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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?"
M.I.T. geeks vs Vegas.
True story.
An amazing read.
La via sola al paradiso incommincia nel inferno
Actually, craps offers some of the best odds in the house.
The original come/don't come bets are close to 50/50, and when you put "odds" behind them, those bets are exactly 50/50.
When you see signs with 100x odds for craps, those are fantastic deals. Your original wager might be $5 at an expected 98% return, but if you put another few hundred behind it at an expected 100% return, your total bet is going to be damn near 50/50.
Casino owners have said something like, "If every patron played craps, and every player played the maximum odds allowed, we wouldn't be able to pay our electricity bills."
Todd
From: http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/
Legally speaking the player may play blackjack any way he wants without cheating or using a computer, and the casinos may do anything from making conditions unfavorable to barring in an effort to stop anyone who they deem has an advantage over the game. Much of the challenge of card counting is avoiding suspicion that you are anything but a normal non-counting player. The most obvious indication that somebody is counting is that they make a substantial increase in bet size after a lot of small cards leave the table. Although the greater the factor by which you can increase your bet the greater your odds of winning, more than doubling your last bet is a fast way to arouse "heat" from the dealer and pit boss. Usually when casinos do realize you are counting they will either shuffle the cards whenever you increase your bet, essentially removing any advantage, or ask you to leave.
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
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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