Math in poker is a little overrated. It's often listed as an advantage of the game by less experienced players.
Once you have the basics nailed (mainly expected value calculations) there really isn't much more to it, the rest of the skill then comes from estimating opponents hand ranges. And past that, meta game, hand range balancing, deception etc become increasingly important.
Poker is an amazing game when you're playing people who also understand the game. When you're scrapping at the free games it's a pretty dismally inefficient learning tool. If you want to play good people, you need to play with money.
Poker also has a big potential downside, which is obsession, outright misery and despair which can slowly creep into your life. Distinguishing between addiction and a pursuit you are thoroughly interested in and enjoy is often difficult to pinpoint.
Poker also has other downsides which I've observed many times, even with close friends. Illusions of grandeur are common, and can be destructive in your life in a larger way than you are prepared to admit. For example, many players who have been playing for many years still believe they can go pro. These players don't study the game, they just play it and often bemoan their bad luck. For years. In an alternative Universe they might have perused a career, yet they are still playing small stakes games and bleeding off their money at a very slow pace, slow enough to kid themselves that they are simply suffering a bad run of luck.
Perseverance and self belief really aren't virtuous qualities in poker for most people.
Harrington on Holdem are the best strategy books on poker in my opinion. If anyone is interested in seeing how poker players should be thinking as they play I highly recommend those books!
As for recommending people go into poker, I actively tell people to steer well clear of it. Money flows upwards, addicts keep on self destructing and the winning players will justify it with ethically dubious statements like "if I don't take their money, someone else will", or with blinders on with statements such as "all the losing players are probably just casual and playing for fun" to appease their own ethics.
A lot of winning players do not understand or empathise the torture that some losing players have to endure.
There is a real pleasure playing poker on a table with people who are equal, or above you in skill level. The level of thought, the challenge, the tactics are thoroughly thoroughly enjoyable. I was never especially good at poker, but I did touch upon these sorts of experiences. To get there though will take most people a lot of time, probably time better spent elsewhere.
"Poker also has a big potential downside, which is obsession, outright misery and despair which can slowly creep into your life. Distinguishing between addiction and a pursuit you are thoroughly interested in and enjoy is often difficult to pinpoint."
Yeah, a long list of things you can do on the internet has these same potential downsides.
"Math in poker is a little overrated."
I think it's one of the most important parts of the game. Poker is like a market and in each street you are basically looking for arbitrage opportunities. The players set the odds for you, some are long term winners, others are long term losers.
"To get there though will take most people a lot of time, probably time better spent elsewhere."
I agree with this, however, for me poker is a social activity. And that's worth it.
I would also recommend the Harrington books for beginners looking to improve their tournament play. They are widely read, however, and the strategy is exploitable by someone who knows you're playing it. But it's still much better than your own strategy at the start.
Edit: I would say, in my anecdotal experience, you don't encounter the same number of addicts in poker as you do in other games. You're more likely to see them at the roulette or blackjack table looking for a quick bet. The adrenaline moments in poker, tournaments especially, are quite widely spaced out.
>They are widely read, however, and the strategy is exploitable by someone who knows you're playing it.
So true. I've had some great success exploiting people who play Omaha to the letter of one of the more popular books.
>I would say, in my anecdotal experience, you don't encounter the same number of addicts in poker as you do in other games.
My anecdotal experience says that the worst addicts "play" the stock market. I think it works well with your observation about adrenaline moments as every tick makes for one.
> Harrington on Holdem are the best strategy books on poker in my opinion. If anyone is interested in seeing how poker players should be thinking as they play I highly recommend those books!
Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo the single most important book to read after you actually learn how to play, which the Harrington books are excellent for.
It covers everything about poker that doesn't have to do with what the cards actually are. Where to sit, when to look at your cards, how to act, when to play, when NOT to play, how money flows, etc.
Are the "winning players" that you refer to at every level, or do you just count those at the very top as winners?
Is poker zero-sum, or do things like spectator events or sponsorship change that?
Also, can you comment on the "creativity" aspect that the blog post suggests. I would have thought very little strategy or tactics are thought up on the spot, but take many weeks of practice beforehand. Perhaps that is only at the top levels though?
As far as zero-sum goes, with the rake [the fee per pot casinos charge] it is negative sum. Further, when ESPN pays Caesars to broadcast the World Series of Poker, none of that money is added to the prize pool, so it is not like professional golf where sponsors help add to the prizepool [or maybe entirely add to it, im not sure]. Some individual players are sponsored so for them, they are "freerolling" [meaning they cant lose money, they can only win as somebody else is paying their way].
For your creativity question, it depends a lot on how players think. There are a lot of small situations that occur in a game where what I have been studying previously makes me think of a better play while I am actually playing, but most of that is based on concepts I have been previously discussing and thinking about. However, Phil Galfond, one of the top players in the world, has said that he learns the most by playing and thinking deeply about every situation and figuring things out on the fly. He is clearly an exception to the rule, and I he is where he is at now because of all the hours he played leading to now as well as how much he discussed the game with other very high level players.
Winning players: The winning players he's talking about exist at every level. At the small time level, they're often "prop" players, sponsored by the casino to generate action where the floor manager wants it.
Poker is strongly negative-sum. The venue has to be paid for. There isn't enough sponsorship to go around to everyone, and there definitely isn't any for the small time.
Creativity: spending a lot of time practicing something isn't the opposite of creativity. I find that creativity is simply recombining things you already know how to do. There aren't many fields where someone is simply "a natural" at a very high level; it almost always comes from practice.
This is an incredibly jaded reply. Somebody who was "never especially good" at programming but spent a lot of time try to be could make the exact same post. Poker is very difficult to become successful at in your part-time, because you need to balance playing with studying which forces you to divide a small pie even smaller.
While the best of the best can beat tough tables and will play anybody, most of us make money by playing worse players. Recreational players will often say "I cant beat these players because they dont think, if only I could move up to where they respected my raises!" But the problem with that is that the majority of our profits come from those players, if you cant figure them out, then you wont be beating the better players. Plain and simple.
As far as math being overrated, I couldnt disagree more. Yes, bad players or people who dont play often ask if you need to be a math genius to figure it out, or if you have to count cards, both of which arent true but that doesnt mean math is unimportant. Yes, pot odds, counting outs, etc is all pretty basic. Solving complex game trees for various situations to find the maximally exploitive play is not. Is the math complex? No, not really. It can be confusing, but there are tools to help and it isnt very high level math; however, that doesnt make it unimportant.
Further, saying math is unimportant is completely ignoring the activity you are "playing." Poker is entirely math. All you are doing is playing a numbers game. In texas hold'em your first card dealt will have a 1/52 chance of being a specific card, and your second will have a 1/51 chance. Then you have the various probabilities for the flop, turn, river, etc. Saying poker isnt about math misses the forest for the trees. I could say blackjack isnt about math, you just need to follow the basic counting strategies to turn a profit. But what do you think those are based on? How were they calculated? Look at what the University of Alberta is doing with math and try to say it isnt important.
I respect your posts in BFI at 2p2, but this is something that only provides the perspective of a player who never reached a high level of play. It is important to understand that perspective, but while people should always learn from somebody who failed, they need to be very careful when looking to them for advice. Yes, many give great advice, and many winners just got lucky, but you need to hear both sides.
TLDR: As far as the actual question goes, if you live in the US dont get into online poker unless it is just for fun. There arent enough options for you to play, and the risks are too high. If you are outside the US and want to learn the game, make sure you have enough time to study and play, use good resources (twoplustwo.com in conjunction with a video training site), listen to people better than you, and always try to improve. Dont look for how to play x hand in y situation, look to understand the framework that will help you make those decisions. It isnt easy, and if you already code then your time is better spent freelancing, but for college students, I think it is a great option, provided they can be honest with themselves about their abilities.
When it comes to crossover with programming, Im not so sure i directly agree (although Im just learning to code, so take this with a grain of salt) with their specific points. I think when poker is properly studied, it helps you learn how to think and analyze situations rationally. That ability helps the coding process, but it is broader than that, and not really the reasons the author outlined. It truly is a math/logic based game (so is any non purely luck based game), so it requires a similar mindset, but I dont expect learning one would help a ton with the other directly.
Somebody who was "never especially good" at programming but spent a lot of time try to be could make the exact same post.
Programming doesn't have a rake.
Regarding math, there are about a half-dozen or dozen situations that you should memorize the approximate odds to, and be able to divide those odds by how much is in the pot (minus your bet/call). It's not that sophisticated, you're not deriving probability theory from first principles here.
Poker's fun, don't get me wrong, but nobody should regard it the way we regard programming.
> Look at what the University of Alberta is doing with math and try to say it isnt important.
University of Alberta have done awesome research into poker, and I believe that every poker game is theoretically solvable. Math is a great tool to win poker with, but for most humans that depth of math is unreachable therefore as a player it's sort of useless (especially so in a live game).
When I was a winning player at various levels (plo100 was as far as I got) I really don't feel I was consciously doing much math except in the less frequent harder spots. (My demise was tilt and bankroll management).
> This is an incredibly jaded reply.
Fair comment, you have to understand though that it's a game that really hurt me at one point and that some of my friends are unknowingly suffering from it. I would not wish my experience of poker onto anyone else, and I would feel very uncomfortable exploiting someone who was in a similar position (which is obviously near impossible to ascertain online). I am quite vocal about this because I do feel a lot of the downsides are glossed over by the winning players - especially the less direct downsides like people deviating too far away from other paths in their lives that they would be happier in (such as a 'real' job/career).
When I went to casinos, local games, even pub games I would only say about 10% of the people in each place were happily enjoying themselves. My experience of poker is that the vast majority of people who play it a lot really aren't actually enjoying the pursuit, many to the point it impacts their outside lives, and that the game does tend to attract less savoury characters. Of the 90% that were not enjoying it, many of them are deluded by their own ability and potential. Perhaps I was just at the bottom of the pit and it changes at higher levels, but new players starting it would be difficult to break away from that majority group.
This definitely makes me hesitant to recommend the game to anyone, regardless of the huge enjoyment and lessons I did get out of it.
To prevent obsession, you should start with an initial budget (e.g. 50$) and never pay more. Force yourself to get more money from the tables. Also restrict your maximum buy-in to something like 1/25 of you budget. For 50$, this means tables with 2$ buy-in. The buy-in restriction keeps you at a comfortable level, because tables with higher buy-ins have better players.
Using this strategy I played from 50$ up to 300$ over a year or something. At that point I quit, because I got bored.
Your advice is pretty much spot on however I believe the downvotes are attributed to the fact that reasonable budgetting doesn't prevent obsession. It may help prevent you from overspending initially but using moderation to prevent an addiction is a bit of an oxymoron.
Once you have the basics nailed (mainly expected value calculations) there really isn't much more to it, the rest of the skill then comes from estimating opponents hand ranges. And past that, meta game, hand range balancing, deception etc become increasingly important.
Poker is an amazing game when you're playing people who also understand the game. When you're scrapping at the free games it's a pretty dismally inefficient learning tool. If you want to play good people, you need to play with money.
If you get to a reasonable level at poker, it does have a lot of advantages. Here's a blog post I wrote comparing running a startup to playing poker: http://www.scirra.com/blog/80/why-running-a-startup-is-like-...
Poker also has a big potential downside, which is obsession, outright misery and despair which can slowly creep into your life. Distinguishing between addiction and a pursuit you are thoroughly interested in and enjoy is often difficult to pinpoint.
Poker also has other downsides which I've observed many times, even with close friends. Illusions of grandeur are common, and can be destructive in your life in a larger way than you are prepared to admit. For example, many players who have been playing for many years still believe they can go pro. These players don't study the game, they just play it and often bemoan their bad luck. For years. In an alternative Universe they might have perused a career, yet they are still playing small stakes games and bleeding off their money at a very slow pace, slow enough to kid themselves that they are simply suffering a bad run of luck.
Perseverance and self belief really aren't virtuous qualities in poker for most people.
Harrington on Holdem are the best strategy books on poker in my opinion. If anyone is interested in seeing how poker players should be thinking as they play I highly recommend those books!
As for recommending people go into poker, I actively tell people to steer well clear of it. Money flows upwards, addicts keep on self destructing and the winning players will justify it with ethically dubious statements like "if I don't take their money, someone else will", or with blinders on with statements such as "all the losing players are probably just casual and playing for fun" to appease their own ethics.
A lot of winning players do not understand or empathise the torture that some losing players have to endure.
There is a real pleasure playing poker on a table with people who are equal, or above you in skill level. The level of thought, the challenge, the tactics are thoroughly thoroughly enjoyable. I was never especially good at poker, but I did touch upon these sorts of experiences. To get there though will take most people a lot of time, probably time better spent elsewhere.