5 ms·

The reason poker is a successful game is because bad players can win. Otherwise why would a person who was bad at the game stake any money at all. Personally I

The reason poker is a successful game is because bad players can win. Otherwise why would a person who was bad at the game stake any money at all. Personally I would rather take the luck out of it and attempt to normalize (perhaps by playing duplicate hands) but I imagine it would be quite boring for non poker nerds and therefore non lucrative for everyone.

cortesoft 2y ago
> Personally I would rather take the luck out of it Then you should play Chess, or some other perfect information game. There are popular games that don't involve luck.
- annacappa 2y ago
  I do and I play duplicate bridge, a game that has taken the luck out of a card game. I just like poker theory - I ran a bot for years - and I just don’t like variance that much and I guess I like the game for the strategy more than who has the most chips at the end, although obviously without the hazard it’s not anywhere as entertaining
  - MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
    Curious what do you mean by "I ran a bot"? Like, you programmed and/or operated a bot that played on real money sites?
    - annacappa 2y ago
      I programmed and ran a bot that played on real money sites.
      - MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
        Oh, so you cheated people out of their money. That's not cool.
        piltdownman 2y ago
        Not in the slightest. No different than a player playing optimally or with tight adherence to a strategy like Brunson's SuperSystem. Game Theory Optimal Poker is just the given when playing MTT - although many platforms have some form of Real Time Assistance detection. Even in live games they use poker solvers in between breaks to optimise your playing potential and reduce the range of 'playable hands'.
        MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
        Yes in the fullest. For one thing it's against the ToS of every site. But it's also just plainly unethical. Even the most elite players are merely reaching a moderately accurate approximation of optimal play, which completely pales in comparison to a bot that can find it on every hand. Of course a bot that simply assumes opponents are playing co-optimal strategies will only be minimally exploitative, but more sophisticated bots can easily incorporate historical data and find correct maximally exploitative deviations against opponents in real time, which again is something that even the best players are only able to do accurately a fraction of the time. Also it's laughable to suggest that playing optimally is "just the given" in MTTs, which are arguably the softest format available where almost nobody in a given field is playing anywhere close to optimal. And even more laughable to suggest that modern bots are akin to players adhering to SuperSystem, a poker strategy book written nearly 50 years ago which was already extremely outdated before the advent of solvers 10 years ago.
        piltdownman 2y ago
        Oh no! Not the ToS that hides inappropriately behind AML/KYC to stop you withdrawing cash, or arbitrarily lets a platform ban your account and seize funds with little recourse to any legal authority (as they're generally operating out of weird territories like Gibraltar/Isle of Man or Malta to circumvent other rules). As for unethical, things like PioSolver, MonkerSolver, and PokerSnowie are basically de facto standard for play at high level online - and are absolutely used at breaktimes in live play. Then you have people multi-monitoring, or running GTOWizard in a VM, as a given. You're basically claiming that all bots in action are Pluribus style, which is just nonsense. I bring up SuperSystem since its the earliest reference I can think of by a Pro to the concept of range advantage. The modern poker sites basically just teach game theory optimal... which ends up with people running GTOWizard as a given. The best bots I've seen that avoid detection are basically doing some variant of the strategies outlined in modern guides like RIOs From the Ground Up.
MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
> Personally I would rather take the luck out of it and attempt to normalize (perhaps by playing duplicate hands) There's something called "match poker" which does exactly that.
piltdownman 2y ago
The reason poker is a successful game, outside of the inherent fun, low barrier to entry, and high skill ceiling, is that you can leverage one or many different skills to achieve victory hand to hand. This includes 'soft skills' like body-language reads, speech-play, false-representation, baiting players into non-optimal play, as well as the underlying mathematical basis. The luck element - known elsewhere as RNG Jesus - is mitigated completely over 10,000 hands by appropriately skilled players. There's a reason the composition of the final tables of the WSOP can be so static year on year, multiple bracelet winners wouldn't be a thing otherwise . A fully optimised 'safe' player can be beaten both short-term and long-term live by a player who is skilled in reading tells, or simply bluffing. The BBV may be different, but the concept of a 'hero fold' exists for a reason - and is often more satisfying than a 'hero call' to veteran players.
- annacappa 2y ago
  I’m an expert poker player. What I said was 100% correct and didn’t need a bunch of extra unrelated stuff. I’m making a fundamental point about randomness and poker which you are failing to understand. Stop and try to understand for a second instead of launching into mansplaining.
  - piltdownman 2y ago
    And I'm a golden retriever. My tail wags when I've a good hand. Please take your reductive misandry elsewhere. It's impressing no one.
    - annacappa 2y ago
      So you’ve heard of mansplaining before, I’m guessing quite a few times. Here is a suggestion. Read the comment the other person states and then engage with it instead of attempting to use it as a jumping off point for your post. And btw, luck does not disappear over 10k hands. The final table at the wsop has not been static. Since 2000 when hold’em poker became popular nobody has repeated back to back wins. If it was a game of skill we would expect the best player to keep winning.

cortesoft 2y ago

> Personally I would rather take the luck out of it Then you should play Chess, or some other perfect information game. There are popular games that don't involve luck.

annacappa 2y ago
I do and I play duplicate bridge, a game that has taken the luck out of a card game. I just like poker theory - I ran a bot for years - and I just don’t like variance that much and I guess I like the game for the strategy more than who has the most chips at the end, although obviously without the hazard it’s not anywhere as entertaining
- MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
  Curious what do you mean by "I ran a bot"? Like, you programmed and/or operated a bot that played on real money sites?
  - annacappa 2y ago
    I programmed and ran a bot that played on real money sites.
    - MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
      Oh, so you cheated people out of their money. That's not cool.
      - piltdownman 2y ago
        Not in the slightest. No different than a player playing optimally or with tight adherence to a strategy like Brunson's SuperSystem. Game Theory Optimal Poker is just the given when playing MTT - although many platforms have some form of Real Time Assistance detection. Even in live games they use poker solvers in between breaks to optimise your playing potential and reduce the range of 'playable hands'.
        MaxfordAndSons 2y ago
        Yes in the fullest. For one thing it's against the ToS of every site. But it's also just plainly unethical. Even the most elite players are merely reaching a moderately accurate approximation of optimal play, which completely pales in comparison to a bot that can find it on every hand. Of course a bot that simply assumes opponents are playing co-optimal strategies will only be minimally exploitative, but more sophisticated bots can easily incorporate historical data and find correct maximally exploitative deviations against opponents in real time, which again is something that even the best players are only able to do accurately a fraction of the time. Also it's laughable to suggest that playing optimally is "just the given" in MTTs, which are arguably the softest format available where almost nobody in a given field is playing anywhere close to optimal. And even more laughable to suggest that modern bots are akin to players adhering to SuperSystem, a poker strategy book written nearly 50 years ago which was already extremely outdated before the advent of solvers 10 years ago.
        piltdownman 2y ago
        Oh no! Not the ToS that hides inappropriately behind AML/KYC to stop you withdrawing cash, or arbitrarily lets a platform ban your account and seize funds with little recourse to any legal authority (as they're generally operating out of weird territories like Gibraltar/Isle of Man or Malta to circumvent other rules). As for unethical, things like PioSolver, MonkerSolver, and PokerSnowie are basically de facto standard for play at high level online - and are absolutely used at breaktimes in live play. Then you have people multi-monitoring, or running GTOWizard in a VM, as a given. You're basically claiming that all bots in action are Pluribus style, which is just nonsense. I bring up SuperSystem since its the earliest reference I can think of by a Pro to the concept of range advantage. The modern poker sites basically just teach game theory optimal... which ends up with people running GTOWizard as a given. The best bots I've seen that avoid detection are basically doing some variant of the strategies outlined in modern guides like RIOs From the Ground Up.

MaxfordAndSons 2y ago

> Personally I would rather take the luck out of it and attempt to normalize (perhaps by playing duplicate hands) There's something called "match poker" which does exactly that.

piltdownman 2y ago

The reason poker is a successful game, outside of the inherent fun, low barrier to entry, and high skill ceiling, is that you can leverage one or many different skills to achieve victory hand to hand. This includes 'soft skills' like body-language reads, speech-play, false-representation, baiting players into non-optimal play, as well as the underlying mathematical basis. The luck element - known elsewhere as RNG Jesus - is mitigated completely over 10,000 hands by appropriately skilled players. There's a reason the composition of the final tables of the WSOP can be so static year on year, multiple bracelet winners wouldn't be a thing otherwise . A fully optimised 'safe' player can be beaten both short-term and long-term live by a player who is skilled in reading tells, or simply bluffing. The BBV may be different, but the concept of a 'hero fold' exists for a reason - and is often more satisfying than a 'hero call' to veteran players.

annacappa 2y ago
I’m an expert poker player. What I said was 100% correct and didn’t need a bunch of extra unrelated stuff. I’m making a fundamental point about randomness and poker which you are failing to understand. Stop and try to understand for a second instead of launching into mansplaining.
- piltdownman 2y ago
  And I'm a golden retriever. My tail wags when I've a good hand. Please take your reductive misandry elsewhere. It's impressing no one.
  - annacappa 2y ago
    So you’ve heard of mansplaining before, I’m guessing quite a few times. Here is a suggestion. Read the comment the other person states and then engage with it instead of attempting to use it as a jumping off point for your post. And btw, luck does not disappear over 10k hands. The final table at the wsop has not been static. Since 2000 when hold’em poker became popular nobody has repeated back to back wins. If it was a game of skill we would expect the best player to keep winning.