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I've spent some time on card counting and it's anything but fascinating. The theory behind it is easy to grasp, and the implementation is pure drudgery. You lea

I've spent some time on card counting and it's anything but fascinating. The theory behind it is easy to grasp, and the implementation is pure drudgery. You learn a card counting system, then you crank away at it. All the big casinos know what to watch for, and if you are successful they will ask you to leave. Poker, on the other hand, is much more difficult, and just as dependent on mathematics. Your strategies depend on who you're playing, and how they're playing against you in any particular hand. Much more fun. And with poker, you're playing against other individuals, so you don't have to worry about the house shutting you down if you're playing too well.

parker 19y ago
Then it would seem like you have more than a passing interest! Which is fine too. I haven't played too much poker, I kind of missed the fad a few years ago while I was overseas... but it seems really interesting, and it gives me something else to go research ;)
geebee 19y ago
I agree with you that it isn't especially difficult to learn how to card count, or understand the theory behind it (it is probably very difficult to do it well in a casino, but that's a different issue). That said, I actually do find it fascinating, mainly because of the history behind it. A lot of discoveries look simple in retrospect, but keep in mind this was a complicated game that was essentially intractable until the advent of supercomputers (early reviews of thousands of hands weren't even enough to get accurate readings on the odds). It took a math professor from UCLA (Thorpe) with an interest in programming to really get a handle on the odds. We could all write a program to calculate basic strategy odds now, but at the time, it was very, very innovative. While Hi-Lo and other counting systems seem pretty simple, I think it was a stroke of genius to think of this the first time. And it was another stroke of genius to use a programming language to determine exactly when the count turned the expected return in favor of the player. Add in statistical systems for bankroll management (ie., how do you use a small but positive expected return into a 99% chance of making money while keeping bankroll growth as high as possible), and you have some real sophistication considering that it hadn't been done before. The people who did this the first time were brilliant, and personally, I think it is pretty fascinating.

parker 19y ago

Then it would seem like you have more than a passing interest! Which is fine too. I haven't played too much poker, I kind of missed the fad a few years ago while I was overseas... but it seems really interesting, and it gives me something else to go research ;)

geebee 19y ago

I agree with you that it isn't especially difficult to learn how to card count, or understand the theory behind it (it is probably very difficult to do it well in a casino, but that's a different issue). That said, I actually do find it fascinating, mainly because of the history behind it. A lot of discoveries look simple in retrospect, but keep in mind this was a complicated game that was essentially intractable until the advent of supercomputers (early reviews of thousands of hands weren't even enough to get accurate readings on the odds). It took a math professor from UCLA (Thorpe) with an interest in programming to really get a handle on the odds. We could all write a program to calculate basic strategy odds now, but at the time, it was very, very innovative. While Hi-Lo and other counting systems seem pretty simple, I think it was a stroke of genius to think of this the first time. And it was another stroke of genius to use a programming language to determine exactly when the count turned the expected return in favor of the player. Add in statistical systems for bankroll management (ie., how do you use a small but positive expected return into a 99% chance of making money while keeping bankroll growth as high as possible), and you have some real sophistication considering that it hadn't been done before. The people who did this the first time were brilliant, and personally, I think it is pretty fascinating.