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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.
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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!)
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.
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.
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.
Being a nerd and doing "insider" jokes is different from thinking that I'm smarter than everyone else because I'm a programmer.
But I'lll freely admit that I've been guilty of this myself. Assumed that I'm smarter because I'm a programmer, that is. That is why I've spent so much time thinking about it.
And now I see it as a trend with programmers and it is rather obvious when reading slashdot.
A question is asked, which begs for answers which reassuringly imply that programmers are smarter than the average person. It is our communitys little "feel good" ritual.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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...
Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker at your table in half an hour, you are the sucker.
One of the members of that MIT blackjack team (Semyon Dukach) is now running BlackJackScience.com.
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.
Poker is not the same as typical casino gambling - especially if you're not playing it at a casino.
Casino gambling involves games of chance where the "house" (the casino) has a statistical edge over the long term.
In poker, you're playing other players - so you've all got an equal shot at the money. The only factor giving you an edge is your ability to play the game.
To say that "Gambling is a tax on the stupid" in a thread like this is to imply that anyone who plays poker is stupid.
Quite the contrary. But we who are decent or even good/great at poker definitely prefer to play against the stupid - because they're the ones who line our pockets.
One might even argue that poker is really more a game of skill than it is "gambling" - though there is still luck involved in the short term, the skillful will win out in the long term regardless of luck.
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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!
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)
..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.
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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!
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.
Part of being a good programmer is a logical mindset. So most programmers are more logical and can memorize processes better than the average person.
I'm an engineer and I know a lot of lawyers. They can't learn the formulas/processes. I can't read 500 pages in three days and remember everything. Which one is really smarter?
It really bugs me that people have to be smarter than someone else instead of just accepting that everyone is different.
"I'm a physician...programmers...lawyers...Then also come the management professionals..."
Then come the salesmen (like myself) who measure intelligence on how well we indiscriminately outsmart and take the money of all those types...and more. It actually helps us when we find people who are puffed up with the ideas of their own intelligence. It makes it alot easier to do what we do.
We are like the undertakers of the economy. Go and do what you want, but you have to come see us sometime. MUHAHAHAHHA!!!
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.