Learning to Play Poker

[Student]

It's true, because you're integrating limited experience with your readings! I too am a rank beginner, and I knew I had no basis for understanding, except that I'd watched TV poker for a couple of years, before I began playing poker for money (tiny amounts) starting April 6th.

I've now played about 5,000 hands, which I understand is just about nothing! Yet I have somewhat of a fair basis for readings now, based on ENRICHED experience. By comparison, there are those who have 100,000 hands, and just about all of these hands have been on an unenriched basis. They're just not getting the full experience, not to belittle the considerable amount of time they've devoted to their poker.

I'm 67 years old, and new to poker. I just don't have all that much time to waste, if I would obtain my income goals, and then apply this income generating capability over maybe 30 years of income producing play (ahem!!!). Then too, who of us has time to waste?

The majority of the approx. 360 posts I've done to 2+2 represents serious efforts I've made to learn NL HE, and in a hurry! Documented are the travails of a true beginner, yet it's being done by a person who has been a scientist, and an inventor of a number of major mathematical conceptions. To say I'm thinking outside the box is something of an understatement. In this thread I'll shed light on the learning process, consistent with my 2+2 alias, namely Student. More can be learned by simply reviewing some of these 360 2+2 posts, though many of them are somewhat lengthy. But learning is the game, isn't it? I'd think a lengthy useful article would contain more educational content than a brief one, all else being equal. You decide!

Dave

[ QUOTE ]
Documented are the travails of a true beginner, yet it's being done by a person who has been a scientist, and an inventor of a number of major mathematical conceptions. To say I'm thinking outside the box is something of an understatement.

[/ QUOTE ]

Speaking of which, has anyone published a book that (probably a stupid question, but I haven't come across one...books on everything I think of nowadays) that is setup like Dan Harrington's books, insofar as each problem shows you your position, size of your stack...cards dealt pre-flop...situation awareness (tight passive game..player to your right, though, is a wild man, etc) and approaches each move from a game theory decision tree perspective (integrals and all)?

I wish there were a program out there that would allow me to enter in a setup and look at each decision...call...raise..re-raise...fold...from an EV/mathematical game theory perspective...

Working with numbers all day makes me kind of lazy for this endeavor [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

I love Dan's books for the problems....but have an affinity for numbers, like you, so would love to see something like this....seen anything like this, sir?

[Student]

I was getting ready to respond to your other thread, when I noticed you'd entered my thread too. My answer in this thread will come more easily to me than the other, so I'll start with this one and then go to the other. By the way, thanks for your contributions; they harmonize with how I'm proceeding with poker.

Mastery of the mathematics of poker isn't all that hard. In fact, even in those instances where it gets hairy, the consideration is that there is no practical way of proceeding, given nature of the game. It's one thing to bring forward to a particular hand a theoretic conception, and then spend 2 hours making the computations, and quite another to make this a practical thing in a hand that involves many dozens of individual decisions, all of which are done in the course of the one minute that the entire hand requires to play out.

Several outfits have ranked most internet players, keeping a database on all of us. For perhaps $20/month an individual can share this database. Internet casinos resent the unfair advantage that some players have over their fellow players at a table, so they are attempting to figure out countermeasures. Most of these comprise checking your computer to see which applications you're running in the background; if you're using software that's on the prohibited list, the casino might easily enough threaten to bar you from their casino.

Two (or more) persons, living even thousands of miles apart, can conspire to get onto one table, and share hand info, using the telephone and a separate line. Of course these individuals are cheats, in the full sense of the word, and they deserve hanging (as in the Old West!).

Again and again I've found myself in a situation where my mathematics training permitted coming up with a solution, where none seemed apparent. My Graduated Payment Mortgage (GPM) invention was dictated by necessity. In fact, in late 1973 I used a GPM to buy my present home, and a year later I bought 1,700 apartments in Dallas; the GPM is the 5th dimension of finance, and broke the Gordian Knot that precluded so many real properties from selling. The GPM permitted sharing future benefits of ownership with the seller; the wise buyer required a significantly lower initial payment on debt financing as the tradeoff.

There are applications that I can envision, whereby I can secure advantage in poker, using applied mathematics. I haven't done it, but intend to. After all, I'm still playing 1/2 cents NL HE, which I intend to do until such time as I honestly feel that I have positive expectation of winning, when I sit down to play poker!

Just today I thanked Pov for his linkage to a free site that does more than PokerStove does (another free poker site). In fact, the linkage was published just today, so I suggest you search messages I've put onto 2+2 for today, using the author search capability of 2+2. It was Pov too who published a table of hand expectancies for every one of the 169 possible hands, and for tables with 2 (head-to-head), 3, 4, etc thru 10 players at the table. Pov did this in another of my threads. I wish you well, if you're hunting for it! But it was done early on, and I have only 360 threads on 2+2 so far. I think Pov's table was prepared using PokerStove (and applying lots of elbow greece!).

Hope this helps!

Dave