2+2=WCP???

[Evan]

First of all I'm not sure if this is the right forum to post this so if anyone thinks it would be better suited somewhere else then tell me or feel free to repost it yourself.

Anyway...I was just eating lunch and semi-day dreaming when this thought popped into my head. If the 2+2 community as a whole played against a WCP or a table of WCP's (Chan, Negreanu, those kind of guys) could we hold our own?

Here's what I mean...imagine that the other player(s) play normally but whenever it was "2+2's" turn to play the decision would be made in a similar way to how discussion on posted hands goes. Everyone would examine the situation, give their ideas and then we'd come to some sort of consensus.

If we did this do you think that we'd be able to compete with or even beat these WCP's? Basically what this question comes down to is whether many decent/good/very good players can combine to equal a truely great player capable of playing at the highest level. I think this would clearly be a case of diminishing returns (each additional player added to the 2+2 entity would have less impact than the player added before him), so at what point would the returns on additional players be infinitesimally small such that the ability of X players working together would equal the ability of X+1 or ever 2X, 3X or 100X players? Obviously the actual point in number of players at which that occurs is not important, but what skill level do you think we could acheive together?

I'm not sure what I think yet, that's mainly why I posted this. I'd really like to see what some of you say and what your reasons are behind it. Thanks.

[Messy Harry]

Damn bro, you're really taking it to another level!! /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Ayn Rand]

Basically what this question comes down to is whether many decent/good/very good players can combine to equal a truely great player capable of playing at the highest level.

They cannot.

[bicyclekick]

Combined, we'd kick the crap out of em.

We have plenty of world class players and those guys couldn't compete with an entity that got to discuss every action.

[PITTM]

im pretty sure some guy named fossilman or something is pretty good at no limit tourneys... /images/graemlins/wink.gif

rj

[Evan]

Let's change the problem a little bit and just take SS forum regulars (off the top of my head...me, bison, sthief09, sfer, johnny boom boom, cdc, stellarwind, j.r., etc. I know I left a bunch of people out, this list is not meant to be all inclusive). A lot of these guys are very good players, I don't think any of them are world class.

Do you think that a collection of these players could beat the pros? What if we let the pros have extra time to think about their decisions like we would?

I'm not sure if these questions have any significance other than curiosity but I think its pretty interesting, and who knows maybe this will lead to some useful thought.

[Michael Davis]

The simple answer is no. A collection of very good players could not equal a world class player on the play of a given hand. This is because there are things that are available to no members of the group of very good players that are available to the world class player.

Now, that being said, it is possible that there would be more world class players if you were allowed to discuss and debate every move for a few hours before making it. But just as in any field, if one person is an expert, no amount of non-experts coming together can generate new knowledge.

But, there are world class players here.

-Michael

[Evan]

[ QUOTE ]
But, there are world class players here.


[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I kind of meant my question to exclude them 9although I didn't say that so my fault). But I think your answer about non-experts is basically how I intended the question to be interpreted.

[thirddan]

i think that if the 2+2 team was given enough time to consider every possible scenario each time they acted then they could beat a table of WCP, but if they had the same amount of time as everyone else then no way...

As for the original question including all posters, i think that it would basically be Ed/Mason/David/Clark/Dynasty/ElD since i don't think any other poster would make better decisions, so the fact that the rest of us mortals are there wouldn't really matter...

[Evan]

How do you think we'd do if it was just us mortals (i.e. not guys like mason, david, ed, diablo, etc.) like the guys I listed in one of my other posts (not just those guys obviously, but others form that same group)?

[Danenania]

I think given unlimited time for discussion that the 2+2 SS team could beat the WCP table fairly easily. Taking situations away from the table and analyzing the hell out of them would take away almost all of the psychological advantage a WCP might have. The 2+2 team would also make way fewer mistakes.

But given a reasonable time limit I think we'd get rocked. The thing that makes these guys WCP's is their ability to consistently make very good decisions on the fly.

[thirddan]

[ QUOTE ]
i think that if the 2+2 team was given enough time to consider every possible scenario each time they acted then they could beat a table of WCP, but if they had the same amount of time as everyone else then no way...


[/ QUOTE ]

Given enough time we could anaylyze all possibility and run sims blah blah, i think we could beat them, but level the time given and we'd get our asses handed to us...

[Rah]

[ QUOTE ]
I think this would clearly be a case of diminishing returns (each additional player added to the 2+2 entity would have less impact than the player added before him

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you are referring to the economic term of diminishing *marginal* returns. Diminishing returns actually mean that the pool of knowledge decreases by each extra 2+2er.

[turnipmonster]

correct me if I'm wrong, but most everyone on SS focuses on beating the hell out of party 1/2-5/10. we are talking about guys who are used to extracting maximum value from clueless fish. we are not talking about people who are expert hand readers and are used to playing solid, thinking, aggressive opponents and trying to exploit specific weaknesses.

the little I know of high limit pros is they specialize in beating people that may even be mid limit pros and winning players, but maybe play too straightforwardly or have a few flaws like they fold too much or something.

in short, I think it's a completely different universe, and I think whatever group you could put together would probably get destroyed.

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]
correct me if I'm wrong, but most everyone on SS focuses on beating the hell out of party 1/2-5/10. we are talking about guys who are used to extracting maximum value from clueless fish.

[/ QUOTE ]

And most of them don't even do that particularly well.

scrub

[Evan]

...and George goes below the belt.

By the way guys, he's probably mostly refering to me there.

[Popinjay]

it all depends on who is allowed to discuss, and by that i mean only if the actually skilled mid-high posters were involved

[PITTM]

"This is similar to my works in that anyone who reads it is sure to be an [censored] for at least a month afterwards."-Ayn Rand.

where is that from?

rj

[bicyclekick]

If it was just SSers they'd get the [censored] kicked out of them because they'd play too ABC and the pros would kick the [censored] out of them for that.

[Reef]

I know for a fact that a room full of non-Grandmaster level chess players could not take a single game off of Gary Kasparov in 10.

However, the 2+2 board, even if a little to the disadvantage still has the edge of bad beats! Not to mention the times the pros get outplayed. It happens in poker, just not in chess.

[Evan]

can someone explain waht exactly makes someone a chess grandmaster? i never really understood this. is there some kind of test or something?

[Pepsquad]

Maybe I'm thinking a little too deeply about this but in my opinion you'd actually have a better chance of beating the Pro all by yourself and with every 2+2er added to the think-tank, your chances would decrease. Your game will be much more unpredictable left up to little 'ol you. With a pile of 2+2er's making each decision the Pro would know that every move we made would be the most optimal "by the book" decision. And he/she would crush us.

[sublime]

i want to be the guy who splashes the pot


that is all

[Evan]

ummmm....sold. anyone else want a position in this thing? as long as we're at it, i'll be the guy who builds elaborate towers out of our chips.

[sublime]

we need somebody with a deep voice to say "bet" "check" etc.

i guess since most of us have never met we could just pick somebody who types in bold letters on occasion.

[Pepsquad]

I'LL DO IT.

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]

can someone explain waht exactly makes someone a chess grandmaster? i never really understood this. is there some kind of test or something?

[/ QUOTE ]

Here (http://chess.about.com/library/weekly/aa03a25.htm) is a long article about the chess ranking system. A good friend of mine in college was an extremely talented chess player, and when I made the mistake of asking him that question one night, his answer took half an hour...

The official rules are Here. (http://fideonline.com/official/handbook.asp?level=B0101)

scrub

[sthief09]

no that's me... the Trop was only spreading 2/4 at one point over the weekend, and my friends hadn't gotten there yet, so I had no room. I sat down and I bought 10 racks of white and made the greatest pyramid ever

[spamuell]

[ QUOTE ]
If it was just SSers they'd get the [censored] kicked out of them because they'd play too ABC and the pros would kick the [censored] out of them for that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Kick, I think this is complete BS.

The reason that SSers play very ABC is because in the vast majority of cases, it's the best way to extract money from bad players. There's no point being tricky.

If it was a game of limit hold'em (online, to eliminate physical tells or anything of that nature), I think we could take on some WCPs and it would be close. When it comes down to it, they really wouldn't be able to outplay us that much, it isn't like we've never heard of a check-raise bluff or calling the flop with nothing with the intention of raising the turn to win the pot. It wouldn't that hard to see through some of these moves, we'd probably just end up using game theory to work out with which range of hands it would be correct to call down and with which we should fold.

WCPs are just people who are very good at making decisions, fast. They don't have x-ray vision and provided we mix it up, they will not find it that easy to read our hands.

[Michael Davis]

I agree with you that many SS are good enough to adjust their play, but WCP would still make mincemeat of this forum in a limit hold 'em game.

-Michael

[Monty Cantsin]

Let's put some terms around this and see if we can find some WCPs who would be interested. I'm serious, I think this would be really fun and interesting.

The easiest thing to arrange would be heads up, but that doesn't really tap into the collective expertise of this forum. There are plenty of great heads up players among us but it's not our bread and butter as a groop, I think it would be ideal to put together a full table of WCP's and top-level pros.

In terms of execution we would need something close to real-time, a play-by-mail pace obviously wouldn't work for poker. I think we would want some kind of overall chess-clock style time limit plus a hard limit of no more than 5 minutes on any individual play, something like that.

The forum players would therefore have to be conversing in real-time in some kind of chat space. I'm picturing a chat application with a voting interface that allows us to collect and display everyone's current opinion of the best play.

The key is to avoid falling into simple majority rule. After all, the best play is often overlooked or misunderstood by the majority and then articulated in some convincing way by an individual and then eventually agreed upon by consensus. We would have to capture this process of argumentation and dialogue in real-time in order to accurately reflect the collective intelligence of the forum.

Perhaps some form of weighted voting where individuals each have a limited resource they can use to call attention to a particular alternative line. Something that allows an individual to halt the proceedings and point something out when it seems especially important and necessary, but only once or twice. I don't know.

Anyway, I tend to think we would give the WCPs a run for their money. One disadvantage we would have is that consensus thinking would tend to be too predictable (that's the ABC problem.) Individual quirks and eccentricities will mostly get ironed out, and that's bad because those glitches are useful in a game where everyone is trying to reverse-engineer everyone else's playbook. This is sort of related to the majority-rule problem discussed above.

But that may be more than made up for by the potentially awesome problem-solving capacity of a massively parallel self-organizing network of intelligent agents, in their underpants.

Let's do it.

/mc

[spamuell]

Monty, as fun and educational as I think it would be, I really doubt we could find WCPs to agree to this.

Also,

[ QUOTE ]

In terms of execution we would need something close to real-time, a play-by-mail pace obviously wouldn't work for poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why not? I thought that was exactly what we were talking about.

[Monty Cantsin]

No way, it has to be basically real-time. Poker has way too many plays over the course of a session, and most of them are way too default, for it to work as pbm. Also what are the other players doing during this time? Our goal is to play them at their regular game, not give them the chance to ruminate over every move and possibly discuss it with other players and run calculations etc. That would blur the difference we are trying to map.

/mc

[Paul2432]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe I'm thinking a little too deeply about this but in my opinion you'd actually have a better chance of beating the Pro all by yourself and with every 2+2er added to the think-tank, your chances would decrease. Your game will be much more unpredictable left up to little 'ol you. With a pile of 2+2er's making each decision the Pro would know that every move we made would be the most optimal "by the book" decision. And he/she would crush us.

[/ QUOTE ]

The optimal by the book decision will take the form:

Raise: XX% of the time
Fold: YY% of the time
Call: ZZ% of the time

The actual move would then be determined randomly according to the assigned percentages.

Paul

[TimM]

[ QUOTE ]
I know for a fact that a room full of non-Grandmaster level chess players could not take a single game off of Gary Kasparov in 10.

[/ QUOTE ]

This sounds a lot like Kasparov v World:

http://classic.zone.msn.com/kasparov/Home.asp

But Kasparov's advantage over non-GM players is much less in a "postal chess" type of game. Being able to move the pieces around on a board instead of having to visualize everything is a huge equalizer.

Of course this would not work for Poker at all, since it would take several lifetimes to get enough hands in to even out the short term luck factor.