. Phil is a poker geek himself, one of the best players around (and the youngest to win the world championship). His recent book on poker Play Poker Like the Pros is the best "intermediate" book around in my opinion.
PokerPages.com. Best place to find a game, be it a tournament or local game. Great source of poker news.
There are also a great number of high quality poker blogs, including PokerBlog.com, GuinessAndPoker.com and ChrisHalverson.com.
Not to mention of course, the explosion of online poker sites, including UltimateBet.com,
---------
There is no try at jedinite.com
Maybe when McDonalds is done offering their no-bun hamburgers, they can start putting decks of cards in their adult happy meals.
That's too odd.
Poker? I hardly know her!!! =oP
However- these are the averages for entire properties, and can be manipulated based on the number of 103% payout machines, 97% payout machines, and 40% payout machines scattered throughout a casino.
Therefore we can both be right.
HOWEVER- I quallify my statement by saying that my knowledge is now 6 years old. Your numbers sound just about right, though- the further away from the strip you go, the better chance you have to win, and this too is advertising-related.
Note also how the casinos are VERY carefull not to let this show up in the published statistics- erring a bit on the side of caution with all nickle machines.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Interesting stats, but it neither proves nor disproves the parents premise. The stats you mention are for the casino as a whole, the parent was refering to locations within the Casino.
If a Casino has 1,000 slot machines, it might determine that 20 of them are in "LURE" locations, and they payoff at 103%. The remaining 980 machine can pay off at 94.84% and you casino will average a payout of 95%. Now consider the amount of tech and monitoring casinos do, the variety of machines at their disposal, etc. You really think every machine pays off at the same rate?
Heck, this theory even explains why off-strip casinos pay out more, they have a lower ratio of high visibility to low visibilty slots, meaning their average will be higher.
Still doubting? Its not widely disseminated, but the big advantage of electronic Slots is that while their payouts must be the same, its perfectly legal for them to dangle jackpots just off the screen in non-scoring positions. They are carefully timed to show up when you might be getting disappointed, but not so often that you see the line and the stick attached to the carrot.
The corporate Vegas of today is far more cut-throat than the gangster Vegas of yesteryear, Its not Vinny in the back figuring how to lure you, its a crack team of statisticians and behavioral psychologists...
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Slots are DIFFERENT than video poker machines. Big, big difference.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I used to play UT and Medal of Honor. Not anymore, after I found out that many of the online poker sites have FREE money tables. So you get to compete against others and it doesn't cost you anything.
A friend of mine just recently started a site:
www.Aces-Wired.com
He's got reviews of several of the Online Casino's
I happen to live near Ga Tech and there are big games going on almost every night. Most colleges have games.
Plus I learned something else really interesting. About 40% of the people that I meet playing poker are Self Employed so it a great source for leads for my own business.
Poker is a great analogy for business too. In poker and in business you've got to learn to play the odds.
1. Know when the odds are in your favor.
2. Be able to capitalize on that advantage.
3. To make money, you learn to be comfortable with risk. There is no way around it.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
There's also playing poker against other people, but that probably requires even more skill than regular poker unless you play against bad players and leave quickly.
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
Ever heard of comic book conventions? What about Star Trek conventions or Star Wars conventions? What about furry conventions? What about free software developer conventions?
And what about playing online?
For those who don't know how to play.... Texas Hold'em is the most popular form of poker that is played on TV and at the World Series of Poker
Link: Texas Hold'em Poker Rules
I play weekly - one other IT guy has joined our table recently, but mostly non-geeks.
I host a monthly 32 person (4 table) no limit hold 'em tournament. Started out last year as a small for cash thing and has grown since then.
.NET.
We've completely automated the buy-in, re-buy and add-on process with pocket pc's outfitted with barcode scanners talking to a db through a SOAP interface. Each player has a plastic membership card with embossed PIN # and barcode on the back. The waitresses simply scan 'em in and off we go. Behold the power of
We dump the stats from each tournament and, if needed, re-rig the tournament rules to smooth things out for the next tournament.
Poker is definitely becoming the bridge of our generation though. We get more people each tournament, pretty soon we're going to have to rent out a hall or something.
Of course I would have to take a rake at that point and it would become illegal. *shrugs*
As the dealer starts to pass the dog by, the guy says, "Hey, deal my dog in!"
Everyone looks rather askance but they deal him in.
To everyone's surprise, the dog picks up the cards and begins to play!
After a few hands one of the guys says, "Say, that's amazing! Your dog ought to be in the Guiness Book of Records!"
The dog owner says, "Nah, he sees too many flops and is a sucker for a check-raise."
more Online Poker Jokes
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
Nuff said.
My casino philosophy has kept me on the winning side of the equation for some time now.
My lifetime up-to-down ratio is something like 4:1, and here's why:
When I walk into the casino, I have already planned to spend $100. I think of it the same way I would going on any kind of night out: an expense. This money is already mentally written off (ie, I expect to lose it).
If at any point during the evening my gambling fund is double or more than my initial fund amount, half my gambling fund goes into my wallet. Say I win $250 on a lucky call, having $50 still on me. I'm at $300, so now I drop $150 in my pocket. No matter what happens, no matter how bad the gods hate me, I will only gamble out of the fund, and not dig into wallet cash. In this example, I made $50, plus I got the night for free, because I got my $100 expense fund back. And I got to keep gambling from $150. :D
The rule changes after that...but this is all instinct derived. I wouldn't be surprised if someone could produce a formula that squeezes high efficiency out of this, but it won't be me. For me, I just work off doubles for any one visit. At the $200, $400, and $800 points I split the gambling fund in half and put half away. After that, every $1,000. And so on, and so on, choosing whatever numbers suit your income and desire to bet.
At some point, I might have $4000 set back, and just decide to let the gambling pot do whatever it will. Regardless of what happens, I can walk at any point, and have paid for the trip, the time, and still have cash to cover toys and taxes. And still come home with that $100 in my pocket.
It could be that I just got lucky a couple of times, larger wins wiped out the small losses since I don't gamble a lot. I average one trip every couple of years, but as long as you keep your head it's not bad. Usually the problem comes when people gamble what they can't afford to lose, so they gamble more to win it all, and wind up screwed.
Best rule ever: Always be prepared to lose just decide beforehand how much to lose, and stick to it.
Self-referential sigs are rarely entertaining.
most geeks play strip uno all the time. it's strip duo that's a little more rare for them.
char *mySig;
Disclaimer -- the only form of Poker I play is Texas Hold'em, Low-Mid Limit and occasionally No Limit tournaments. I can't speak on the other variations of the game and, no, I don't work for or with any of the sources that I am citing.
For starters, Hold'em, like any form of Gambling for real money, isn't for everyone. Gambling is called Gambling for a reason, otherwise they'd call it Savings. But if you're looking at getting into it, here is some food for thought:
From a geek standpoint, I think one of the appeals that Hold'em Poker has is that it isn't so much a game a chance as it is more of a game of incomplete information. The very essence of living a geeked out existance is marinated in the ability to thrive in environments of incomplete information, whether solving problems or creating solutions. Out of those who consider themselves geeks, I'd have to say that those who are Hackers (whether in the genuine sense or cracking into computer/network/phone systems) would probably tend to have a little more of an edge than most. Aside from the logic and reasoning involved in playing the game, there's a certain instinct that develops, very similar to that certain "something" that enables some people the uncanny ability to take a look at a system, see what isn't obvious and find ways to make that system do things it wasn't originally designed to do. Anyone applying the Hacker Mentality to learning and playing the game will probably find that it won't take long for them to become formidable opponents.
Another way to look at the game is that essentially you're putting together a puzzle, racing to put yours together first, and betting that you can put together a better puzzle than everyone else -- all done by assembling the information between the hole cards that you're dealt, the cards that are flopped, the final cards that hit the table, and the patterns of betting/raising/folding around the table. You're not only competing with others at the table but you're also competing with yourself since there are times when you'll have to fold on seemingly great hands because playing them through to the end of a round will only mean getting beat and throwing your money away. Outside of just plain old bad luck, when it comes to most people losing big at Hold'em, generally you can boil it down to either (1) the know the basic rules but being clueless about the game's dynamics, (2) playing with a lack of discipline, and/or (3) letting their egos dictate the way they play their cards instead of doing what the cards and the dynamics of the table during that particular round says they should do. I'm no expert but this is something I've observed way too often. I've competed in some small stakes Hold'em tournaments locally and walked away with the top prize several times. In each case the people that were easiest to knock out of the game succumbed to any one of those three, usually all of them by the time I was scooping up the last of their chips.
The two foremost authors I've read on the subject are Sklansky and Malmuth. Between these three books -- The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky (ISBN: 1-880685-00-0), Hold'em Poker by David Sklansky (ISBN: 1-880685-08-6), and Hold'em for Advanced Players by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth (ISBN: 1-880685-22-9) -- alot of patience, and alot of practice with both online poker play (start with play money) and stand-alone versions of the game, it doesn't take long to advance beyond being one of the novices throwing their money away at a table and getting beat like a baby seal. The rest comes with time and experience.
Aside from those books, there are tons of sites out there on the subject. Here are a few that I found to be helpful during the learning processs:
http://www.twoplustwo.com/
http://www.learn-texas-holdem.com/
http://www.holdemsecrets.com/
Als
I'm a masters student at the robotics institute at CMU. we've got a group of graduate students that play at least once a week, and we all love it.
recently, as part of one student's AI project, we played against the 'pokerbot'. Basically, it was a GUI on a laptop which needed a human operator to input cards and bets.
At first, we called it a 'foldbot' for good reason. After a few tweaks from the programmers, it became pretty good at structured texas holdem poker.
losing a hand in a showdown to a machine of your own making is the worst...
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
I love to play poker. I'm not the best player in the world, but I do win a little(!) bit. I think it's important to point out that poker is a very different form of gambling than 21 or craps or slots.
There are many people who don't understand this, and in fact are probably reading this right now thinking, "oh, another delusional gambler."
The thing you have to understand about poker (but not video poker) is that it is never played against the house. Instead, the house takes a small fee from each hand. In home games, there is no fee at all.
This means that whether or not you win is based not only on the raw statistics of how the cards come, but also how your opponent plays.
For example, note that before each hand of poker some or all players must play a forced bet, called a 'blind' or 'ante'. Of course, you are allowed to bet, call, raise, or fold at any time.
Now, just suppose, you are playing against a complete idiot: someone who folds every hand at every opportunity, even if he has the best possible hand.
Under these circumstances you would win 100% of the money. Every penny would be yours. Every hand you check, he says, "I don't think I can win", and he folds his hand.
Now of course, people are not that dumb, and don't play this way. But it turns out that there is a very very very wide range of possible ways to play the game between playing perfectly (which means you are somehow able to guess with 100% accuracy what cards your opponent has and know with 100% accuracy what he will do in a given situation and calculate the odds 100% correctly in your favor) -- and playing like our hypothetical moron.
This gap between ineptitude and perfection is what allows poker players to make money. The vast majority of players fall just above the moron line (believe it or not!) -- and this means there is plenty of room for people willing to learn how to play the game properly (and who have the discipline to actually do so!) to take money away from those who aren't willing.
Most of the people who play poker ARE gamblers. They call with their hands to the river hoping to get lucky and win the pot. The poker player who isn't gambling is the one who uses all available information at his disposal to calculate the odds of his winning and who only plays the game if it is to his benifit to do so.
For example, in Texas Hold'em, each player gets two cards and shares five. Suppose you are playing someone and are in the following hand:
YOU: Ah Ad
Board: Ac As 7h 5d
At this point, even with one cards still left undelt, it is IMPOSSIBLE to lose this hand. Why? There are only four aces in the deck, so your opponent can have none. The very best hand he could have at this point would be a pair of sevens. Not even a straight flush is possible at this point because there is only one card left to come. The best your opponent could hope for would be to get another seven -- and lose anyway.
When this happens in poker (it's called having the 'nuts'), every penny you bet that is matched by another player is profit. There are no odds at this point -- there is no question. You WILL win.
Good players excel at placeing themselves in this situation, while avoiding situations where they are the ones on the losing end of the deal. (If you were on the losing side of this game, the best thing you could do would be to fold and not give your opponent any more money. But most people will call you down because they "Just had to see what you had!")
If you still believe that winning or losing at poker is random, just take a look at the WSOP: Just as in golf, each year the same 20 professionals keep coming back to play, and each year it's those same 20 people who walk away with the bulk of the money. Oh, sure, every now and then someone wins the competition who probably shouldn't have, and every now and then a professional loses a lot of money. But averaged over time, in the end, it's the good players who will end up with the cash.
The only real difference is that in Golf sponsers usually pay the entrance fee, where as in poker, each player fronts his own fee.
Just something to think about when someone says, "Poker," and you think, "Slots."
-Chiem
Blackjack & Card counting:
It is possible, with perfect statistical analysis of blackjack play, using all the information available to you as a player, and perfect strategy based on that analysis, to beat the house by a good margin at blackjack. This generally requires computational assistance, which is illegal in most places.
It is also possible with less than perfect play and analysis, to beat the house at blackjack, but by a smaller margin. This is where card-counters fall.
Card counting is not illegal. It is not cheating. It is simply observing what everyone else at the table can also see, and calculating your bets. It should in no way seem WRONG. Casinos have done a good job of demonizing it, however. It is also not difficult, and nothing like what you probably saw in the movie "Rain Man".
You do not get kicked out for card counting.. you get kicked out for WINNING. If you consistantly beat any game, the casino will, for obvious reasons, not want you to play that game anymore. The same goes for bookies.. they often will not take action from players who consitently beat the bookie. It just happens that blackjack is the easeist game to beat.
If the casino suspects you of counting, they don't care unless you are winning. If you are winning consistently, it's easy for them to tell if you are counting.. and therefore know that you are going to continue winning unless they stop you from playing.
Systems:
There is no "system" to beat any other game, with the odd exception of specific electronic machines at specific casinos. There is no roulette system. There is no craps sytem. There is no pai-gow system. Anyone who has a system is wrong. mathematically, provably wrong. If it were possible to simply read a book and beat roulette, casinos would not be in business.
Poker:
Poker is unrelated to casino games.
Poker is not about beating the house.
Poker is not about beating the odds.
Poker is about beating other people.
Knowing the odds, the cards, knowing what the odds are of your hand beating everyone elses hand is the BEGINNING of poker.. EVERY expert poker player can already tell you the odds, more or less, at any given round. Knowing the odds perfectly will not let you win poker.
When you play poker, your object is not to win more hands than the others, it's to win more money.
Let me repeat that... your goal in poker is NOT to win more hands than everyone else.. it's to win more MONEY. Given that everyone knows the odds equally, and the shuffles are random, everyone will on average win the SAME number of hands (if we ignore folding and bluffing). Then, it all comes down to psychology.
A poker room at a casino (or smoky back room of a restaurant, or Uncle Bobs) takes a cut of each hand's pot, either a per-round fee or a percentage. You are not playing to beat the house; the house gets paid no matter what.
ONLINE GAMBLING STUFF:
- Online blackjack is not casino blackjack. There is no shoe, no deck, for practical purposes. Some software MAY simulate a real 6 deck shoe or what have you, but it is reset every hand.
The main point is, you CANNOT count cards playing online blackjack, it's totally useless. You cannot shift the odds in your favor. In fact, if you do apply counting strategy, you will make things worse for yourself, and lose faster.
- Some online casino games look like and play like real casino games, but the outcome of each hand is not totally random, win/lose is actually controlled centrally, as with slot machines, to enforce an overall payout percentage for the house. This is generally considered pretty dodgy, but it is done with some online games.
- Online poker is just like real poker. You play against other, real people, and the house takes a rake.
- The main problem is collusion, as it is harder to detect. Poker software companies say they have algorithms to detect collusion. This is quite possible.
- Back to why poker is a
I think most of you are missing the vast distinction between poker and blackjack/craps/slots ect. The primary difference is where your winnings come from. In the majority of gambling games if you hit it big the casino pays. In Poker all your winnings come from other players. You sit at a table and take their money.
Poker has nothing to do with beating the house. The house takes the rake regardless what you do. Poker has to doing better than the other players. This can be done, and be done consistently.
For example I play poker online all the time. In fact for a while now, my poker winnings have been my primary source of income. Although, after getting my B.S. in C.S. I should probally at least look for a job.
I usually play partypoker.com (signup/bonus code "join25"). To be fair I have played since I was like 17, and I am 22 now. But, as long as I've played I've cracked a profit. In fact my poker skill has bought me a few computers, paid my rent the past few months, paid for a few quarters of college, fixed my car, and bought me a burrito I ate this morning.
The house gets paid regardless, so you actually can win at the game. For example it would be like paying 10 dollars to play somebody chess and if you win you get 19 bucks (the person who owns the chess set rakes a dollar). Now if you were a chess grand master this situation would be great for you, and the chess set owner.
This is poker. All though chess is much more descrete, the better player almost always trounces the worse player. Poker is has a bit more luck involved (not nearly as much as you would think). But, this gives losing players the impression that they can win, and winning players something to chat about how bad they were 'bad beat' by some 'moron'.
The crux of it is. Poker is a game of skill. You pay the casino/online-site/back-room-operator for the honor of sitting at the table and being permitted to seperate suckers from their money.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Sir Clive Sinclair is a case in point here. British electronics mogul in the 1970s and the 1980s (OK, the C5 was crazy, but his company Sinclair Research got calculators, 'mini radios' and digital watches early to the market and the ZX80/81/Spectrum defined an era in computing for some of us). High-profile member of Mensa as well (nb. for the record I think Mensa is a very stupid notion indeed, but I digress).
A keen poker player he has appeared a number of times on televised Poker in the UK. The recevied wisdom is actually that he is rubbish, and indeed caused a stir by storming off the set having lost 1500 quid in the first episode. This is really a bit unfair because I have heard from those more knowledgable in these matters that he doesn't do too badly at tournaments in general.
And yes, I play myself. It does seem to be a case that mathemticians and 'geeks' have an affinity for the game. As a psychologist I always pretend to be "in computers" so as not to sour things from the get go (ironic really as I think a firm grasp of numbers and a decent memory is far more important than the actually very little psychology has to say on the subject, but theres nothing one can do about stereotypes).
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
VIDEO poker != TABLE poker.
Lemme explain, as a fairly proficient card shark. (I missed WSOP by eight seats in a 150-man supersatellite this past Feb. Wired 7s, short-stacked, on the button, against a bozo with 9-10 off. He flopped a 9, I go home.)
Video poker is a game of chance. Granted, due to Gaming Board regulations, the chance of any card hitting is in line with actual probabilities, but, in the end, you are, like a slot monkey, looking for particular combinations of cards to get a payoff, usually starting at a pair of jacks.
Table poker, though, is an entirely different animal. Larger amounts of money are typically involved. Play is much more skill-based than in video poker. Knowing when to toss Big Slick (A-K), or when to hold Khan (A-Q) is a tricky thing to master. It's even harder to know what to do on a flop. Some flops it's damned obvious, some the right looking thing will kill you. (Ex: A-9, flop comes 9-3-3 with one caller. Too bad the &*#$ had J-3. Two pair is good. A set is better.)
Add to that understanding the psychology of the game. You have tight players, you have loose players, you have lunatics, you have masters, and quite often you don't know who's who until they've taken some of your precious pieces of resin. VP, you're playing a machine.
Probability is also a major major factor. Big Slick, for example, is a monster hand because (a) it is favored against any other non-paired hand and (b) against any paired hand that isn't kings or aces, it's a coin-flip. (7-3 dog against cowboys, 12-1 dog against bullets. Link to a great poker odds calculator)
But the most difficult part of poker - especially high-stakes tournament poker - is keeping it together when you're so nervous, excited, tense, and anxious at the same time. Keeping it together when you know you've got the nuts (the very best hand possible) and you've got a sucker betting into you.. or calming down enough to see if your set also made your opponent fill her straight.. It's tough.
I love it.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I have been playing poker for a while now (both in casinos and home games) and I would like to make a comment that may sound foolish:
POKER IS NOT GAMBLING
The reason for this is the following: you are not playing a game of no or limited choices (hit or stay), and, more importantly, YOU ARE NOT PLAYING AGAINST THE HOUSE. In poker, you play against other players. The house makes money by taking off a small amount (the "rake") out of each pot.
The term "gambling" itself is a thin line. After all, isn't insurance gambling? You pay money to a company in case your car gets hit, but what if it never does? What about buying stock? What about walking out the front door of your house in the morning? By this same token, poker is not gambling. This assumes that you are a good player and that you play often. The reason it is important to play often is because you can go on a crappy streak of cards (bad luck) for maybe even a hundred hands, but after playing ten thousand hands in a year, the statistics even your "luck" out. All that is left is your playing skill. In fact, all poker gurus will tell you that you should not think "I have played 200 games of poker this year", but rather "I have played ONE game of poker this year, with breaks in between".
This is not just my opinion. In California, casinos are illegal (except on Indian Reservations). But what ARE legal are "card rooms," or pseudo-casinos that just have poker. Blackjack is not allowed at these places. The reason for this is because according to California law, blackjack, roulette, etc are considered "games of chance," while poker is legally a "game of skill," thus not gambling.
Think this is a bunch of garbage? Then why is it that of the 2600 participants in this world series the final 100 will be mostly the same people that were in the final 100 last year? And at the final table, why will there be people that have been in the world series long before espn started showing it? Watch - it will happen. If poker were just luck (like blackjack), then this would be a statistical impossibility.
49 players paid 1500 each to participate. Playing Texas Hold 'em they used a glass table with under the table cameras so the viewers could see the cards. It got quite exciting watching who was bluffing who and who would walk away with the 50,000 grand prize.
One of the regular players was Sir Clive Sinclair - inventor of the ZX81 and pocket calulator.
There are TWO rules for ultimate success in poker: 1. Never tell everything you know. more Poker Party Jokes
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
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"This year's World Series final event, which began Saturday and lasts through the week, drew 2600 participants"
They broke through security and wrote "pwned" on the Ace of Spades.
It's not like you could get any karma out of it. The mod system is semi-broken.
If you want to come out of Vegas with a million dollars, go there with a billion dollars
I don't play poker in any casinos, but have been playing home games regularly for around 3 years now. I mostly play tourney style games which are quite different then cash games. In a cash game with a smaller limit, you'll want to play more conservative. In a tourney no-limit game, it allows you to open up your game and play with more aggression. Poker is one of the games I like to play because you only in part play the cards and the other part you play the players.
Craps, blackjack, roulette, etc. are purely gambling games. It doesn't matter what the other person does because you have a set formula to follow. Once you've learned the basic strategy, these games become inherrently boring. Poker on the other hand is a game in which you have to adapt to the players at your table.
Not only are there plenty of odds to learn, but you'll have to master the art of bluffing and reading the bluffer. And it changes every time someone new sits at the table. Even if you play with the same people, people change, and you have to compensate according to the way they're playing that day.
The best aspect of poker is that its a social game. Hang out, drink a few beers, and have a good time.
... otherwise we wouldn't take these crappy jobs with no job security.
That ol' Janx Spirit!
... the day I drew black aces over eights.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Treating the pre-flop betting round a second ante. I have to admit that playing tight pre-flop is so ingrained I couldn't begin to form another approach.
Getting into the endgame with a couple of nitwits is a great situation, but when it's a lot of nitwits, my signal processing gets overwhelmed.
I love poker, and play quite frequently in home games and at my local casino. I read books, and watch tourneys on TV, like the WPT. I am quite good, and looking foward to beating some fellow slashdot readers at a table soon...
"No Limit Hold'em is the Cadillac of Poker games"
-Doyle Brunson
The thing I love about poker is that it's not about playing against the house. It's about playing against other humans who have the exact same odds that you do. No weighted advantage among participants. Certainly the house always takes its cut (rake), but win or lose, it's always about one person outplaying (or being luckier than) another. Face to face, mano a mano. Very satisfying when you win, and very humbling when you lose. Love it.
It is impossible to beat the house playing poker in a casino poker room, because you aren't playing against the house in the first place.
Knowing pot odds is basic strategy, ever player should know. Poker is all about playing the poeple. The house does not factor into the equation at all.
Poker is in no way a game of luck, it only seems that way to the uninitiated. Getting a good hand is all luck, sure.. but the object of poker is not to win more hands, it's to win more money.
+1 for every 10/j/q/k/a that is played
-1 for every 2,3,4,5,6
ignore 7-8-9
Divide the count by a guess as to the # of decks left in the shoe... and then
bet higher on higher counts, bet low on lower counts.
While I have come ahead in black jack more times then i have lost, technically if you play 1 million $1 games, you should come out with $995,000 provided you are playing perfectly (which isn't hard to do given the small number of possible hands). Various house rules of course lower or raise the odds. Card counting, of course, is the way to go if you want to even the odds but it won't work on 8 decks and, to even the odds, single deck games only give a 6-5 payout on black jacks (rather then the expected 3-2).
At the end of the day, your odds are pretty close to 50-50 provided you play well, and you can get a lot of free booze complements of the house (down in vegas)
Pocker of course is the best way to earn money because, unlike blackjack, you are playing against other players, not the house and thus, your odds are as good as anyone elses so it comes down to skill. Of course the house takes a cut so the table loses overall, but, generally, if you want to earn money gambeling you need to find a game where you compete against other people and get bloody good at it
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
The so-called infamous "Monte Carlo" method. When you lose, double your bets again.. eventually you will come out on top at some point.
True enough.. however.
- You need LOTS of cash, quicklky, to maintain this. The variance is huge.
- This "system" ignores table limits, which you will very quckly run into.
- You might hit 0/00, which would, well, really screw up the system.
Not me, M&M's are too expensive now...
"Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun."
I agree with your point but I have to pick one nit.
Doyle Brunson has a Master's degree in Administrative Education. He earned his Bachelor's degree in 1954 and his Master's the following year. (Source is his book -- "Super System.") I really doubt the math was a struggle for him.
Also, he has said that if you think poker is card game, you'll never be good at it. It's a game of people and position that happens to involve cards. (That's a slight paraphrase.)
Oh, and, yes I play a bit as if that wasn't obvious.
It's alpha, but works quite well i think :
.iso of a liveCD ready to run it, the project is lead by Loïc Dachary, a senior GNU, Debian programmer, and i think developpers are needed to help them ;)
here is le website.
There is an
An interesting fact is that it is plain GPL software developped under a commercial contract: Loïc works on this paid by a game company!
So this could be a major hit in gnu/linux gaming AND a way to prove one (brilliant) programmer can _earn_ his life writing Free Software! =~))
GO MekenSleep!
It's a game with black and white stones on a 19x19 board. And the aim is to make the largest territory. Seems pretty dull? Well... It's the most fascinating game I've ever come across!!! The rules are really simple and yet there are so many possibilities, strategies, etc...
Besides its interest as a game, I've found this game interesting in two other ways: it has some philosophical aspects (being too greedy is bad, etc...) and also playing it with someone shows quite a bit of the personality of your opponent. Hmmm and the "Go" community is also great (so many friendly people to teach you the game, etc...).
One last thing... If you like anime, I highly recommend "Hikaru no Go" (I got to know the game and started to play it just because of this anime).
For more information (and possibly play online), I recommend: KGS.
Why not a 10-deck shoe? Or a 100-deck shoe? Then they'd have to reshuffle far less often.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
That should be "Martingale" system.
didn't see many posts about this but... I play poker online, which is a blast for real money - but there are things to be afraid of. From a computer science point of view, they generally do a very poor job with their random number generators. In pokerroom.com where I used to play, what I noticed was this: if you have a certain card, there is high probability (more than it should be, I had a few instances of this, did the math, and the odds were something like 0.6%, and the same scenario happened 3 times in 150 hands, also in those same 150 hands I had the same hand more than 4 times for 3 hands I noticed (33, QQ, and K5) and certainly more that I didn't. The odds of this happening in a real numerical system were very very low.) They have some certification that I am highly skeptical of. If you want to get into this a good site reviewing the different sites for online play is http://www.pokertips.org the way way over advertised ultimatebet.com actually seems like a good choice because of 1) good RNG with seeds based on physical measurements 2) 0.01-0.02 NL games, so you can get the hang of nl holdem and lose max $1 at a time.
While many have posted about pokerbots, odds calculations, and other game-related issues, i'm surprised no one has brought up the issue of security.
Internet pokerrooms are an exploding phenomenon; according to my sources, one of the largest pokerrooms makes over $2 million/day. However, as you might expect, this brings up some security issues.
The most basic of these is random number generation. A long time ago, one of the poker rooms had a faulty Random Number Generator. They were re-seeding it for every hand! And worst of all, they posted their code online to demonstrate how "secure" it was... The best poker rooms today will use a hardware RNG with all sorts of goodies to protect the data stream.
Another issue is that of fraud. Hackers have been known to buy-in with stolen cc's, and then dump that money to accomplices, then, when the victim charges back, the poker room is left holding the bill. This doesn't affect the players so much, since the poker rooms end up losing the money; but the best poker rooms will impose limits on (first) deposits to prevent this.
Yet another issue is that of collusion detection. Another AI problem, which is a pattern-detection problem, is to check when two people are "playing partners". Some of this software is already in use right now and (to my knowledge) works fairly well. I think a big problem for colluders is, not only do they have to make their collusion effective, but they have to avoid the detection software.. and if you can avoid the detection software, that probably puts a big enough dent into your cheating plan that it renders it useless.
Finally, it brings up the issue of e-cash in general. While paypal does not allow online gambling, there is a whole industry of electronic payment services that thrive on gambling, the main one being Neteller. Since none of these are US-based, does the US risk losing dominance in this potentially important area of the future? And how secure are these accounts anyway? The people I know who use these things keep very little money in them and withdraw regularly to a real bank account.
So as you can see, poker and internet poker in particular brings up far more computer issues than simply the problem of a Poker-playing AI/poker strategy.
Thoughts are welcome.
Yes, poker is a game for mathematically-oriented geeks. In fact, the game is undergoing a revolution, with the savvy young players overthrowing the old guard, because they simply have better tools in their toolbox. Understanding how the other player thinks is still absolutely essential to playing at the top level, but there are also many mathematical concepts (beyond simple probabilities) that are very important to poker strategy.
In the old days of the Internet (before AOL), the newsgroup rec.gambling.poker had an incredibly high signal to noise ratio. Good players shared their insights, and many of them went on to be major stars in the poker world. I was just down at the WSoP and met with several of them (old friends and new acquaintances, many world champions among them).
Television has suddenly made poker into a spectacle, and the growth in popularity has been spectacular. Online poker is also booming, with thousands of geeks fleecing the millions of players who have less knowledge about the game.
If you want to learn more about this great game, visit some of the links on the The University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group home page. You will need to read a lot (especially the books by Sklansky and Malmuth), and practice a lot before you become a good player.
One good tool for providing endless hours of practice is the commercial version of our research programs, Poki's Poker Academy.
Now is a great time to have fun and augment your income playing poker.
- Darse.
( hey look moderators! it's the actual guy! :)
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The pros who complain about the newbies... they aren't really interested in playing poker. They're the people who learned how to play tight, became profitable, and never learned anything else. I could teach my dog to play tight, and profitably, but she wouldn't be playing poker.
Pokers popularity will drop, yes, but it will also leave behind another generation of poker players, who will play for life. Losing players who want to go out, have a few drinks, and gamble a bit. This fad seems to be doing a great job at making poker more respectable, and making casino poker less intimidating. These effects will improve the game forever.
Come on geeks, read your books, do your math, go to the casinos or to pokerstars.com. You probably won't become a millionaire, but you'll likely make a nice bit of extra cash, and you'll definitely have a lot of fun.
Poki was a great bot on irc.poker.com (if it is the same one). Is there any good IRC poker out there anymore? Has anyone tried the new irc.ircpoker.com ?
I've tried poker a few times. I like Draw the best. Hold-em is too much like "5 cards on the table for everyone. Everyone get's the same cards." I like not knowing what other people have. I also don't like bluffing. Yes I know poker derived from bluff but I don't like it. It's almost like lying which I also don't do. Of course I don't like watching it at all. To me it's just like watching a die roll with irrelevant outcomes.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Missing by 8 seats is no different than first man out in a satellite. Pick a better example to puff yourself up with.
"I belive that's moot, better be carefull or the grammar nazi will get after you."
They really should have used "grammer" instead of "grammar" though.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
How much maths may one need for that?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What, you actually expect me to believe your carefully-researched facts over the unsubstantiated rumors of some guy who doesn't know how to spell "nickel" or "lose"?
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I've always thought that Illuminati is poker for geeks.
Alex
I've been playing poker all my life in some form or another and while I appreciate shows such as "World Poker Tour" and "World Series of Poker", it has really made competitive poker playing at public casinos quite a hassle.
Before the rise in popularity I could go out to my local Indian reservation and sit down for 10 hours and play some quality poker. Everyone at the table knew the rules , everyone was reasonably experienced and most everyone appreciated a great play.
Lately though, I have noticed more and more players who have come to poker trying to be the next Chris Moneymaker. They don't take the time to appreciate and learn the game on all levels and man is it annoying. They are always the same too; young geeks who come in with dark glasses, a ballcap, and a buttoned up jacket. I feel like slapping them and yelling, "THIS IS NOT A NO-LIMIT TABLE, STOP PRETENDING YOU'RE SOME KIND OF POKER PRODIGY AND GO PLAY THE SLOT MACHINES!!"
Maybe its just my opinion, but it drives me nuts. I'm not a pro, but I enjoy the game and I know that I certainly enjoyed the game a hell of a lot more when I didn't have all these upstart posers in dark glasses coming to the $10 limit table to go all-in on a 2-7 off suite. If you're going to play, play to understand that there is a time and place to play like this and it's not at the limit tables.
There is a lot of skill in the betting & bluffing side, but that's not really mathematical skill, it's more a social skill.
LordBodak's journal.
Being good at poker is all about social engineering, reading people, emotions, hiding your won, bluffing with your reactions, all things the stereotpical nerd and geek would find alien.
If you want to leave Vegas with a small fortune, start with a large fortune.
And spend it in the pawn shops when you are there.
So many people literlay loose the shirt off there back [1] and are reduced to hocking cameras, guns etc. These can be bought very cheaply from pawnbrokers. Coupled with very cheep rooms (+ suites) and free shows to lure in gamblers, you can come away with more monney than you spend if you dont gamble!
[1]I even saw a tux in a pawn shop there.
Trouble was it was typical vegas XXXXXL fat bastard size.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Don't even know'er
"Insert Sig Here"
YOU: Ah Ad
Board: Ac As 7h 5d
The very best hand [your opponent] could have at this point would be a pair of sevens.
That's not true. He could be sitting on pocket 7's, and have made a full-house. He'd still lose to your quad-Aces, but I just wanted to point out that a "pair of 7's" is not the second-nut hand out there at this point.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
i for one find poker much more interesting than blackjack or other ostensibly "non-total luck" games
:)
#1, blackjack basically is a "total luck" game once you've got a handle on basic strategy and counting... it just becomes a matter of whether or not you get an opportunity to put your counting skills to good use, and then not getting booted from the casino...
but poker, at least over beers with your mates, is basically social engineering... and the better you know the folks you're playing, the more interesting the game is...
as i side note, i generally have only played poker with my non-geeky friends, which is a coincidence, not a choice
Was that comment written in english???
My website
Luck has a role in poker, sure. You can't control what cards you get, but, once you have the cards, skill really takes over. Your decisions on what to do with those cards can win you the hand, regardless of what the cards say.
Going all-in with The HAMMER! (7-2 offsuit) isn't necessarily a bad play, especially when you think your opponants got dealt crap. Going all-in with aces isn't necessarily a good play, if there's someone you suspect may have a decent hand and you wish to get all the chips you can out of him.
Skill in betting is precisely a mathematical skill. At the least, you need to know what odds you're getting and giving for that bet. (EX: 100k bet into a 1M pot = 10:1 pot odds.) Flashing through exactly which hands can beat yours, and the odds that your opponant has it, is also tricky. (EX: I have Q-9 off. Board reads 6-7-Q-8-T, rainbow. What beats my hand? A J-9.)
If no skill were involved, then each final table would be completely different and random... but you look at the leader boards, and a few faces keep coming to the top. Games of skill have a cream of the crop. Games of chance, by nature, can't.
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
Was that comment written in english???
Yes, but with a lot of poker terminology.
If you'd like to learn the terminology you can either read some poker sites (I dunno any, but I'm sure they're out there) or watch some WPT. They have two commentators and do a good job of explaining terminology -- either the commentators will explain the term they just used, or a little explanation box will pop up in the bottom right of the screen doing so.
Yeah, I've been watching a good bit of WPT... it's fairly mindless to watch, which is good when you're waiting for a 13 week old child to finish eating, fall asleep, etc.
I think the most difficult part may be the lingo. Did you understand what he said?
Poker has recently become somewhat popular among the grad students in the physics department at Duke. We try to play at least once a month, and ESPN's poker coverage has even accompanied our own play. I'd thought we were becoming somewhat cooler -- I should have known we were just dragging poker into geekdom. Fantasy football, anyone?
2600 participants. Three times more than last year, you say? That's some explosion.
I love playing craps in the casino and have been wanting to host a craps game with some friends. I don't know how to "host" a game without having a huge bank. Any suggestions as to how one would go about hosting a craps game without having a bank?
I'm surprised at the very low number of poker-related responses to this topic.
In my experience there are quite a number of high-tech industry poker players in both California and Washington, both of which have legal cardrooms where Texas Hold'em (and sometimes other games) are dealt.
For my own part, I used my poker skills to generate enough income to pay the rent through two years of post-layoff, post-tech-bust unemployment. I had savings, and for a time unemployment benefits, so I wasn't completely dependent upon it for my sole sustenance, but for about 18 months poker revenue was my sole source of income.
I've relocated to a state without legal public card rooms now and only play for fun when I travel down to Seattle or the Bay Area, but if I needed to, I'm pretty sure I could continue to make a living off of hold'em, particularly in the current climate. It can be a difficult analysis -- it takes thousands of hours at the table (at least) to determine your long term expectation but I've got the history and data to convince myself that I'm viable.
In the end, however, though I very much enjoyed the free time I had and the ability to travel, life as a semi-pro poker player was stressful, not anywhere near as lucrative or steady as employment as a computer engineer, offered no health benefits, and required I work in a horrible environment. (If I'd played mostly in California, where the poker action is incredible and the card clubs are smoke-free, I might not have minded so much but as a non-smoker playing in Seattle-area card rooms it was a real turn-off to come home at the end of the evening reeking of second-hand smoke.)
Except for occasional recreational play I'm mostly uninvolved with the poker world these days, but my visits back to the card rooms suggest to me that the newfound popularity of hold'em as television entertainment has brought a fair number of new faces into the card rooms and until the new generation of players hone their skills and the weaker ones drop out the pickings are pretty good.
For those of you who are just starting out, remember, you don't have to be a great poker player, just better than the other players you sit down with. But also remember the famous poker saying: if you sit down at the table and you can't spot the fish, there's a pretty good chance you're the fish!
I believe the original poster was referring to Video Poker machines, not slot machines -- they are two different gambling devices. Interesting stats though.
Think about what JQ Public says when they listen to geekish. It's a similar situation: every subgroup has a specific slang. (Try dissecting med or law sometime. Eew.)
/ignore the rest of this post. Else, enjoy a little poker lingo.
Here's a good description of the game, and I don't just say that because I wrote it: Link to the entire yee-haw of Texas Hold'Em (Yeah, I know, I missed a couple things. Sue me later.)
If you know about poker stuff, then just
I explained a few terms within the post, but here's a few more:
Blind: Forced bets. The players dealt cards first in the hand must post blinds prior to looking at cards. The first player posts a 'small' or 'little' blind, roughly half a full wager. The second player posts the 'big' blind, equal to a full wager. The blinds are live bets.
Button: In games with a "blind" structure, like Texas Hold'Em, the button represents the person who would be the dealer if the players dealt themselves. The button rotates around the table, moving one person each hand. Each full rotation, every player has posted the big and littl eblinds. The player 'on the button' has a positional advantage, since s/he gets to act last in each round after the first (the blinds, who had to wager prior to getting cards, act last in the first round).
Supersatellite: The poor man's way to get into a major tournament. Entries into a super are significantly cheaper than a main event; for example, entries into the last chance supers to WSOP Main Event are $200+$25, and supers into the Rendevous de Paris this July are E500+0 (both compare to $/E10,000 buy-ins). Online supersatellites can be even cheaper; UltimateBet runs $100+$9 tourneys which feed most major WPT events and its own stop in Aruba, PartyPoker held events as cheap as $25+$2 to get into WSOP (they sent over 300 people there!)
Note: X+Y is the normal form for tourney entry fees. X goes into the prize pool. Y goes to defray cost of running the event, such as tying up the venue for so many days, paying the dealers, providing the cards and chips, etc. Technically, this year's WSOP is a $9600+$400 event. Doesn't change the fact it costs 10 large to play.
Big Slick: A-K. One of the most powerful, dangerous hands in Hold'Em.
Khan: A-Q. (Newer term. Plays off the name of the nuclear scientist from Pakistan who sold secrets to anyone with the cash.)
Wired: A pair. Any pair can be called wired. (Ex: I got eliminated with wired 8's when that guy hit his inside straight draw.)
Cowboys, Knights, etc: A pair of kings. Second or third best opening hand in Hold'Em, depending on who you talk to.
Bullets, Pocket Rockets, American Airlines, etc: A pair of aces. Hands down, THE BEST opening hand you can get in Texas Hold'em.
Ducks: 2's. Don't ask.
Presto: 5's. Don't ask.
Tight: A player who plays little, and then only the best starting hands. When a tight player reaches for chips, either you better have a better hand or run.
Loose: A player who plays way too much. Loose players play insane hands, like 8-6, 9-5, etc, hands without much chance of winning. These are also known (by expert players) as rent money.
Dog: Think.. UNDERdog.
Flop: The play in Texas Hold'Em is around three revelations of community cards, and those five community cards combine with a player's two down cards to make the best possible 5-card poker hand. The first revelation is of three cards, dealt off the top of the deck after a card is discarded, and is known as the FLOP. A round of betting occurs after the flop is shown.
Turn: The next revelation is a single card known as the TURN. A round of betting again commences.
River: The last revelation - the fifth card is revealed now.
Check out my most recent journal entry for a few more links, because I'm too lazy to write it all here.
Oh yeah, to the AC that says 8th is no different from last: For me the difference was six hours of play, nearly two thousand dollars from
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
"And worst of all, they posted their code online to demonstrate how "secure" it was..."
Bill? Is that you?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
The secret to winning on slots is to know the approximate reinforcement schedule used and how much money has been pumped into the things already. Vegas slots are useless for this purpose, but in other countries with slightly stricter payout rules (Europe, Australia) its quite common for 'bar fly' types to keep themselves in beer and fags through keeping an eye on the fate of the machine in the corner of the pub.
I have a math degree and worked as a software developer, but started playing more and more poker in my spare time, essentially being a semi-pro. Then I lost my job and became a fulltime pro. Math, software development, and poker do go hand in hand, though I think I hate poker most of all. I'm looking for software work.
The new poker explosion of the last 2 years or so has made the environment wonderful for the pro. Bad players who get lucky filter up the limits until their luck runs out and then stay there until they are broke. Lots of new players are sitting in 20-40 and 30-60 games at the casino and getting slaughtered and there seems to be no end to the numbers that are coming in.
I've also managed to pick up a student who is paying me for lessons and am thinking about looking for more. Poker is huge and those with talent can make a lot of money, but like they say, it's a hard way to make an easy living.
When I said "a pair of sevens," I meant a pocket pair of sevens, giving him the boat. Rivering one more seven gives him quads for a quads over quads loser. Obviously a pair of sevens isn't anywhere near the nut.
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Right after submitting my comment, I threw a Google AdSense banner on the poker pages to see what would happen. In a clear violation of the AdSense TOS, I'll share the results with you:Noticeable slashdotting, rapidly diminishing (though not to zero). The most interesting part of the stats is that only three out of 2,000 Slashdotters clicked on the ads for online casinos and odds generators -- and I suspect those three hits were folks who clicked out of sympathy. Unfortunately, the low hit rate means I can't give a Slashdot subscription to the best page improvement tip.
But I'd love to know who gave me 41 cents with a single click on Saturday! I'd like to thank him... and talk to him about a bridge I'd like to sell.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
This is not a set. Not every three of a kind is a set. In hold'em, "set" is a particular term for when you have a wired pair, and the third falls on the board.
You'd be a more convincing shark if you knew your terms.