How does poker compare to bridge?

[tread]

Wasn't sure the correct forum for this question, hopefully this is it. I am having a disagreement with my grandmother, who is a life long bridge player and thinks gambling is "evil" and has no experience playing poker.

I have previously told her that to play poker properly takes a great deal of mathematical and psychological skill and that I feel I can do these things well enough to post a modest profit or at least break even in the long run.

Here is a quote from a recent letter from her: "I have watched some of the many TV shows about poker lately and concluded that no brains are employed here, only deceit. Who is the better con man, what a waste! Learn to play bridge and see how smart you have to be to play well."

Obviously there are many ways to respond to this, the first being that TV show only show hands they feel are interesting in order to create entertainment for the general public, but since I am not willing to make such an uninformed opinion about bridge as my grandmother did about my game and no one I am aware of in my entire generation plays bridge, is there anyone who can give me an objective comparison on the level of strategy, mathematical calculation, and psychological evaluation required in playing bridge?

In essence, is it easier to "play bridge well" or "play poker well", understanding that luck is a major factor in poker outcomes where it plays no factor in bridge (that I am aware of).

Thanks in advance for responses....

[EjnarPik]

I answered "Bridge", but it is in no way a simple question. I doubt that more than very few people are qualified to answer that question. I am not one of them, as my knowledge of poker is far to limited. (According to my partner, that goes for bridge too.)

Ejnar Pik, Southern-Docks.

[CurryLover]

I play both games, although I don't play much bridge anymore. I think the answer to your poll is bridge. If you had phrased the question 'which requires more skill , poker or bridge?' then I would have said it was impossible to answer. However, since the question specifically mentioned intellect, I voted for bridge.

Of course it all depends upon your definition of 'intellect'. My dictionary defines it as 'the capacity for understanding, thinking, and reasoning'.

Poker obviously does require you to think and reason. However, I believe a lot of a good player's edge in poker (esp. big bet poker) comes from other attributes which are more based on feel, intuition and experience than logical thinking and reasoning. For example, you may make a play because you detect weakness in an opponent either from his betting or from his mannerisms. Think about a time you have done this. If you are honest, you must admit that the mental processes you used were not especially intellectually advanced compared to a bridge master calculating the play of a full thirteen hands or a chess master spending 30 mins analysing every variation of a complicated piece sacrifice. Your thought processes were probably based more on instinct and experience than this.

I can't remember where I saw this (it was probably something by Sklansky) but I read somewhere a very interesting point that seemed to make sense to me regarding this sort of question. It said that great poker players are not necessarily 'great minds', but that they are nearly always 'super-quick minds'. You don't have time for the sort of intellectual thought during a poker hand that you would have during a bridge hand or a chess game. You have to make a decision quickly and based on incomplete knowledge. The best players are those whose decisions are correct most often. Since it is a game of incomplete knowledge, and since decisions have to be made so quickly (you can't sit at the table and calculate to the nearest percentage the exact chances of an opponent holding a certain hand, your exact EV etc. and in big bet poker this is not always the best way of thinking about things anyway) poker is more about feel and instinct than bridge, or other mind games like chess. This does not mean that it is easier to play or a softer game - just that the type of skills needed are different, but no less challenging.

I have read a lot of books on poker since I started playing. I have also read quite a few books on bridge and a huge amount of books on chess. What I have noticed is that reading even a 'difficult' poker book like Theory of Poker is easier than reading a bridge or chess book (I don't mean that it is easy to truly understand everything in it though). When I used to read chess books it was incredibly draining intellectually, especially if you were reading them without a chess board. You have to constantly visualise all the variations in your head, rather like playing a game of chess without looking at the board. It's a bit easier with bridge books since any one deal is only 13 hands long, but it is still a task to keep the whole play in your head whilst reading. Poker books on the other hand are easier to read because, whilst you still need to think hard about them, you don't need to keep so much in your head whilst doing so.

I don't think there are as many things to think about when making a decision in a poker hand as there is in a bridge hand or chess game. However, there may be a small number of things that you must get absolutely right, or you'll lose all your money. Your opponent goes all-in and you have to decide if he's bluffing. If you approach the decision from a totally intellectual perspective you will not be a winning player in my opinion. Of course, you need to review the betting pattern throughout the hand and make logical conclusions based on this. You also need to calculate the odds if this is appropriate (if there are more cards to come for example). However, I think a top big bet player like T J Cloutier will not be thinking purely in a logical, scientific sense when making this critical decision. He will be reading the other player, letting his instinct and experience guide him as well as thinking hard. He will not be there making his decision based on a long series of game theory-type calculations.

I actually think that LIMIT poker is probably more of an intellectual game than NL/PL poker. I certainly don't think it is more difficult though, just as I don't think bridge is more difficult than poker. However, in limit you often have a lot of little things to consider and can make the 'correct' EV choice based on analysis and logic. IN other words, it is very technical and logical most of the time. Big bet poker is not like this. It requires more than just logic or intellect.

I think big bet poker is the most challenging and demanding game I have ever played. I don't think it requires as much intellect as other games like bridge or chess, but I do think it requires just as much skill.

[jrz1972]

I used to play regularly in bridge tournaments, although I had to quit when I moved to a part of the country without a serious bridge infrastructure. I started playing poker mainly to replace bridge as a competitive outlet.

Bridge definitely requires more skill than poker. It is not close. Just to add to what's already been posted by others:

1. There are plenty of poker books that provide an expert-level summary of the entire game (like HEPAP, say). There are no similar books for bridge, because each individual component of the game (bidding, declarer play, defense) is so difficult that theres no way to write an expert-level book on all three topics without having it run a bazillion pages. Most expert-level books on bridge deal with one particular topic within one particular area of the game (e.g. overcalls, the law of total tricks, squeezes, defensive signals, etc.). I am not aware of any similar specialization within the poker literature; it isn't needed there.

2. I am a reasonably competent bridge player, but I cannot play with even one drink in my system. Even though I am sober, I find myself making careless mistakes with even one alcohol molecule in my bloodstream. By way of contrast, I routinely play at Party with two sheets to the wind, and when I review my hands the next morning I am quite happy with my play. (Okay, granted this is Party, but still my dropoff with poker is pretty minor compared to what it would be with bridge).

3. People routinely multitable at poker. I have run across people who might simulateously play at 6+ holdem tables. The idea of anybody doing the same thing at bridge is just unimaginable. Bridge requires far, far more concentration than poker.

None of this is to say that poker is easy. It isn't. I agree that poker is primarily a skill game, it requires work to get good at it, and I enjoy it for that reason. Rather, I want to stress that bridge is an incredibly difficult game, orders of magnitude more difficult than poker IMO.

[bigpooch]

Agree! As another clear-cut example, suppose all the hands
of the final table at the WSOP were written up in a book and
compare that with all the hands in the final match in the
Bermuda Bowl; it's not even close! /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Piers]

Bridge is a tactical game, consisting of a sequence of logic problems to be solved quickly and accurately. After learning how to play there is not much more to learn about Bridge, all you can do is get better at solving the problems.

Poker is a complete contrast, while you are playing there is usually not much to think about, you do most of the clever stuff away from the table. Poker’s skill depends much on understanding, and research away from the table is key to any attempt to improve.

Poker is a much deeper game than Bridge, but much more subtle so it is very easy to miss the point. While the skill factor in Bridge is very much in your face and imposable to miss.

[Andy B]

She still writes letters. How quaint. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

If she thinks that gambling is evil, there is probably nothing you can do to convince her that anything poker-related has any merit whatsoever.

Luck is not an insignificant factor in rubber bridge. It is minimized in duplicate, but it isn't eliminated.

Most of the math that I've run across in reading about bridge is a lot less involved than the math that I've run across reading about poker. Maybe I wasn't reading the right bridge books. In a typical daily bridge column, though, there will be something where declarer can deduce from the bidding that West started with precisely four spades and East with two, so it is twice as likely West started with the King so you run the finesse through him. Since any unseen card can only be in one of two places, probability calculations in bridge are never as involved as they are in poker.

Psychological considerations are far more important in poker than they are in bridge.

I think bridge is the tougher game. I have tried to be good at it and failed. I have tried to be good at poker and have achieved modest success. My temperament is much better suited to poker than to bridge. Bridge requires partnership confidence, while poker is every man for himself.

My mom watches the poker on TV, trying, she says, to figure out what I find so appealing about it. Thing is, the big tournaments are so far removed from the limit cash games I play in that there's really no comparison.

One does have to use one's brain to deceive, no? Poker is a cerebral game, but I don't think your grandmother is terribly interested in seeing that.

Also, it's a lot easier to find a good poker game than it is to find a good money bridge game.

Here's something I just thought of: a case can be made that poker is more complex than chess, because while a machine has been developed that can beat Gary Kasparov at chess, no machine as yet has been developed that can beat a tough full ring game. I am completely ignorant about bridge-playing machines. Can someone comment?

[Andy B]

[ QUOTE ]
I am not aware of any similar specialization within the poker literature; it isn't needed there.

[/ QUOTE ]

To the contrary, most poker books only deal with one game, maybe two. I am not aware of a good book that covers HE, stud, stud/8, and Omaha/8. But you're right that there aren't any books devoted to, say, turn play in limit hold'em, or river play in seven-card stud. I think there could be, though.

I have tried to become good at bridge and failed. I've tried to become good at poker and have had some success. Certainly from my vantage point, poker is easier. One of my weak points is remembering cards. I have trouble remembering what all was played during a bridge hand, and I have trouble remembering folded cards when I play stud and stud/8. I'm better than I used to be, but a long way from good. This doesn't hurt me that much stud, but it absolutely kills me in bridge.

Part of the reason that I gave up bridge a while back is that I am an absolutely insufferable partner. I get really aggravated when people don't bid as I would have them bid, or when they fail to lead my suit when I want them to. Thing is, I am nowhere near good enough to be so impatient with people. A few years ago, I was at this thing wearing a name tag, and a friend looked at it and said, "your last name's Blackwood?"

"Yeah."

"Did I know that?"

"Apparently not."

"Do you play bridge?"

"It's been a while."

"Are you free tomorrow night?"

And so I was the twelfth at this bridge party. There was one good player, myself, and ten people who were bad enough that they thought I was a good player. It was there that I discovered the secret to dealing with incompetent partners, one which was not available to me at music camp or the MIT Bridge Club, and that is beer. You can't play bridge with alcohol in your system; I can't play without it. /images/graemlins/grin.gif Alcohol doesn't usually help my poker game much, and I seem to feel the need to demonstrate this to myself rather forcibly once in a while, but sometimes I am able to strike a balance where it enhances my aggression without unduly affecting my judgment. It's a tough balancing act, though, and I'm not very good at it yet. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

I couldn't multi-table bridge; I can't even play one table. I can't multi-table poker for that matter. There are people, though, who can play multiple games of chess simultaneously. Surely there is someone out there who can play multiple bridge hands at the same time. My buddy Bob T. of Small-Stakes Hold'em Forum fame played a bit of bridge in his day. He tells me that when he played in tournaments, at the end of the day, he could tell you every bid and every card played for the entire day. I think with that kind of capacity, he could probably multi-table bridge against incompetents like me. The people who multi-table poker aren't doing it against world-class players, y'know.

[Scotch78]

I have studied both poker and chess in depth, and can say without any doubt that chess is more difficult. Not only was chess more difficult for me to learn, but my natural skills are better suited to chess than poker, and even with that advantage I still put more energy into chess and got better at poker. What enables a computer to play great chess, but not great poker, is the fact that all information is available in chess. As to bridge, I am not an experienced player, but from what I do know, I'd say bridge is much harder to excel at.

Scott

[Bob T.]

This is a tough one. It is like saying, which requires you to be a better athlete, tennis or soccer?

Additionally, the question itself leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Which game requires more intellect to be a successful player?

You could probably spend a long time debating either of the highlighted terms, before you could come to any real aggreement on those.

But I think that bridge takes more study, and more practice, and also a better understanding of the principles involved to achieve the same level of expertise at both games. You see a lot more poker players with less experience having a lot of success than you would see in tournament bridge.

I also think that there in some ways, poker is a much more complex game than bridge is. I think that in a higher percentage of situations, the absolutely correct play, can be figured out in bridge. While in poker, the need to take into account the opponents playing style and mental state, mean that the correct play at one time, will not be the correct play facing the same set of actions at another time. I think that in some ways, this makes poker a more difficult game.

Tournament bridge with duplicate boards removes a lot of the luck from the game, and at the top levels, there results are more predictable than at the top levels of tournament poker.

I wonder if we played duplicate headsup poker, with partners playing the opposite cards, if the same partnerships would always appear in the final matches. I think there is an idea that would be interesting, and would also produce a lot of practical theory about the play of a poker hand.

I think bridge requires more logic, and straightforward analysis, while poker uses more intuition and situational analysis. I know right now, I find poker a lot more interesting.

Good luck,
play well,

Bob T.

[Piers]

[ QUOTE ]
I have studied both poker and chess in depth, and can say without any doubt that chess is more difficult. Not only was chess more difficult for me to learn, but my natural skills are better suited to chess than poker, and even with that advantage I still put more energy into chess and got better at poker

[/ QUOTE ]

I think there are a couple of points that you are overlooking.

Bridge and chess players are better at bridge and chess then poker players are at poker. For this reason it is much easier to become a relatively good poker player if you take to trouble understand the game properly. The reason for this is that what makes a good chess or bridge player is much clearer than what makes a good poker player. Poker’s skill element is hidden.

Mostly for the above reason it is much easier to convince yourself that you are a good Poker player when you are not then it would be for Chess or Bridge. This effect is exaggerated by the fact that skill at Poker is less directly rewarded in terms of results then Chess and to a much lesser extent Bridge.

Winning a chess game, is very closely correlated with skill. There is hardly any correlation between winning a Pot at poker and skill at the game. In bridge there is a strong correlation between making a contract and skill at the game, and if a contract goes off dispute accurate play it is usually clear what the problem is.

[ QUOTE ]
What enables a computer to play great chess, but not great poker, is the fact that all information is available in chess

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the main reason that computers play better chess, is that there is a larger commercial demand for chess playing computers. Further Poker programs need to keep a database of statistics on its opponents, which gives an extra technical problem. Online poker is changing this however, but in what way is still unclear.

[ QUOTE ]
As to bridge, I am not an experienced player, but from what I do know, I'd say bridge is much harder to excel at.
Scott

[/ QUOTE ]

I am not so sure, I think it is much easier to convince yourself that you excel at poker than bridge. It is complely clear cut for Chess.

[jrz1972]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I am not aware of any similar specialization within the poker literature; it isn't needed there.

[/ QUOTE ]

To the contrary, most poker books only deal with one game, maybe two. I am not aware of a good book that covers HE, stud, stud/8, and Omaha/8. But you're right that there aren't any books devoted to, say, turn play in limit hold'em, or river play in seven-card stud.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's what I mean.

One of the bridge books sitting on my shelf is a book on balancing by Mike Lawrence. (For the uninitiated, "balancing" refers to a situation where your side chooses to enter the auction for the first time after your opponents' auction dies out at a low level). It runs a little over 200 pages in something like 8 point font, with zero white space, making it approximately as long as SSHE. The best analogy I can think of with poker is if Miller had decided to write a SSHE-length book on something like blind defense. There are many important things to say about blind defense, but not 200 pages worth.

[jrz1972]

[ QUOTE ]
Most of the math that I've run across in reading about bridge is a lot less involved than the math that I've run across reading about poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

Poker is definitely more math-drenched than bridge. All you need for bridge is a knowledge of a few common percentages (when to finesse vs. play for the drop, say) and the ability to count to 13. Poker involves a lot more in the way of basic probability theory and game theory. One of my favorite aspects of TOP is that it directly references both Bayes' Theorem and mixed strategies. Good stuff.

[CurryLover]

That is a sensationally good idea from Bob T!

They always say that a top class player could beat you with his cards, and also beat you with yours. This would be the way to test it out. From the perspective of poker theory it would be invaluable in many ways.

[fnord_too]

[ QUOTE ]
in·tel·lect ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ntl-kt)
n.

The ability to learn and reason; the capacity for knowledge and understanding.
The ability to think abstractly or profoundly. See Synonyms at mind.
A person of great intellectual ability.

[/ QUOTE ]

I voted for poker. I think the skill set required to play poker successfully is larger than that of bridge. More to the point, I think you have to "learn and reason" a lot more in poker. Every person you play against in poker necesitates learning; in bridge, you do not play the players, just the cards. You sometimes try to manipulate your opponents with tricky play, but these tactics, to the best of my experience, are not aimed at specific individuals.

Furthermore, poker encompasses many many games. If you were to name one game, say limit hold'em, I think I would still vote for poker because every time you sit down you need to adapt to the table conditions. Of course with bridge you have contract bridge versus duplicate, but still the differences between the two (in how you bid and play) are not as great in my oppinion as say the differences between Limit HE and PLO.

I do not play very much bridge any more. I used to play fairly often, but was never what one would term avid. Given that caveat, here is my impression of the game: Bridge is a complex game (both in bidding and hand play), but it is a game that one can master. You may need to get creative in bidding, and may need to navigate some tricky lines in the play of a hand, but for the most part there are best bids (for whatever convention one uses) and best lines, and these bids and lines are clear to a master and not really opponent dependant.

There is no such luxury of mastery in poker. You need to constanly adapt to opponents and table conditions, and the right play in one instance can be the wrong play in another (that is, all the tactical information, cards you see, bets you see, are the same, but player conditions are different). Add to this that as a successful poker player, you need to go where the action is. Bridge will be bridge in 10 years, but the most popular poker game could be something none of us have imagined 10 years from now, necessitating learning a whole new game. Yes, the tenets will be the same, but the mechanics could be completely different.

[Monty Cantsin]

This is a great thread. Very interesting, many great responses.

/mc

[LokiV]

You will find that top level poker players are incredibly skilled at poker, chess, backgammon, bridge, etc.

Games theory and ability is very real and traceable. If I'm lucky, game theory related to genetics will be the subject of my Ph.D thesis when that time comes.


In response to the poster who said they couldn't play bridge while drinking: I have never played it (I refuse, it involves my father) but I've played (and won) chess matches under dubious circumstances.

I'd never play poker while drinking though. So that part is relative? Or maybe bridge is just 100000x more complex! But like I said, I'll never play it.

[pzhon]

In bridge, the amount of information typically available from previous rounds of play far exceeds that in poker. The possible lines of play are more numerous in bridge than in poker. However, these don't mean bridge is more demanding than poker. In both games, you have to defeat other people, and if your opponents can't handle the full complexity of the game, you don't have to, either. The rules of chu shogi (http://www.shogi.net/rjhare/chu-shogi/chu-intro.html) are far more complicated than the rules of shogi (http://www.shogi.net/shogi.html). There are many shogi players, but almost no one plays chu shogi competitively, so it should be relatively easy to learn to beat chu shogi players.

I believe a greater fraction of poker players than bridge players are considered good. Further, this is true for those who have played and studied for one year. In poker, players are respected if they win consistently, even if they are winning against horrible players. In bridge, players are respected if they consistently place well in tournaments against good opponents. Of course, respect is subjective.

[Blarg]

What an interesting thread.

Loki's idea that game playing ability applies across multiple games and is genetic is interesting. Separating the factor(s) that make one a good game player from mere raw intelligence, as perhaps measurable by an I.Q. test, would be the interesting part. Can less intelligent people triumph in games because of peculiar clusters of attributes -- beyond merely a special facility for mathematics? It seems so, at least in poker. But isn't the proper application of those attributes a confirmation of intelligence as well? Aggression and when to apply it and against whom, understanding opponent psychology ... someone with an I.Q. of 100 successful at the latter two aspects of poker could conceivably be a long-term winner against much more supposedly intelligent opponents. So how closely is good game-playing ability really related to standardized measures of intelligence? I'm not sure Brunson and Sklansky wouldn't have some disagreements on that.

[Kopefire]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the main reason that computers play better chess, is that there is a larger commercial demand for chess playing computers.

[/ QUOTE ]

From an algorithm/game-theory point of view, Chess is the easier problem to compute, because it is a game of total information where-as poker is a game of incomplete information.

That doesn't mean that poker is easier than chess for human beings, though, as human beings don't approach problems the same way computers do.

[Kopefire]

I have grown up playing cards . . . my grand-father taught me to play euchre and bridge before I was in kindergarden. I was playing with him for money in local clubs by the time I was 7. I've played spades, hearts, bridge, and a variety of other games over the years. Some of them I've played fairly well . . . while i've yet to become a life-master in bridge like my grandpap, that's largely because I don't like paying membership dues to play games. All that said, i've only been playing poker a few weeks.

My take on the difference is that bridge is the more demanding game because you have to be certain not only that the play you are making is a good play from your perspective, but that it is a good play from your partner's perspective _and_ that your partner will see it the same way you do.

In poker, because it is a single-person game not a partner game, there is a lot more room for individuality. If you are loose-aggressive, you can make that work for you and be a winning player if you're really good at table selection. If you're a super-tight player the same holds true. There is more room for individual style in poker.

However, there is far less room for miscalculation in bridge than in poker. In poker you can mis-read your opponents pre-flop and still manage to bail on the flop bet before you loose your shirt. Sure, you might be down the hand, but it won't cost you the session.

In poker you can make a hundred such tiny mistakes a night and still be a winning player.

Bridge is a lot less forgiving of small mistakes. A few miss-queues a night is all that seperates a bad loss from a great win.

So which is more intellectually demanding? Honestly, i think it's bridge.

In poker you don't even have to pay attention to what your opponents are doing for the most part. All you have to do is wait for it to be your turn to act and guage if your cards deserve a raise, call or fold. While the great players do pay attention to the others at the table, it is the case that many very decent players do not. Heck . .. look at mutli-tabling! You could never multi-table bridge. It's just not doable.

I'd note that the enjoyment in bridge comes, I think, primarily from the intellectual challenge. While the enjoyment of the game in poker comes not from the intellectual challenge but the freedom of multiple correct choices.

[Monty Cantsin]

[ QUOTE ]
If I'm lucky, game theory related to genetics will be the subject of my Ph.D thesis when that time comes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Karl Sigmund's book Games of Life (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140242090/qid=1095135632/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-5550738-0675135?v=glance&s=books) is maybe too pop-sci/layperson for you but man I loved this book.

/mc

[LokiV]

[ QUOTE ]
So how closely is good game-playing ability really related to standardized measures of intelligence?

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent question Blarg.

IQ is not the only measuring point of the human brains ability. One less focused on measurement would be 'Emotional Intelligence' or EQ. This is a lot more intangible than a strict IQ rating but an easy relation to the poker world would be some players ability to read their opponents and judge their hand strength.

An intangible like that is something definitely not neccesary in a strict logic came like chess. Therefore it can be said that chess is a function of purer intellect than poker.

I should note that the idea of EQ vs. IQ is a debated and not formalized topic as of yet. Some people I've talked to consider it complete BS and their opinions have been the norm for many years. The problem with these topics is in trying to condense what we could probably write hundreds of pages about into a few paragraphs. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Kopefire]

Given that IQ has so many demonstrable problems with regard to non-biased testing, it's hard to imagine any functional formal measurement of EQ at this point in time; let alone comparing them to one another.

[TonyBlair]

IQ is a waste of time anyway. Who cares? I want to see skills in action - music, sport, good card playing, whatever - and perhaps try to emulate. People are just good at different things. If I'm being honest, if I met the person with the highest IQ in the world, odds on I'd think he was a complete turd.
As for bridge, I don't play but the vote wouldn't let me defer so I voted poker. You may disregard.