Geeks Playing Poker? 431
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?"
Online vs. Offline (Score:5, Insightful)
Crazy Fad or New Social Activity (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
IMO (Score:2, Insightful)
~S
Not analytical thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
We aren't smarter (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Real Geeks Play Blackjack (Score:1, Insightful)
Short Term vs. Long Term (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Online vs. Offline (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, what am I saying!! Everyone hop onto partypoker with all your money and find kryond at the NL single table touneys. I suck really bad...honest, I do!
Online play has created the poker explosion (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Opposite (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Poker (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrite anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
thinking that because you're smart (Score:1, Insightful)
Playing poker is like driving (Score:5, Insightful)
As a matter of fact...! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Crazy Fad or New Social Activity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Texas Hold 'em (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.ddpoker.com/ [ddpoker.com]
I've never played it, so I can't vouch for its quality. I've seen it sold at a lot of retail outlets though.
Re:We aren't smarter (Score:1, Insightful)
While we're at it, sports players aren't physically more adept or in better shape than other people.
Wait a minute...
Re:IMO (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Hypocrite anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Gambling is a tax on the stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Be careful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Short Term vs. Long Term (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrite anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's because of the large amount of exposure professionals get to laymen in that profession; be it programming, lawyering, managaring, or what-have-you. They've all spent many years becoming what they are (university etc) and get much exposure to (a) laypeople in that profession (their customers), and (b) the clique of other professionals, with which they can chitchat about the clueless ones out there.
Technical people thinking they're so much smarter than the rest, e.g. commercial people (managers, marketing, sales) who are needed every bit as much as the technical people, just because they understand a technical thing others don't, really annoy me. It's your job to understand these things, and it's others' job to understand their things!
Thank you for listening. :)
David Sklansky says... (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Re:Crazy Fad or New Social Activity (Score:4, Insightful)
But my friends are geeks too (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
view from the inside (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [livejournal.com].
Re:Online vs. Offline (Score:5, Insightful)
That, and the fact that many of the popular online poker establishments have problems with bots and people working in collusion to grind out the pots.
Anyway, one of the most important things I've learned while playing poker is that playing penny games online will get you to see enough pots where you can learn the odds pretty quickly. But I personally wouldn't take playing online any further than that. If you want to be a serious poker player, you have to get used to playing the people, and not just the odds.
poker success... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.Re:Online vs. Offline (Score:4, Insightful)
As a skilled player myself I can say that my mathmatical skills, used in programing if not gained from it, have helped alot. Though it is true that no amount of statistics knowledge will be the final word in a poker hand, it is usefull when determining betting for value, and dealing with those bad beats when they come along. So every time you win with that 72o hand be well aware that you are give the loser a large value bet, even a 73o is making a few penies on each dollar bet.
Re:Hypocrite anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Online Poker != Real World Poker (Score:2, Insightful)
The odds are extremely important, but so is knowing your opponent.
Jw
Re:IMO (Score:3, Insightful)
It's about knowing their betting history, and deducing their strategy from it. It's about information transmitted within the context of the game.
Very hard to do, but not related to reading body language.
Re:It really depends... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't doubt you, really, but to me this sounds a little like an invitation to a pyramid scheme... Most people think they are smarter than average, so there should be a large pool of people to supply all the money you are winning, but nevertheless.
I don't know if I'm smarter than average, and even if there was a reliable way to tell, I might not want to know. I think however, that the right thing to do is to stay out of gambling, and I don't hesitate to recommend that course of action for others as well, since it's more likely the smart thing to do also*
(* poker is a zero-sum game, but only if you don't count the casino fees. It's also nice to reflect on whether the 10004th dollar is worth as much to you as the 104th in practice... and since you're much more likely to lose the 104 than to win the 10004th, perhaps the game isn't zero-sum even then. Payoff functions are tricky things to define.)