Replying To Daniel Negreanu

[David Sklansky]

This is a repost of how I replied to Daniel in a different thread. Its too important to have it lay buried because of the subject matter, because of Daniel's stature, and because it should teach people a lesson. Namely, don't criticize someone based on second hand information. Especially if first hand information is readily available. (This appears to be the second time Daniel has done this by the way. The first being when he heard an innacurate report about my comments about his head up challenge.)

Someone originally posted that it seemed I was saying in an essay in Poker Gaming and Life, that it can never be logically right to risk your life. Daniel quoted him, then gave an example that seemed to refute me. But he never read the actual chapter. What follows is the original post, Daniel's response and my response to him.

(Original Post)
"I have read "Poker, Gaming & Life" by David Sklanksy (is it socially acceptable to admit this in this forum?) and most of it seems logically correct, and is interesting, but one bit I disagree with

Basically DS says that it is illogical for some one to take a 1 in 1000 chance of dying for $25,000. He reasons no one would accept $2.5 million and take certain death, and this has the same mathematical EV as the 1 in 1000 case, therefore it is illogical to take the 1 in 1000 chance of dying for any amount of money.

I would quote a few paragraphs, but I'm not sure about the legality and morality of that or whatever

anyway, before I get into this, I thought I'd let Sklansky confirm or deny this claim, maybe I have missinterpreted what he was trying to say or whatever, but it looks to me like a big mistake "

(Part of Daniel's Reply)
"It's comments or posts like these that show me how disconnected some people can be to human emotion. By not factoring in human emotion you'll often come to the WRONG conclusion as David did here. Here is an example where taking this chance would be ENTIRELY logical:

A father see's that his son needs a transplant or he will die. He has no medical insurance and no way of paying for the procedure for his son which costs $25,000.

"Some goofy scientist tells him that if he can retrieve a rare poisonous bird from the wild he'll give him $25,000. Let's say the odds of him dying in the process are 1000 to 1.

Would it be "illogical" for this father to try and save his son?

Love isn't logical David."


(My reply to Daniel)
Here is what I wrote in Poker Gaming and Life:

".....If you are not willing to take $100,000 to be fired, you shouldn't take a one in 100 chance of being fired to gain $1000.........It should be obvious why this same type of analysis FALLS APART when you are risking your life,...."

Later on this:

"There are times however when it is logically correct to risk your life. I will mention three:

1. When you are trying to prevent something even worse than death, such as torture OR YOUR CHILD DYING.

2. When you are trying to prevent something almost as bad as death, such as slavery, and the risks of dying are small.

3. When not taking the risk results in an even greater risk of dying for you or (if you want to be altruistic) FOR OTHERS."

[Daniel Negreanu]

Hey good one David! Obviously all I read was the OP and that's clearly not accurate according to what you wrote. My apologies for assuming that he gave us all the correct information.

It doesn't however change my overall opinion that you'll often underestimate human emotion when related to poker. That's just in your nature being such an analytical person.

Your strengths lie in numbers rather than understanding human emotion and WHY people do what they do. In a nutshell, you being a math major versus a physchology major has a significant impact not only on how you play poker, but also how you approach thinking about it.

That's not really a knock on you at all. Not everyone excels at the same things. For example, I spend much less time worrying about the mathematical side of the game and much more time thinking about things like, "With John Doe being recently divorced, how is that going to change the way he plays the river?"

IMO, to be a great poker player it takes a steady diet of BOTH types of thinking. I think you'd agree with that broad generalization.

[JoshuaD]

It would be really funny if "Daniel Negreanu" wasn't actually Daniel N, and just a really good gimmick account.

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
This is a repost of how I replied to Daniel in a different thread. Its too important to have it lay buried because of the subject matter, because of Daniel's stature, and because it should teach people a lesson. Namely, don't criticize someone based on second hand information. Especially if first hand information is readily available. (This appears to be the second time Daniel has done this by the way. The first being when he heard an innacurate report about my comments about his head up challenge.)

Someone originally posted that it seemed I was saying in an essay in Poker Gaming and Life, that it can never be logically right to risk your life. Daniel quoted him, then gave an example that seemed to refute me. But he never read the actual chapter. What follows is the original post, Daniel's response and my response to him.

(Original Post)
"I have read "Poker, Gaming & Life" by David Sklanksy (is it socially acceptable to admit this in this forum?) and most of it seems logically correct, and is interesting, but one bit I disagree with

Basically DS says that it is illogical for some one to take a 1 in 1000 chance of dying for $25,000. He reasons no one would accept $2.5 million and take certain death, and this has the same mathematical EV as the 1 in 1000 case, therefore it is illogical to take the 1 in 1000 chance of dying for any amount of money.

I would quote a few paragraphs, but I'm not sure about the legality and morality of that or whatever

anyway, before I get into this, I thought I'd let Sklansky confirm or deny this claim, maybe I have missinterpreted what he was trying to say or whatever, but it looks to me like a big mistake "

(Part of Daniel's Reply)
"It's comments or posts like these that show me how disconnected some people can be to human emotion. By not factoring in human emotion you'll often come to the WRONG conclusion as David did here. Here is an example where taking this chance would be ENTIRELY logical:

A father see's that his son needs a transplant or he will die. He has no medical insurance and no way of paying for the procedure for his son which costs $25,000.

"Some goofy scientist tells him that if he can retrieve a rare poisonous bird from the wild he'll give him $25,000. Let's say the odds of him dying in the process are 1000 to 1.

Would it be "illogical" for this father to try and save his son?

Love isn't logical David."


(My reply to Daniel)
Here is what I wrote in Poker Gaming and Life:

".....If you are not willing to take $100,000 to be fired, you shouldn't take a one in 100 chance of being fired to gain $1000.........It should be obvious why this same type of analysis FALLS APART when you are risking your life,...."

Later on this:

"There are times however when it is logically correct to risk your life. I will mention three:

1. When you are trying to prevent something even worse than death, such as torture OR YOUR CHILD DYING.

2. When you are trying to prevent something almost as bad as death, such as slavery, and the risks of dying are small.

3. When not taking the risk results in an even greater risk of dying for you or (if you want to be altruistic) FOR OTHERS."

[/ QUOTE ]

Something David leaves out is his part in this misunderstanding. Jazza made the original post on that thread. Then David replied to Jazza's post with this:

DS --
"There are various flaws in that EV calculation argument when the chance of dying is tiny and the rewards are huge."

David makes no attempt to clarify Jazza's description of the article. In fact he infers that Jazza's description is correct except for a flaw in a special case of it. Only later, after many people have responded based on Jazza's original post and based on David's original response, and only after Daniel Negreanu has taken the bait does David give the clear explanation he shows above:

DS --
".....If you are not willing to take $100,000 to be fired, you shouldn't take a one in 100 chance of being fired to gain $1000.........It should be obvious why this same type of analysis FALLS APART when you are risking your life,...."

If he had given this explanation immediately instead of the misleading one he did choose to give, "There are various flaws in that EV calculation argument when the chance of dying is tiny and the rewards are huge", there would have been no cause for confusion.

David did not choose to mitigate the damages from Jazza's innacurate post. Instead David chose to reply in a way that exacerbated the damages. Jazza made an accident possible, but David gave it the green light. A case could be made that David owes some apologies, not only to Daniel but to everyone who took the bait on that thread.

The reply shown by Daniel on this thread is NOT a reply to David's post on this thread. It was his response to David's finally revealing the truth on the other thread. It included an apology and a friendly opinion. David's response to Daniel's apology is his OP on this thread.

It would be nice to have Daniel's participation on these boards. I wonder if David will allow it.

PairTheBoard

[David Sklansky]

Hi Daniel,

Apology accepted (assuming you now buy the book.)

I'm also glad to see you come here. (It makes Mason more money.)

As to this:

"In a nutshell, you being a math major versus a physchology major has a significant impact not only on how you play poker, but also how you approach thinking about it."

I don't think about poker quite the way you think I do. You haven't played with me much, especially in games where I am comfortable with the stakes and I am not distracted. So you are relying on a non representative sample of observations, things I write, and conversations I've had with you. But my writings are purposely more technically oriented than my "thoughts" for the sake of my readers who are playing mainly in games where the fundamntals are so important. My conversations with you have been of the logical puzzle variety because they have definite answers, I find them amusing and you have done so well with them. (Oddly it almost seems like you are EMBARRASSED by the fact that only you and Howard Lederer got almost all of them.) But again you can't deduce from those puzzles what goes through my mind regarding poker strategy. It is definitely less technical than you assume. (There ARE some situations, notably all in preflop ones, where I believe one must defer to the math and am quite sure those who don't are costing themselves money. Harrington and Ferguson agree with me and if you don't, you're probably wrong. But situations like this are relatively rare.)

The main reason I feel compelled to dispute your quote by the way, is for the good of the readers of these forums. I am quite sure that 95% underestimate the degree of importance I place on non mathematical factors when playing higer stakes poker. And 98% underestimate the degree of importance you DO place on mathematical factors (especially in a ring game). You may not realize it yourself because it has become second nature to you. But you would be doing these readers a favor if you admit that most of your thoughts are NOT on whether an opponent is in the midst of a divorce.

[David Sklansky]

"David did not choose to mitigate the damages from Jazza's innacurate post. Instead David chose to reply in a way that exacerbated the damages. Jazza made an accident possible, but David gave it the green light."

Did you think this was like a TV show where I was trying to trap everybody? I didn't set the record straight because I forgot the gist of the chapter (which by the way relates to war more than anything else). I just reread it an hour ago and thats when I put up my post.

"It would be nice to have Daniel's participation on these boards. I wonder if David will allow it."

PairTheBoard

Are you OK? I'm starting to worry about you.

[David Sklansky]

"The reply shown by Daniel on this thread is NOT a reply to David's post on this thread. It was his response to David's finally revealing the truth on the other thread. It included an apology and a friendly opinion. David's response to Daniel's apology is his OP on this thread."

The original post on this thread was written before I knew Daniel apologized on the other thread. Daniel reposted his apology here. What are you trying to say?

[PairTheBoard]

DS --
"Are you OK? I'm starting to worry about you. "

That's so sweet of you to worry David. Yes I'm fine. Although you never know when I might need rehab for something like this:

Credit ThrysiodB
================
news story....A WEST NYACK, N.Y. MAN was found dead at his computer apparently the victim of trying to keep up with too many professional forums. Childress H. Wanamaker, 54, an account executive at a New York-based new media company, died of starvation according to the West Nyack coroner's office. Wanamaker's emaciated body was found by Loraine, his wife of 26 years, who told MediaPost she had been bringing her husband meals on plastic trays for weeks, but that he never took the time to eat them.

"He was glued to his computer 24/7," she said tearfully. "He was so afraid he was going to miss an opportunity to contribute a comment or start a discussion, that he just stopped eating." She added that Wanamaker's last words were "OK Picard, stick that in your pipe and smoke it..."

Computer forensic specialists from SUNY at Cortland discovered that Wanamaker was subscribed to 48 different forums and networking communities including one apparently having to do with the elderly called "oldtimers" and another apparently limited to just 100 people. They also found that he posted a comment into one forum or another on an average of two per minute every hour of the day for the past seven weeks.

"He felt under terrible pressure to be part of the online community," said his son, Lucian, who says he tried several times to get his father's attention and lure him away from the computer. "The only time he even looked up was when I told him I had seen Dane Madsen trying to steal his car out of the driveway."

Police found what appeared to be an organization chart taped to the wall of Wanamaker's den with lines linking small photos of people unknown to the police including a Tom Hespos and an Adam Boettiger. Neither is considered a suspect in Wanamaker's death.

"Once, I thought I had him," said Lucian Wanamaker, "when I said that mom had made cookies, but half out of his chair, he just sat back down mumbling something about two Roman gods; I believe it was Jupiter and Atlas having some sort of titanic battle. 'Let them eat PIE,' he bellowed banging on his keyboard."

Computer forensic specialists reported that there was no order or continuity to Wanamaker's forum postings. "It looks like he just sort of randomly commented on whatever was in the discussion string at the time," said Stephen Hall, CUNY-Cortland adjunct professor of intemperate and impulsive behavior. "He let nothing go by unchallenged by his own point of view, nor failed to respond to any other community member asking for advice or a new job. This consumed not only 24 hours a day, but also, apparently, his physical health."

In what must be a record, Wanamaker was linked into to over 15,250 other community members, many of whom he exchanged notes with daily. He also contributed to 375 blogs and was expected to start an online column about the impact of interactive communications on health, when he died.

A virtual memorial service will be held online at a date to be determined.

--------------------
If anyone needs me, I'll be banging my head against the wall for an hour or two. I've got to knock some sense out of my head if I'm going to survive the next few years.
================


PairTheBoard

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
"The reply shown by Daniel on this thread is NOT a reply to David's post on this thread. It was his response to David's finally revealing the truth on the other thread. It included an apology and a friendly opinion. David's response to Daniel's apology is his OP on this thread."

The original post on this thread was written before I knew Daniel apologized on the other thread. Daniel reposted his apology here. What are you trying to say?

[/ QUOTE ]

I posted my comment after I'd read your OP but before I realized Daniel's reply on the other thread and Daniel's reply on this thread were made after my response on the original thread but before my reply to my response on that thread here on this thread.

PairTheBoard

[Jazza]

jeez, did no one see this in my OP?

[ QUOTE ]
maybe I have missinterpreted what he was trying to say

[/ QUOTE ]