poker

[james_gsx]

I watched a poker tournament on TV over the weekend with my mom. The girl was up big, then you could see emotion take over her. Sure enough, the professoinal took advantage and she lost. When they asked her questions later, she never referred to emotion, but it was clear as day thats what it was.

It made me think of how similar it was to trading. The amateur starts off well, while the professional sits back and waits for the planned setup. The amateur makes a mistake, gets emotional, and the professional goes in for the kill and takes their money.

I also noticed very quickly how well the professional kept to a good capital management plan. If he had a band hand he took no time to fold and move onto the next one. Just like a professional trader, exiting the trade before it hurts his account.

[darthtrader]

thanks guys,

Edward Miller's books look like exactly what i was looking for. Thats interesting soultrader you didnt read books, counting the outs though is what I want to learn. Haveing no idea and starting out with an odds calculator it was pretty interesting to see hands i thought would have been really good have a 5% probability.

Tilt sounds great, thats why i would like to only learn low limit right now with some idea i know some theory. Should take some tilt out. Suprised there isnt more talk about tilt with trading.

I think I have noticed the drunken boxing idea on yahoo already as an extreme example. Everyone is so loose and clueless that half the table calls anything, if you play tight at all you bleed dry.

Something else that sounds interesting for a fun read about emotions is the Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. Story of a billionaire that took on all the top pros who combined their rolls and played him one on one. The pot would go up to 20 million a hand and the pros lost all their edge because the emotions of losing their entire roll was overwhelming.

[darthtrader]

	Quote:	Dogpile
	once you have read that a played a while: read 'Small Stakes Hold Em' by Miller (this book is considered the bible for online players).

Hey Dogpile, I cant thank you enough for this info. I found a pdf online of it, even just looking at the table of contents I was ready to order when I caught the "tight is right" subject. Scrolling through to find that section I caught the expectancy graph per hand in the book and immediately ordered it. I was shocked how few hands have positive expectancy.
It sounds like the whole book is about how to play tight against typical loose/clueless players in low limit. I could never play no limit, no way I can play anything but tight. My goal is to be able to go up to niagara casino thats about 20 min from here and come home with some pocket change on the weekend from small limit for fun. This is perfection.

[Dogpile]

just be aware Darth that the Small Stakes book is not a beginners book. the concepts in there are pretty advanced -- despite the title saying its Small Stakes.

poker is a funny game statistically. the 'variance' in your results is high relative to the win rate. often times, a few hours of playing will show a profit or loss based on just a small number of the hands you played. did you make a flush on that big pot? did your Aces (AA) hold up or get cracked by 97 offsuit? the nice thing is a lot of the time you can take solace in studying the hands you played and seeing if in retrospect you played them well. if you consistently play hands well and minimize the 'tilt' factor, you can clean up at small stakes games. I suggest you start at the very lowest online stakes you can find and play at least 20 thousand hands before you even attempt to move up. The free games probably won't teach you much. But if you can't beat those, you can't beat money games. You should clean up over time if too many players are playing too many hands. In the short-run, say over a few hundred hands, poker is a luck game. Over the course of thousands of hands, skill wins. Over tens of thousands of hands, skill dominates.

[notouch]

What do you think of the poker bots that are around? You need programming skills to program them to play a winning strategy but it strikes me that any relatively competent programmer could program a strategy to clean up on the tables. I know the online poker rooms try to ban them but there are ways round. Do these bots take away your edge?

Also what do you think of the legitimate software around? There are odds calculators and programs that keep track of other players. Can you incorporate these into a winning poker strategy?

[Reaver]

I am not scared of poker bots, for the same reason I am not worried about automated trading systems..sure, they will win some money, and blow a lot of players right out of the water...but they are ultimately predictable..no machine has dynamic thought, and no machine can use discretion. No matter how sophisticated it's programming is, it is still a machine and has to follow systematic rules. You will find a way to exploit a system with enough work.

[Sparrow]

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread but simply didn't know where to put it.

If any of you guys likes to watch poker, the High Stakes Poker series is available on
youtube.
Just got to search for high stakes poker season x episode x there or check this.
x being the number you are interested of course.

It's really entertaining, and I love to watch it.

In the 4th season from episode 11 on the buy in is at least 500k.