Posts Tagged ‘game theory’

Verlyn Klinkenborg, who regularly contributes interesting and well-written little essays  to the New York Times Op-Ed page, writes today about four-way stops and what a surprisingly successful tidbit of human cooperation they are:

What a four-way stop expresses is the equality of the drivers who meet there. It doesn’t matter what you drive. For it to work, no deference is required, no self-denial. Precedence is all that matters, like a water right in Wyoming. Except that at a four-way stop on the streets of Rancho Cucamonga everyone gets to take a turn being first.

The underlying theme here is nothing less than the importance of  rational games playing to a functioning society. As poker players, we tend to focus on game theory’s competitive applications in zero-sum situations, but game theory is equally as applicable to cooperative interactions that realize non-zero-sum benefits. (For more on this subject, see my review of Robert Wright’s Nonzero.)  Read the complete post...

The player that I ended up sucking out on yesterday was the reason I was sitting in this 40/80 game. I didn’t recognize his name, so I sat in and started playing a bit. It quickly became apparent that he was one of the most loose and aggressive players I’d ever played with. My HUD showed him running at something like 45/32/9, which was telling even over a small sample size. I had never seen him fold to a continuation bet, either.

Not that he was terrible. He actually seemed to play reasonably well post-flop, but against good players, I just don’t think it’s going to be possible to show a profit playing 45% of your hands at a 5-handed table. Still, figuring out how to adapt to such aggression was tricky. Here’s a hand I’m still not sure about:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $80.00 BB (5 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com  Read the complete post...

My tournaments results have been pretty good the last few months, culminating most recently in two PCA seats and a win in the FTP $300 Saturday 6-Max. I attribute this improvement to a disciplined effort to avoid bringing the aggressive play needed to win in high-stakes cash games over to a tournament setting where my opponents are far more passive and far less tricky.

Last night, in the $300 rebuy FTOPS event, I was rolling along nicely and then fell off the wagon:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 170/340 Blinds 25 Ante (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t13511)
UTG (t19356)
MP (t20140)
CO (t18855)
Button (t12236)
Hero (SB) (t19919)
Hero’s M: 30.18

Preflop: Hero is SB with 8, K
4 folds, Hero bets t1020, BB calls t680

Flop: (t2190) 9, 2, 7 (2 players)
Hero bets t1333, BB raises to t3125, Hero raises to t18874 (All-In), BB calls t9341 (All-In)  Read the complete post...

Robert Wright’s Nonzero is not a poker book. I picked it up because it claimed to apply game theory to human evolution, both biological and cultural, and to offer a sweeping and prophetic account of humanity’s history and future. Yes, that’s a pretty ambitious goal, and the author acknowledges as much. Wright does indeed provide a fascinating, fast-paced survey of the history of human civilization that, despite occupying only one-third of a not particularly long book, rarely feels rushed. His predictions for the future are spotty, which can be forgiven, but he could at least provide more guidance about what the world’s leaders ought to do to continue to pursue mutually advantageous relationships. As nothing more than an educated layperson, I found Nonzero to be a quite compelling introduction to the continuing evolution of human civilization, with at least a glimpse into what the future might hold as well.  Read the complete post...

Small Stakes No-Limit Hold ‘em
by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn

Professional No Limit Hold ‘Em, Volume 1 (PNLHE) is one of my all-time favorite poker books and the one that I recommend to anyone looking to get started to the game. I eagerly awaited the publication of Volume 2, which was rumored to deal with short-handed games and more advanced concepts, and mourned its loss when its authors parted ways with Two Plus Two Publishing.

Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn ultimately self-published the book now known as Small Stakes No-Limit Hold ‘Em (SSNL), and it’s even better than I’d hoped.

Read the full review including my “Two-Minute Recommendation” in the Book Reviews Section of the site.

Read the full review

Even though I’m too sloppy/lazy/uneducated to work out the details of complicated problems, I’m quite interested in the mathematics of poker. I feel like I do have a broad grasp of the game theory that underlies many situations and can use that to aid in my decision-making. Recently, I’ve been curious about how to quantify exactly the value of seemingly abstract concepts like position and implied odds. I think I may have come upon a sketch of how to work some of it out, though I doubt I’ll ever follow up on it.

We start with the “exploitability”, the idea that there is something about how you play that an opponent could potentially take advantage of. Conversely, “unexploitable” means that there is nothing an opponent could do to take advantage of how you play. Importantly, unexploitably is not always the most profitable way to play. Often, you will do something exploitable in order to exploit something exploitable an opponent is doing.  Read the complete post...

OK, this has sparked a lot of interest among commenters, so I think I will offer a few of my own thoughts on the hand after all. In terms of what durrrr may have been thinking and why he was successful, I don’t have a lot to add to the very good analysis I already linked. Instead, I’ll focus on what I think Greenstein and Eastgate could have done differently.

(If you don’t know the details of the hand, Geoff recently shared a link to a YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SKwhb_nJVQ)  Read the complete post...

Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 2 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

Hero (SB): $2,434.50
BB: $3,954.50

Pre-Flop: T K dealt to Hero (SB)
Hero raises to $30, BB raises to $100, Hero raises to $255, BB calls $155

Flop: ($510) 3 A 2 (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets $199, BB calls $199

Turn: ($908) K (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets $480, BB folds

Results: $908 Pot ($0.50 Rake)
Hero mucked T K and WON $907.50 (+$453.50 NET)

If he called the turn, I was shoving the river. Position, deep stacks, and judiciously employed small bets are a lethal combination. It’s exceedingly difficult for him to show up with enough big hands to prevent me from exploiting him with river shoves.  Read the complete post...