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Geeks Playing Poker?
Ben Collins writes "I recently won a satellite tournament at Full Tilt Poker for entry into the World Poker Tour Final at Foxwoods Casino. I picked up poker as a hobby about 4 months ago, and consider myself a decent player, maybe due to programming experience (analytical thinking). Any other programmers/computer people find that they can play poker better than the average person because of their computer experience?"
In online play, it can really come down to your abilities to play the odds. Your geek skills are good for this. In offline play, though, tells can be a huge factor, and for some geeks, the social aspect of this may be much harder.
I prefer luck over skill in poker. Bet high, never fold, and one of those times I'll come out near even, maybe.
I took up poker a couple years ago before it became popular online, and now I play from time to time online, and I would consider myself a winning player.
The thing with poker is the game isn't all too complicated if we are talking about online play, where sound betting strategy will win you money. Give a logical thinking person a simple poker strategy to play, they will do fine and definetly win some money online.
Online poker is all about logic and patience, and at least the former is found in most computer people, which is why I am guessing they will do much better at the strategic part, which will more or less translate into playing winning poker.
I'm not sure if Poker is a fad right now or something that may last. My instinct tells me it is a fad and will die in a year or so. Has it had resurgence before anyone know of?
I will play from time to time, but I find it best in moderation. Anyways, lets start the flame war.
Is poker a fad or is it here to stay, and why?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Don't forget Bill Gates was a notorious poker player in college, writing thousand dollar checks at the end of the night usually.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Coding also improved my sexual prowess.
Of course you play better than the average person. You're better than all of us. Would you like to sit and put a few dollars down?
I've been dealing with computers for a long time and it hasn't helped me one bit at poker. Sure, maybe you can do the math a bit better but that only helps for online games. IRL, strategies are much different as you're playing with people and have to read the player. And besides, how many geeks have had any real experience with people (and no Virtual Girl doesn't count!)
Being geeky might help with keeping track of cards, but I think the real skill in poker is the ability to read your opponents body language. That skill doesn't sound like it's a skill that most nerds posess, or they'd get laid more.
~S
I play a lot of online poker (about 10-12 hours a week) and consider to myself to be a good player, regularly winning $30 tournaments and even have a couple of multi table wins under my belt.
I go out to the Grovesner Casino in Great Yarmouth (England) a few times occasionally and have won the tournaments there simply by playing out the odds, and always starring at my chips, not playing with them at all, and just doing everything like a robot, thus giving away hopefully no tells! Perhaps I would have less success at a major tournament but certainly on a social level those odds calculating and keeping a steady game and not going on a "tilt" can definately make you win.
Its a game for mugs though
picked up poker as a hobby about 4 months ago, and consider myself a decent player, maybe due to programming experience (analytical thinking)>
Programming has little to do with analysis and a lot to do with gut feelings when you code, and more importantly, when you debug. What I mean is, you "feel" it when the code is right (or whatever solution you're working on is right) and you know long before the end of the project whether it'll be great, so-so or crappy.
Well, same thing for poker: you play by "feeling" the opponents, and your hands, and just "knowing" when the stars are aligned and when you should go. So yes, your programming experience may have something to do with your playing poker well, but not for the reasons you think.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
No,
And this isn't a troll.
But I think that programmers tend to think that they are smarter than the average person. People tend to want to be good at what they do. And for a programmer, being intelligent is one of the most important factors for that.
And with the power of wishful thinking they think they are.
And without even realizing it, they ask questions which imply that programmers are smarter than the average person. That bugs me.
Oh, and I'm a programmer myself.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
I've been playing poker since I was proably 5 or 6 years old. Growing up , when we visited my grandparents' house my dad, my grandfather and my uncle always played poker in another room while my mom helped my grandmother in the kitchen. I bothered them until they let me play, but their condition was that I had to put up my own money. Betting your allowance against a bunch of guys who really would take it and not feel sorry for you makes you think pretty seriously about strategy, odds and winning.
I'd practice far more often if there was a *local* Texas Hold 'em client for Linux.
I know of none.
Any suggestions?
(I'm a Winex / Cedega subscriber, if that helps any...)
Thanx.
M.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
That's where being a nerd can make you a star.
It's not even just analytical thinking, but meta-analysis of the game. I don't play that often, and would be considered a complete newbie, but I consistantly win against other newbies I'm playing with... I think due to CS training I understand the concepts of strategy in bidding, bluffing, and probability way better than non-math people. These variables are just inherent to the way I think (esp. since I enjoy security too), and combine that with the fact that I have taken courses and read much about non-verbal communication, social/group dynamics, etc. and I would think I have a pretty decent advantage. (I mean, that, and I tend to win ;-)
;-)
But please, people, if playing with friends, don't just be an asshole and take the money! If you see other people really didn't get into the game, just refuse to take your share of the total pot... And if in company where that would be awkward, just offer to buy everyone late-night munchies/etc. or buy the next 6-pack, or whatever is most appropriate.
I'm not much into card games, but I think Poker and Asshole are great additions to any late-night weekend chilling! (And Durak rocks too, for those of you Russian enough to know what I'm talking about
I've been wondering if there is a good game for xbox/ps that I can use to improve my skill with the types of poker and what not. Does anyone know if one exists? I seem to do well from just everyday experience, but I think that a console/pc type of game (not the crappy $10 walmart specials) would do a good job teaching the advanced concepts, simply because of the repetitive nature.
I'd be especially interested if there were an xbox live game...
If you look at the world class poker players, you will find that many of them are classical trained in advanced sciences and mathematics. Poker is a game of the odds, especially games with community cards, such as texas hold 'em or Omaha. It's the games like 5 draw where the game really becomes about psychology...
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
It is exceptionally intresting to note that lots of highly skilled computer game players from games like Quake and Starcraft have recently (and in some instances not so recently) taken up playing poker for money, and seem to be doing okay at it.
Notable names that may be recognized by some of the more gamer geek types around here are Sujoy, Hakeem, Lakerman and Daishi.
I've seen him talk about playing quite a bit over at his site. Seems like poker has become sort of a *geek* fad as of late.
Personally I perfer the odds at the Blackjack table. At poker yor aren't playing against the house though.
I suck at poker. I have a tell...no I'm not going to say what it is in a public form.
"But I think that programmers tend to think that they are smarter than the average person. [...] That bugs me. [...] There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary numbers and those who don't." ...
Be careful, short term success does not a good poker player make.
Even the BEST in the world, Brunson, Chan, etc., go through long losing streaks due to the high variance of poker.
You can make the correct decision each and every time based on the proper odds, yet lose money for weeks at a time.
It's not how you handle winning that determines how good a player you are, it's how you handle losing.
Praying for the end of your wide-awake nightmare.
5 friends of mine thought that I'd be a good fish for their Texas Hold'em game. I went on to win 6 straight tournaments. Now they won't play with me anymore. :(
This has changed everything. You can practice for little or no money (I know sites that play 1c/2c games). There are sattelite games, so for only a couple dollars, you can have a chance to win a trip and entry in to a million dollar tournament. It has essentially made the game accessable to the masses.
This is great for us geeks, because the masses arn't very good at math and logic. Online play is all a math game. Once you get pot odds and the probabilities down, you are better than the average player. If you can manage a little patience, it becomes very easy to be a positive player.
And I'll be honest with you, It is rare that I find a video game that is as engaging as poker. It's multiplayer, and winning actually matters, so everyone is trying there best.
PK
Engineers arn't boring people, we just get excited about boring things.
I find that being a computer geek makes me worse at poker than the normal Joe Schmoe. Now, physicists, on the other hand, tend to be better than the average. The difference, I believe, is that although computer people would tend to have the necessary math and analytical skills to play poker, they tend to think algorithmically which really doesn't work in a poker setting.
The only time I've felt I had an advantage was when the people I was playing against didn't know how to play poker.
"Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose." --Douglas Adams
My brother lost about $20k over 5 years learning to play poker. After awhile he started making money. 2 things are necessary to consistently make money playing poker. Patience and time. As of now he lives in Las Vegas as a part time ramp agent and part time gambler, he has paid me back as well as the rest of the $10k or so he had borrowed from everyone. People are drawn in to poker by the "thrill" when the money games are specifically not about that. After you play a couple hundred thousand hands, you get over the thrill and learn a grind that is reminiscent of MMORPGs but with a more lucrative outcome for the investment.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Analytical skills are somewhat better than geeks than other people, which will give people only a slightly better edge than that average player.
Like other players, I know how to play the game of poker (i.e. straight beats a set, etc). I may have a better analytical skills that may allow me the calculate pot odds or the number of outs in any particular situation. Soon enough though, I run in many players who have equal footing in this area, even though they were not "geeks". Therefore, there must be something else out there that separates the pros from the ameteurs.
Alas, that answer is the ability to read tells. I don't mean the ones that you see occasionally on TV and they actually say what they are after they happen. I play with average people, and most average people display tells that give out a lot of information about the strength of there hands. The pros obviously learn to control the tells, but they ain't perfect either. So, learning tells is very important if you would want to win.
I recommend the book Caro's Book of Poker Tells. This book applies to different poker games, not necessarily texas hold-em. This book is somewhat older, but it has many of the tells that frequently occur and has photos to back it up.
Coderz 4 Life
Just remember, if you cant spot the sucker at the table, your it.
I believe my programming experience has made me a better tetris player. With little practice I can beat most of players on tetrinet and I think this is due programming. Of course there are other good players, but most of good players that I found around are programmers either. Coincidence?
avi freedman, chief network scientist at akamai and all around cool cool guy and networking geek, made it to the final table of pot limit omaha at the world series of poker.
In the early 90s I earned my spending money during grad school playing poker in the card rooms in the S.F. Bay area.
i'm pretty good at reading people, but not in poker, cuz i dont even try. haha, because i dont know how to play. i do well when i play with my friends, because since i dont know how to play they dont know how to read me. i'll have a full house or somethign (i dont even know what that means) and then be like, "o, i'll just keep adding money for the fun of it" and everyone thinks i'm bluffing, cuz i am, because i dont know what a good hand is. i was gonna say that geeks not being able to read people is a stereotype. but... i can read people really well in eral life, and tell what they are thinking, and figure out what they mean even if they dont know. but i cant do math. haha. which is why i cant program. even though i want to so badly. i can understand program structures and come up with new structures that programmers i know think are really good (and think of them in ways that no one thinks of, because, i dont think like a programmer) but i cant program. i do know a programmer / math prodigy guy who is good at reading people. which is why we get along (he's a friend's father). however, he is lackign in some social skils. he's always off in his own little world. so, when he comes back, he can read people amazingly . but... when he's not here, he doesnt read people, cuz he's not here. his head is in the math clouds too often.
Many of the top pros had previous careers in computers:
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson - PhD in Computer Science from UCLA
Andy Bloch - Two degrees from MIT, once designed computer chips
Phil Gordon - degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet. I just thought poker would be easier among geeks because of the large number of them taking time out to play strip poker.
I don't understand it: sometime I win at online poker, and sometimes I lose.
I played Hold 'Em and other poker variants with my friends for about a year and I ended up fairly even. Changing up your betting styles every now and then and not having any tells is a great way to win. In real life, knowing the odds isn't always helpful. Sometimes you just have to go on gut instinct or that little twitch you saw from the other player as the river was shown... sometimes it works out for ya, sometimes it doesn't.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Poker syndicates whole goal is to nourish this type of conceit among the flock. Sure, some of the herd get fat playing against the flock, but when the shepherd comes, everyone is going to be fleeced.
Poker is about cheating. It is easier to cheat people who think they are smart. So, you let them think they are smart, play upon their egos.
How do they cheat? The ways are innumerable, different ways against different tables, but usually its day-to-day nickel and diming, not so much the big pot type stuff you see in the movies.
Simply consider this. If only two players at a Texas table collude by using undetectable signaling, they double thier odds. Do people really think that when there is money involved the sharks don't take every advantage?
I don't think that being a programmer automatically makes you more apt at poker, since playing good poker is just as much about reading players as it is about calculating odds. BUT...
I know of at least 2 exceptional professional poker players with extensive computer background: Chris "Jesus" Ferguson has a PhD in computer science, and you'll often hear him talking about how his studies in game theory have helped him at the poker table (and I'm thinking he's right, since he won the WSOP main event in 2000). Also, Barry Greenstein (he's also got 2 WSOP bracelets, iirc - neither were main event wins) is a former programmer who worked for Symantec for about 12 years through the mid-90's. As a side note, he donates every penny of his tournament winnings to charity (and I've seen him win over $1 million at a WPT event).
I've been playing poker for about 6 months now (pretty seriously, been competing in tournaments and reading some of the classic poker books), and I consider myself to be fairly accomplished (poker paid for my neuros audio computer, so I must be somewhat OK), and I'd have to say that being a programmer has helped a great deal with getting better.
As I said, being a good poker player has just as much to do with being able to understand your opponent as it does with being able to count outs and figure oods on the spot. If you can get a dead read on the guy you're in the pot with, you're in better shape than if you've got 24 outs post flop because if you know what he's holding, there's no stopping you.
well, it's nothing one behind the ear wouldn't cure
i know heaps of IT people who have taken up poker in the last year. online poker is very popular it seems.
I like to beleive that I play with people who are just seriously poor at playing poker...nay...they SUCK! :)
-bk
Not so much about poker, but Brining Down the House is a neat read about how some MIT students (definition of geek, no?) took Vegas casinos and other for millions playing blackjack.
No. No, I completely suck at it, and will probably never get any better. You should all come teach me how to play, in a high-stakes game at my place. Show a bad player like me how it's really done.
Well, this is about Blackjack not Poker I know, but interesting none the less in that if you have a good mathematically sound system (ie. card counting), you can turn the odds in BlackJack in your favor. Wired had a great article "Hacking Las Vegas" awhile back about a team of BlackJack players from MIT that really worked the Casinos over for a goodly amount of time before the Casino's finally caught on. Apparently it was quite an innovative method that was harder to detect as the roles were spread out between several players in a team. DaveC
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.
Project planning experience really helped me learn to bluff. And my unwillingness to comment source apparently translated into minimal tells. You can't read me or my code.
For about the last 3 months i've been playing poker with groups of friends (yes for money) about 2-3 times a week. My roommate and I (he excels at parlor games) have been practicing on a near nightly basis. I live in Houston, and lately they've had radio competitions that provide you a seat (Rod Ryans Houston Hold'em Tourny). My roommate and I have both been trying very hard to win a seat. Winner of this tourny get paid vacation to Vegas and a paid seat in the 2005 WSOP (world series of poker). I consider myself a winning player as well, the odds and betting strategies are what I focused on first. I dont feel that picking out others tells are that difficult, i pay much attention to nuances and details, however my own tells,,, I can lock myself up somewhere else and turn my body off. Maybe my "social geek issues" arent that bad after all ;)
you'll have an advantange over your opponents is a great way to get yourself into trouble. yes, brains are definitely an asset but they're no match for experience - particularly against those who've read up on the theory of poker and what not. A PhD who thinks he's smart - rightly so - and who sits down at a 10/20 game believing his intelligence alone will make him a winning player will get educated very quickly. If ever there was an example of "street smarts" being better than "book smarts" existed, poker is it. Having said that, almost all top poker players are brilliant people - but intelligence alone won't cut it. Nice thing about poker is that to make money you don't have to be good. You can actually be pretty bad - just need to find players worse than yourself. And for anyone interested, PartyPoker offers a bonus of 20% up to $100 on your initial deposit if you use the promo code "23457"
Finger (johnc@idsoftware.com) entry from 1998:
2/8/98
------
Just got back from the Q2 wrap party in vegas that Activision threw for us.
Having a reasonable grounding in statistics and probability and no belief in luck, fate, karma, or god(s), the only casino game that interests me
is blackjack.
Playing blackjack properly is a test of personal discipline. It takes a small amount of skill to know the right plays and count the cards, but the
hard part is making yourself consistantly behave like a robot, rather than succumbing to your "gut instincts".
I play a basic high/low count, but I scale my bets widely -- up to 20 to 1 in some cases. Its not like I'm trying to make a living at it, so the
chance of getting kicked out doesn't bother me too much.
I won $20,000 at the tables, which I am donating to the Free Software Foundation. I have been meaning to do something for the FSF for a long
time. Quake was deployed on a dos port of FSF software, and both DOOM and Quake were developed on NEXTSTEP, which uses many FSF based tools. I don't subscribe to all the FSF dogma, but I have clearly benefited from their efforts.
but my wife beats me in poker pretty constantly. Then again she has PhD in genetics and I just own a programming company that I started when I dropped out of college. I've been supporting her studies so I guess I'm still smar... hey wait.. what was the question?
Nobody thinks he is below average.
So, to answer the original question, it's not just programmers -- everyone is coming out ahead! Alan Greenspan clearly should take note, as there's something very wrong with the country's money supply.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Particularly if they are playing strip poker.
Nobody want to see Jabba the Gut!
It's a a decent read if you want to get the book...
3 9/qid=1098656981/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-8719217 -1303628/
Bringing Down the House: How Six Students Took Vegas for Millions - Ben Mezrich
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/00994682
"I recently won thousands of pounds at full tilt poker!. It was so easy and now i'm really rich! I picked up poker as a hobby about 4 months ago, you can too!.
Perfect for geeks, you are sure to rake in the cash and the wonderful full tilt poker!
Any other programmers/computer people find that they can play poker better than the average person because of their computer experience?
I sure know i can, thanks to my wonderful employers at full tilt poker!"
Why would we direct traffic to a site that requires windows to run? Pokkerroom.com is web based and even has a picture of tux on their main page.
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker at your table in half an hour, you are the sucker.
I thought luck wasn't really a factor if viewing poker over the long term? I swear I read somewhere about people playing professionally who could break their income down to an hourly rate because it always averaged out that way when looking at it weekly or monthly.
I think since I am more logical/analytical then the average persom I am less likely to actually partake in games of chance. Maybe if I actually applied myself at poker I could do fairly well, but it really bores me.
Gambling is a tax on people bad at math.
Wow, you really went out of your way to brag about winning.
POker is alot of fun but I am no good at it. I am a veteran programmer.
...and I bet he's a better driver than the average person too. And lover. And, well, just better than the average person (meaning everybody else on Planet Earth) at everything...
These guys crack me up.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Knowing pot odds, implied odds, calculating the number of outs you're drawing to, etc... these are all an important part of poker. It just so happens that programmers are better at math than most, but all things being equal I'd take a stats major over a CS major.
I guess programmers would have an advantage if there weren't widely available poker tools out there, but Turbo Texas Holdem simulations pretty much even the playing field for anyone computer literate.
You'll probably find this article extremely helpful. It won an Ignobel award.
Not only is Online more about the math, but low limit online poker (1-2), 5 dollar SnG tourneys, etc. - is populated by the WORST shoot from the hip players. If you simply play simple tight poker, you generally grind out 10 bucks - 20 bucks an hour at those levels.
Once you go to real money - 50 tourneyes, 5-10 games, its very hard to win consistently - everyone at that level KNOWS the math.
I've been playing poker for almost 10 months now after a fellow programmer got me hooked on Hold'em. But I do have to say the I don't think my programming experience has really helped me. Sure, knowing the odds and stuff helps in the long run, but mostly only for ring games. Tournaments are a another story.
I think what helps more, especially when you play with the same group of people a lot, is the image you project at the table. I play regularly with a bunch of my co-workers, most of whom are programmers. They all have the image of me that I play good cards and never bluff. If they only knew. It really helps to get a nice big stack early and bully them the rest of the night.
One of the members of that MIT blackjack team (Semyon Dukach) is now running BlackJackScience.com.
except for the clever people who run the casinos
its not a buisness model that fails, for a reason
"Online poker is all about logic and patience, and at least the former is found in most computer people, which is why I am guessing they will do much better at the strategic part, which will more or less translate into playing winning poker."
:D
God help you the day you play a 56k'er then. They'll beat you little impatient braodband weenies down
You need a FREE iPod Nano
What helps is being able to hold your liquor. I'm referring to playing in-person rather than online; there's a huge difference.
The best players I know personally work in print shops and on loading docks, so you might want to hold that "smarter-than-thou" attitude close the vest if you ever actually sit at a table on Friday night.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I am an average programmer. My grandfather had been trying to get me into poker for years. I finally started this year. I must say, I am perhpas average online. In real life, I am a decent player.
For examples, I have played three tournaments. 1 No Limit and 2 limit Texas Hold'em games. The NL game, I placed 17th. A bit better than average.
On the Limit games, the first tourney I played, I took first. On the second, I made a 2 bad plays and went out 12th.
In the last couple weeks, I am up $2000 on $200 starting money. However, I have played enough poker in the last 7-8 months to know it is all about patience. You need to wait for the right hands, you need to think about your play and you need to get lucky every once in a while.
So, I believe I am actually a much better player in real life. I will know more soon, as I will be playing a lot over Christmas. So, we will see if I walk away with a lot of money or none.
One fabulous book that I want to recommend to everyone who is just starting out is Phil Helmuth's "Play Poker Like the Pros"! You can't miss it in the book stores, 'cause everyone knows Phil! Stay away from books the purport to teach you how to "play" Low-limit Hold'em, especially titles by Lee Jones and, extra-especially, Ed Miller and David Sklansky! If you're reasonably smart and know the hand rankings, you already know anything that's in these books - you'd just be wasting your money to buy them. Stick with Phil's learned advice!
In the final anlysis, though, the best way to learn is to just sit down and play! I recommend Party Poker for their great bonuses and player skills to get you honed on the competition. Try out the $1/2 limit tables! I'll be looking for you!
Thinking you have some special skill in a game that mostly depends on luck is the first step in becoming a gambling addict. You were not doing well because of your engineering abilities, you were doing well because you were dealt good hands. Thats luck, not skill, and it doesn't carry over from one game to another. It won't be long before your luck turns on you and you are down quite a bit of money.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. One of the best in the world. Has a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Uses his mathematical abilities quite often in the WSOP (World Series of Poker).
I've always wondered why a poker face is an advantage, instead of effective use of a very expressive face that misleads. Seems if you can control individual muscles to produce subtle signals at will, it could be a valuable weapon.
Anyone out there that can enlighten me?
Annie Duke's brother is Howard Lederer. He was a college chess champion. That is even "geekier" than a programmer.
From watching the "WPT", it does seem to me that computer scientists have a dis-proportionate representation. I believe that Phil Gordon is also retired programmer.
Also highly represented backgrounds are Lawyers and CEOs.
But *good* programmers *are* smarter than the average person. I'm prepared to be proved wrong, but programming is a skill that only intelligent people can learn. I have never met a competent, but stupid, programmer.
I'm (obviously) not saying that programmers are the most intelligent people in the world - no more than I would say that theoretical physicists are the cleverest people in the world. But both of these professions have intelligence as a prerequisite!
I know B.G may not the most popular geek here, but according to several books about him, he was a great player at College.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Being intelligent does give you a large advantage in poker when it comes to determining probabilities. The ability to calculate quickly how many outs you have as well as other factors like pot odds and implied odds is extremely useful. Also, it should provide some hedge against going on tilt although this happens to any player one time or another regardless of what they might say.
:) Also, most people think it's a pretty cool job and like to talk to you about it...
That said, online poker is much more mechanical than live poker and the advantages for the analytical mind are stronger online by a significant amount. In live play it is much more about profiling people, sensing weakness, and so on then actually what cards you are holding. Online play for any good player is a strictly "by the numbers" you only have to profile particularly bad (or rarely, particularly good) players.
One rather large caveat, being smart/analytical is great but it will not save you against an extremely experienced player. Of course, the ideal is to be both intelligent and experienced, then you are nearly unstoppable (in the long term of course, short term anything can happen).
Myself and the majority of my friends play poker professionally, some extremely successfully but all make a good living. Note that all of us have college degrees but have not bothered to us them yet.
All it takes to be successful is three things:
1) Money
This is a no brainer you have to have enough money so that you can lose for a significant amount of time without busting your bankroll. It is helpful to have other friends who play and can lend you money if things go bad. To make a good living I'd recommend playing 2-3 tables of 15-30 around 30 hours a week online, for this you'll need about $10,000 to be safe. A good 15-30 player that plays full time, 3-4 tables should be able to make around $60,000 a year or more depending. Typically though an excellent player will move to higher limits when they start making this amount of money.
2) Theory
Books, books, books. Of course the "Bible" for Hold 'Em is Sklansky and Malmuth's Hold 'Em Poker for Advanced Players. There are a lot of others but this is the best to start with in my opinion. In addition, if you know someone who is already a professional theory knowledge can be gained by simply watching them play and asking them questions.
3) Experience
Don't need to say much here. A professional playing for 5 years will school you 60+% of the time if you've only been playing for a year. The more the better. Note that the "play money" games do not count as experience nor does limits below 5-10/10-20 really prepare you for a 15-30 or 30-60.
As an aside, tournament play can definitely get you experience but don't count on it improving your play dramatically in standard games, with the exception of profiling and reading people. Not only are tournaments typically no limit but they have a much different dynamic in general. There are many good tournament players who suck at ring games and vice versa.
Anyways, the best thing about being a poker player is the total freedom, you can work whenever you want, or not work for a week if you don't feel like it. If you feel like taking a vacation you can just go, of course sometimes you do have to go to places like Aruba and play tournaments, what a drag!
I highly recommend it but be warned you WILL lose money at first, and you WILL be incredibly stressed out much of the time. Playing is inherently stressful, especially when you hit a dry spell where you lose for a week or two straight. Make sure if this happens, to stay calm, playing looser will not get your money back quicker!
I'm below average. Way. I don't even know the rules.
Of course, this is like comparing non-drivers to drivers, under your analogy, but hey, how many 15/16 year olds do you know who're sure they're probably better drivers than their parents?
Tweet, tweet.
Given that the man taught himself Linux for the purposes of running his own website, most of us would qualify him as intelligent.
I skim over his blogs about every other month, and recently he's taken up poker as a hobby. He's studied, practiced, etc, and blogs the stores of his experiences playing (LA, Vegas, and so on).
What have I learned by reading them? No, being smarter than the average person does not automatically make you a better poker player. Other things do.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Learn how to indentify and play positive ev video poker games. With near-perfect play you will come out ahead over the long haul. No casino heat to worry about, either. In fact, if you play long and hard you'll be rewarded with meals, rooms, drinks, etc.
I lose. :P
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I've got quite a few friends in the department (CS @ UMass Amherst) that play online poker regularly with the sole intent to make money. Some claim to make up to $28/hr. running on four tables online. Their stories sound pretty awesome, it's definitely an advantage to have an analytical background when it comes to certain aspects of poker.
no.
I absolutely believe that an analytical background esp. in C.S., Mathematics, or Physics will aid any potential poker player.
I recently started playing (C.S. background) and noticed that it was very easy to get into the game. It's not just analyzing statistics e.g. odd of the next flop being in my favor, etc. but analyzing your opponents.
The math aspect of probabilities has defintely helped in terms of knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em although you sometimes just have to chance it.
In sum, being a C.S. guy definitely helps.
Looks like slashdot killed the full tilt poker servers.
- instead of "analytical thinking," it should be:
"analytical drinking"
(who in the hell plays poker w/o a beer or two?"
The real question is, will playing poker make me a better programmer? It looks more fun than another O'Reilly book.
..there are 2 kinds of people that can be professional poker players. People with a freakish talent for poker (very very rare) and people that could make more money doing something else but choose not too. It takes a lot of skill to play poker, and playing for 4 months.. you don't have a clue. It's like when you first learn to code, your the man when you learn about a subroutine!
If you don't know who David Sklansky is, you don't make money playing poker. I have been playing poker for years, and most of the players I know say the make money, or 'break even'. Yah? Do they keep records? If the answer is no, then you do not make money.
About 10% of poker players are profitable. This does not mean, you won big one night, and forgot to write down those couple of loses. It means, play 40 hours a week for a year, and see where you are. Play 50,000 hands and see where you are. If you have 10 people playing.. the best player will eventually get all the money, it's just a matter of time. It may take years, but it will happen.
I don't mean to troll at all with this. It's just when I keep reading, "I am an above average poker player and have been playing for 4 months and here is what I have to say..." it makes me think how every thinks they are "above average drivers."
So am I an above average player with all my obnoxious 'insight'? Well, I am paying taxes from poker this year, so yeah.
Now, let's shuffle up and deal!
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
I played in a regular Hold 'Em game several years ago, before the recent popularity boom. A few months, I started getting back into the game, playing online and checking out some of the tournament play on cable TV. Pop culture has ruined the game.
The first sign was my 13 and 15 year-old cousins giving me playing tips at a low limit game at their aunt's wedding. These kids look up to poker "stars" with the same intensity they looked up to Derek Jeter a couple of years ago. Weird. (Their mother didn't seem to mind too much when I schooled them for about $20 total, by the way.)
The second sign was when I went to my first "real" game in several years. Many of the doofuses in attendance had donned "crazy" sunglasses--just like the "stars" on ESPN wear. Other guys had developed their own nervous habits of shuffling their cards, shuffling their chips, etc. So many of the iconic expressions of poker have now been popularized and I think it sucks. It reminds me of when the Red Hot Chili Peppers made it big in the early 1990s, and al of the sudden, all the jocks in high school were wearing Mother's Milk shirts.
I am by no means a pro poker player. I'm not even a good poker player. But damn if I don't hate to see the ghetto of poker being gentrified by a bunch of baseball-cap-wearing, Ray-Ban mofos from the 'burbs.
As they say, "If you think poker is a game of luck rather than skill, my friends would love to have you come over and play poker with us."
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Comment removed based on user account deletion
On the other hand, back during the boom, the main instigator of our poker games also liked very good single-malts, so any money I lost was more than made up for by a cheerful evening with friends drinking his whisky.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I knew I am smarter then most people before I was a programmer!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now that you have plugged Full Tilt on slashdot, I can't log into it anymore, since it's likely under a barrage of hits. You've ruined my evening!
(as a side-effect, though, you may have just provided fresh blood for the tables. The sharks will have their day soon! Muhuhuhahahaha!)
You don't win because you're particularly smart and therefore good at poker. You win because most people are really, really shitty poker players.
Timothy, that's pretty good, and I take nothing away from your accomplishment. However, any seasoned poker player will tell you, it's not about the odds, it's the people you play, and, essentially, getting a good "run" (streak of lucky deals). Anyone who tells you otherwise, will probably be the one to take your shirt, since he's lying to you.
* Furthermore, it really depends on where you play online poker. Most of the sites have a shitty random number generator when they suffle the deck. I've seen one particular "seat" get the same damn good cards for at least 20 hands. And, freaking full houses and flushes occur far more often than Combinatorial Math will tell you. I've won 2 online poker tournaments, yet I get my ass kicked most of the time by one of my poker buddies on the weekend. And, he's been in the WSOP tourny before.
So, try a bunch of other online poker sites first, before you go off and wager the mortgage to your house...
I (paul phillips) made three WPT final tables and three WSOP final tables in the last year but I was a programmer until I started playing cards full time a few years ago. Apparently I even still read slashdot from time to time. Finally, a thread where I feel completely qualified to post.
Programmers have a better foundation for poker analysis than most but this is a very incomplete predictor of success. Much more valuable is the ability to play your A-game all the time, and I haven't seen that programmers are any better at this than anyone else.
Poker is as much a test of self-discipline (and many other things) as it is of logic and knowledge. Being a brilliant analyst is of no use is you fail in other areas.
I write a lot about the tournament poker life in my blog.
-- Stop the violins!
I own a small store in the local mall that sells poker supplies for home games, so I follow the poker trend with some interest. (Shameless plug: bloomingtonpoker.com) I also play a *lot* of poker, and I'm pretty knowledgable of the poker scene.
Now, I also spent a few years as a network admin before starting a business. I think there are a few factors as to why programmers, or more importantly those with substantial computer skills, make good poker players.
For one thing, computer professionals tend to be more intelligent with numbers, and more comfortable with straight-up theory. One of the hardest things to explain to new players is why you can make exactly the correct decisions and still not win the hand.
Also, programmers and admins don't mind (and in fact rather enjoy) immersing themselves in tedious material to master a subject. The average player will learn the rules of the game and think they know everything there is to know about poker. But there are countless nuances to the game (think pot-odds, check-raising, semi-bluffing) that one needs to read and practice in order to master.
Computer folk are also known to possess refined analytical skills, since we use and hone them everyday.
Now, at our store we get a lot of parents who are concerned that teaching their kids to play poker will give them gambling habits. We turn that around (partially as a selling point, but really the point is honest) and tell them all the skills their kids will learn from it. At the youngest ages, it will teach them to count. For older kids, learning pot-odds is good math, and they're learning to make decisions based on a complilation of many factors. It also gives them social skills to be good winners and good losers. Much like being a programmer is good for playing poker, learning poker at a young age will certainly turn out some good code-monkeys in a few years.
-Ding
Does anyone know anything about John Carmack being banned from some Vegas casinos because he is a very talented card-counter as well as being able to figure out all of the odds? I've heard stories, but never seen anything to substantiate.
Remember, it's not how good you play that makes you money - it's how bad "they" play. I've seen this concept stressed in a quite a few poker books.
A poker player isn't successful because he plays well, he is successful because his opponents make mistakes.Years and years of fixing barely-fixable computer problems have given me a great poker face...
*resumes staring*...
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
A TRUE geek would write CODE to play poker for them. All of you.. and I mean ALL of you are only geek wannabees.
+5 TROLL, baby.
No.
Online play isn't really poker. It's a trainer for hand strength. In that venue, analytical people can use their pattern matching skills to profit. I have to say that at my regular bi-weekly game the three worst players (of 12) are geeks. Their people reading sucks and their manipulation skills are poorly developed. They have a hard time sucking the more socially experienced players into a hand... However, that's a broad generalization. I am a network weenie and I am a strong third place at the table, but I get out a lot for a geek, and I had to work closely with sales droids while consulting. Maybe some of their sliminess rubbed off.
Other way around, won my first computer in a card game.
...that most online poker is much less skilled than the face to face that is out there in the world. Mainly because a lot of folks don't view money they use online as money out of their pockets or something. People see the likes of Chris Moneymaker, etc, go through, win big, never to be heard from again, and think that they too can do it. At least poker requires SOME skill, unlike the lottery, but the odds of a random scrub making it big is very small. As the saying goes "even the sun shines on a dog's ass from time to time"
I'm terrible at poker and always have been. Even my grandparents can beat me! I dare not play where large amounts of money are at risk.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
I bet there is an entire profession in the poker world who does nothing but take money away from people who have been playing poker for four months with their friends and now thinks they're pretty good.
I'm not in that scene, mind you...but it seems like a pretty silly thing to think you can master the intricasies of poker in four months.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
for about three years. Now play on Pokerstars. I play mostly No limit and Pot Limit Hold 'em tourneys, and some limit stud. I won a 250 person $20 event earlier this year (about $1200 payday). (I just busted out of the same tourney about 30 minutes ago). I'm up that plus about $150 this year. It's mostly entertainment.
I've played a little live, and am heading to Tunica (the Grand) this weekend to play with a buddy.
Poker online is nice, but I have a lot more fun with my monthly game...
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
...maybe Ben Affleck missed his true calling.
> No, I find as a geek my run of luck is
> far worse than the norm.
What makes you say that?
> First post
Oh, I see what you mean . .
Yeah, I play poker too online.. I especially like these guys... seems like they use DirectX'n'stuff for fast animation: http://www.pokerchamps.com Thats geeky and nice.
"if you want to win a fortune..first start off with a larger one..."
personally i have the worst luck at cards
insert witty comment here
is anyone else here sick of hearing about poker? since when did poker become a 'sport' worthy of taking up VALUABLE TIME on ESPN??? i think i'm going to write my congressman and have him write up a bill that outlaws poker on TV. not that i watch TV much but for every split second that i surf through a channel that has poker showing, i feel that my intelligence has somehow been dulled. i think the next slashdot poll should ask what the best card game is, although everyone knows that sheepshead http://www.sheepshead.org/ is the best!
I've been playing almost every weekend for the last two years, and let me tell you, being able to read your opponents is one of the most important skills in poker. I can generally play the odds well enough to break even, but I have one cousin who can read me like a book, and if he plays I leave the table broke.
The odds are extremely important, but so is knowing your opponent.
Jw
The story of a geek and his Casino wins. One of the best articles on kuro5hin ever.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
As old as I am, I'm still 6'4" and 240lbs, while he was a scrawny, zit-faced kid.
I believe he was just typical of those n00bs who think they know it all now that they have some framed pieces of paper and can reformat a hard drive.
Our world is imploding.
a women working for the casino shuttle bus told me that, "Vegas has to adjust a lot during E3. We de-empaphasize the gambling and start pumping up the girlie shows. It's the only way to make money when your town in over-run by tens of thousands of young men with an impressive grasp of probability, but practically zero intra-personal skills". She was right too. Me and everyone from my company won several hundred dollars a piece gambling, and promptly blew most of it on a nude review show featuring bad music, and lip-synching porn stars.
The one interesting thing about fads is they create a much bigger user base. For instance, more surf boards are sold now than during the surfing craze of the Beach Boys, et al., more people run now than during the days of Jim Fixx and more people use computers than during the internet fad.
So while many people will get out of poker and move on to a new fad, poker in general should have a much larger user base five to ten years from now than it does now and that user base will be more devoted.
I don't think it's "analytical thinking" that makes geeks good at poker. It's two things: attention to detail (reading the reactions of others), and an inscrutable poker face.
:P
The former is partly helped by the common geek task of assigning meaning to very slight details. The latter is helped by the geek trait of staring expressionless into a monitor for several hours a day. When one gets used to expressing emotion through implication in text -- or through use of emoticons -- one gets out of the habit of showing emotion through facial expression.
$pantheon{chosen_deity} help us if the poker tournaments give us access to ":-)" -- our poker-face would be ruined!
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
How many people in this world have college-level statistics under their belt? How many people use this knowledge regularly?
Thorough knowledge of odds is more common among engineers than non-engineers. Thus, in a game of chance, an engineer is more likely to use appropriate analytical skills as opposed to "a feeling" about an outcome.
I'm not sure I entirely agree. It's true, I've been playing poker since I was six and am also admittedly geekish...but they aren't overly related. Maybe playing online makes a difference since everything follows algorithms anyhow, but when you actually play poker, you need to know a lot more than your odds. How to read people, for instance. If you are too analytical, this doesn't quite work...
Allright.
I love strategy games(chess, you name it)
I also feel I read people well.
I like geeky stuff but am not considered a geek(really).
While I never played poker I have watched it,
What makes a good player?
I know you can learn the odds, but that can't be the only thing that makes a good poker player,
What are the neccessary skills?
Poker Books are the biggest waste of time and money. If you have to read a book to learn theory behind poker, your in big trouble. Of course there are situiations where stastically you should make a particular move, if it be to raise or fold, or etc... but this should be learned the hard way in my opinion. The best way to learn is to screw up yourself with friends, then read some washed up pro's poker book becuase he can't adjust to all the 21 year olds romping him in casinos, and needs to make money another way. Everything I have ever read in a poker book has been immediately followed by the phrase "well no sh*t stupid." Save your self the $49.95 and get some real expierence and lose $5 to your friends.
The game has always been played, but it's getting a great deal more exposure today than it has in times past.
It's a lot easier for the average guy to identify with poker players than it is to identify with professional atheletes. As one of the other posters mentioned, with time and patience, anybody could theoretically become a world-class poker player, whereas only people hitting the genetic lottery can become a world-class professional athelete. That level of accessibility goes a long way.
It has been estimated that a few years ago, approximately 20% of the population played poker occassionally, or more frequently. That was before the TV explosion.
I think it's a resurgence, rather than a fad, and I think the Poker spotlight will be shining for quite a while.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
Sorry if a bit side-topic...
One thing that confuses me is how can Online Poker not be cheated.
Say you have 3 teammates. All of them have both a telephone and a DSL line connected to the same poker website. They 3-way call each other and join the same game online.
If they are talking to each other they know what each other's hand looks like so they can raise/re-raise on big hands, and fold on the rare occasions that all three have weak hands.
Seems like it doesn't matter if only 1 of the teammates has all the chips at the end, they should be able to take a lot of money from the other players at the table and split the winnings.
It would be the same thing as players doing tells and signs to teammates when they have a good hand, but since they can actually talk to each other it would be even more abusive.
Just curious since I have never played online, mostly out of fear I would get scammed.
So when the doc asks you to fix his broken down PC, you feel superior as you realize that your AMD64 power machine kicks its but, and that the doc hasn't got a clue as to how to diagnose a simple power-supply failure.
Then you get sick because you've been spending too many late nights with beer and pizza playing EQ, and go to the docs. He feels superior because he knows that your electrolytes are a bit off and really you could be saving yourself the checkup, post-checkup, and pricey prescription by simple eating some of the right foods.
And then when you die because of an allergic reaction to an ingredient the meds that the doc missed on your chart, the lawyer feels superior because he takes the doctor down a few notches in court and takes a hefty chunk out of his malpractice insurance.
OK, extreme cases here, but everyone is good at something and in reality we're *all* superior... just in different ways. We tend to think superiority=smarter, but really it's more a varied/specialized skillsets.
Sometimes it's a defence mechanism too though, as really it's quite nice to bitch about how your clients are idiots for continueousy spyware infesting their PCs (or getting the same sickness, breaking the same filesharing laws, etc etc)... in an effort to deal with the frustration that *continuously* dealing with the same problem over and over again brings you.
But really, how many of us think we're smarter than our doc when dealing with medical issues, or the lawyer when dealing with legal. You might even hear a doctor refer to you as "that smart/clever computer guy." It's better to have pride/confidence in what you do, and respect for those that are masters in your own field.
I am a geek (http://davetaylor.name), and I picked up Texas Hold 'Em because I act as a hobby (http://nowcasting.com/ddt) and was invited to play a game with a television producer.
So I got on the net, learned the basic odds and strategy, and showed up. It was a $20 game, and I bowed out when I was $14 up. I understand the tradition is to play until you win or are broke, but I noticed that like capitalism, after someone is sufficiently ahead of you, assuming they're not incompetent, it's not really worth it to compete with them.
The social element is key, but I noticed my geekiness doing its job. After the cards were shown, I'd replay the hand in my head, and correlate people's behaviors with the hands they had.
It was like keeping a short circular buffer in my head. Most people had really blatant tells, nothing subtle like tiny twitches. They were more like the loud impressions you get from boys with severe confidence issues trying to hit on girls.
This, along with keeping track of simple odds really helped compensate for it being my first game.
I'm a fabulous poker player, and also a complete dumbass. Next theory, please!
I'm a fairly introverted person, and I don't usually do well in confrontational situations. I once bought a car from a dealership and ended up paying full sticker price for it. Not because I don't intellectually understand the haggling process. I had read a book on how to buy cars, and went in armed with all the facts and figures I would need, fully prepared to bargain until I got a good deal. Or so I thought. When the time came, I just couldn't summon the necessary guts to confront the salesman.
Since I started playing poker, however, I feel I've grown as a person. Poker is not just about odds, it's also about guts and aggression. This personal growth culminated a few weeks ago, when I landed a contract and actually haggled (Previously, I'd always just accepted what I was offered). I ended up settling for $20/hour more than I was originally offered. Not too shabby. That's made a difference of $1000 so far, with more to come. Compare that to the $100 or so I've won at the poker table.
So I definitly recommend poker as therapy for introverted geeks!
Furthermore, their bots are good, and they have published the majority of how those bots work. Check it out.
link
I found the best way to win at poker was to cheat. While learning poker I learned the slight of hand skill. This allowed me to pretty much deal myself a winning hand almost all the time. Works great at impressing your friends. Too bad most casinos around have a designated dealer. Luck is just to unpredictable to trust. Cheating, done correct, always pays off (for example the MIT Black Jack team).
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
I got interested in Hold'Em several months ago. My natural inclination was to read books && write code. The result was this:
http://Search.CPAN.Org/~pip/Games-Cards-Poker-1.2. 46QD4ax/Poker.pm
I started calculating situational odds... exhausting some of the combinatorics. I wanted to do this as Free Software so that other GNU/Linux geeks could be helped to calc odds && make bots too. I figured I'd be able to make a simple CGI or ptk interface to the data which would be natural to use while playing online.
But then I actually broke the ice && started playing. I played against friends a bunch of times && sat down at a nearby casino table once. I quickly realized that it's fscking boring to me. Even if I know a lot already && have an aptitude to learn how to become great... all the time I'd have to spend to weather the storms... all the time I'd have to just sit there "playing" would not be fun for me. I'd rather play PS2 or code or read.
So, in my case, the computational challenge was fun && I hope my code can benefit others (let me know if you'd like additions to Poker.pm or if you'd like my CGI or ptk code... as I'd be glad to share it under GPL) but the time investment to actually make money doesn't seem worth it since I don't like the activity. I don't get paid all that much but I work on a job I love. Even if I could make a bit more playing Hold'Em, so far, I'd rather not.
On another interesting note: There's been an emergent topic in this thread which I find perpetually interesting. Are programmers (or middle-class people in general) generally smarter than others, the majority, the masses, the lower-class? It seems to me that we know we are. We read more, study more, learn more, analyze, criticize, calculate, etc. because we constantly need to solve new && different problems. We're more on our toes... we're more savvy... progressive. We often identify with the intelligent Nipponese (through video games, anime, gadgets, sport bikes, sushi, manga, etc.) more than the bumbling drunken Mtv Madden war-minded pro-violence repressed-sex consumer sheeple attitude that is so prevalent around us.
Maybe it is haughty. Maybe our responsibility is to our country && the world. We should strive to educate && illuminate our fellow United Statesians (apologies to all non-USians but I suffer as /. does from US-centricity because it is where I live && what I primarily know... shit && because we constantly reach all over && impact the whole rest of the world more than any other country). Some of our "intelligence" is of course rote knowledge like C++ object syntax or underlying problem-solving principles like design patterns or search/sort algorithms but people with a propensity for such things spend time cultivating those skills at the expense of others. So while we know how to map sometimes devastatingly enormous && complex spaghetti code into our minds completely, others are social virtuosos. They can be much better managers or salespeople etc. because they are good at appearing to be your friend. They're not so systematic && analytical... they have intuition about feelings, emotions, underlying motivations... they can encourage you to work hard for something you hardly care about or believe in... maybe they believe themselves if not just for a bigger paycheck. They are (generally) more adept than coders at human interaction / manipulation. Salespeople can convince customers that they need to buy products they hardly need for way more than they're worth with some crazy high interest loan that more than doubles the end cost.
So who's smarter could be a matter of perspective. Geeks with few social skills might not relate well to each other or society because their affinity is for powerful &&/or optimized &&/or clever
I wonder what sort of physical "enhancements" or rather at what point you're not allowed to play in some of these bigger shows. I mean, if hawkings decided to play poker there isn't anyway you can read him at the table, he's got the odds and numbers down better than anyone, and likely has a machine/person to handle his card, it's pure advantage!
When I was a kid, the p0rn was not so widely spread. One of the first possibilities to see images of naked people of the opposite sex was to play strip poker for Apple II. That is how I learnt to play poker and I had to be good and patient player, if I wanted to win. And I wanted :)
Perhaps they are also less inclined towards grammar? :)
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Not sure if this was posted or not, sorry if it was. I recently watched a 2 hour show on the Discovery Channel about this MIT Blackjack team. One of the former members has a website now called blackjackscience.com and it looks like he is offering seminars for $$$.
I am amazed this subthread grew so much. EVERYONE thinks they are smarter than average. The career may help provide convenient rationalizations, but that's the only real correlation. The only useful thing I know about people judging their own intelligence is this irony: the smartest people don't think they are that smart.
This is a "yay for linux" message board. Please try to stay on topic.
Here's the problem. I consider myself a really good "beginner" at Hold 'Em. I've prowled the low limit tables at the Horseshoe, the Luxor, and the Hard Rock down in Ft. Lauderdale, and I've never left the table with less than I showed up with.
Within those parameters, I can play.
How do you know when to step up to higher stakes?
It's tempting to play the higher limit tables, thinking that the players there will be more seasoned, that they'll have a better understanding of the game, and that they'll be less likely to stay involved in hands that they shouldn't be in.
The remaining issue is: What if I suck, and I only win because I suck less than the rest of the amateurs at the $2-4 tables?
I guess the only thing to do is pony up, and get an answer to the question.
I have been playing poker for a few years now and have found pokerroom.com, they have a Java interface and it will work with any OS.