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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.
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!!!
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...
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.
Tells are without a doubt the single most overrated aspect of poker. Beginners place so much significance on them and they are in actuality within epsilon of zero significance. If you are playing with absolutely terrible players, can you get a hint of whether or not they're strong or weak based on certain things they do, body language and mannerisms? Yes. Can you do this in the World Series of Poker where you imagine yourself playing at the Final Table and catching a tell off Doyle Brunson that isn't an intentional tell he used to separate you from your money? Probably not. Knowing that the pot is offering you 8-to-1 odds when you are 6-to-1 to make your ace-high flush and there's no pair on board (so there can't be a full house or four of a kind) is much more valuable then guessing and second-guessing what your opponent's scratching his nose three times means, versus his usual two.
My guess is you haven't played much poker for real money, at least not against opponents who aren't god-awful. See? I called your bluff, and I can't even see you!
I'm a physician and I frequently sense that physicians consider themselves smarter than the common individual, programmers included. I am also aware that lawyers too, by virtue of their understanding of meticulous contracts and weighing of evidence, consider themselves *far* smarter than others. Then also come the management professionals, many of whom are happy to consider themselves transcendentally smarter than others they would like to see as personnel, resources and assets they can manipulate.
I think it's a middle-class disease. If you're upper class with inherited property and investments, then the urge to prove yourself isn't all that pressing. But If you're a middle-class and falling into the ranks of lower-class isn't unthinkable, then kicking the lower-class man is a good way to relieve your tension.
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!