I think so, but this may be specific to my own peculiar view.
At a poker table, it is the dealer's job to make sure the game is being played by the book. Some dealers are better at this than others, and even the best dealers make occasional mistakes. Bets are miscounted, hands are misread, players are directed to play out of turn, anti-collusion rules go unenforced, pots are split incorrectly, and any number of other mistakes can happen. When I notice these things, I like to point them out and get them corrected, but when I do some other players sometimes get upset. Should I be pointing these things out? Let's look at the main factors.
1. Effect on my winnings.
The only direct effect is that I will usually point out errors even if they were in my favor, such as an opponent putting in two many chips to call a bet. I lose money when I do that.
One indirect factor is the effect of either upsetting or pleasing other players. However, there's not that much they can do about it, and not many people take these things very personally, anyway.
Another indirect factor is that new players might feel more comfortable in the casino, which may help to make the average competition a little softer.
This category is a wash, with maybe a tiny advantage to NOT pointing out errors, especially those errors that directly result in more chips for myself.
2. Effect on the social atmosphere.
Usually, if I don't point out an error, it will go unnoticed by whomever it hurt. So, by pointing out the errors, I might be making the social atmosphere a little more tense.
An indirect effect is that everyone can relax a little more about the whether the rules are being followed. We can trust that somebody else will usually point out any mistakes.
Another indirect effect is that players might trust each other a little more, which I think encourages a better social atmosphere in the long run.
For me, the major reason I like to point out any errors I see is that the alternative is unfair to inexperienced players and players who are new to a casino. For inexperienced players, they obviously are less likely to realize if a mistake has been made. For players new to a casino, they suffer from the fact that the other players are likely to know each other and be inclined to look out for each other. So, errors that were made in the new players' favor are more likely to be pointed out and reversed, putting new players at an unfair disadvantage. When this happens, the social atmosphere becomes much worse. However, these situations are rarely so clear cut as to make a big difference.
Personally, I just feel better if I do what feels like the "right" thing, so I would be particularly uncomfortable if I ignored errors. You may be different.
Advantage to pointing out errors, but this may be partly specific to myself.
3. Effect on the purity of the game. This depends on what you think "pure" poker means. To me, it means a game of poker played by the rules, but other purists might argue that poker should be a purely individualistic game, and no player should say anything that could help another player out, even if it's just to ensure that rules are being followed.
Advantage to pointing out errors, but players with different philosophies may disagree.
I personally would certainly like it if players took a more active role in policing their games, but it doesn't seem likely that we could overturn the prevailing mentality that players should avoid getting involved in other players' hands.
*****
I accepted a spot in the PhD program in statistics at UMBC.
*****
I've been posting on a blog called "Skepolitical," a portmanteau of "skeptic" and "political." My most recent post was on Attachment Parenting.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Should No Limit Holdem Players Want Antes in Their Games?
Two of the main triggers of the poker boom in the 2000's, the movie Rounders and ESPN's well-produced broadcast of the WSOP (especially the Moneymaker victory), both specifically glorified the game of no-limit holdem. Rounders famously quoted Doyle Brunson calling NLHE the "Cadillac of poker games." Brand-new poker players came to the casinos looking for holdem games, especially no-limit holdem games. Before long, veteran stud players migrated to the no-limit games hoping to prey upon the newbies. The result is that, compared to holdem games, stud games have plummeted in popularity since the 1990's. Today, stud games feel downright antiquated.
One distinguishing feature of stud games is that they use antes, and, as a result, antes now seem as antiquated as the stud games they're used for. Actually, while antes are almost never used in NLHE cash games, they do usually come into play in the later rounds of tournaments. This is cause for consternation among some tournament players, mostly because the antes increase the effect of luck as compared to skill. Perhaps ironically, then, one place you can occasionally see antes in NLHE cash games is in the very high-stakes games, where you might expect the players to want to maximize the importance of skill. The reason they like antes is that many of these top players have recognized the problem I mentioned midway through my previous post on jackpots: standard NLHE has very little action if everyone in the game is playing a strong, solid, tight and aggressive game. To fix this problem, top pros have sometimes decided to add antes to their games. So, should the rest of us be advocating for the introduction of antes into our NLHE games? Probably, but let's look at the major considerations.
1. Maximizing winnings.
2. Having an enjoyable social experience.
3. Having a pure, intellectually stimulating game of poker.
All three factors have opposing forces that I will attempt to weigh against each other.
1. Maximizing winnings: If you are a strong player with a given set of opponents, your EV will probably be slightly improved if you are using an ante. With more action, you will be correct to play more hands, and this will give you more opportunities to use your superior skill against your opponents. Also, there will be more money in each pot, which means more potential profit. There are two major drawbacks, however. First, your expected volatility will certainly rise substantially because the antes directly increase the luck factor and, with more money being bet, you will effectively be playing higher stakes. This will possibly force you to move down to lower stakes. Second, your typical opponent's biggest weakness, playing too many hands, will suddenly become much less of a liability. Your weak opponents will be playing better even if they fail to adjust for the introduction of the ante. This is all subjective, but my guess is that these factors give a bit of a net boost to EV.
The previous paragraph assumes "a given set of opponents," but we must also consider the effect on the player supply in an ante game versus a no-ante game. In the short run, only good players seem likely to want to use antes. The first players who will want to make the move to "ante NLHE" are those who are confident in their ability to adjust to the new strategic challenges posed by the introduction of an ante and those who recognize the problem I just described with NLHE losing action if you are at a table of solid players. We can expect that these players are better than average, and they will certainly not be novices. Despite this, I think that in the long run, bad players will really enjoy the antes. Having more action and higher volatility is way more fun. If we can get to the point where antes are no longer a novel concept, novices will be happy to play with them. In the long run, which is what I'm primarily concerned with in these blog posts, I think the antes will attract more bad players than good players because of the increased luck factor. Another small net positive for EV.
2. Social experience: For most people, getting to play more hands is more fun. Sure, there will be the odd player who likes to sit back and wait for AA or KK, but who needs those guys anyway? Others will object to the increased luck factor, but just as many will enjoy it. In the short run, some players will be put off by the novelty of antes, but others (such as myself) like thinking about novel strategic situations, and in any case the novelty will wear off. A net positive.
3. Pure, stimulating game of poker: Some purists, including yours truly, are just concerned with having a robust, stimulating, fairly-played game, unencumbered by factors introduced by the casino such as jackpots, rakes, or confusing rules or promotions. The antes affect none of these factors except that they have the potential to engender a much more stimulating game by discouraging tight, nitty play. Some purists additionally want a traditional or low-luck game of poker. For these players, the antes may be a problem. From my perspective, however, the antes represent a major boon to the game itself.
Many of the factors above relate to my personal preferences, which may make it hard to convince other players (or my readers) to come to my side if they are not already so inclined. For example, if you understand the importance of having luck in a poker game (this is what attracts the bad players) but you still think it's better to try to minimize it, there's not much I can do to convince you that antes would be a good thing. Also, my approximations on the effect on EV are certainly up for debate. However, if you agree with me on these factors (and you should!) then you'll agree that introducing antes is a really good idea.
I wonder whether we can ever really make the jump to adding antes in lower stakes games. Perhaps it's like the QWERTY keyboard: research shows it's not optimal, but it's just not worth making the switch. It's not surprising that the high-stakes NLHE games were the first to adopt antes. Nobody playing those stakes is going to have an issue with getting outside their comfort zone to play a slightly novel form of poker. (Well, maybe Andy Beal.) They're not worried about scaring away new players, and they are looking to maximize the amount of action in their games. It's also possible that these high stakes games have fewer action players and are thus more prone to going cold.
All of these factors that encourage the use of antes diminish as you go down in stakes. What I think needs to happen for antes to become prevalent is for enough regular players to realize that the top pros are playing with antes. When that happens, the game will no longer look as weird and novel as a Dvorak keyboard. In the meantime, regular players can advocate for antes by convincing their fellow poker players that antes are a good thing and by asking their floor men to make "interest" lists for ante games.
One distinguishing feature of stud games is that they use antes, and, as a result, antes now seem as antiquated as the stud games they're used for. Actually, while antes are almost never used in NLHE cash games, they do usually come into play in the later rounds of tournaments. This is cause for consternation among some tournament players, mostly because the antes increase the effect of luck as compared to skill. Perhaps ironically, then, one place you can occasionally see antes in NLHE cash games is in the very high-stakes games, where you might expect the players to want to maximize the importance of skill. The reason they like antes is that many of these top players have recognized the problem I mentioned midway through my previous post on jackpots: standard NLHE has very little action if everyone in the game is playing a strong, solid, tight and aggressive game. To fix this problem, top pros have sometimes decided to add antes to their games. So, should the rest of us be advocating for the introduction of antes into our NLHE games? Probably, but let's look at the major considerations.
1. Maximizing winnings.
2. Having an enjoyable social experience.
3. Having a pure, intellectually stimulating game of poker.
All three factors have opposing forces that I will attempt to weigh against each other.
1. Maximizing winnings: If you are a strong player with a given set of opponents, your EV will probably be slightly improved if you are using an ante. With more action, you will be correct to play more hands, and this will give you more opportunities to use your superior skill against your opponents. Also, there will be more money in each pot, which means more potential profit. There are two major drawbacks, however. First, your expected volatility will certainly rise substantially because the antes directly increase the luck factor and, with more money being bet, you will effectively be playing higher stakes. This will possibly force you to move down to lower stakes. Second, your typical opponent's biggest weakness, playing too many hands, will suddenly become much less of a liability. Your weak opponents will be playing better even if they fail to adjust for the introduction of the ante. This is all subjective, but my guess is that these factors give a bit of a net boost to EV.
The previous paragraph assumes "a given set of opponents," but we must also consider the effect on the player supply in an ante game versus a no-ante game. In the short run, only good players seem likely to want to use antes. The first players who will want to make the move to "ante NLHE" are those who are confident in their ability to adjust to the new strategic challenges posed by the introduction of an ante and those who recognize the problem I just described with NLHE losing action if you are at a table of solid players. We can expect that these players are better than average, and they will certainly not be novices. Despite this, I think that in the long run, bad players will really enjoy the antes. Having more action and higher volatility is way more fun. If we can get to the point where antes are no longer a novel concept, novices will be happy to play with them. In the long run, which is what I'm primarily concerned with in these blog posts, I think the antes will attract more bad players than good players because of the increased luck factor. Another small net positive for EV.
2. Social experience: For most people, getting to play more hands is more fun. Sure, there will be the odd player who likes to sit back and wait for AA or KK, but who needs those guys anyway? Others will object to the increased luck factor, but just as many will enjoy it. In the short run, some players will be put off by the novelty of antes, but others (such as myself) like thinking about novel strategic situations, and in any case the novelty will wear off. A net positive.
3. Pure, stimulating game of poker: Some purists, including yours truly, are just concerned with having a robust, stimulating, fairly-played game, unencumbered by factors introduced by the casino such as jackpots, rakes, or confusing rules or promotions. The antes affect none of these factors except that they have the potential to engender a much more stimulating game by discouraging tight, nitty play. Some purists additionally want a traditional or low-luck game of poker. For these players, the antes may be a problem. From my perspective, however, the antes represent a major boon to the game itself.
Many of the factors above relate to my personal preferences, which may make it hard to convince other players (or my readers) to come to my side if they are not already so inclined. For example, if you understand the importance of having luck in a poker game (this is what attracts the bad players) but you still think it's better to try to minimize it, there's not much I can do to convince you that antes would be a good thing. Also, my approximations on the effect on EV are certainly up for debate. However, if you agree with me on these factors (and you should!) then you'll agree that introducing antes is a really good idea.
I wonder whether we can ever really make the jump to adding antes in lower stakes games. Perhaps it's like the QWERTY keyboard: research shows it's not optimal, but it's just not worth making the switch. It's not surprising that the high-stakes NLHE games were the first to adopt antes. Nobody playing those stakes is going to have an issue with getting outside their comfort zone to play a slightly novel form of poker. (Well, maybe Andy Beal.) They're not worried about scaring away new players, and they are looking to maximize the amount of action in their games. It's also possible that these high stakes games have fewer action players and are thus more prone to going cold.
All of these factors that encourage the use of antes diminish as you go down in stakes. What I think needs to happen for antes to become prevalent is for enough regular players to realize that the top pros are playing with antes. When that happens, the game will no longer look as weird and novel as a Dvorak keyboard. In the meantime, regular players can advocate for antes by convincing their fellow poker players that antes are a good thing and by asking their floor men to make "interest" lists for ante games.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Should Poker Players Want Jackpots in Their Games?
This is the second in what I hope will become a series of posts on the things that (good) poker players should look for in an ideal casino game. Regular players in poker rooms hold sway with the casino management, and this series can be viewed as my personal commentary on what I think you should be lobbying for if you are a good poker player.
For this post, I'll be thinking primarily of the "Bad Beat" type of jackpot, which I think is the worse of the two. I'll be looking at how it affects the three main concerns I mentioned in my previous post:
1. Maximizing Winnings.
2. Having an enjoyable social experience.
3. Playing a pure, intellectually stimulating game of poker.
I don't have anything to say about concern #2 here, but some players may have a strong personal preference for or against jackpots. Personally, I don't like them much. Let's look at concern #3 and then #1.
If playing a pure game of poker is your main reason for coming to a casino, you will hate jackpots, especially bad-beat jackpots. For purists, putting finely-tuned poker strategies to work against real opponents is the essence of what makes playing poker worthwhile. It can be a joyous experience to put theory into practice and have it work out. Jackpots destroy this by changing the players' incentive structure, thereby interfering with the logical inferences about your opponents' decisions that characterize a pure game of poker. These disruptions are most evident in Bad Beat Jackpot games during hands where there are two Aces on board, because the easiest way to win a jackpot is for a third Ace to hit the board while one player has the case Ace and the other player holds a large pocket pair. Winning the actual pot becomes insignificant, with players focusing only on making sure they do not miss out on the 1/40 or so chance at winning a few thousand dollars.
There is another, subtler, consequence of jackpots on the purity of the game that is often overlooked. The $1 jackpot fee is taken from each pot, and this affects optimal play. A slightly smaller pot means that it's optimal to play slightly tighter (and, if other players make are making that adjustment, it becomes correct to play more aggressively). This is a minor disruption, but it is made worse by the fact that another $5 is usually being taken out for the casino's rake, and my sense is that each extra dollar taken out is marginally worse than the previous. (Consider, for example, the effect of taking the first dollar out of a $1000 pot compared to taking the thousandth dollar out after already removing the first 999!) In No-Limit Hold'em, which already has a problem of having too little action when everyone in the game is solid, the problem is especially pronounced. A future post may explore the possibility of adding an ante to NLHE games in order to liven them up a bit.
The jackpots introduce opportunities for corrupt practices by players, dealers, and administrators. Honest players now have one more thing to be on the lookout for in order to protect themselves.
When a jackpot is actually hit, the game comes to a screeching halt. Winners celebrate, decks are examined for evidence of cheating, administrators skim off the top of the jackpot (legally and sometimes illegally), ID's are taken out, and forms are filled out for tax purposes. A nightmare for a purist who just wants to sit and play poker.
I hesitate to call myself a purist (after all, it ranks third on my list of concerns), but maybe I am. Certainly, I'm sympathetic to this way thinking, and I consider "game purity" to be the major reason to dislike jackpots. I previously would have told you that Maximizing Winnings is my primary issue with jackpots, but the effect of jackpots on winnings is actually pretty complicated. Let's examine the pros and cons.
Having often argued against jackpots, I'm well-versed in the negatives. The simplest possible analysis is to look at the EV of each dollar paid into the jackpot. In California, I've been assured that the casino is allowed to take 15% for administrative costs, so each dollar returns 85 cents at best. (This is assuming you can trust administrators not to skim off the top.) The money you put in will sit around for months, on average, so the net present value of that money is slightly less than 85 cents. Then, you are expected to tip. (Tipping can be forgone, I suppose, but everyone I know has tipped after their jackpot wins.) Most players tip 5-10%, so our return is now down to about 75%.
Things are still worse than that, though, for several reasons. First, jackpots increase the volatility of our win rate substantially. Second, the deck-checking is unfairly biased towards delaying the jackpot payouts, because they are occasionally cancelled. (Once in a while the deck-check reveals a bad deck and the jackpot is not paid, but is it very rare for a deck to be checked when the jackpot is not paid out. This means sometimes payments have gone into the jackpot drop in hands that would have been voided had the jackpot been won and the deck checked. To be fair, the decks should be checked every time a dollar is paid to the drop, but this is impractical for obvious reasons.) Third, the slightly smaller pots mean tighter play becomes correct, and this can cut into the win rate of strong, creative players. Fourth, when the jackpot is actually won, the game will be delayed, eliminating winnings you expected to have during that time playing poker. These factors are hard to quantify, but I would say that between the EV and volatility issues another 5% of utility is lost. So, we are at about 70% return, assuming there is no cheating or illicit skimming by the casino management.
I've heard a few good arguments for having jackpots amid many weak arguments. The most worthy argument is that jackpots attracts amateur players. All else being equal, having to play the jackpot drop costs me about $4 an hour and in the long run I get paid back about $3 in jackpot winnings. So, ignoring strategic effects and time delays, it really only costs me about $1 per hour. On the flip side, a single fish at the table is certainly worth much more than this. Even just a slightly weak player can make up for that $1/hour jackpot loss. Moreover, a good player will tend to play hands that have a good chance at making a jackpot, such as high pocket pairs or big Aces. This means that, for good players, the return on investment should be slightly higher than for weaker players. My sense is that this is a very minor effect, but I could be wrong. It is something, at least.
In conclusion, I would say that the only very significant effect of jackpots on any relevant concern is on the purity of the game. Jackpots are unmitigated disasters for game purity. However, your bankroll will benefit if the jackpot scares off the other poker purists. Purists tend to be good players. If your only concern is for making money, the jackpot might actually be helping you in the long run by attracting worse players to the game. Keep in mind, however, that if these worse players are not in the game at any particular time, you would certainly be better off without the jackpot drop.
*****
I did not get into the UMD College Park Applied Math department. I am leaning towards accepting the position in the PhD program in Statistics at UMBC.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Advice That Will Help Both My Opponents and Myself
Most of the advice and analysis on this blog could easily be used against me if readers found me at their poker table. (Indirectly, it can hurt me even if we never play against each other by marginally improving the play of the average poker player.) I enjoy doing strategy and hand analysis on this blog, and I think it's been worth any small amounts of EV I may have lost.
A commenter (Rick) suggested that I give some advice that would actually help me if it were followed by my opponents. This sounds easy: Just give bad advice! An intriguing idea, but it wouldn't make much difference because my poker-playing readers can mostly discern bad advice from good, anyway. Fortunately, there is another way: Give advice that helps not only me but also my opponents. This is clearly the angle Rick was suggesting. This seems like a good idea, so I'm going to devote a few posts to encouraging behavior that will improve the culture of casino poker.
When I'm in a poker room, I have three main concerns. Players will surely differ on the relative importance of these three factors, but I think nearly all players are implicitly concerned with these three things. For me, I would rank them as follows.
1. Maximizing my winnings. This is an explicit goal of most players, and the main concern of most poker pros. Like other poker players, I tend focus on ways in which I can win money from other players, but there are also plenty of things players can do to help not only themselves but also other players (either all the other players or some subset).
2. Having an enjoyable social experience. Poker is a social game, after all. Occasionally, I will come across players for whom this seems to be the primary goal of their poker games.
3. Playing an interesting game of poker. This is the concern of the poker purists, who play for the love of the game.
The first piece of advice I want to give is conventional wisdom but is very difficult for many people to follow: Be nice to the bad players. This helps the other players fulfill Concern #1 because the bad players are likely to stick around for longer. It usually also helps the bad players fulfill Concern #2. Unfortunately, poker players are often too immature to resist castigating bad players for bad beats and the like. Personally, I also wish that people were nicer to the good players, but that is not necessarily good for fulfilling Concern #1. There are a few of players at the Bike who are so unpleasant that I tend to try to avoid them, and I imagine it is good for their win rate to get me out of their games.
That's it for today. Stay tuned for my next attempt to help improve the culture of casino poker.
A commenter (Rick) suggested that I give some advice that would actually help me if it were followed by my opponents. This sounds easy: Just give bad advice! An intriguing idea, but it wouldn't make much difference because my poker-playing readers can mostly discern bad advice from good, anyway. Fortunately, there is another way: Give advice that helps not only me but also my opponents. This is clearly the angle Rick was suggesting. This seems like a good idea, so I'm going to devote a few posts to encouraging behavior that will improve the culture of casino poker.
When I'm in a poker room, I have three main concerns. Players will surely differ on the relative importance of these three factors, but I think nearly all players are implicitly concerned with these three things. For me, I would rank them as follows.
1. Maximizing my winnings. This is an explicit goal of most players, and the main concern of most poker pros. Like other poker players, I tend focus on ways in which I can win money from other players, but there are also plenty of things players can do to help not only themselves but also other players (either all the other players or some subset).
2. Having an enjoyable social experience. Poker is a social game, after all. Occasionally, I will come across players for whom this seems to be the primary goal of their poker games.
3. Playing an interesting game of poker. This is the concern of the poker purists, who play for the love of the game.
The first piece of advice I want to give is conventional wisdom but is very difficult for many people to follow: Be nice to the bad players. This helps the other players fulfill Concern #1 because the bad players are likely to stick around for longer. It usually also helps the bad players fulfill Concern #2. Unfortunately, poker players are often too immature to resist castigating bad players for bad beats and the like. Personally, I also wish that people were nicer to the good players, but that is not necessarily good for fulfilling Concern #1. There are a few of players at the Bike who are so unpleasant that I tend to try to avoid them, and I imagine it is good for their win rate to get me out of their games.
That's it for today. Stay tuned for my next attempt to help improve the culture of casino poker.
*****
I've been taking an online course on game theory run by two professors at Stanford.
*****
I got into the PhD Statistics programs at UMBC and George Washington, but without funding. I'm still waiting on UMD College Park's PhD program in Applied Math, Applied Statistics, and Scientific Computation.
Monday, April 02, 2012
What is Your Biggest Weakness as a Poker Player?
This is another interview-style question that seemed like the type I might get after my Mathematical Poker talk back on February 14. Since I haven't been playing poker recently, these questions have provided a good excuse to keep this blog alive for the past several weeks. I hope to address some other poker issues in the coming weeks, but this will probably be the last in this question-answer format unless a commenter has another question worth answering.
The one thing I think would most help my poker income would be to put more effort into game selection. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a "weakness": most players neglect game selection as much as I do, so I'm not actually particularly weak. Doing game selection has some drawbacks, especially in live poker: it is conspicuous to scout out various tables before playing, it cuts into the time you could be playing, and it annoys the floorpeople if you keep changing tables (especially at the Commerce, in my experience). Still, the effect of having a good game can overwhelm any effect of marginal improvements in my own strategy when it comes to my win rate. I state this without data; perhaps I'll find the motivation to do a bit of analysis to back up (or falsify) this idea. Drawing from my memory, however, it really does seem that some tables at a casino can be clearly seen to be better than others, I am pretty confident that selecting a good game is far more important to my winnings than any small fluctuations in my own play or adding a few extra minutes of playing to my session. In a similar vein, I have rarely tried to make stabs at higher limits, despite my belief that this can be a useful endeavor, and I've had several strong players tell me I should be playing higher stakes. I guess I just don't consider myself much of a "gambler" and I would like to keep it that way.
Historically, my approach to game selection has been as follows: spend 20 seconds scanning the room for known fish or for a table seeming to have an unusually good time. (Occasionally, it helps to play with players who are good but who are particularly skilled at making other players play badly. Rarely, it can also help to notice recognize a player I know focuses on game selection, and I can be confident that any game he is in will be a good one.) Then, when I'm in a game, I am rather aggressive about selecting against staying there. That is to say, I will ask for a table change within 5 minutes if the game is not great. (This can annoy the floorpeople and gives your opponents some information about the type of player you are.) To improve my table selection would require that I spend an extra couple of minutes watching a few hands at each potential game until I find one that is quite juicy, and there are usually one or two of these if you look hard enough. If I don't find a juicy game, I should still be able to select one that is at least pretty good.
At the table, my biggest weaknesses are probably concentration and exploiting strong players, which are related. Against weak players, I am perfectly capable of focusing and probing their weaknesses, but I tend to just model strong players as "perfect" and try to play optimally against them in a game-theory sense. This creates a sort of feedback loop of being distracted from the game if I'm up against only solid players, because I don't feel the need to concentrate on them and this creates boredom. In truth, I do think even good players are exploitable, and this becomes especially interesting once they start trying to exploit me; I tend to be a step behind the competition in such situations (not a big deal, since I think my standard game is unusually difficult to exploit in the first place). I think the problem is that finding opportunities to exploit these weaknesses seldom arise, and it takes an awful lot of patience for the effort to pay off. Perhaps other players are fooling themselves into thinking that it's more worthwhile than it truly is, but the bottom line is that most other players seem to have deeper wells of patience and concentration to draw from than I do when it comes to studying their opponents.
The one thing I think would most help my poker income would be to put more effort into game selection. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a "weakness": most players neglect game selection as much as I do, so I'm not actually particularly weak. Doing game selection has some drawbacks, especially in live poker: it is conspicuous to scout out various tables before playing, it cuts into the time you could be playing, and it annoys the floorpeople if you keep changing tables (especially at the Commerce, in my experience). Still, the effect of having a good game can overwhelm any effect of marginal improvements in my own strategy when it comes to my win rate. I state this without data; perhaps I'll find the motivation to do a bit of analysis to back up (or falsify) this idea. Drawing from my memory, however, it really does seem that some tables at a casino can be clearly seen to be better than others, I am pretty confident that selecting a good game is far more important to my winnings than any small fluctuations in my own play or adding a few extra minutes of playing to my session. In a similar vein, I have rarely tried to make stabs at higher limits, despite my belief that this can be a useful endeavor, and I've had several strong players tell me I should be playing higher stakes. I guess I just don't consider myself much of a "gambler" and I would like to keep it that way.
Historically, my approach to game selection has been as follows: spend 20 seconds scanning the room for known fish or for a table seeming to have an unusually good time. (Occasionally, it helps to play with players who are good but who are particularly skilled at making other players play badly. Rarely, it can also help to notice recognize a player I know focuses on game selection, and I can be confident that any game he is in will be a good one.) Then, when I'm in a game, I am rather aggressive about selecting against staying there. That is to say, I will ask for a table change within 5 minutes if the game is not great. (This can annoy the floorpeople and gives your opponents some information about the type of player you are.) To improve my table selection would require that I spend an extra couple of minutes watching a few hands at each potential game until I find one that is quite juicy, and there are usually one or two of these if you look hard enough. If I don't find a juicy game, I should still be able to select one that is at least pretty good.
At the table, my biggest weaknesses are probably concentration and exploiting strong players, which are related. Against weak players, I am perfectly capable of focusing and probing their weaknesses, but I tend to just model strong players as "perfect" and try to play optimally against them in a game-theory sense. This creates a sort of feedback loop of being distracted from the game if I'm up against only solid players, because I don't feel the need to concentrate on them and this creates boredom. In truth, I do think even good players are exploitable, and this becomes especially interesting once they start trying to exploit me; I tend to be a step behind the competition in such situations (not a big deal, since I think my standard game is unusually difficult to exploit in the first place). I think the problem is that finding opportunities to exploit these weaknesses seldom arise, and it takes an awful lot of patience for the effort to pay off. Perhaps other players are fooling themselves into thinking that it's more worthwhile than it truly is, but the bottom line is that most other players seem to have deeper wells of patience and concentration to draw from than I do when it comes to studying their opponents.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
What are some common weaknesses of your opponents?
This is another question I was NOT asked at my poker talk last month, but that I figured would make for an interesting blog post.
This question is basically the same as the following: what do you do as a poker player that sets you apart from most other players and enables you to win? It's not strictly necessary to be able to answer this question in order to be a +EV player. For example, it could be that your income comes entirely from the 5% of players who are truly terrible, and that against most players you have no real strategic advantage. In practice, though, a winning poker player will try to identify and exploit weaknesses in all his opponents.
Below I list several common weaknesses of players. You will notice a common theme of players being conflicted between the "correct" goal of maximizing EV and some other goal, usually related to psychological satisfaction. I believe one of my primary advantages over other players is that I am not an emotional player. To the extent that my emotions are involved in my play, they are usually tied to my ability to make +EV plays, since it gives me satisfaction to think I am playing well.
The most common weakness of players is to play too many hands. Any player who has heard even a little poker advice knows that they should be playing very few hands. To a new player in a nine-player NLHE game, it is shocking how often they should be folding, and it often takes a while for them to really believe get used to it. Among weaker players, I think another problem is that they have trouble reconciling conflicting motives: they want to make money but they also want to have fun. Folding is not fun, so they play lots of hands even if they know they shouldn't.
Another common weakness I see is that players overestimate their skill level. This often manifests itself in the first weakness I mentioned: playing too many hands. Players think they can make more hands win than they really can. In good players, overconfidence can also result in "Fancy Play Syndrome," which means deviating too much from standard play, usually in an attempt to make a "hero call" or a big bluff. These plays are psychologically extremely rewarding when they work, which suggests that good players, too, succumb to conflicting motives.
A more specific weakness is that players are reluctant to call with hands that probably losing but are +EV because of good pot odds. A classic example is if you hold QQ and you figure your opponents has raised with AA, KK, or AK. You are behind your opponent's range here but you will likely want to call if you are getting good pot odds. (This is one reason why I am a big fan of semi-bluffing with AK before the flop.) Again, I think this can be traced back to a problem of conflicting motives. Good players often care deeply about their reputation, and since it can be embarrassing to call with a hand that is behind, they are reluctant to do so.
Finally, I think good players spend too little effort considering their own hand ranges and too much trying to "outthink" their opponents by thinking one "level" higher. It's much more efficient to just make sure you have balanced your play in a game-theoretical sense. For example, before you check on the river with a weak hand consider your hand range given the play so far. If your hand range contains some hands that you would like to value bet with, it should also contain some hands that you will bluff with. In fact, for those who saw my talk at Swarthmore or who have read The Mathematics of Poker by Chen and Ankenman, you know that there is a specific ratio of the number of hands you should be betting to the number you should be bluffing. Unless you are trying to exploit a suspected weakness of your opponent (for example, you think he calls too much on the river), you should balance your range in agreement with an optimal strategy. (As an aside, I think that this approach is one reason why people's assessment of my play tends to be polarized, with many people thinking my strategy is carefully measured, and other thinking I'm maniacally aggressive because I find opportunities to bluff in situations that most players wouldn't bother. These assessments seem contradictory, but both are essentially correct.) I think this weakness usually stems from the fact that most players simply haven't learned to think about poker in this way. However, for some players it may be that this is yet another example of conflicting motives like we saw in the first few examples. That is, it is certainly fun to try to outsmart your opponents (rather than just balancing your own range), and so it seems likely that players will put a bit more effort into that aspect of the game than is really called for.
This question is basically the same as the following: what do you do as a poker player that sets you apart from most other players and enables you to win? It's not strictly necessary to be able to answer this question in order to be a +EV player. For example, it could be that your income comes entirely from the 5% of players who are truly terrible, and that against most players you have no real strategic advantage. In practice, though, a winning poker player will try to identify and exploit weaknesses in all his opponents.
Below I list several common weaknesses of players. You will notice a common theme of players being conflicted between the "correct" goal of maximizing EV and some other goal, usually related to psychological satisfaction. I believe one of my primary advantages over other players is that I am not an emotional player. To the extent that my emotions are involved in my play, they are usually tied to my ability to make +EV plays, since it gives me satisfaction to think I am playing well.
The most common weakness of players is to play too many hands. Any player who has heard even a little poker advice knows that they should be playing very few hands. To a new player in a nine-player NLHE game, it is shocking how often they should be folding, and it often takes a while for them to really believe get used to it. Among weaker players, I think another problem is that they have trouble reconciling conflicting motives: they want to make money but they also want to have fun. Folding is not fun, so they play lots of hands even if they know they shouldn't.
Another common weakness I see is that players overestimate their skill level. This often manifests itself in the first weakness I mentioned: playing too many hands. Players think they can make more hands win than they really can. In good players, overconfidence can also result in "Fancy Play Syndrome," which means deviating too much from standard play, usually in an attempt to make a "hero call" or a big bluff. These plays are psychologically extremely rewarding when they work, which suggests that good players, too, succumb to conflicting motives.
A more specific weakness is that players are reluctant to call with hands that probably losing but are +EV because of good pot odds. A classic example is if you hold QQ and you figure your opponents has raised with AA, KK, or AK. You are behind your opponent's range here but you will likely want to call if you are getting good pot odds. (This is one reason why I am a big fan of semi-bluffing with AK before the flop.) Again, I think this can be traced back to a problem of conflicting motives. Good players often care deeply about their reputation, and since it can be embarrassing to call with a hand that is behind, they are reluctant to do so.
Finally, I think good players spend too little effort considering their own hand ranges and too much trying to "outthink" their opponents by thinking one "level" higher. It's much more efficient to just make sure you have balanced your play in a game-theoretical sense. For example, before you check on the river with a weak hand consider your hand range given the play so far. If your hand range contains some hands that you would like to value bet with, it should also contain some hands that you will bluff with. In fact, for those who saw my talk at Swarthmore or who have read The Mathematics of Poker by Chen and Ankenman, you know that there is a specific ratio of the number of hands you should be betting to the number you should be bluffing. Unless you are trying to exploit a suspected weakness of your opponent (for example, you think he calls too much on the river), you should balance your range in agreement with an optimal strategy. (As an aside, I think that this approach is one reason why people's assessment of my play tends to be polarized, with many people thinking my strategy is carefully measured, and other thinking I'm maniacally aggressive because I find opportunities to bluff in situations that most players wouldn't bother. These assessments seem contradictory, but both are essentially correct.) I think this weakness usually stems from the fact that most players simply haven't learned to think about poker in this way. However, for some players it may be that this is yet another example of conflicting motives like we saw in the first few examples. That is, it is certainly fun to try to outsmart your opponents (rather than just balancing your own range), and so it seems likely that players will put a bit more effort into that aspect of the game than is really called for.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
What is one piece of advice you would give to a beginning player?
I've been using this blog to answer questions that I got during the Mathematical Poker talk I gave last month. In the coming week, I'll answer two or three other questions that I did NOT get. They are sort of standard interview-type questions that I thought I might have to answer during the talk, but they didn't come up. I feel like answering them anyway. The first one I'll address is how what advice I would give to beginning players. I am assuming they will be playing no limit holdem.
If I really had to give only one piece of advice, it would be to play as low stakes as possible and fold almost everything as soon as possible. Most new players play way too many hands, most of which they will have no idea what to do with. Even good players would lose if they played that many hands, and new players will probably lose way more with them.
However, the answer really depends on what you hope to get out of poker. The above advice is good if your goal is to play and lose as little money as possible. However, many players will have other goals. For example, if you have played very little poker and your goal is to:
1. Make money. My advice is: don't play poker. You'll probably lose because your opponents are probably better than you.
2. Get better at poker. First, read a lot. If I can give more than one piece of advice: think about your own hand ranges with each action you take. (If your opponent knew your strategy, would he be able to figure out what you have?) Third, keep track of your results and, if you play online, keep track of your statistics.
Fourth, play lots of hands and raise a lot. (This puts you in the action and gives you lots of experience and you will learn how your opponents react to you. The downside is you will probably lose a lot of money in the meantime.) Fifth, play high stakes. (Again, you'll lose a lot, but this is the fastest way to learn how to win at these stakes.)
3. Get better without losing so much. Same as the previous answer, but skip the fifth point above and moderate the fourth point. I would still advise playing hands that yield slightly -EV because this is a good way to gain experience.
4. Have fun but don't lose too much. Think hard to try to figure out what your opponents have and try to exploit them. If this isn't fun for you, you probably do not like poker. Don't try to trick your opponents too often, because this will lose you money. Play very low stakes, fold a lot, and raise a lot. Folding a lot is not fun, but it is absolutely essential to avoid losing a lot. Make your raises bigger than the size of the pot. If this means putting in more than one quarter of your stack or your opponent's stack, just go all-in. This makes it very hard for better players to take advantage of you.
*****
I didn't get into UPenn Wharton statistics or UMD economics. Those, along with JHU biostat, were probably my only chances at an academic career. I'm still waiting to hear back from three other PhD programs that are less competitive. If it doesn't work out, I always have poker to fall back on! Perhaps I could become a professional blogger. (Or I could try to get a late application in somewhere, like GW econ or UMD Law.)
*****
I signed up for a free Game Theory course offered by Stanford.
If I really had to give only one piece of advice, it would be to play as low stakes as possible and fold almost everything as soon as possible. Most new players play way too many hands, most of which they will have no idea what to do with. Even good players would lose if they played that many hands, and new players will probably lose way more with them.
However, the answer really depends on what you hope to get out of poker. The above advice is good if your goal is to play and lose as little money as possible. However, many players will have other goals. For example, if you have played very little poker and your goal is to:
1. Make money. My advice is: don't play poker. You'll probably lose because your opponents are probably better than you.
2. Get better at poker. First, read a lot. If I can give more than one piece of advice: think about your own hand ranges with each action you take. (If your opponent knew your strategy, would he be able to figure out what you have?) Third, keep track of your results and, if you play online, keep track of your statistics.
Fourth, play lots of hands and raise a lot. (This puts you in the action and gives you lots of experience and you will learn how your opponents react to you. The downside is you will probably lose a lot of money in the meantime.) Fifth, play high stakes. (Again, you'll lose a lot, but this is the fastest way to learn how to win at these stakes.)
3. Get better without losing so much. Same as the previous answer, but skip the fifth point above and moderate the fourth point. I would still advise playing hands that yield slightly -EV because this is a good way to gain experience.
4. Have fun but don't lose too much. Think hard to try to figure out what your opponents have and try to exploit them. If this isn't fun for you, you probably do not like poker. Don't try to trick your opponents too often, because this will lose you money. Play very low stakes, fold a lot, and raise a lot. Folding a lot is not fun, but it is absolutely essential to avoid losing a lot. Make your raises bigger than the size of the pot. If this means putting in more than one quarter of your stack or your opponent's stack, just go all-in. This makes it very hard for better players to take advantage of you.
*****
I didn't get into UPenn Wharton statistics or UMD economics. Those, along with JHU biostat, were probably my only chances at an academic career. I'm still waiting to hear back from three other PhD programs that are less competitive. If it doesn't work out, I always have poker to fall back on! Perhaps I could become a professional blogger. (Or I could try to get a late application in somewhere, like GW econ or UMD Law.)
*****
I signed up for a free Game Theory course offered by Stanford.
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