Poker vs. Go

[BobC]

I shouldn't rise to this but..

go here:
http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rake.php

the 50 cent max for rake is for Fixed Limit poker at low stakes. The point with limit (although it was not my game) is that at these stakes you will see a lot of flops because you can play a lot from mid position.

At No limit the stake the rake caps at $4 for $0.25/0.5. But the point isn't the fraction of all those lovely big wins you make. The pain is the the continuous leak of 5% of hands that just see the flop..

From FT:

2 $0.05 $1 in Pot $0.50 $1
3 $0.05 $1 in Pot $1 $1.50
4 $0.05 $1 in Pot $2 $3
5-9 $0.05 $1 in Pot $3 $4


players :: rake per dollar : max pot. RIT correction (ignore)

On a 0.25/0.5 games sb + bb = $0.75. One 4bb raise in late and a call is $2.75 in the pot. Even if one player folds after this the house says thanks to $0.1. One CB and flat call and two passive checks on the river and you have $4.75 in the pot. The house says thanks for $0.20 - and nothing really happened!

Two player (HU) games get through 5 hands a minute - bigger tables get through a hand every one and half minutes. This is the reason for the low cap on HU games.

Sharkscope I hardly used - I was interested to see what Kim was up to. She is not a ring player to my knowledge so what you see there might be quite indicative.

As to 25% of poker players being long term winners, I will continually, but respectfully, disagree with this. No poker forums (who make money by encouraging people to play poker) or poker house will release or discuss the figures. There was a time when Poker Tracker could be set to "mine" tables, The idea was that you would open up 40 tables and let poker tracker run for week. At the end of that time you had a very good profile of everyone currently playing on the site. This technique was used to select tables (avoid sharks) and get position on players. This data mining is no longer allowed but of course I did it when it was and I stand by my figures. About 5% of players are "winners" in the long term. There are quite a few breakeven players in that 5% who may be just content with rakeback and bonuses).

If you wish to disbelieve this figure and underestimate the extent of the risk then it's your money...

[xDragon]

uhh, no, 50 cent rake applies for all HU tables, even the 3000/6000 limit HU or 500/1000 NL HU tables. you can refer to websites all you want, i can give you actual experiences of being at those tables and seeing the rake. so you show the rake being 5 cents for every dollar. if your figures are accurate, $4 max cap at 5 cents a dollar, that means you need 80 dollars in the pot to take the max rake, and that doesnt happen all that often at 25 cent 50 cent. even though uits on the site i dont buy that max rake is 4 bucks. as i recall i never saw rake being more than 3 dollars anywhere. according to your figures it explains pretty much what i said in my post.

youre only playing 20% of hands if youre a decent player, a decent bit of those pots arent even going to the pot. so youre complaining about 10 cents being taken out of the pot the 10% of the time youre in the pot? if youre playing for any amount of money at all, that money is negligible.

[xDragon]

you should still easily be able to make more than minimum wage playing 10 tables.

this sentence is quite revealing in itself. the dream of income w/o regular work must be tempting for quite a number of young go players for the same reason as becoming a go professional looks attractive at first sight (however out of reach for most). in both cases it isn't easy money and wishful thinking won't help you in either endeavour. ("rake doesn't matter" is a strong indication for wishful thinking.)

the disturbing side of this is to see some players trying poker upon realising that they won't turn professional in go. it would not surprise me if an impressive percentage of younger mid-dan upwards players who dreamt this dream also play poker or even more poker than go these days. (based on anecdotal evidence).

normally i should be thrilled that people have so much misunderstanding about poker...but alas i doubt that you play it.

[aokun]

The games are quite dissimilar in structure, but there is a close relationship in a couple of key points that makes me not at all surprised that both games appeal to the same people. I recall comments made by two go professionals.

Kim Myungwan 9p, in a class in LA, said that creativity was a crucial element of playing go well, and the better or higher level you play at, the more important it is. Playing at his level, your opponent is liable to know all the patterns, be able to do all the calculations and be able to read ahead as far as you can. You have to find some other thing, some new thing, or you won't do well. My thought about his comment is that playing a creative move, you don't know the outcome. You are deliberately taking the game into an unexplored branch of the tree, thinking, at least partly intuitively, that it will work out better for you than your opponent. That is a risk, possibly a heart-stopping one, possibly a career-ending one. To be able to make those moves, you have to have some understanding of and control over your own emotions. The calculations are different, but the emotions involved and the decision, are very similar to making a big move during a poker hand or tournament.

The other was Takemiya Masaki 9p when he was giving his lectures in Portland. He said players should stop trying so hard to win, and should instead make the move they want to make, looking afterward at whether it was a good. Do you want to win or do you want to get better, he asked. Nothing to do with poker, but a lot to do with intuition. Your mind can perform many more calculations and make many more and better inferences than your conscious mind is aware of. Takemiya 9p was strongly recommending learning to pay attention to, interact with, even subtly train, your intuition, to play go better. It is a powerful ally. A similar dynamic applies in poker, where the game is ludicrously simple but the betting conflict is devilish in its layers. Some authors have said in poker you are playing your opponents, not your cards. Reading them and reading their cards from them, is a complex and intuitive task. Another author described how many poker players go to the poorhouse "ignoring the frantically blinking lights of experience." Your mind should, by the end of an evening of playing with someone, be able to make a better guess than from the cards and bets alone, whether the guy actually has three jacks. Whether you do or not depends on whether you can hear, interact with and improve, your intuition.

[swatters]

Edit, more relevant to recent discussion: When one talks about earning money with poker and compares it to a job, one frequently forgets things like paid vacation, paid sick-leave, healthcare, pensions etc (of course the effect of these varies by country and legislation, in Finland it means a coefficient of 1,5-1,6)

They're also forgetting that good jobs help build resumes and skills. These in turn lead to better jobs in the near and far future.

Many jobs also contribute to society.

[jdl]

This is a good chance to ask a question about poker that's often bothered me. I do have a vague notion of how to play, but I haven't played poker and my experience of it is limited to the many scenes in westerns and the like (i.e. not regulated tournaments).

Maybe there's a lot of artistic licence being used with the rules there, but I can't quite get why the rich man doesn't always win automatically. Why can't he just say, "I raise you 25 million dollars" which no-one can match?

Others answered this already, but in case you want to read more about it the term you're looking for is table stakes.

[jdl]

I can make more than the minimum wage by playing poker even now and it is tax free with no overhead.

If you're in the U.S. gambling profits are not exempt from taxation. I paid taxes on all of my poker profits. The IRS is the one agency you do not want to screw around with.

[Archivist]

I hate poker.
I love go.

That's pretty much all I have to say about it, other than leaping into a rant about betting card games.

[zazen5]

Poker and Go are different on many levels.

In go generally luck is not a factor. You can do everything right in poker and oftentimes lose. The chances of this occurring are much less in go.

Poker rewards deception. Go is better for mental training in that it teaches you how to play assuming the other player can see everything you do. Not so in poker. Poker is a game of incomplete information. Which would you rather play a game in which you can lose money when you make no mistakes or a game which teaches you how to play with no deception and yet your opponent is powerless to stop you? To me nothing could be more thrilling about the idea of mental training teaching you how to take steps to win, your opponent can see these steps and cant do a single thing about it.

I have played poker and understand pot odds and hand odds. There are many different types of poker players. Yet I have found the whole game is bs and rewards slimeballs and trickery.

Poker doesnt even compare to playing Go. Poker is a close in interest to listening to women talk about female topics or watching paint dry.

Additionally, poker causes physical tension whereas go gives positive energy and relieves stress. No wonder poker is grouped with other negative vices.

[Hsiang]

There is a new twist in Poker: the Duplicate Poker. Or most specifically, Duplicate Texas Hold'em. This game is played almost like regular Texas Hold'em, except each hand is replayed at several tables and the scoring is based on what you do relative to others sitting in the same position at the other tables. It is just like Duplicate Bridge.

Competition can be carried out among individuals or among teams. I will give you an example of a team competition.

In a prototype team competition, six people from six teams play each other at one of six tables. Members of each team sit at different positions at the tables. Each hand is replayed at all tables. The chips are reset after each hand. The hands are scored on a 1-6 basis: whoever wins the most (or loses the least) in a particular hand, relative to other players sitting at the same seat at the other tables, gets a 6; the next gets 5; etc.; exactly like in Duplicate Bridge. So, for each hand, every player on a team gets a score somewhere between 1 and 6. When all the hands are played, the team score is the sum of all its members' scores on all hands.

(Side quiz 1: how do you extend this to individual competitions?)

This form of Poker reduces the factor of luck greatly and is what the International Federation of Poker (http://www.ifpoker.org/news/ifp-preside ... ampionship) is using to apply for membership in IMSA and SportAccord.

Where is the skill factor? Let me give you a simple example. Let's say on a particular hand one player gets a King pair, another gets a Jack pair. The other four players all throw in, and the open cards are of no consequence. Obviously the K-pair wins the hand. But that does not mean he wins the duplicate score: the skill is in how he extracts the most chips from the J-pair holder. The winner in this case is whoever wins the most chips with the K-pair and whoever loses the fewest with the J-pair. Both of these players get a 6.

(Side quiz 2: why Texas Hold'em and not other forms of Poker?)

The first-ever Duplicate Poker World Championship will be held this Fall in London. Go is invited to stage a parallel demonstration event. Well worth looking forward to!

[BobC]

Poker and Go are different on many levels.

In go generally luck is not a factor. You can do everything right in poker and oftentimes lose. The chances of this occurring are much less in go.

You do have to play a long game in poker. Variance is very harsh - but this is a feature of all gambling games.

Poker rewards deception. Go is better for mental training in that it teaches you how to play assuming the other player can see everything you do. Not so in poker. Poker is a game of incomplete information. Which would you rather play a game in which you can lose money when you make no mistakes or a game which teaches you how to play with no deception and yet your opponent is powerless to stop you? To me nothing could be more thrilling about the idea of mental training teaching you how to take steps to win, your opponent can see these steps and cant do a single thing about it.

Yes. To win at poker you need to put a value on position and betting structures over pot odds and hand odds. Over a very large number of hands between players - it is largely position and post flop work that a player has any control over. This is usually viewed as deception but that is the only real edge you have long term.

I have played poker and understand pot odds and hand odds. There are many different types of poker players. Yet I have found the whole game is bs and rewards slimeballs and trickery.

[/quote]

Fair point, well made...

Poker is a close in interest to watching paint dry.

Again you show some considerable insight here. I am beginning to respect your opinion

Poker is a close in interest listening to women talk about female topics

No.no no. This is an awful thing to say... No game is that bad...

Additionally, poker causes physical tension whereas go gives positive energy and relieves stress. No wonder poker is grouped with other negative vices.

I'm not sure go relieves stress...

[danielm]

One thing poker has in its favour is that it works a whole lot better as a casual game. Which is why I like to play it with friends or online, but not for (significant) money.

I believe that competitive poker players probably also enjoy the game very much, but as for making a living from online poker sites, I just get the impression that most people (or all?) get to the point where it becomes a mindless grinding of mathematical evaluations. It does not sound particularly more enticing than a comparatively repetitive office job.

[hyperpape]

In a prototype team competition, six people from six teams play each other at one of six tables. Members of each team sit at different positions at the tables. Each hand is replayed at all tables. The chips are reset after each hand. The hands are scored on a 1-6 basis: whoever wins the most (or loses the least) in a particular hand, relative to other players sitting at the same seat at the other tables, gets a 6; the next gets 5; etc.; exactly like in Duplicate Bridge. So, for each hand, every player on a team gets a score somewhere between 1 and 6. When all the hands are played, the team score is the sum of all its members' scores on all hands.

It sounds like a good game, but resetting the chips removes a lot of room for strategy in pot limit or no limit play.

[Mef]

One thing poker has in its favour is that it works a whole lot better as a casual game. Which is why I like to play it with friends or online, but not for (significant) money.

I believe that competitive poker players probably also enjoy the game very much, but as for making a living from online poker sites, I just get the impression that most people (or all?) get to the point where it becomes a mindless grinding of mathematical evaluations. It does not sound particularly more enticing than a comparatively repetitive office job.

Poker is great as a casual game in that it is easy to be more social (have a larger group playing), has a low barrier to entry (someone who has never played before can be dealt into the hand, and at least participate), and a low barrier to victory (at least in the short-term....anyone can get lucky on one hand and win). Go can be a social game if you have the right group in the right spot, but it really suffers in the latter two regards.

[Hsiang]

It sounds like a good game, but resetting the chips removes a lot of room for strategy in pot limit or no limit play.

Yes, indeed. But you must have that feature to ensure the "duplicate" nature of the game. For example, if at one table a player drops out after losing all his chips, the next hand is no longer duplicated on all tables!

You can fix this with no-limit play of course, but there are other consequences. For example, if the chips are counted cumulatively, a player who just lost a big hand will have a hard time recover from it. You could limit that and only count X number of hands together; that would be a different game. Or you could count the chips won and lost in each hand separately, then you might as well reset the chips after each hand. ^^