Thoughts of online poker

[RED-DOG]

Luck is not something to be feared by a good player - it is to be embraced. It is the fog of war which obscures the bad player's true position. It is the oasis on the horizon which encourages the bad player to venture further into the desert to his death.


Beautifully put.

[snoopy1239]

Luck is not something to be feared by a good player - it is to be embraced. It is the fog of war which obscures the bad player's true position. It is the oasis on the horizon which encourages the bad player to venture further into the desert to his death.


Beautifully put.

ffs, did Stuart Hall say that?

[Peter Costa]

Poker is a game whose very nature is to obscure the difference in skill between good players and bad players. As such, the bad players may not realise they are bad players because of luck. The mediocre players may think they are great players because of luck.

Luck is not something to be feared by a good player - it is to be embraced. It is the fog of war which obscures the bad player's true position. It is the oasis on the horizon which encourages the bad player to venture further into the desert to his death.

The long run is king - our target number of hands played is placed at the vanishing point in the distance.

If you don't like luck/bad beats go play chess, where the better player always wins. See how much fun that is.

Love it!

[AndrewT]

Peter[/url] Costa link=topic=26856.msg544072#msg544072 date=1188171937]

Poker is a game whose very nature is to obscure the difference in skill between good players and bad players. As such, the bad players may not realise they are bad players because of luck. The mediocre players may think they are great players because of luck.

Luck is not something to be feared by a good player - it is to be embraced. It is the fog of war which obscures the bad player's true position. It is the oasis on the horizon which encourages the bad player to venture further into the desert to his death.

The long run is king - our target number of hands played is placed at the vanishing point in the distance.

If you don't like luck/bad beats go play chess, where the better player always wins. See how much fun that is.

Love it!

And this is after three hours sleep last night, four hours drinking in the park this afternoon, then four hours drinking in the pub this evening.

In vino veritas indeed.

*collapses*

[Peter Costa]

Poker is a game whose very nature is to obscure the difference in skill between good players and bad players. As such, the bad players may not realise they are bad players because of luck. The mediocre players may think they are great players because of luck.

Luck is not something to be feared by a good player - it is to be embraced. It is the fog of war which obscures the bad player's true position. It is the oasis on the horizon which encourages the bad player to venture further into the desert to his death.

The long run is king - our target number of hands played is placed at the vanishing point in the distance.

If you don't like luck/bad beats go play chess, where the better player always wins. See how much fun that is.

quote]

BTW Andrew - funny you should mention Chess. One of the game I created invloves playing Chess with dice. I did actually come close to launching it a while back - in fact, did two lots of software (still have the AI version I play on). Anyhow, looking to develop new software and launching a games company in the new year.

[AndrewT]

BTW Andrew - funny you should mention Chess. One of the game I created invloves playing Chess with dice. I did actually come close to launching it a while back - in fact, did two lots of software (still have the AI version I play on). Anyhow, looking to develop new software and launching a games company in the new year.

Here's some ideas you can have for free.

Scrabblechess - instead of lining all the pieces on the board at the start of the game, players pick out their pieces from a green bag and play them from a rack in front of the board.

Battlechess - a wall is placed across the board and players attempt to sink their opponent's pieces by calling out squares.

Connectchess - players win the game by getting four pieces in a diagonal line.

Cluedochess - players have to guess from which square checkmate occurs and which piece makes it.

[MANTIS01]

The thickness of the fog can sometimes weigh heavy on a good player's chest though.

Example: Last night I entered 3 tournaments and got done by three 2-outers on the spin...significant time/financial investment and no reward...so a little accumulator on that eventuality would have been nice. Good players can get lost in the fog along with the bad I think. It is fine to embrace the luck elements of the game but we all go through periods when it is almost exclusively bad, particularly in tournament play, and anything that can negate this frustration is probably worthwhile....even if it is just a replacement mouse!

[thetank]

If you don't like luck/bad beats go play chess, where the better player always wins. See how much fun that is.

'Chess,' said the Dutch grandmaster, Jan Hein Donner, 'is as much a game of chance as blackjack; or tossing cards into a top hat.' There was a pained silence, then a polite babel of disagreement: it was a game of the utmost skill; a conflict between disciplined minds in which victory would inexorably go to the more perceptive, the more analytical player; a duel of the intellect in which luck played no part. Donner shrugged, lit another cigarette and said: 'Believe that if you like.'

Warning - Do not read on if you can't be arsed.

If your favourite Premiership team concedes a penalty, but then the opposite striker hits the bar, you'll feel kind of lucky. In a similar way, most chess players will talk about getting lucky when their opponent makes a mistake or misses an oppurtunity, even at the highest level. Perhaps then, it could be said that while there can be good luck in chess, there is no bad luck, only bad skill.

But what of a similarly strengthed rival getting lucky against someone whom you do not in a round robin style contest. The absence of good luck in itself constituting bad luck (ala going the whole tourney without AA.) I see this point, but there is something meatier.

2nd Warning - Seriously, the following is kinda dull.


There are many occasions where a chess player (not only the best players, but also the best computers) are not able to tell which of two or more good looking moves is actually the "best" to play. They use their perception and tactical foresight as much as possible, but what is to say that the move they didn't choose is actually the superior. All sorts of different principles and strategic concepts are weighted before a desicion is made, but there is often no certainty (especially in the middle part of the game).

If you are in any doubt that the best possible move should be able to be worked out, remember the news last month of the team of computer scientists who took 18 years and 200 high powered computers running their Chinook program to work out the 500 billion billion combinations of moves possible in the game of checkers/draughts.
“Checkers has roughly the square root of the number of positions in chess,” said Jonathan Schaeffer, who led the Chinook team.
So that's 500 billion billion x 500 billion billion moves.

Now this luck factor isn't huge, I would never beat a grandmaster, no matter how many times I played him/her. However, players regularly lose to those a little bit worse than them, and beat players a little bit better than them. The idea that luck plays absoultely no part in chess, just because it is a game of "complete information" is, I believe, a fallacy.

What may be relavant here, is how chess players minimize the luck factor...When they are deciding the World Champion, they play more than once.

Gotta be something in that. (Make the $10k WSOP main event a rebuy!!!!!)

[thetank]

The longevity of chess is such that it probably doesn't need too much sexing up.
Similarly with the game of poker, and the unprecedented success it has enjoyed of late, I'm thinking "if it ain't broke........."

Now I'm sure gimmicks could be a good way of making a little money for a short while, but I think that's all these variations on an already successful theme will ever be.
I don't think that convincing millions of players worldwide to stop playing Hold'em and start playing Giveyourmoneytothebestplayersfaster'em is going to be easy, but good luck to all who attempt it.

[tantrum]

Keep the fish lucky i would say.

Plenty of people like playing turbos- because they are gamblers.  They are not interested in playing poker in order to prove they are better then others, but more likely to play to get action and get lucky.


The insurance against the bad beats will remove the thrill of gambling.  More people believe in luck as the main factor in winning in poker.  There might be perhaps a place for improvement in the quality of generators, mtt structures, but whoever plays live a lot get the same amount of suck outs per number of hands dealt.  The difference is our perception.  If you play 100 hands per minute  you will probably feel that there is more suck outs online then in live game as in live game you play 20-30 hands per hour (or whatever it is).


The poker site operators should think more of reducing and fighting cheats (as from what i read recently there are more and more of those)

I want people to get frustrated when they get bad beats, go on tilt and crying; i need to get bad beats myself in order to feel that other people are donkeys.

Let's presume that you can take an insurance against bad beat.  on what basis your premium will be calculated?
 One will also have to first define what is bad beat?  AA vs KK is not a terrible bad beat.  Hitting 2 outer on the river is much worse, but perhaps as a player you let the other guy hit the 2 outer, therefore your claim will be void.

Just played a game where I had a top pair and flush draw; i checked and button pushed all in to my delight but unfortunatelly button hit runner runner straight. Would I be insured against that?  One can claim - probably rightly that my check on the flop showed weakness, the button was on steal and got lucky, if I was to raise and the button called this could qualify for the insurance pay out. 
But then i was only 85% favourite and the insurance covers anything above 90%
In whole honesty how many times we are beaten when favourite 90%?  not many times.

I know because once on different forum we had a competition to post bad beats above 85% off all 50 people taking part over the period of 4 months we maybe counted 5-6 very bad beats i.e <90% where the player was favourite to win.  It did not happened to me. I think the worse one i had was something like when i was favourite  87% ( sorry but this is how i do my calculations- in percentage)


So maybe this is a good start to see how many actually bad beats are there and how many are just product of human imagination or error - this might lead to drawing all the fish away from the pond, not only that but those who believe in bad luck as well, as most gamblers believe that one day their luck will change.

As I am not a great player I want a lot of bad players around me, as this is the only way i can play a bit of poker without going broke. I want poker sites to invite and encourage all the donkeys and gamblers to the tables, i don't need insurance against bad beats, if one can't deal with variance and bad beats they should stop playing poker and do something different with their lives.

As few on this thread mentioned already, poker is a game that gives false impressions of one's greatness, that's what keeps the game alive and exciting.

[action man]

Poker is a game whose very nature is to obscure the difference in skill between good players and bad players. As such, the bad players may not realise they are bad players because of luck. The mediocre players may think they are great players because of luck.

Luck is not something to be feared by a good player - it is to be embraced. It is the fog of war which obscures the bad player's true position. It is the oasis on the horizon which encourages the bad player to venture further into the desert to his death.

The long run is king - our target number of hands played is placed at the vanishing point in the distance.

If you don't like luck/bad beats go play chess, where the better player always wins. See how much fun that is.

great post andrew!. Good players will win on the internet if they play for long enough so the varience evens out. Bad players will lose, however not without winning for a little while. Long enough to think they have been unlucky in losing. I love interent poker the way it is. If it aint broke.....

[bolt pp]

Every on-line poker site should have an insurance agent...like taking insurance in Blackjack. As a player you can choose to pay a subsidy and if your A-A gets cracked by K-K at a crucial moment or you are runner-runnered after outplaying your opponent you get the appropriate compensation. The insurance agent will always make money because of the unlikliness of this scenario becoming a reality...this will certainly lessen the frustration of continuous bad beats.

This is clearly impractical in a tournament

why? i see this done live in important hands in comps, usualy by people that know eachother but the principle works

[boldie]

I'm with Doyle on the whole insurance thing. If you can afford to be in a hand you should never take out insurance as long term it's a losing proposition. if you can't afford to be in the hand..you should be playing a lower stakes game.

[tantrum]

I'm with Doyle on the whole insurance thing. If you can afford to be in a hand you should never take out insurance as long term it's a losing proposition. if you can't afford to be in the hand..you should be playing a lower stakes game.
need insurance to play poker you should give up stright away

[doubleup]

Every on-line poker site should have an insurance agent...like taking insurance in Blackjack. As a player you can choose to pay a subsidy and if your A-A gets cracked by K-K at a crucial moment or you are runner-runnered after outplaying your opponent you get the appropriate compensation. The insurance agent will always make money because of the unlikliness of this scenario becoming a reality...this will certainly lessen the frustration of continuous bad beats.

This is clearly impractical in a tournament

why? i see this done live in important hands in comps, usualy by people that know eachother but the principle works

Pokerstars press release August 2015

Pokerstars are pleased to announce that the Sunday Million started in August 2007 ended yesterday in a 7000 way chop.  The deal making process that lasted most of the 8 years was finally resolved on the sudden and apparently suspicious death of the player nitbstrd who had insisted that he should get 1st prize because despite having chips of T$0.00065 he would always take insurance on his allins and could therefore not be eliminated.