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Maria Konnikova Shows Her Cards
- ada1981 8y ago>> Sometimes I’ll go to New Jersey and hop onto the poker website at an internet cafe. Online poker is illegal in New York, but not in Jersey. << Aka, VPN.
- curiousgal 8y agoAmerican banks are blacklisted as well, good luck getting around that restriction with a VPN.
- charlesdm 8y agoCan't you just open a bank account outside of the US?
- hackermailman 8y agoYes though NJ you can walk into a 7/11 and fund your account or immediately collect cash winnings from any Borgata casino cage 24/7 https://www.onlinepokerreport.com/ https://www.onlinepokerreport.com/
- rezz 8y agoAll the legit sites require multi-factor verification, wifi data, cell phone geofencing, etc. Not to say it can't be spoofed, just requires a bit more effort.
- oh_sigh 8y agoWhen I worked for Amazon in NYC - back before NJ was paying sales taxes, we were told we were allowed to work from home if we lived in NJ, but to say code of something like "I'll be working from Penn Station tomorrow".
- ada1981 8y agoBecause they didn’t have a presence at that point in NJ? Cool, tax fraud!
- ada1981 8y agoNo paywall: https://outline.com/bJxgcH https://outline.com/bJxgcH
- webkike 8y agoPoker is an extremely interesting game that I have been diving head first into ever since I cam home from college and had a bit of disposable income. Besides the fact that it's a very fun game that bizarrely mirrors the real world economy in many ways, it's a great way to make new friends in a town. Unlike a lot of other games, poker is all about communication. It really fosters connections when you play with the same people a bunch. If you're interested in getting into poker, avoid the casino cash games at all costs. Casinos take a rake or the pot - aka, transaction fees (oh wow, so you're expected winnings are the growth of the economy minus transaction fees? How economic!). If you're starting to play poker you'll want to see as many hands as cheaply as possible. Try free bar poker or local cash games and try to make your money last as long as possible. This means folding a lot of hands It's interesting, because there is one thing that professional poker players love and hate a lot: gamblers. A gambler will go all in on an extremely stupid bet, such as a 45/55 heads up. Your EV is to lose with such bets but gamblers will play them anyway. And hell, once about every two times they'll win.
- jack_pp 8y agoCash games are actually lower variance. I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone in good faith, especially if they're competitive. It's a huge time and potential money sink
- himlion 8y agoAgreed on both counts. As an ex poker pro the easy money is long gone, apart from a few exceptions here and there.
- caro_douglos 8y ago+1 If you consider the hours of playing tournaments professionally it is a lot less than a programmer's take home.
- webkike 8y agoThanks for the info! I guess I just suck, I edited the post to reflect that. I don't think it's in bad faith to recommend people play poker recreationally either for free or for small amounts of money. Obviously there's a world of difference between playing a game every weekend for $40 buy ins versus spending $800 every week at the bicycle. On the same line of thinking, getting into street fighter is an incredibly rewarding experience! I wouldn't recommend anyone to jump in and dedicate their life savings to becoming a professional with no prior experience though. Edit: that being said, if you or your family has a history with addictive behavior, I'd urge extrmeme caution
- ada1981 8y agoKinda a light read, but interesting.
- greggeter 8y ago"There are people who think that women shouldn’t be at a poker table, and they try to bully me. So, what do I do? I let them. And I wait to be in a good position so that I can take their chips. Just like life, right?" There's a lesson there.
- p1esk 8y ago>> Do you have any insights on why grifting schemes appear to be proliferating? Fraud really thrives in moments of great social change and transition. We’re in the midst of a technological revolution. That gives con artists huge opportunities. People lose their frame of reference for what can and can’t be real.
- oh_sigh 8y agoAny evidence that fraud doesn't thrive at all times, including times of change and transition? This sounds like a just-so story.
- keithpeter 8y agoQuote from OA that caught my eye as well... "...We’re in the midst of a technological revolution. That gives con artists huge opportunities. People lose their frame of reference for what can and can’t be real." So I suppose the hypothesis is that more people have defective bullshit detectors during big changes in any given field. A possible test of the hypothesis would be to look at fraud prosecutions by domain of deception (high tech stocks, property development) and by choice of victim (newly rich technical people, people new to a country &c) and see how those vary with time.
- jib 8y agoMicrosoft doesn’t know that you have a virus on your PC (and won’t call you about it) but Facebook can identify your friends in a photo you posted better than you can. That is not obvious to most people, because the concept of customer service we understand, while we really don’t understand learning algorithms.
- acqq 8y ago> Microsoft doesn’t know that you have a virus on your PC But technically Microsoft definitely can know that, if that were its goal. There's nothing technologically lacking to have that knowledge. Most probably it simply doesn't use that information, specifically doesn’t call random users.
- aml183 8y agoThis article is a bit misleading. She might have won $200,000, but it doesn’t account for buy-ins. Also, tournament poker has huge variance. It could take years to know if someone is a winning player. If you play cash, a good player will win something like 7/BB per hour. I’m not saying she is or isn’t a good player, but the metrics used are misleading.
- kofejnik 8y agoExactly this. Literally anyone can randomly luck a few tourneys. Case in point - Main Event winners such as Jamie Gold and/or Jerry Yang.
- cepth 8y agoYou're correct that "career earnings" is a misleading statistic, but it's one that's popularly used in poker. Daniel Negreanu, currently #2 on the all-time money list, actually had a net negative year in 2017 despite winning $2.8 million that year (https://www.cardschat.com/news/daniel-negreanu-loses-money-in-2017-despite-2-7m-in-tourney-wins-56485 https://www.cardschat.com/news/daniel-negreanu-loses-money-i...). That said, I'm not sure the article is that misleading. Maria is 720th in the GPI rankings, which does account for buy-ins (http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=531869 http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=531869). For someone who began playing a year ago, that's a pretty remarkable achievement. EDIT: I should also note that "career earnings" or close variations are used in several sports, including golf and tennis. Take home pay is much lower than topline/headline numbers, but for obvious reasons it becomes tedious to ask people to calculate and publicize their living and travel expenses, etc.
- Nokinside 8y ago>$200,000 in tournament jackpots. I have never played jackpot tournaments. If I understand correctly it's you get a jackpot from winning several sit&go tournaments in a row. I don't know how the money there is divided.
- rezz 8y ago@nokinside the quote is poorly written, this isn't some special bonus she won, she's amassed over 200k in earnings over the last 18 months. Her largest single win being worth over 80k. You can view her stats here. http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=531869 http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=531869
- gm3dmo 8y agoCan Google's AI win at poker?
- efoto 8y agoNot necessarily Google AI. But AI is already at pro poker level. https://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-reveal-how-poker-playing-ai-beat-the-worlds-top-players/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/researchers-reveal-how-poker-p...
- cepth 8y agoOne caveat, the AI in those matches, Libratus, played heads-up Texas Hold 'Em, i.e. 1 vs 1 play. It's yet to be demonstrated that any program can defeat humans in 6 handed or full-ring play, probably due in no small part to the variance in those games.
- nabla9 8y agoAI is already very good at head's up (two players against each other). IMHO the real challenge will be playing against multiple players with slightly varying levels of skills. Playing little differently against different players gives an edge if you can model their behaviour. (ultimately winning in poker means growing bankroll faster than anyone else over multiple games)
- raverbashing 8y agoOne of my small pet peeves is how Texas Hold'em became the "standard" for poker games as opposed to classic 5 cards each game You get 2 cards and fold most of the time. Not really fun.
- Zanni 8y agoMy experience is the opposite. I think Hold 'em opens up the game for playing more. Unless you're playing some crazy home game with wild cards, the classic 5-card games (draw, stud) are "you get 2 cards and fold most of the time." And since you have less information about the other players' hands, you can't exploit (bet) marginal edges as well. The 7-card games (including 7-card stud, which is a classic) are more fun.
- raverbashing 8y agoThe information sharing is something that changes the game, I agree.
- antisthenes 8y agoYup, especially 10-handed, the game has become incredibly nitty, since you're very likely folding 9/10 hands, sometimes more.
- claydavisss 8y agolink from HN August 2020: Help Maria Konnikova Get Back On Her Feet After A Run Of Bad Luck (patreon.com)
- ph0rque 8y agoYou have access to the future and all you bring back is a title to a patreon link? ;)
- zone411 8y agoIt's a possibility that Dr. Konnikova just played NY Times like a flute! That would be legendary. I'll repeat my comments about this part: "When you see someone looking a certain way, you assume they play a certain way. So once I figure out how they view women, I can figure out how to play against them. They’re not seeing me as a poker player, they’re seeing me as a female poker player. There are people who’d rather die than be bluffed by a woman. They’ll never fold to me because that’s an affront to their masculinity. I never bluff them. I know that no matter how strong my hand, they are still going to call me because they just can’t fold to a girl. Other people think women are incapable of bluffing. They think if I’m betting really aggressively, it means I have an incredibly strong hand. I bluff those people all the time." I'm sorry but has anybody who praises these quotes actually played poker? This kind of strategy would only work on complete fish. It'd be very quickly exploited by any pro or a decent amateur. I'd like her to name one pro or one good amateur in the world who thinks like this "Other people think women are incapable of bluffing." This article seems like a throwback to 2004 when this kind of strategy would actually work on newbie players flooding casino tables. I will however give Dr. Konnikova tons of credit if she got these quotes in the paper, so that now she can exploit people who actually believed them. That would be amazing. She seems like an accomplished and smart person, so this seems most likely.
- albedoa 8y ago> I'm sorry but has anybody who praises these quotes actually played poker? This kind of strategy would only work on complete fish. It'd be very quickly exploited by any pro or a decent amateur. Check out the buy-ins [1] of the tournaments she is playing. You are way overestimating the skill levels of these players. > This article seems like a throwback to 2004 I used a female avatar when playing online up until Black Friday, and while anecdotal, I swear by the effect. I have also been a witness to the way men play back at my women pro friends and at random women amateurs in a live setting. There's a lot of embellishment in this piece and by Dr. Konnikova, but no, players didn't suddenly get smart after 2004. 1. http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=531869 http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=531869
- zone411 8y ago
- keyle 8y agoI've always loved poker. I played for a year or so online for funsies and watched a lot of videos of the pro. Then one day I went to a casino and tried my luck there. I did very well, cleaned up two guys. I went home way richer than I entered, and I felt sick to my guts. Never went back and stopped playing.