My thoughts on Gabe's thoughts on Josh's post

[elindauer]

Ha ha. Ok, seriously now.

There is a common belief that the games must get tougher and tougher forever. This belief seems to be based on two thoughts:

1. fish get busted and stop playing, making the game tougher
2. players get better as they gain experience, making the game tougher


However, as any casino owner can tell you, there are two powerful counters to these arguments. They are:

1. New people are born. They start out sucking at poker.
2. Bad players keep getting paid, adding more dead money to the pool


To make the point, casinos have been around for a long time. Every argument that suggests that poker will just get harder and harder to beat can be used to suggest that the casino's edge in blackjack should get worse and worse as time goes on. The game is no doubt much better understood now than it was 30 years ago.

But you know what? Walk into any casino and you will find a bunch of morons still donking it up. Sure, some players have gotten better, but the casinos are still killing the game, despite being at an inherent rules disadvantage.


I'm hedging my bets in poker as a career, because I concede that maybe one day the bots will settle in and the game won't be beatable. However, there is the distinct possibility that online poker will not only survive but actually flourish with dead money, just the way casinos continue to flourish every year. People just like to gamble.


So yeah, continue to work on your game. Great. But let's not get to dramatic about how we'll all have to adapt or see our winrates drop to zero. That's probably not the case.

my 2 cents.
eric

[DeeJ]

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because I concede that maybe one day the bots will settle in and the game won't be beatable.

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I was going to post a new thread with the subject line above but I've already been spiggoted for flippant behavior once today [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

Bots are my concern too. But I think that the online rooms will get cleverer to the point that they will ensure that their project "DERB" succeeds (Don't Enrich Ray Bonert). After all, they have billions and a business to lose, but cheaters only have a few bets to win.

I think the games are tougher now precisely because hundreds and hundreds of people (like the 2+2ers Josh worries about) have moved up from .5/1 to 3/6 to 15/30,20/40 etc in the last two years. So the shark population has grown....so too has the fish, but I think it's true that the proportion of shark:fish has increased since the 'crazy loose' 15/30 days.

[elindauer]

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I think the games are tougher now precisely because hundreds and hundreds of people (like the 2+2ers Josh worries about) have moved up from .5/1 to 3/6 to 15/30,20/40 etc in the last two years. So the shark population has grown....so too has the fish, but I think it's true that the proportion of shark:fish has increased since the 'crazy loose' 15/30 days.

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I agree with you that the games have gotten tougher. I think many people see this trend though and project it out into the future expecting it to continue. My own take is that we saw an influx of bad players because of changing "market conditions", ie, all the poker that was suddenly on TV.

Players got hooked, they in turn told their friends, who in turn started up home games... these new players flooded the online market, and we saw super-soft games. That was great, but this sudden influx of new players represented a spike, and it has of course tapered off to a more equlibrium-like level.

There will always be new players and new money flowing into all forms of gambling though. It's true that the games have gotten tougher as this surge of new players has died down, but it's not going to go to zero. It's just returning to a steady state where the numbers of players getting busted by the sharks is similar to the number of new players and new bankrolls being generated all the time. If you want to know what that steady state looks like, go into any casino and look around at how many people are throwing away their money. Plenty, right?

I predict that a leveling off of this effect will occur very soon. I'm not concerned that the dead money is going to dry up.

my 2 cents.
eric

[tonysoldier]

The other thing to keep in mind is that as the number of fish decrease, so do the number of sharks. So, those that remain do better.

[mike l.]

"1. fish get busted and stop playing, making the game tougher
2. players get better as they gain experience, making the game tougher"

it's like saying, darn us bartenders are gonna have some trouble because:

1. alcoholics get drunk too much, it messes up their life, and they stop drinking.
2. alcoholics tend to get better at managing their disease and become functional again.

i play primarily against addicts. some are more functional. others are straight up sick, and whenever they have any money, they spend it trying to win as many pots as soon as possible.

the games will be good forever.

that said, i agree with everything josh says.

[CardSharpCook]

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The other thing to keep in mind is that as the number of fish decrease, so do the number of sharks. So, those that remain do better.

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Remember in math class the graph of deer to wolves? Bascially, you have two equal sine waves, but the wolves have a +3 attached to them. Meaning the wolves experience the exact same population swings, but they do so 3 time units after the deer. Deer explode -> wolves eat deer -> wolves explode -> too many deer eaten, deer die -> not enough deer, wolves die.

[alThor]

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Every argument that suggests that poker will just get harder and harder to beat can be used to suggest that the casino's edge in blackjack should get worse and worse as time goes on. The game is no doubt much better understood now than it was 30 years ago.

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While I agree with what you were saying about poker, you picked a bad analogy. Modern BJ card counters would kill to have the conditions of 30 years ago. And (as poker players like to put it) it's not close.

alThor

PS How tempted was I to post that in a new thread.... [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[DeeJ]

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Deer explode -> wolves die

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Exploding deer are dangerous to all woodland creatures [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

your point is a good one. I learnt this on a simulation program with foxes/rabbits.... the only problem is if you have a better hunter (bot) than the fox (shark) or the rabbit (fish) both foxes and rabbits get scarce.