How much information about poker strategy is really available?

[h11]

I disagree, for low level games at least. I was always a terrible poker player, in casual games, almost always lost, but read a couple books and then won on the internet, at low levels. Concepts such as "probability" never occurred to me as relevant before. I read Ed Miller's book on Small Stakes, changed how I played, and won at a faster clip.

Also, if stocks are priced efficiently, then we should expect managers, with transaction costs, to do worse than chance calculated without those costs.

I love reading anything Aaron Brown writes. He has a wonderfully clean mind which cuts through the underbrush to get right at the heart of issues.

[AaronBrown]

Thanks for the kind words, and you're right about the transaction costs.

Still, you have to be careful about assuming that a guy who won some tournaments (a) did it by skill more than luck, (b) knows how he did it and (c) wants you to know as well. I agree that there are some helpful poker books out there, but I also recommend Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb (disclaimer, he's a friend of mine, but he doesn't give me a cut on his book sales) to maintain healthy skepticism.

Ed Miller is a smart guy, a great player and a clear writer. But even so, I'd bet his book did more awakening than teaching. You can show a guy something, but if he doesn't have the talent, at best he can become an average player by diligent study. If someone has the talent, you just have to hint at the general principle, and he'll leap to the conclusion himself.

[BruceZ]

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From another field, I offer an old example I used to use in finance class, I'm sure you could update it. If you pick your stocks at random, you would do better than the market 50% of the time. There were approximately 1,024 (I cheated a little) open-end public mutual funds in the 1980s that invested in stocks. By chance, you would expect 1 to beat the market 10 out of 10 years. None did. 10 should have beaten the market 9 out of 10 years. None did. 45 should have beaten the market 8 out of 10 years, 3 did, and all three managers wrote books about how smart they were.

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One of the reasons that they might not do as well as a randomly chosen portfolio is that the mutual funds have certain constraints on the types of stocks and on the number of stocks they can invest in, and in what ratios. So the completely random portfolio may not be one that they could have chosen. A fair test would compare the performance of each mutual fund to that of a portfolio chosen randomly within the same constraints as the fund. Do you know the results of any study like this?

Also, did all 1024 funds invest exclusively in stocks, or did some invest in bonds too? Equity funds would typically be expected to under perform the s&p.

The basics are layed out.. As stated above, when I first played I didn't even consider all the basics to even have a chance at winning..

Honestly, I think some things are innate and can't be learned.. like reading players and memorization, you really need to train your brain

For the rest, the elements are out there, but since poker isn't a 1-dimensional step-by-step game.. it has ever changing variables and different styles, so all the information will never be available from all the top players

[patssoxceltsfan]

I actualy think that there is quite a lot of good literature in how to think at the table. The best two books are Harrington on hold-em. Super system 2 also contains a lot of good info, Brunson describes his style pretty well. It's a lot less mathamatical than Harrington's style, Brunson seems to focus on playing the man more than playing the cards but it gives a good look into an aggressive style.

The fact is that poker isn't chess, there isn't any calculation that tells you a guy will call a $150 bet but won't call $151 (there are calculations that will tell you that he's making a mistake if he calls the 151 though). There are only 52 cards and you'll see every combination of those in every position after only about 100 hours of play.

Poker is a huge guessing game, you read the cards, review the past action and make your best guess about what your opponent has and guess what to do from there. He then does the same. Fluctuations will be high in the short term but in the end the best guesser will win more money.

If there were some poker secret wouldn't we see a dominant poker champion? Wouldn't the same people win the money year after year after year instead of having huge fluctuations?

[benkahuna]

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If there were some poker secret wouldn't we see a dominant poker champion? Wouldn't the same people win the money year after year after year instead of having huge fluctuations?

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Not sure what sort of secret you're looking for (sounds like magic almost), but given the strong luck factor in poker and more prevalent in tournaments than in ring games I think consistent tournament winning would be very unlikely. The best you can do is look at tournaments over the longest term possible, hope it's statistically significant, and assign player skill levels based on those results.

[Shandrax]

The fact alone that Men the Master, Howard Lederer and Barry Greenstein have trained players from basically zero to championship-level shows that there is something the average player can't learn from books. I simply doubt that they were just incredibly lucky to chose the most talented people in the world to work with.

[benkahuna]

Didn't Greg Raymer get himself a main event win with a few years experience and reading lots of 2+2 books and hanging out here?

All you've shown is that some pros can train people to become good players. That's indicative of a student-teacher relationship (and in many cases financial relationships). I think there are a number of examples of people that became great players in the absence of other great players. Do you have to play against such players? Yep. Do you have to know what they're thinking at the table? Certainly. Do the most talented pros have to teach other players their SuP4 Sekr1t Inf0z for them to learn how to win? I don't think so. Does it help? Almost certainly.

[Shandrax]

Amazon was so nice to send me a big package with Poker Essays I-III and Sklansky on Poker. I have to admit that I love these books. Not only are they the perfect complement for the more theoretical works, they simply answer so many open questions about all aspects of the game.

Somehow I am getting the feeling that there information is there, it is just spread out more than I thought and one is facing the difficult task to put it all together.

[Big_Jim]

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If there were some poker secret wouldn't we see a dominant poker champion?

[/ QUOTE ]

Naw, the river will get him one of these times.