8 ms·

Why a programmer should try online poker

20 points by napolux 14y ago

Slackwise 14y ago
In my opinion, Magic: The Gathering is a far more interesting game for programmers. Not only does it cover all the same facets of poker (stats, hands, bluffing), it has complex strategy. I think a lot of the logic put into playing and building a deck in MTG aids in similar mental processes for programming. Actually, the skills needed for MTG are probably even better for someone in business and finance. Learning to budget, offsetting losses and tracking trends in the metagame--all very good skills for someone trying to make money in a market. Oh, and it's got more geek appeal. Can't overlook that.
lazyjones 14y ago
Reasons why you shouldn't: http://www.theage.com.au/national/online-poker-fraud-revealed-20080930-4r8f.html http://www.theage.com.au/national/online-poker-fraud-reveale... http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/15/news/economy/online_poker_indictments/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/15/news/economy/online_poker_in... For programmers it should be particularly obvious that cheating is just too easy and too tempting for online poker/gambling sites. Not getting caught is a little harder.
- rojoca 14y ago
  It should be noted that the post explicitly recommends using free/fun to play games and links to a problem gambling site.
  - napolux 14y ago
    Exactly. I'm not telling you to play your money on poker. I'm just telling you to play poker for the fun and "benefits" of the activity.
- mathrawka 14y ago
  Cheating by the site is a risk, but on Poker Stars I feel fairly safe because they have so much invested and would do their best to make sure their image does not get tainted. I mainly played heads up before Black Friday, and there is more to it than just simple odds. You get into a psychological battle, which includes odds, and has money at the end. I stayed around the 50NL games, but was still able to pull in $1000/mo playing in my spare time. Then there was Black Friday.
- Jabbles 14y ago
  I would have thought that online poker sites were infested with bots? There certainly seem to be a lot available by searching for "poker bot".
  - JanLaussmann 14y ago
    Interesting forum for someone who wants to learn something about poker bots: http://pokerai.org/pf3/index.php http://pokerai.org/pf3/index.php
- andyakb 14y ago
  Just a heads up, your second link does not discuss any fraud of the players and instead discusses money laundering which the sites had to engage in to pay players from the United States. UltimateBet and AbsolutePoker had a massive cheating scandal, and both they and FullTilt were insolvent and werent able to pay back the players. Pokerstars has shown time and again that they are operating on the up and up, and many of the other pokersites are part of publicly traded companies. The biggest concern is that of bots, and while some sites arent very vigilant about banning suspected bots, Pokerstars is. In short, play on reputable sites, and if you are worried about bots, then play at pokerstars and report anything suspicious. Are there cheaters? Yes, but it is easier for a site to detect cheating when they have access to all hands played by every account than it would be for a casino who has none of that information.
TomGullen 14y ago
Math in poker is a little overrated. It's often listed as an advantage of the game by less experienced players. Once you have the basics nailed (mainly expected value calculations) there really isn't much more to it, the rest of the skill then comes from estimating opponents hand ranges. And past that, meta game, hand range balancing, deception etc become increasingly important. Poker is an amazing game when you're playing people who also understand the game. When you're scrapping at the free games it's a pretty dismally inefficient learning tool. If you want to play good people, you need to play with money. If you get to a reasonable level at poker, it does have a lot of advantages. Here's a blog post I wrote comparing running a startup to playing poker: http://www.scirra.com/blog/80/why-running-a-startup-is-like-playing-poker http://www.scirra.com/blog/80/why-running-a-startup-is-like-... Poker also has a big potential downside, which is obsession, outright misery and despair which can slowly creep into your life. Distinguishing between addiction and a pursuit you are thoroughly interested in and enjoy is often difficult to pinpoint. Poker also has other downsides which I've observed many times, even with close friends. Illusions of grandeur are common, and can be destructive in your life in a larger way than you are prepared to admit. For example, many players who have been playing for many years still believe they can go pro. These players don't study the game, they just play it and often bemoan their bad luck. For years. In an alternative Universe they might have perused a career, yet they are still playing small stakes games and bleeding off their money at a very slow pace, slow enough to kid themselves that they are simply suffering a bad run of luck. Perseverance and self belief really aren't virtuous qualities in poker for most people. Harrington on Holdem are the best strategy books on poker in my opinion. If anyone is interested in seeing how poker players should be thinking as they play I highly recommend those books! As for recommending people go into poker, I actively tell people to steer well clear of it. Money flows upwards, addicts keep on self destructing and the winning players will justify it with ethically dubious statements like "if I don't take their money, someone else will", or with blinders on with statements such as "all the losing players are probably just casual and playing for fun" to appease their own ethics. A lot of winning players do not understand or empathise the torture that some losing players have to endure. There is a real pleasure playing poker on a table with people who are equal, or above you in skill level. The level of thought, the challenge, the tactics are thoroughly thoroughly enjoyable. I was never especially good at poker, but I did touch upon these sorts of experiences. To get there though will take most people a lot of time, probably time better spent elsewhere.
shyn3 14y ago
Poker is awesome. Free poker doesn't teach you much. Programmers value security and structure. With free money there is no structure to poker. People will go all-in, or raise the big blinds. There is no accountability and nothing to risk. Once you play real-money games you see a drastic difference between play and real. People start being accountable for their actions and try to calculate optimally as to their odds of success on a given hand. The problem is once you start with real-money, win or lose, you find it harder to stop. This is where programming and poker are intertwined. Programmers can't stop programming. They will always program. Poker players will always buy-in.
qznc 14y ago
I can recommand Poker, although not specifically to programmers. I got more general life lessons out of it. You learn to take decisions with vague information by approximating and using basic math. As TomGullen says, the necessary math is neither hard nor is it much. To art is to adapt your numbers to the real world situation. Example: With an open-ended straight draw at the flop, you chances are roughly 1/3 for a straight in the end. First, you need at least two other players. If you have one other player, you fold, because it is not profitable. With three or more other players you keep playing. With two enemies it gets interesting, because you need to factor more information in, to decide. What is your position? Did someone raise before the flop? How did your two enemies play their hands before? What is your image at the table? ... Another lesson i got from poker is to control my emotions when I'm on a streak. If you are on a winning streak, you still must fold when the math says the expected value is negative. On a loosing streak you still must go all-in if the math says so. No peaking at the flop, when your initial hand is too bad.
- andyakb 14y ago
  Again, as I said in response to TomGullen's comment, that is still the very basic of poker math. Further, your example is incorrect. To continue with an OESD [open ended straight draw], you do not need 2 opponents. You simply need the pot odds of the bet you are facing [and factoring in potential bets on future streets while drawing, as well as expected profit when you make your draw] to be giving you at least 2:1 odds. In poker it is very easy to think youve "figured it out," because in a casino it is hard to keep track of your profits and losses over more than a few visits, and the ups and downs can have large impacts on your short term results [which take a long time to get past in a casino]. I do agree that emotional control is the biggest thing [outside of profits] that I got out of poker, because it carries over into the rest of my life. Im more patient, and dont get upset as easily about things that are outside my control. Those are important lessons to learn in life, and if you have gotten those from poker, great, but you still have a ways to go to understand the basic math and other concepts.
- TomGullen 14y ago
  Emotional control is one of the hardest things to master in poker and is ultimately why I failed. Learning the influence your emotions have on you and your decision making is as you say a very important life lesson. Being able to recognise when your emotions are causing you to make a series of bad decisions is a very useful tool.
czzarr 14y ago
Wtf HN? How in the hell does this article make the frontpage when it's written (albeit with good intentions) by a complete poker newbie and the points he make are incredibly shallow? There are so many much better blogposts about online poker, please don't upvote this. (fwiw I played up to 25/50 for a little while, and quit a huge winner, so I know what I'm talking about)
- napolux 14y ago
  I am a programmer and not a poker player. :)
gexla 14y ago
Programmers probably shouldn't play online poker. When programmers aren't programming, or creating other things, they should probably spend time off the computer. They don't need another computer activity. So, play poker face to face. Maybe you don't live in an area where you can do that, then start a low stakes home game with friends. Don't have friends, go out and meet some people. ;) Don't bother with free poker, you will learn much other than the basic rules. Even micro stakes are a bit crazy.
kevhsu 14y ago
By this logic, programmers should try playing super smash brothers melee competitively.
mhd 14y ago
Any particular reasons for poker instead of chess, go, baccarat, skat etc.?
- napolux 14y ago
  I played go, chess and many other games. Poker is widely avaible online, could be played for free or money and is quite "dirty". Never seen Jessie James playing chess :P.
  - mhd 14y ago
    Well, the money aspect didn't even figure in the original article as a positive, and go, chess & various other card games contain math, too, and often have quite vibrant online communities. And, erm "dirtyness" as a deciding factor? Then I'd suggest three card monte.
    - napolux 14y ago
      LOL. :)
rms 14y ago
Poker is mostly about some weird sort of secret autistic like aptitude that no one really understands. Programmer types are higher in weird autistic aptitude than average. Moderately outlying poker players can make about as much as they can as Bay Area programmers, and it's kind of a lot more fun to hang out all day getting served drinks in a casino all day than be in the Bay Area, though the Oaks Card Club is quite good for live multi table No Limit turbo-ish tournaments. Email if you want to play sometime there. Also email me if you know of a Bay Area Startup poker game with a decent buy-in. I only ever find the social club low-limit ones on Facebook. I didn't read the article and upvoted it.
- encoderer 14y ago
  For the best, maybe "reading people" is just how you described it -- that "weird sort of secret autistic like aptitude that no one really understands." This is like that famous (to poker players anyway) first scene of the movie Rounders where Matt Daemon's character goes around and tells you to some sick level of accuracy the hand range of his opponents. But in my experience, not being that, I can describe it better: For me, reading people is about giving them as much negative stimuli as possible and watching closely at their reactions. I'm really only passably good at this in a 1-on-1 setting. I avoid big money in multi-player pots if i can even though they provide a chance for much richer implied odds (eg the ability to earn 2, 3 x my money). What that means is this -- I play what's known as a "tight aggressive" game. I only play about 5-10% of the hands dealt to me. And I play them hard. I raise a lot. Not usually huge raises, instead I like to have more, smaller raises. A good Pot Limit game is great for that. The idea here is simple: I want to make you make more decisions. If I think you're a worse player than I am, then my odds increase the more decisions I make you make. And I would much rather be in a position where I re-raise and she comes back with a huge re-raise and I fold than a position where I have less signal about her hand, and more noise, and think I have the best of it all the way down and lose a big pot. YMMV, but that's what "reading players" means to me. Edit: Also, build a poker bot. For fun. Not profit. You probably won't profit. But I loved it. There are great "engines" you can build off of. I used WinHoldem but this was circa 2005 so certainly there are better options. It's great. You get computer vision, machine learning, etc, it's loads of fun.
zafriedman 14y ago
As both a programmer and a poker player I have strong opinions on the subject. In turn: "Math is useful I see a lot of people around telling “I don’t need math”. In poker (and in programming) you need a lot of math, even for simple operations." I think the importance of math is overstated in poker. When you look at a hand you must determine your chance of your hand improving, which is a straightforward mathematical exercise. You must also determine your opponents chances of improving his hand, which is also a straightforward mathematical exercise, but is complicated by the fact that you can't see the cards your opponent has. So once you have pegged your opponent for a certain hand based on his or her behavior earlier in the hand as well as any previous knowledge you have of the player, if applicable, then again straightforward math. Finally, professional/skilled poker players always calculate the odds the pot gives them versus the odds that either their hand will improve or the odds that in the specific situation they can expect to win the pot, and they further must consider what odds they are offerring to their opponent by their actions. Weighing those factors pretty much completes the degree to which mathematics plays a role in no-limit Texas Hold'em. "Be fast and precise In online poker you can’t think hours for your next move. If you are a programmer you should be fast-thinking and precise. Fast and no errors." While this resonates much more for me in vis a vis poker, I think this is borderline idiotic in the sense of programming. In poker you must act fast because it is forced upon you in the context, you have no choice. Think of it like using Javascript before Douglas Crockford came along and enlightened you to the good parts of the language, the only reason to use it was because you had no choice! But in programming, to say that you have to be "fast and [make] no errors" is stupid insofar that it's an obvious goal of which stating serves no purpose. It's like when I tried to explain to a non-programmer friend of mine the concept introduced by Jason Fried of "getting good at making money". He thought it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, like as if someone saying "I'm going to work hard to improve my skill at making money" is going to in any way have a causal relationship with the actualization. I probably didn't do Jason justice in setting the right context for my friend, nevertheless I think this phrase exhibits the same logical fallacy. "If you want to try poker there are a lot of free poker games on facebook, iPhone, etc… Don’t waste your money. The fun is the same." You'll never get good if you're money is not on the line. Now, I'm not saying that one should get in over their head, or even wager large amounts of money, especially when learning to play poker. However, you will simply not see the real scenarios and wrestle with the real hands that make you a great poker player, unless you and your opponents are playing for money. My impression of free poker games is that they mimic televised poker. Televised poker is for entertainment, not education, so the hands that are shown are epic bluffs, balls-to-the-wall all-in wagers, and other 5%-ish hands that provide the greatest level of excitement to viewers. I'd do the same thing if I was a TV producer, but it's not real poker. My point in this tangent is to illustrate that 95% of winning and loosing in poker comes down to average-plus hands beating average-minus hands. And while no hands are trivial in poker, playing an average-x hand against an opponent who holds the counterpart is ridiculously challenging. You will not have the motivation to really wrestle to find the answer without your money on the line, and getting good at finding out how to induce small mistakes in your opponent is basically synonymous with becoming a good no-limit Texas Hold'em player. And finally, a gaping omission in my mind: Poker is great for programmers (and maybe more accurately entrepreneurs) because it is a game where the perfect amount of information is available such that a skilled player, in the long run, can expect to have a positive ROI when playing against players of lesser skill. No-limit Texas Hold'em in particular, is the epitome of this. At the height of its popularity when big no-limit tournaments were attracting deep-pocketed beginners, a skilled player could expect his tournament entry fee to be worth 5 to even 10x its value in terms of expected value each time. The concept of imperfect information is resonant in entrepreneurship I think for sure, and as for it's benefits with programmers, I believe the best way to think about it is that poker in beneficial because it ostensibly uses the same cognition as design patterns in software engineering. You have a problem to solve with a variety of factors, and you apply patterns to solve those problems based on your knowledge and the past experience of others who have blazed the trail before you.

20 points by napolux 14y ago

In my opinion, Magic: The Gathering is a far more interesting game for programmers. Not only does it cover all the same facets of poker (stats, hands, bluffing), it has complex strategy. I think a lot of the logic put into playing and building a deck in MTG aids in similar mental processes for programming. Actually, the skills needed for MTG are probably even better for someone in business and finance. Learning to budget, offsetting losses and tracking trends in the metagame--all very good skills for someone trying to make money in a market. Oh, and it's got more geek appeal. Can't overlook that.

lazyjones 14y ago

Reasons why you shouldn't: http://www.theage.com.au/national/online-poker-fraud-revealed-20080930-4r8f.html http://www.theage.com.au/national/online-poker-fraud-reveale... http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/15/news/economy/online_poker_indictments/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/15/news/economy/online_poker_in... For programmers it should be particularly obvious that cheating is just too easy and too tempting for online poker/gambling sites. Not getting caught is a little harder.

rojoca 14y ago
It should be noted that the post explicitly recommends using free/fun to play games and links to a problem gambling site.
- napolux 14y ago
  Exactly. I'm not telling you to play your money on poker. I'm just telling you to play poker for the fun and "benefits" of the activity.
mathrawka 14y ago
Cheating by the site is a risk, but on Poker Stars I feel fairly safe because they have so much invested and would do their best to make sure their image does not get tainted. I mainly played heads up before Black Friday, and there is more to it than just simple odds. You get into a psychological battle, which includes odds, and has money at the end. I stayed around the 50NL games, but was still able to pull in $1000/mo playing in my spare time. Then there was Black Friday.
Jabbles 14y ago
I would have thought that online poker sites were infested with bots? There certainly seem to be a lot available by searching for "poker bot".
- JanLaussmann 14y ago
  Interesting forum for someone who wants to learn something about poker bots: http://pokerai.org/pf3/index.php http://pokerai.org/pf3/index.php
andyakb 14y ago
Just a heads up, your second link does not discuss any fraud of the players and instead discusses money laundering which the sites had to engage in to pay players from the United States. UltimateBet and AbsolutePoker had a massive cheating scandal, and both they and FullTilt were insolvent and werent able to pay back the players. Pokerstars has shown time and again that they are operating on the up and up, and many of the other pokersites are part of publicly traded companies. The biggest concern is that of bots, and while some sites arent very vigilant about banning suspected bots, Pokerstars is. In short, play on reputable sites, and if you are worried about bots, then play at pokerstars and report anything suspicious. Are there cheaters? Yes, but it is easier for a site to detect cheating when they have access to all hands played by every account than it would be for a casino who has none of that information.

TomGullen 14y ago

Math in poker is a little overrated. It's often listed as an advantage of the game by less experienced players. Once you have the basics nailed (mainly expected value calculations) there really isn't much more to it, the rest of the skill then comes from estimating opponents hand ranges. And past that, meta game, hand range balancing, deception etc become increasingly important. Poker is an amazing game when you're playing people who also understand the game. When you're scrapping at the free games it's a pretty dismally inefficient learning tool. If you want to play good people, you need to play with money. If you get to a reasonable level at poker, it does have a lot of advantages. Here's a blog post I wrote comparing running a startup to playing poker: http://www.scirra.com/blog/80/why-running-a-startup-is-like-playing-poker http://www.scirra.com/blog/80/why-running-a-startup-is-like-... Poker also has a big potential downside, which is obsession, outright misery and despair which can slowly creep into your life. Distinguishing between addiction and a pursuit you are thoroughly interested in and enjoy is often difficult to pinpoint. Poker also has other downsides which I've observed many times, even with close friends. Illusions of grandeur are common, and can be destructive in your life in a larger way than you are prepared to admit. For example, many players who have been playing for many years still believe they can go pro. These players don't study the game, they just play it and often bemoan their bad luck. For years. In an alternative Universe they might have perused a career, yet they are still playing small stakes games and bleeding off their money at a very slow pace, slow enough to kid themselves that they are simply suffering a bad run of luck. Perseverance and self belief really aren't virtuous qualities in poker for most people. Harrington on Holdem are the best strategy books on poker in my opinion. If anyone is interested in seeing how poker players should be thinking as they play I highly recommend those books! As for recommending people go into poker, I actively tell people to steer well clear of it. Money flows upwards, addicts keep on self destructing and the winning players will justify it with ethically dubious statements like "if I don't take their money, someone else will", or with blinders on with statements such as "all the losing players are probably just casual and playing for fun" to appease their own ethics. A lot of winning players do not understand or empathise the torture that some losing players have to endure. There is a real pleasure playing poker on a table with people who are equal, or above you in skill level. The level of thought, the challenge, the tactics are thoroughly thoroughly enjoyable. I was never especially good at poker, but I did touch upon these sorts of experiences. To get there though will take most people a lot of time, probably time better spent elsewhere.

shyn3 14y ago

Poker is awesome. Free poker doesn't teach you much. Programmers value security and structure. With free money there is no structure to poker. People will go all-in, or raise the big blinds. There is no accountability and nothing to risk. Once you play real-money games you see a drastic difference between play and real. People start being accountable for their actions and try to calculate optimally as to their odds of success on a given hand. The problem is once you start with real-money, win or lose, you find it harder to stop. This is where programming and poker are intertwined. Programmers can't stop programming. They will always program. Poker players will always buy-in.

qznc 14y ago

I can recommand Poker, although not specifically to programmers. I got more general life lessons out of it. You learn to take decisions with vague information by approximating and using basic math. As TomGullen says, the necessary math is neither hard nor is it much. To art is to adapt your numbers to the real world situation. Example: With an open-ended straight draw at the flop, you chances are roughly 1/3 for a straight in the end. First, you need at least two other players. If you have one other player, you fold, because it is not profitable. With three or more other players you keep playing. With two enemies it gets interesting, because you need to factor more information in, to decide. What is your position? Did someone raise before the flop? How did your two enemies play their hands before? What is your image at the table? ... Another lesson i got from poker is to control my emotions when I'm on a streak. If you are on a winning streak, you still must fold when the math says the expected value is negative. On a loosing streak you still must go all-in if the math says so. No peaking at the flop, when your initial hand is too bad.

andyakb 14y ago
Again, as I said in response to TomGullen's comment, that is still the very basic of poker math. Further, your example is incorrect. To continue with an OESD [open ended straight draw], you do not need 2 opponents. You simply need the pot odds of the bet you are facing [and factoring in potential bets on future streets while drawing, as well as expected profit when you make your draw] to be giving you at least 2:1 odds. In poker it is very easy to think youve "figured it out," because in a casino it is hard to keep track of your profits and losses over more than a few visits, and the ups and downs can have large impacts on your short term results [which take a long time to get past in a casino]. I do agree that emotional control is the biggest thing [outside of profits] that I got out of poker, because it carries over into the rest of my life. Im more patient, and dont get upset as easily about things that are outside my control. Those are important lessons to learn in life, and if you have gotten those from poker, great, but you still have a ways to go to understand the basic math and other concepts.
TomGullen 14y ago
Emotional control is one of the hardest things to master in poker and is ultimately why I failed. Learning the influence your emotions have on you and your decision making is as you say a very important life lesson. Being able to recognise when your emotions are causing you to make a series of bad decisions is a very useful tool.

czzarr 14y ago

Wtf HN? How in the hell does this article make the frontpage when it's written (albeit with good intentions) by a complete poker newbie and the points he make are incredibly shallow? There are so many much better blogposts about online poker, please don't upvote this. (fwiw I played up to 25/50 for a little while, and quit a huge winner, so I know what I'm talking about)

napolux 14y ago
I am a programmer and not a poker player. :)

gexla 14y ago

Programmers probably shouldn't play online poker. When programmers aren't programming, or creating other things, they should probably spend time off the computer. They don't need another computer activity. So, play poker face to face. Maybe you don't live in an area where you can do that, then start a low stakes home game with friends. Don't have friends, go out and meet some people. ;) Don't bother with free poker, you will learn much other than the basic rules. Even micro stakes are a bit crazy.

kevhsu 14y ago

By this logic, programmers should try playing super smash brothers melee competitively.

mhd 14y ago

Any particular reasons for poker instead of chess, go, baccarat, skat etc.?

napolux 14y ago
I played go, chess and many other games. Poker is widely avaible online, could be played for free or money and is quite "dirty". Never seen Jessie James playing chess :P.
- mhd 14y ago
  Well, the money aspect didn't even figure in the original article as a positive, and go, chess & various other card games contain math, too, and often have quite vibrant online communities. And, erm "dirtyness" as a deciding factor? Then I'd suggest three card monte.
  - napolux 14y ago
    LOL. :)

rms 14y ago

Poker is mostly about some weird sort of secret autistic like aptitude that no one really understands. Programmer types are higher in weird autistic aptitude than average. Moderately outlying poker players can make about as much as they can as Bay Area programmers, and it's kind of a lot more fun to hang out all day getting served drinks in a casino all day than be in the Bay Area, though the Oaks Card Club is quite good for live multi table No Limit turbo-ish tournaments. Email if you want to play sometime there. Also email me if you know of a Bay Area Startup poker game with a decent buy-in. I only ever find the social club low-limit ones on Facebook. I didn't read the article and upvoted it.

encoderer 14y ago
For the best, maybe "reading people" is just how you described it -- that "weird sort of secret autistic like aptitude that no one really understands." This is like that famous (to poker players anyway) first scene of the movie Rounders where Matt Daemon's character goes around and tells you to some sick level of accuracy the hand range of his opponents. But in my experience, not being that, I can describe it better: For me, reading people is about giving them as much negative stimuli as possible and watching closely at their reactions. I'm really only passably good at this in a 1-on-1 setting. I avoid big money in multi-player pots if i can even though they provide a chance for much richer implied odds (eg the ability to earn 2, 3 x my money). What that means is this -- I play what's known as a "tight aggressive" game. I only play about 5-10% of the hands dealt to me. And I play them hard. I raise a lot. Not usually huge raises, instead I like to have more, smaller raises. A good Pot Limit game is great for that. The idea here is simple: I want to make you make more decisions. If I think you're a worse player than I am, then my odds increase the more decisions I make you make. And I would much rather be in a position where I re-raise and she comes back with a huge re-raise and I fold than a position where I have less signal about her hand, and more noise, and think I have the best of it all the way down and lose a big pot. YMMV, but that's what "reading players" means to me. Edit: Also, build a poker bot. For fun. Not profit. You probably won't profit. But I loved it. There are great "engines" you can build off of. I used WinHoldem but this was circa 2005 so certainly there are better options. It's great. You get computer vision, machine learning, etc, it's loads of fun.

zafriedman 14y ago

As both a programmer and a poker player I have strong opinions on the subject. In turn: "Math is useful I see a lot of people around telling “I don’t need math”. In poker (and in programming) you need a lot of math, even for simple operations." I think the importance of math is overstated in poker. When you look at a hand you must determine your chance of your hand improving, which is a straightforward mathematical exercise. You must also determine your opponents chances of improving his hand, which is also a straightforward mathematical exercise, but is complicated by the fact that you can't see the cards your opponent has. So once you have pegged your opponent for a certain hand based on his or her behavior earlier in the hand as well as any previous knowledge you have of the player, if applicable, then again straightforward math. Finally, professional/skilled poker players always calculate the odds the pot gives them versus the odds that either their hand will improve or the odds that in the specific situation they can expect to win the pot, and they further must consider what odds they are offerring to their opponent by their actions. Weighing those factors pretty much completes the degree to which mathematics plays a role in no-limit Texas Hold'em. "Be fast and precise In online poker you can’t think hours for your next move. If you are a programmer you should be fast-thinking and precise. Fast and no errors." While this resonates much more for me in vis a vis poker, I think this is borderline idiotic in the sense of programming. In poker you must act fast because it is forced upon you in the context, you have no choice. Think of it like using Javascript before Douglas Crockford came along and enlightened you to the good parts of the language, the only reason to use it was because you had no choice! But in programming, to say that you have to be "fast and [make] no errors" is stupid insofar that it's an obvious goal of which stating serves no purpose. It's like when I tried to explain to a non-programmer friend of mine the concept introduced by Jason Fried of "getting good at making money". He thought it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, like as if someone saying "I'm going to work hard to improve my skill at making money" is going to in any way have a causal relationship with the actualization. I probably didn't do Jason justice in setting the right context for my friend, nevertheless I think this phrase exhibits the same logical fallacy. "If you want to try poker there are a lot of free poker games on facebook, iPhone, etc… Don’t waste your money. The fun is the same." You'll never get good if you're money is not on the line. Now, I'm not saying that one should get in over their head, or even wager large amounts of money, especially when learning to play poker. However, you will simply not see the real scenarios and wrestle with the real hands that make you a great poker player, unless you and your opponents are playing for money. My impression of free poker games is that they mimic televised poker. Televised poker is for entertainment, not education, so the hands that are shown are epic bluffs, balls-to-the-wall all-in wagers, and other 5%-ish hands that provide the greatest level of excitement to viewers. I'd do the same thing if I was a TV producer, but it's not real poker. My point in this tangent is to illustrate that 95% of winning and loosing in poker comes down to average-plus hands beating average-minus hands. And while no hands are trivial in poker, playing an average-x hand against an opponent who holds the counterpart is ridiculously challenging. You will not have the motivation to really wrestle to find the answer without your money on the line, and getting good at finding out how to induce small mistakes in your opponent is basically synonymous with becoming a good no-limit Texas Hold'em player. And finally, a gaping omission in my mind: Poker is great for programmers (and maybe more accurately entrepreneurs) because it is a game where the perfect amount of information is available such that a skilled player, in the long run, can expect to have a positive ROI when playing against players of lesser skill. No-limit Texas Hold'em in particular, is the epitome of this. At the height of its popularity when big no-limit tournaments were attracting deep-pocketed beginners, a skilled player could expect his tournament entry fee to be worth 5 to even 10x its value in terms of expected value each time. The concept of imperfect information is resonant in entrepreneurship I think for sure, and as for it's benefits with programmers, I believe the best way to think about it is that poker in beneficial because it ostensibly uses the same cognition as design patterns in software engineering. You have a problem to solve with a variety of factors, and you apply patterns to solve those problems based on your knowledge and the past experience of others who have blazed the trail before you.