Remarks on Nonlinear Utility for Poker Winnings/Money
Stephen Blackstock
<gu...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
[some really good stuff]
Nice post!
Reading great stuff like this makes me think that rec.gambling should
publish a journal - electronic, or course - to which authors would submit
electronic papers (perhaps born of posts), which would be evaluated and
edited, and whose publication-worthiness would be assessed by some group
of editors. This may sound like nothing more than a moderated newsgroup,
and that would be a good start, but I think it could be bigger. The
collective wisdom of the posters (and lurkers) at rec.gambling is at least
as great as that of contributors to most major academic journals.
>
> Bad beat good humor (from a former high-limit prop player at the
> Bicycle Club who, it seemed, hadn’t won a hand in two months): "Hi,
> my name is Tony, and I'll be your live one tonight."
Heh.
-Bozo
"And maybe we can convice Stanford and MIT to
open Departments of Gambling and award degrees
in that field."
"Dr. Blackstock has a B.A. in Gambling, a Masters
in Blackjack, and a PhD in Poker."
Lee Jones
>year. I hope I haven't rambled on too long (I'm afraid I've said a lot
>that's obvious), and if I've been overly didactic, please excuse my
>presumption.
On the contrary, this was a *fascinating* post. I hope we'll be hearing
more from you. One thing - do you think you could teach your news
reader editor to do the apostrophe character correctly? It didn't
display on the original post, and then appeared as an (octal?) 222
when I responded to it.
>Bad beat good humor (from a former high-limit prop player at the
>Bicycle Club who, it seemed, hadn't won a hand in two months): "Hi,
>my name is Tony, and I'll be your live one tonight."
So, did Tony go bust (i.e. why a *former* hig-limit prop)?
Regards, Lee
--
Lee Jones | "I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
le...@sgi.com | If I thought I could see - I could see your face."
415-390-3356 | -Emmylou Harris
Anil Gurnaney
> >Bad beat good humor (from a former high-limit prop player at the
> >Bicycle Club who, it seemed, hadn't won a hand in two months): "Hi,
> >my name is Tony, and I'll be your live one tonight."
>
> So, did Tony go bust (i.e. why a *former* hig-limit prop)?
>
Sort of. He suffered a real life bad beat: after a monster (30k)
win at the Bike, he was followed out of the parking lot. He stopped
at a gas station to use the head, and was hijacked. The robbers must
have seen him cash out, because he had 15k in each pocket, and after
he handed over the first roll, they demanded the rest. He mentioned
that it could have been worse: his wife and kids remained safe at
home. He isn't quite as good as I would have expected for the limits
he played (30/60-100/200), and now flounders in a 10-20 game in
Chicago (although he constantly lobbies to up the stakes).
Thanks for the feedback.
Anil
Anil Gurnaney
had positive EV in exchange for reduced variance in a non-tournament
poker situation. If I don’t think my utility for money in the range of
limit poker losses is linear, I stay home. Of course you are entitled to
your own utility function, but readers of this group must realize that
the goal of poker is to *assume risk* on favorable terms. Risk
aversion at the poker table constrains the set of favorable gambles you
are willing to accept. I don’t know of too many players that can afford
to do this very often and still maintain a net positive EV. Someone
else at the table picks up this EV. So when you play poker in a
nonlinear range of your utility function, you are giving away money to
risk-neutral and risk-loving players (or perhaps insurance men on the
rail).
Anytime you pass on a positive EV opportunity you must figure to
gain more from the decreased variance than the increased expected
dollars. If I offered to buy your hand from you, how much of a
discount would you accept? When you are willing to accept any kind
of juice, you must ask yourself why. After all, you did come to gamble
(if only on favorable terms). What compensates you for the lost EV?
Risk of going (completely) broke? High marginal cost of not being
able to play in the next hour (e.g. travel time, getting players together
for a home game)? Pure love of the game/desire to play longer?
Psychological costs of losing? Avoiding the possibility of going on tilt
after a bad beat? Where does the additional utility come from? Be
careful with this evaluation, because some of the motivations are
decidedly fishlike.
Another way to look at the situation is to assess the price of
diversification, which is available at the cost of more sessions and
more hours. Diversification is time-denominated, and, given risk
aversion, one incentive to take insurance is the scarcity of leisure time.
You could buy lower variance by sticking around for a few more hours
but instead you find it cheaper to pay the Man and frolic in some
sunny, smoke-free place.
I’m a bit puzzled by Darse Billings’ comment that poker players give
away "too much" EV in exchange for lower variance. I don’t see the
basis for this evaluation. I struggle to avoid any such exchange,
preferring to diversify with time and to "self-insure", but that’s just my
personal approach to poker. Again, your utility function is your
business. But recognize that if you are playing at stakes where your
utility for money is not linear, you are paying for the privilege.
I can think of several reasons for a nonlinearity: "money won is twice
as sweet as money earned", intrinsic utility of winning, inability to
step down to a smaller game because of pride, perhaps the nonlinear
player simply enjoys the more strategic nature of higher-limit poker...
I don’t find any of these compelling. If I’m running bad and tire of
the low-limit grind, I persuade friends to play strategically rich
freezeouts. The struggling player who doesn’t step down resembles
the stuckee who gambles it up, a risk-lover (if only temporarily)
accepting more variance in an attempt to recover losses. I have long
felt that wanting to win is psychologically equivalent to wanting to
lose (anyone who plays anything should, IMHO, have a look at "Finite and
Infinite Games", by James Carse, and "Zen in the Art of Archery", by
Eugen Herrigel), and that those who play to win are in fact destined to
lose.
I’ve found that I simply couldn’t play poker successfully when
winning carries great psychological weight. And I know I’m not anti-
clutch. The variance *is* high, and I can’t withstand the fluctuations
in my self-esteem. No game is as confidence-intensive as poker, but
real confidence must be in some sense unconscious. Once you begin to
realize that you believe in yourself, the absolute character of belief
begins to crumble. My best game, in the "zone", is desireless.
I just play. I feel almost clairvoyant in this state. But the last time this
happened (some four months ago) I was jolted out of it when an
opponent muttered in exasperation that the cards must be marked. I
became self-conscious again, and dropped back to the struggling,
striving work of the poker grind.
Gary Becker, a professor here at Chicago, once noted that although
economists often assume universal risk-aversion, all manner of risk-
loving behavior is observed. And indeed, most of the profit in poker
comes from risk-lovers (people who really are there to gamble). At
higher limits one sometimes finds a long-term opportunity to outplay
an opponent who can’t determine that he is actually being outplayed
because of the variances involved. More typically, a player will
ascribe his losses to individual opponents (if diligent enough to keep
track of such things) to random fluctuation. Very few winning players
believe that another player at the table is directly taking money away
from them. And it’s part of your job to make them think so. Variance
enables you to do this even if your opponent tries to make some kind of
statistical evaluation of whether you specifically are outplaying him:
the result will almost certainly be indeterminate. High variances
obscure the answer, and perhaps prevent people from asking the
question. Only in this sense is variance your friend. But surely no one
short of Paul Pudaite would try to make this calculation.
Most losing players, I think, know at some level that they are losing
and indeed must lose,. You just can’t climb uphill for that long
(remember that on average losing players lose more than winning
players win, because of the rake) without seeing your bank account
erode. This information just doesn’t matter to them. They are
engaged in risk-loving behavior and are willing to pay for it. I’m sure
you’ve all met the resigned loser (usually a calling station). A flaky
bit of psychologizing suggests that the bad beat whiner, too, milks
some extra satisfaction from losing: people sometimes indulge him
with sympathy (which, again, it is your job to provide).
But why are people willing to pay to gamble? And is my variance-
neutrality for real? Well...a long string of losses is psychologically
shattering, and I did suffer this just this spring, but I don’t know if I
can bring myself to really openly discuss losing. Perhaps when I am
less neurotic.
This is my first post to this group, although I’ve lurked for almost a
year. I hope I haven’t rambled on too long (I’m afraid I’ve said a lot
that’s obvious), and if I’ve been overly didactic, please excuse my
presumption.
Anil
Bad beat good humor (from a former high-limit prop player at the
Bicycle Club who, it seemed, hadn’t won a hand in two months): "Hi,
my name is Tony, and I'll be your live one tonight."
For an amazing list of probability abstracts (and pointers to authors,
some of whom will mail you their papers), see
"ftp://math.washington.edu/pub/PAS/WWW/titles.html".
Robert Fagen
: real confidence must be in some sense unconscious. Once you begin to
: begins to crumble. My best game, in the "zone", is desireless.
: I just play. I feel almost clairvoyant in this state. But the last
: time this happened (some four months ago) I was jolted out of it when
: an opponent muttered in exasperation that the cards must be marked.
: I became self-conscious again, and dropped back to the struggling,
: striving work of the poker grind.
Yow. Great post. Lots of good points. Don't worry about rambling when
you've obviously got good insight to provide.
I know what you mean about this "zone" or flow state. I won a satellite
for a local tourney on Monday, and I was in that state until it
became heads up. I was pounding nine other players who were mostly
props and dealers. I turned over the nuts the first two hands that I
jammed on, then showed down about one in three of my hands when I had
the goods. On top of this, I was bluffing an additional one or two
and making it and not showing it.
As soon as it was heads up, I noticed that I had about a 4 or 5:1 chip
lead and started thinking about what I was doing. I made one big
mistake and one small one, which led to me being a 2:1 dog. The cards
then came and I jammed until I won with KK over the board against a flopped
top pair. Even then, when I realized I had him in the corner and had gotten
him down to three chips, I spazzed out and only called his last re-raise.
I left him with three chips! DOH! I sucked out a str8 on the next hand
tho to pick up the win.
Anyway, I only got into this tourney by accident and was in what you call
a desireless state at the beginning. I just wish I knew how to turn that
off & on. :)
JT
--
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Jim Rankin
On Fri, 23 Jun 1995, Anil Gurnaney wrote:
> le...@diver.asd.sgi.com (Lee Jones) wrote:
<SNIP>
> > So, did Tony go bust (i.e. why a *former* hig-limit prop)?
> >
>
> Sort of. He suffered a real life bad beat: after a monster (30k)
> win at the Bike, he was followed out of the parking lot. He stopped
> at a gas station to use the head, and was hijacked. The robbers must
> have seen him cash out, because he had 15k in each pocket, and after
> he handed over the first roll, they demanded the rest. He mentioned
> that it could have been worse: his wife and kids remained safe at
> home. He isn't quite as good as I would have expected for the limits
> he played (30/60-100/200), and now flounders in a 10-20 game in
> Chicago (although he constantly lobbies to up the stakes).
>
> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> Anil
Just out of curiosity, how did the IRS view this situation? Since he was
playing at a public cardroom, presumably his cash-out was reported to IRS
or (as someone posted recently) to the Treasury Dept. So as far as the
government is concerned he had income of 30K. You can deduct gambling
losses, but how about losses of gambling winnings to theft? Would the tax
men believe the story, even with a police report?
One of the local house games was held up a few months ago; one of the
players reportedly lost 4 or 5 k plus jewelry, and several players lost
at least a thousand. For reasons which are probably obvious the hold up
was not reported to the police, and the players were just out of luck. I
don't think any of them tried for a tax deduction.
If you were held up for 30k, but still had to pay taxes on it, it would
really be a bad beat. If there are any lurking tax lawyers or
accountants, please clarify.
Thanks,
Jim Rankin
ran...@access.digex.net
Darse Billings
[lots of interesting stuff, explaining why we should never pass up a
positive expectation (+EV) situation]
>you must ask yourself why. After all, you did come to gamble
>(if only on favorable terms). What compensates you for the lost EV?
Well, it's easy for us to say "play all those +EV situations", but this
is a motherhood statement. By itself it doesn't have much value,
because it only touches on the real issue.
The fact is that small +EV plays require a lot of hard work, and put us
in much more danger than the more usual solid approach.
It is *difficult* to find those small edges, and to distinguish them
from the small -EV cases which are very similar. Lots of strong players
just don't want to bother, because to them the added value isn't worth
the extra effort. Why bust your butt for an extra nickel, when you
don't have to do anything fancy to win, and the opposition is oblivious
to the way you're playing anyway? Besides, there is something to be
said for conserving one's energy for the hands that matter the most.
There are lots of common situations where good players don't bother with
a marginal hand because it just isn't worth the effort. Do you fold K6s
in early position, if you think it might earn a fraction of a bet in +EV?
And if you call, how do you feel when you get raised, or later get
trapped on top pair with a bad kicker? That's all part of the risk, but
it still stings, and even good players can't be totally unaffected by
that bad result.
To maximize our profits we also have to be willing to accept much more
danger than usual. If we play a lot of marginal situations, we will
often be making the *wrong* decisions, and it will cost us. But as Anil
pointed out, we have to be dispassionate about the results, and about
our own errors. We must continue to tackle those tricky situations as
long as we believe our gains will outweigh the losses.
Well, that may sound wonderful on paper, but it's still tough to do in
practice. Most S&M players have a highly developed aversion to stepping
in harms way, even if there might be a miniscule percentage in it.
Let's try to work with a concrete example of a difficult situation...
Suppose we hold 87s in the small blind, and the flop comes Ks-7h-2h.
We're first to act, and there are four others in the pot. We have
middle pair with an average kicker, and some backdoor flush potential.
We *might* have the best hand, but it isn't too likely, and even if we
do, we could easily lose anyway. One safe way to play this is to check
and call one bet. Even safer is to check and fold. But a slightly
higher +EV play may be to bet out, and call if we're raised. If you
think this is obvious and would always bet without hesitation, then
weaken the example until you have a truly uncomfortable situation, where
you just don't know what to do. Now, what do you do?
Most solid players would choose one of the safer options, because they
much prefer to put their money on the line only when they clearly have
the best of it. Many dynamic players would fling a bet out there, and
see what happens.
If we do bet, there are many new problems which can arise, depending on
what action follows. Suppose someone calls and the button raises. What
does this mean? Does he really have us beat, or is he on a heart draw?
Well, maybe we're not in the lead after all, but we still have draw odds
to beat a pair of Kings. So we call, the second player calls, and the
turn is the 8h. Great, now we have two pair, but if the heart draw was
out there, we're in deep trouble. But if we check and no one bets, we've
given up a very dangerous free card. We're facing another critical
decision, and finally elect to bet. Both players just call, and the
river card is the Qc. Hmmm... the fact that no one raised suggests that
neither opponent has the heart flush. So now what? Is our two pair
still boss? There might be a tiny +EV from betting for value -- do we
take it? Well, we're here to take all we can get, so yes, we bet. Both
players call again. We put our two middle pair face up on the table.
Second player reveals A7 with a high heart, and mucks. Button shows us
pocket Twos for a set, and stares at us blankly, wondering what planet we
were on. We've been almost completely dead from the very start. Everyone
at the table agrees that we played like a moron, and maybe they're right.
But it's good that they think that -- it's good for our table image.
If the button had been on a pair of Kings, we played the hand well.
Above all, we have to be undaunted by the result and learn from it, so
that the next time we're in that situation, we can apply more knowledge
and make the right decision. By constantly putting ourselves in this
kind of awkward situation, we gradually learn more about the game and
about the opponents we are trying to defeat. We must allow ourselves
the opportunity to develop our instincts, and then learn to trust them.
We may learn to discern a strong call from a drawing call. The next
time our mediocre hand gets raised, we may fold or re-raise, and more
often than not, we'll be right in our decision. As we become stronger,
we can often outplay common opponents in tricky situations, and turn
mathematically =EV situations into significant money winners. When I'm
in the "zone", I'm regularly throwing away big hands, or calling with
next to nothing, and almost always making the correct choice. That's a
great feeling, and is one of the many rewards that come from taking on
the extra challenges inherent in the game.
Cheers, - Darse.
--
char*p="char*p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}
Anil Gurnaney
>Well, it's easy for us to say "play all those +EV situations", but this
>is a motherhood statement. By itself it doesn't have much value,
>because it only touches on the real issue.
>
>The fact is that small +EV plays require a lot of hard work, and put us
>in much more danger than the more usual solid approach.
>
>It is *difficult* to find those small edges, and to distinguish them
>from the small -EV cases which are very similar. Lots of strong players
>just don't want to bother, because to them the added value isn't worth
>the extra effort. Why bust your butt for an extra nickel, when you
>don't have to do anything fancy to win, and the opposition is oblivious
>to the way you're playing anyway? Besides, there is something to be
>said for conserving one's energy for the hands that matter the most.
>
[example deleted]
This makes perfect sense, but the motivations you present for making
"safe" decisions relate more to the difficulty of extracting the last bit
of value from a hand than to variance aversion. It's very natural for me
to just pass on marginal EV decisions, especially against strong players,
because I find the decision (not the volatility) problematic.
One of the major weaknesses in my game had been that although no bad beat
ever bothered me, I would get extremely frustrated and upset at myself if
I made even a marginally bad decision. I needed to relax at the table,
in fact to be less critical of myself in general. Tom Basso, a
securities trader profile in The_New_Market_Wizards by Jack Schwager,
suggested that traders might view each trade as one of the next one
thousand positions they would put on in order to reduce the stress on any
given decision.
A friend told me that I played (poker, pool, chess) as though I were
trying to master the game rather than trying to win. He meant this as a
very serious criticism, but I'm not sure what to make of it. I've noted
that he tends to be happy with just booking a winner (and consequently
perhaps relaxes his concentration when winning and steps it up when
stuck) whereas I want to win all of the chips on the table. I thought
about this for a long time, and discovered a compulsion to be good at
things, an unconscious desire to display my skill. And while I had seen
this trend in others, especially at the poker table (e.g., players who
show losing hands in search of recognition; According_to_Doyle contains a
brief anecdote), I hadn't before been able to see it in myself.
I guess this has become a bit confessional. Anyway, the single
source I found most helpful to my poker game (and my life) is a book
called Neurosis_and_Human_Growth, by Karen Horney, an unheralded
psychologist of the first half of this century. [I should mention that I
read this well after having internalized S/S, The_Theory_of_Poker, S+M,
and Caro, so I might be showing a bias against things that are now
"obvious".] It helped me get at why I spent so much time suffocated by
smoke and unhappy people. A poker table is a hotbed of neurosis. The
random catastrophes suffered every few minutes by some unfortunate player
enervate even the strongest selves. Part of my approach is to
depersonalize my poker play, to get my ego off the table. It's
essential for me not to take losing as a hit against my
self-esteem. Again, this is something I could saw readily in others
before it became apparent in me. Loss aversion, beyond my utility for
the money, was a great gaping hole in my game. And, I think, in my
psychology. I don't know if I've yet been able to repair it.
I hope this hasn't been too obscure.
Anil
(Oh, btw, Lee mentioned that apostrophes in my posts appeared as hex
characters. I'm using Netscape for Windows and don't see the effect. If
anyone has run into this problem before, please email me. Thanks.)
Dan Kimberg
: I can't remember ever dumping or softplaying a hand that I thought
: poker situation. If I don't think my utility for money in the range of
: limit poker losses is linear, I stay home. Of course you are entitled to
: your own utility function, but readers of this group must realize that
: the goal of poker is to *assume risk* on favorable terms. Risk
: aversion at the poker table constrains the set of favorable gambles you
: are willing to accept. I don't know of too many players that can afford
: to do this very often and still maintain a net positive EV. Someone
: else at the table picks up this EV. So when you play poker in a
: nonlinear range of your utility function, you are giving away money to
: risk-neutral and risk-loving players (or perhaps insurance men on the
: rail).
thanks for taking the time to write this article -- as with others, i
very much enjoyed reading it. let me, however, throw out a situation
in which i recently found myself opting for a form of variance
aversion. recently i had been having a bad day at a high-variance
game (5-10-10-15 omaha8) and was tipped off that a nearby 10-20 holdem
game had gone ballistic. that is, players were raising and re-raising
with complete junk, building $700 pots to be taken down by two small
pair, or top pair no kicker. at the time this was fairly unusual for
this game (on other occasions i've usually seen it played fairly sane,
or even overly tight). in any case, i only had $280 left when i got
called for this (presumably) very high expectation game with very high
variance. i knew i might have enough for only a few hands (the
effective structure was probably somewhere between 40-40-80-40 and
40-20-40-40). so i took the seat (this is not the variance aversion
part!). as it happens, i managed to see four or five flops, and
didn't make a hand, so i didn't manage to cash in (i did make a few
mistakes, such as playing QTs on the small blind). anyway, my feeling
at the time was that given that i was short-stacked and facing a
fairly high expectation situation, i should do whatever i possibly
could to stay in action -- that is, to be around for the best
expectation i could find. sure i may have been giving away marginal
expectation on some close situations (actually, i don't think anything
like this really came up). but i was doing so to increase my chances
of seeing a much higher EV situation in a game at which i felt i had a
strong advantage. note that i have rarely if ever seen a game like
this in a cardroom, and i felt it would be foolish to pass up this
opportunity even if i was short-stacked (and therefore a bit more
non-linear in my utility function than i would have liked).
: Anytime you pass on a positive EV opportunity you must figure to
: gain more from the decreased variance than the increased expected
: dollars. If I offered to buy your hand from you, how much of a
: discount would you accept? When you are willing to accept any kind
: of juice, you must ask yourself why. After all, you did come to gamble
: (if only on favorable terms). What compensates you for the lost EV?
: Risk of going (completely) broke? High marginal cost of not being
: able to play in the next hour (e.g. travel time, getting players together
: for a home game)? Pure love of the game/desire to play longer?
: Psychological costs of losing? Avoiding the possibility of going on tilt
: after a bad beat? Where does the additional utility come from? Be
: careful with this evaluation, because some of the motivations are
: decidedly fishlike.
i think avoiding the risk of going completely broke is sufficient
compensation for the loss of a small amount of EV. let's look at a
more extreme situation. suppose you have $100 and must pay $1/hand to
play. suppose further that you expect every 100 hands to come across
1 or 2 situations with monstrous expectation (you can get all your
chips in and get paid 5:1). and suppose on your second hand, you're
in a situation where your expectation is clearly but very narrowly
positive, with high variance. if you go broke getting all your chips
in on this hand, you're passing up a chance at a mountain of
expectation for a tiny advantage.
i know it's not fashionable to quote doyle brunson on such subjects,
but he has an cute chapter on this very subject in his collection
"According to Doyle" (a non-technical book i recommend to anyone who
enjoys poker anecdotes). the chapter is entitled "Staying in Action"
and describes a situation where doyle foolishly got all his chips in
against an opponent in a situation where he was a small favorite, when
he could easily have waited for a larger advantage against his much
less talented opposition. it's just an anecdote, but i think a fairly
telling one in that he clearly maximized his expectation on the hand,
but not on the session.
similarly, citing recent threads on table selection, it's worth
nothing that the cognoscenti of rec.gambling consider table selection
to be the single most important skill in poker. notwithstanding my
own reservations about that assessment, when i find a table that's
probably the most profitable i'll see for a long time, i think it's
worth dumping a few marginally profitable hands in order to maximize
the amount of time spent at the table.
dan
Stephen H. Landrum
Dan Kimberg <kim...@universe.digex.net> wrote:
>similarly, citing recent threads on table selection, it's worth
>nothing that the cognoscenti of rec.gambling consider table selection
>to be the single most important skill in poker.
I sure hope that's a typo, or are we all wasting our time here? ;-)
--
Stephen H. Landrum voice: (415) 261-2626 email: slan...@3do.com
The 3DO Company 600 Galveston Drive, Redwood City, CA 94063
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James -jazbo- Beauregard
interesting and stimulating post. Apparently, longer posts take a while
to get here & I've just now gotten the original article.]
It seems to me there are really two decisions that relate to positive
expectation and variance:
1) Table selection.
Here I include both limits and table texture. From sad experience,
I have found that a low limit game with lots of fast, preflop
action can have higher variance than a tighter or more passive
game at a higher limit.
2) Play of the hand.
In a particular hand, we have to decide what decisions to make.
Some will involve more risk with (presumably) higher possible
return than others.
For case 1), I feel it is primarily a "risk of ruin" question. I want
to play in a game that gives me the highest possible expected bankroll
growth, i.e., the Kelly Criterion. Thus, I will avoid high variance
games, even if the expectation seems to be better, because the amount
at risks exceeds my bankroll*(% expectation). With a larger bankroll,
I would tend to wade into games I now avoid.
On case 2):
Anil Gurnaney <gu...@midway.uchicago.edu> said:
>I can't remember ever dumping or softplaying a hand that I thought
>had positive EV in exchange for reduced variance in a non-tournament
>poker situation. If I don't think my utility for money in the range of
>limit poker losses is linear, I stay home. ...
That's a pretty strong statement. If you are referring to a situation
where you are drawing and are pretty confident that your draw will win
the hand, then you can make a decision based purely on the odds. In
this circumstance I'll agree -- I'll take the edge, even if it's very
small. Like you, I don't play in a game if the amount of money I'm
risking will affect my decision. However, often the decision is of
the following kind: "If he has what he is representing, then calling
him down is wrong (perhaps you'd be drawing dead). If he's bluffing,
then there's almost a sure profit." In making such a decision (assuming
I don't have a tell), I may tend to give up some expectation in
order to reduce variance.
--jazbo
--
James -jazbo - Beauregard (mail to ja...@nova.bellcore.com only, please)
Dan Kimberg
: Bozo suggests an electronic journal of peer-reviewed articles. On a
: less ambitious note, how about a "Best of Rec.Gambling" compilation? I
: know many of us save articles that impressed us at the time, even if we
: never get around to reading them again. I have about a hundred of them
: in my own news folder.
i mentioned my support for this in email to bozo (i think), but i
figure i'll make a few more public comments. i think your "less
ambitious" idea is a good one. i know there have been quite a few
articles i've regretfully failed to save, and it would be nice to be
able to read them again, especially now that i'm better equipped to
understand them.
as far as actual articles go, i'd like to nominate many of paul
pudaite's articles (in particular, his tourney analyses with the
"controlling for luck" calculations, which is already up on my trip
report archive; and his mathematical analyses of which hands can be
profitably played at a complete maniac game).
on a more ambitious note, i think it would be worthwhile trying to put
together a semi-regular web-based poker publication (i'm avoiding the
word "'zine") consisting potentially of regular columns, departments,
features, trip reports, poker conditions, tutorials for beginners,
etc. there's clearly enough material for this already posted on a
regular basis, it would just take a bit of periodic organizational
effort. okay, maybe more than just a bit. but as the unofficial trip
report archivist of rec.gambling (and keeper of the world's only fully
hyperlinked poker dictionary (gotta get those plugs in)), i don't
think the amount of work is unreasonable, especially if authors can be
coerced into html'izing their own articles.
incidentally, i think one incentive for people to write articles
specifically for such an enterprise would be the fact that, as has
been frequently noted, the more technical articles posted to
rec.gambling[.poker] would never get published in magazines like card
player but often find a very receptive audience on the net.
one model i would like to suggest is the peer commentary format i've
seen in a few academic journals (the journal i have in mind is
behavioral and brain sciences, but i believe there are others in other
fields), in which target articles are pre-distributed and a wide array
of commentators are given the opportunity to reply. this may sound
very much like a newsgroup, but there are some differences. the
target articles are selected by an editor as being of particular and
complex interest, and the commentaries are expected at least in
principle to be rigorous, thoughtful, and substantive. the sort of
article i'm thinking of here is something like the top-n list of poker
skills (by michael hall?). i think concretizing a bunch of different
perspectives on the importance of various poker skills would make a
nice resource.
: As I think about this, such a "Best of" archive would be a boon to many
: newsgroups. Newsreaders could even have a "Nominate" button which
: automatically sends a vote to the proper authority; articles receiving
: the most favorable votes go to the top of the list. And let us not
: forget the fun of appearing in the 'p dregs' list!
hey, one more big tourney win and i'm off that list forever.
dan
Michael Maurer
Blackstock aka Dr Bozo)
praises
article <DALoE...@midway.uchicago.edu> by Anil Gurnaney
<gu...@midway.uchicago.edu>.
Hear hear. This has been one of the best threads I've ever read in r.g.
I only wish I could contribute to it!
Bozo suggests an electronic journal of peer-reviewed articles. On a
less ambitious note, how about a "Best of Rec.Gambling" compilation? I
know many of us save articles that impressed us at the time, even if we
never get around to reading them again. I have about a hundred of them
in my own news folder.
I suggest we organize a contest to showcase some of these articles. Dig
through your archives for those gems that keep you reading in the face
of lotto wheeling mania. We could place nominated articles on a Web
server in a cross-linked and indexed archive. (At the moment, don't
send me any articles, just an expression of interest in this idea.)
As I think about this, such a "Best of" archive would be a boon to many
newsgroups. Newsreaders could even have a "Nominate" button which
automatically sends a vote to the proper authority; articles receiving
the most favorable votes go to the top of the list. And let us not
forget the fun of appearing in the 'p dregs' list!
Like the Yahoo of a year ago, such an effort could yield to a promising
entrepreneurial opportunity. Send the royalty checks weekly, please.
-Michael
--
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Maurer Center for Radar Astronomy (415) 723-1024
mau...@nova.stanford.edu http://www-star.stanford.edu/~maurer/
Steve Sembay
[lots of interesting stuff deleted]
|> I guess this has become a bit confessional. Anyway, the single
|> source I found most helpful to my poker game (and my life) is a book
|> called Neurosis_and_Human_Growth, by Karen Horney, an unheralded
|> psychologist of the first half of this century. [I should mention that I
|> read this well after having internalized S/S, The_Theory_of_Poker, S+M,
|> and Caro, so I might be showing a bias against things that are now
|> "obvious".] It helped me get at why I spent so much time suffocated by
|> smoke and unhappy people.
On the subject of psychology books, I'd recommend "Irrationality" by Stuart
Sutherland. No idea if it is printed in the US, but it is a interesting read
for layman on the subject of the human mind's common inability to think in
a rational manner. Its relevance to gambling is that it provides a useful
insight into why many people find basic statistics so counter-intuitive.
Should be required reading for everyone in rec.gambling.lottery.
|> A poker table is a hotbed of neurosis. The
|> random catastrophes suffered every few minutes by some unfortunate player
|> enervate even the strongest selves. Part of my approach is to
|> depersonalize my poker play, to get my ego off the table. It's
|> essential for me not to take losing as a hit against my
|> self-esteem. Again, this is something I could saw readily in others
|> before it became apparent in me. Loss aversion, beyond my utility for
|> the money, was a great gaping hole in my game. And, I think, in my
|> psychology. I don't know if I've yet been able to repair it.
|>
One small way that I have of keeping my emotions in check is if I'm
heads-up with someone and I decide to fold when there are still cards to
come, I never ask the dealer to deal-out. I'd say that 90 percent of the
tourney players that I come up against in this situation ask to see the
remaining cards. Of course, they always get really pissed-off when they see
that they would have made their straight.
|> I hope this hasn't been too obscure.
|>
|> Anil
|>
Steve
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Sembay | Department of Physics and Astronomy,
s...@star.le.ac.uk | University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
Steve Sembay
|> Michael Maurer (mau...@nova.stanford.edu) wrote:
|> : Bozo suggests an electronic journal of peer-reviewed articles. On a
|> : less ambitious note, how about a "Best of Rec.Gambling" compilation? I
|> : know many of us save articles that impressed us at the time, even if we
|> : never get around to reading them again. I have about a hundred of them
|> : in my own news folder.
|>
|> figure i'll make a few more public comments. i think your "less
|> ambitious" idea is a good one. i know there have been quite a few
|> articles i've regretfully failed to save, and it would be nice to be
|> able to read them again, especially now that i'm better equipped to
|> understand them.
|>
|> as far as actual articles go, i'd like to nominate many of paul
|> pudaite's articles (in particular, his tourney analyses with the
|> "controlling for luck" calculations, which is already up on my trip
|> report archive; and his mathematical analyses of which hands can be
|> profitably played at a complete maniac game).
|>
|> on a more ambitious note, i think it would be worthwhile trying to put
|> together a semi-regular web-based poker publication (i'm avoiding the
|> word "'zine") consisting potentially of regular columns, departments,
|> features, trip reports, poker conditions, tutorials for beginners,
|> etc. there's clearly enough material for this already posted on a
|> regular basis, it would just take a bit of periodic organizational
|> effort. okay, maybe more than just a bit. but as the unofficial trip
|> report archivist of rec.gambling (and keeper of the world's only fully
|> hyperlinked poker dictionary (gotta get those plugs in)), i don't
|> think the amount of work is unreasonable, especially if authors can be
|> coerced into html'izing their own articles.
|>
[snip]
|> dan
I support this idea of a web-based publication, especially as I suggested it
to this newsgroup about 3 weeks ago. The reason that I suggested it was due
to the fact that, for some reason, a small but significant percentage of
postings do not make it to my site. As my post got no response whatsoever,
perhaps the reverse route is equally unreliable (not that that would be any
great loss to r.g.p). Anyway, go for it lads !