blonde poker forum

Thought this was a pretty decent read

http://www.philgalfond.com/viktor-blom-the-man-the-myth-the-legend/ (http://www.philgalfond.com/viktor-blom-the-man-the-myth-the-legend/)

Thanks for the link. Galfond writes superbly as ever and Blom is such a fascinating character to read about.

Really good read this, <3 Phils blog

[X] have a man crush on phil galfond.

[ ] ashamed

[X] considering trying to get his seed in me to see if they help my pokerbrain

Lol

'Viktor explained to me over dinner one night that he likes to make his decisions instantly so that he doesn’t question his first instinct.  Apparently, folding the nuts every once in a while is a price he has to pay.'


i am going to have some fun tonight.

I have a theory about him...

This "unexploitable" strategy. I understand the logic behind it and, over a million MTTs, a highly effective and profitable strategy.

But should you use it for the WSOP Main Event? This is another MTT so there's an argument for treating it the same as the Sunday Million, but the World Championship is something he'll play, what, 30 times in his life?

Is there an argument for a lower risk strategy in that event? Is he missing a trick?

I liked this bit.  I have been thinking a bit about this recently with my own game. 

It is assumed in poker that the more tables you have, the worse you play.  I am not sure this is true for everyone.  This year, I have been playing more tables and think my game has improved.  Sure I fold kings pre and misclick raise a few times, but having more tables tops me overthinking situations.

I have heard it said that professional sportsmen don't think about situations much, and just rely on instinct.  When they get too much time to think, they go through the options, and end up doing none of them well.   

Given time to think, I start thinking that this can't possible be aces, as he has made it too obvious, hence it must be a bluff.    Or I end up assigning a possible range that he could have other than aces.  I call, and he has aces. Twenty tables up, it is "he has aces", and I fold.  20 tables up clearly stops me getting too flash with 67 suited utg in level 1 too. 

Obviously I am no Victor Blom, but think there is something in it.  I think you definitely need a solid understanding of the fundamentals first, when I was starting up, my game definitely got worse as I added tables.

Of course, given time to think, I realise this article is just a thinly disguised ploy to smooth talk Blom in to playing Galfond more often.

I can't accept that as being the answer. Every person has an optimal number of tables they can play on simultaneously and the suggestion that you should play as many until you take all the thinking time out and play solely on instinct is missing the point.

If you "over think" it is because you aren't thinking correctly; your reasoning is suboptimal and that is why the decision falls the same way.

Why do snooker players take an average of 20 seconds over every shot, chess masters 2-2.5 mins a move? It isn't necessarily because they don't know what to do (their instinct play is almost certainly the correct one), but because they are making sure. It's a systematic elimination process, where the result is a complete and beautiful conclusion.

I'd love to be able to do that in poker (in anything!) but I know that it's the reasoning that is at fault for every decision I get wrong.

That's how I see it, anyway.

I think it was in Freakonomics the story about the fireman who somehow knew something was wrong in this house and ordered his men to get out asap.

A few seconds later the whole house was ablaze.

When questioned after how he knew, he couldn't answer - he had no idea what caused him to order his men out, he had no idea, just instinct.

All his years fighting fires and the built up experience and knowledge meant something in his brain or subconscious had told him that there was something wrong with this particular situation, yet he couldn't explain what it was.

FWIW At no stage have I made the suggestion that you should play as many [tables] until you take all the thinking time out and play solely on instinct.

I think it is possible that I play better on each table if I have 15 going rather than 2. 

I never have 2 minutes to make a decision (well unless I want to kill the timebank first hand).  If I have several minutes to think about a hand on PHA, I can usually think through all the options properly, check out some stats, know how big a stack each  opponent has and see the correct line.  Even then I am not going to create a probability distribution for each hand, work out how he plays each of them through 3 streets, with different cards on the turn and river, and then work out the best line from that. 

My choice is not 1 second or several hours.  It is 1 second or 20 seconds.   20 seconds can get me to a whole series of possible actions and leave me less sure about the correct action than I was in the first place.   

Theoretically I should play better with a HUD running, a wall of stats and one table going.  Just because it is theoretically correct on paper, doesn't make it so in practice. 


   

interesting.

Tal, i think the difference between poker and snooker on the length of time to take action is that because you have played so many poker hands and there really is a massively set course of action to raise, call, fold I think often whatever you have as your instinct is definitely the best course of action and normally when you have more time to think you can convince yourself out of it.

In snooker i think there are many more variables to think about and thus why more time is necessary, with poker if you have been aware the whole hand, you don't really need to dwell about anything. Well that is the case with me anyway.

I have noticed recently with me that my instinct has nearly always been spot on but i have let thinking too much about it make me confused and i don't go for it.

Need to be careful not to be hasty in calling random all ins on the assumption everyone is at it either, that is not what i am getting at, I just think the initial reaction is normally the best one to go for and is why that quote from prev post rings so true.

Are there really more variables in snooker than poker?

I'll be honest - hard to believe....

muliple player types
multiple moods
multiple hand types
multiple hand developments
different interpretations of hands/ ideas of play
etc etc..

oh and a
flop
turn
river
ocean
pretend post hand play
:D

will explain myself further.

There may be more or less or the same variables in either sport but i think that you have many of them figured out before you have to react to the opponents action, so in your head you know how to react instantly to his raise or call. I see one aspect that probably needs more thought and may take longer is bet sizing for a re raise or for a value bet on the river where i think you could lose money by being too hasty here.

So many ppl spoke about this today.

Basically cliffs are that galfond tells us...

Isildur is degen
Isildur is sick at poker
Isildur is very good heads up
Isildurs history on full tilt
Islidur is bad at PLO
Isildur lost a lot of money to Hastings
Isildur loses less money now

It's just all orllllyyyyy

Even through in the

Isildur is tall.

And ofc a few thin ones such as 'my biggest winning day, 1.6m' etc

I like when galfond writes but leave this kind of stuff to Barry carter and spend your time writing unique pieces.

Anyone agree?

i liked the article, sure we knew a lot of the things he said, but there were some interesting things in there that i was unaware of ie how sick he had become at plo.... to be considered one of the top 3 toughest players glafond has played and for galfond not to think he has an edge, it is a special thing

Wow. Whenever I have seen victor he seems to be slouched in his seat and shorter than anyone else at the table. How tall is he. Can't be Moansnlolzs tall

So you win $1.6m off someone a while ago.

Do you then A. Tell him that he has become one of the best players around so that he will play you again?

Or               B.  Tell him that he is a fish and risk him not playing you anymore?


Even Mr Blom could probably use his first instinct guess to get that one right.

Read some of the recent books on neuroscience and the role of the subconscious in dictating brain activity. Really scary/enlightening/odd. Basically the current consensus is our conscious is just a way of keeping track of what the subconscious is doing and isn't really in control of anything (to badly paraphrase). That's to suggest modern neuroscience truly understands what is going on though, which is extraordinarily unlikely.

You need to read it again. Barry Carter could not write this. Not because he's not a good writer, but because he doesn't have the personal insight. I love articles like this. Could be much better of course with an edit, but it's a blog.

I disagree. The one part of the article which would have been interesting and that normal journos couldn't write is the "Strengths and Weaknesses" but Galfond is super super vague here. He speaks about how they spoke about how they adjusted vs eachother which would be great to here, btu doesn't actually talk about it just that he is super good player because he can adjust. I mean really?

Really feel this is the worst of all Galfonds blogs so far, just behind the "trust in poker" which was again all very very obvious, "you shouldn't give money to people you don't trust"

Not sure exactly what Galfonds game is here. Interesting to see how it develops.

I can't think for any reason why this article was written. Just wish i hadn't wasted the time to read it.

Yeah I see where you're coming from, but he's never going to tell us that. He still plays the guy all the time.

As an insight into Blom the person I thought it was really interesting. And something a journo would really struggle to get without a) spending a lot of time with him or b) speaking to a lot of his friends. And even then the insight wouldn't be as clear and personal as this.

You wanted to know about Blom the player, I wanted to know about Blom the person. Probably a fail on point 1, but a definite win on point 2 (even though obviously could have gone further).

I agree that most of the back story was pointless and almost stopped me reading it first time I looked at it. Like I hinted at structurally it was a bit weak, and could definitely do with some rewriting, but it's a blog.

ya +1

Really sorry to be pedantic here, but what exactly did you learn about the person?

No worries. I learned he was tall. j/k

It was more the impression he left me with. He did a nice job of painting a picture of the kid, with phrases like him looking like he'd just been given $500 worth of quarters when playing in the $50k mix.

I got an overall impression of a fun-loving, easy-going kid who approaches poker with a lightness and naivety that is kind of charming.

More prosaically I learned he doesn't use any HUDs and relies way more on instinct than you would reasonably expect.

Maybe nothing earth shattering, but confirmed a lot of suspicions and fleshed out a pretty enigmatic character.

Playing the amount of tables he does it would be almost impossible to use a hud efficiently and game flow is going to be wayyyyy more important.

But yeh, I understand why the article would be interesting to many, I'm just grumpy/miserable.

Haha! I can totally see why it would be a bit underwhelming to someone who is as immersed in poker as you are. But I think to the average punter (who it's aimed at) it will be a good read.

Good writing does more than leave you with bullet points or cliffs. It leaves an impression, a mood, a feeling. Great writing leaves an impression on your soul. This is on the edge of good I would say.

Im 6ft and he is way taller than me.  Probs 6'3 or 6'4

Sometimes some of the best and most groundbreaking ideas seem obvious after we hear them. I think Galfond is a genius and the best ambassador for the online game we have. What he writes might seem obvious, but as Alun suggests, it is not just about giving us new information, it is about conceptualising things in a way that makes them easy to understand or makes us think about them in a different way.

I told you Barry Carter was a good writer. Spot on imo.

really wish he'd said who the other two guys he plays without knowing his edge are?

Any guesses?

I'm going to go Ziigmund and Rui Cao.

Zeejustin

*get the feeling this is an epic fail of a joke

Wayne bentley

shhhhhhh

Lol. You ever come across him in Manchester Paul, asked a couple of cardroom
 Managers a few weeks back and they say he stopped going out sometime ago

PA? I imagine its two plo hu players, can't imagine it would be Ivey, he has said several times in 08 etc that he was happy to take him on. V. curious too.

I found the article somewhat interesting, kind of the things I'd already read about the summer etc already. DN tweeted, "Just explained how the 7th card in stud is dealt facedown to Viktor, and he exclaimed "That's so cool!"."

What a hero.

feel like it's likely to be someone super aggro, PA on the tighter side HU afaik, could obv very possibly be him.