Poker Thoughts
I play a very important role in the poker ecosystem. I'm good enough to win at the local level, gathering up thousands of dollars which I then lose to real poker players on my periodic trips to big tournaments. I've never gone back through my yearly spreadsheets to do this calculation, but I think I am down lifetime despite being up at least 20 grand when I play within 20 miles of my house. I won the Washington State No-Limit Hold 'Em championship one year, but I have failed to cash in either of my 2 World Poker Tour events. I win way more than my fair share of the Sunday morning tournaments at Diamond Lil's, but the only cash I've won in World Series bracelet events is $1000 from a save when I was heads-up at the first table of a shoot-out event. Last year I got a nice bonus from work so I treated myself to a seat in the Main Event, but I only lasted 5 hands because my pocket aces got cracked by pocket sixes and I accidentally got myself pot-stuck before I could figure it out.
Malcolm Gladwell's latest book (which is quite good) is called Outliers and in it he offers up the theory that to be truly good at something, you need to put in 10,000 hours to learn it. While there are certainly some elements of luck and raw skill required for success, he's pretty squarely on the nurture / hard-work side of the spectrum and he defends his position well (better than the mediocre logic of Blink and esp. Tipping Point, anyway). I have not played 10,000 hours of poker and I'm not sure I want to. I do think I have the raw skills required to be at least good and maybe even very good at the game. However, I get bored by endless cash games and I also get frustrated by the high amount of variance in poker. In Magic, good players have a bigger edge over bad ones. I think the randomness, and thus the balance between skill and luck, is dialed in to a perfect spot and that's why to this day I still think Magic is the best strategy game in the world. You can't win as much money at Magic as you can at poker, but if we all got together and wanted to crown the King Thinking Gamer, we wouldn't play Hold Em ... we'd draft.
Anyway, I play poker probably once or twice a month and usually in tournaments of some kind. The extra structure and the inevitable crowning of one winner appeals to my competitive side way more than trying to eke out a few more big blinds. Between watching this season of High Stakes poker and following Dave Williams on Twitter, I've started eyeing this years WSOP schedule. They've got a $1,000 "Stimulus Special" scheduled for the first weekend (May 30-June 2) that should draw like 5000 people. I'm certainly not going to play the Main Event in my current unemployed condition, but $1,000 is much more manageable (also known as win-able locally). Tonight did not help matters, though. I played some $2 / $5 No Limit at the new Snowqualmie casino and I correctly identified and picked off the action player's all-in semi-bluff on the flop. However, his flush got there on the river to win the $700 pot and I ended the night down about that much. I try to tell myself that all I can control is whether I make good decisions, but it's tough emotionally when I also know I simply don't play enough hands to actually get to the long run.
I do watch a fair amount of poker on TV, which I find to be a more compelling, more gamer-friendly version of reality TV. It's got a recurring cast of characters and it's got interesting conflicts between them. Add in the rooting interest and the smug feeling of superiority that comes from always being able to see everyone's hole cards and that's enough to make it onto my DVR. I stopped watching the World Poker Tour once the final tables started filling up with almost entirely random players, but I find High Stakes Poker to be must-see TV. Tom Dwan has been extremely impressive this season. This hand in particular is worth 5 minutes if you enjoy poker at all. Not only does he win the hand, but he also wins a side-bet on which of his opponents actually had the best hand! In a later show he gets Greenstein to go all-in as a 3 to 1 dog. Greenstein sucks out to win over $500k, but Dwan just shrugs it off, rebuys, and later takes a $900,000 pot off of Greenstein.
Ok, I think I'm done steaming. Time to go to bed now ...
Malcolm Gladwell's latest book (which is quite good) is called Outliers and in it he offers up the theory that to be truly good at something, you need to put in 10,000 hours to learn it. While there are certainly some elements of luck and raw skill required for success, he's pretty squarely on the nurture / hard-work side of the spectrum and he defends his position well (better than the mediocre logic of Blink and esp. Tipping Point, anyway). I have not played 10,000 hours of poker and I'm not sure I want to. I do think I have the raw skills required to be at least good and maybe even very good at the game. However, I get bored by endless cash games and I also get frustrated by the high amount of variance in poker. In Magic, good players have a bigger edge over bad ones. I think the randomness, and thus the balance between skill and luck, is dialed in to a perfect spot and that's why to this day I still think Magic is the best strategy game in the world. You can't win as much money at Magic as you can at poker, but if we all got together and wanted to crown the King Thinking Gamer, we wouldn't play Hold Em ... we'd draft.
Anyway, I play poker probably once or twice a month and usually in tournaments of some kind. The extra structure and the inevitable crowning of one winner appeals to my competitive side way more than trying to eke out a few more big blinds. Between watching this season of High Stakes poker and following Dave Williams on Twitter, I've started eyeing this years WSOP schedule. They've got a $1,000 "Stimulus Special" scheduled for the first weekend (May 30-June 2) that should draw like 5000 people. I'm certainly not going to play the Main Event in my current unemployed condition, but $1,000 is much more manageable (also known as win-able locally). Tonight did not help matters, though. I played some $2 / $5 No Limit at the new Snowqualmie casino and I correctly identified and picked off the action player's all-in semi-bluff on the flop. However, his flush got there on the river to win the $700 pot and I ended the night down about that much. I try to tell myself that all I can control is whether I make good decisions, but it's tough emotionally when I also know I simply don't play enough hands to actually get to the long run.
I do watch a fair amount of poker on TV, which I find to be a more compelling, more gamer-friendly version of reality TV. It's got a recurring cast of characters and it's got interesting conflicts between them. Add in the rooting interest and the smug feeling of superiority that comes from always being able to see everyone's hole cards and that's enough to make it onto my DVR. I stopped watching the World Poker Tour once the final tables started filling up with almost entirely random players, but I find High Stakes Poker to be must-see TV. Tom Dwan has been extremely impressive this season. This hand in particular is worth 5 minutes if you enjoy poker at all. Not only does he win the hand, but he also wins a side-bet on which of his opponents actually had the best hand! In a later show he gets Greenstein to go all-in as a 3 to 1 dog. Greenstein sucks out to win over $500k, but Dwan just shrugs it off, rebuys, and later takes a $900,000 pot off of Greenstein.
Ok, I think I'm done steaming. Time to go to bed now ...
Not sure where you get the idea that poker has a higher variance than Magic. Sure, if you compare one game of Magic to one hand of poker, but that really doesn't make any sense. Certainly over a time perspective Magic has a much higher variance especially if you consider high level events, since in Magic they don't come around very often while in Poker you can play them daily.
Personally, I am pretty sure that my Magic career ran well above expectation and that is over a 5 year period. Playing poker (at least if you play on line) that would be virtually impossible.
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I compare them in real time. So line up a 2-day tournament versus a 2-day tournament, for example. In Magic, good players will consistently make day 2 at PT's and GP's. Not always, but usually. Great players can make the Top 8 of magic events way more frequently than great poker players can make final tables. I do see your point that from the perspective of trying to make a living the fact that Magic only has like 5 big events per year means that those events have a high variance. However, my point is that if poker only had 5 big events per year then there would be nothing resembling an LSV or Gab Nassif level of star.
Maybe another way of looking at the same basic point is this. When I play Magic and lose I usually find that there's something I could have done differently in order to win. Not always, and the gap between top players and the middle of the pack player has definitely shrunk since Magic Online came out, but even nowadays the edge a good player has is still bigger than in poker. It's fairly common to play a session of poker, lose money, and still feel that you did almost everythign right.
I suspect that we're just defining variance differently. I will definitely concede that if my goal was to accumulate dollar bills then poker is the better game for that. But that's not my personal goal. For me I'm comparing them as potential hobbies that will reward my ego's desire to win as a result of my own ability to think quickly and accurately.
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Here's a couple more comparison points:
- A couple of years ago I started playing local (unsanctioned) Type 1 tournaments. I made the Top 8 in 6 of the 7 events I played and won the first place Mox 5 times. In similarly sized local poker tournaments my final table percentage is nowhere near that and in fact I'm going to get busted out in the first couple of levels something like 40% of the time. Now I am a better Magic player than poker player, but it's not like anyone else can put up poker results like that anywhere else either. And part of my edge comes from doing better preparation and showing up with a better deck, but that's part of what I find rewarding about Magic and why it counts as skill-testing for me. (Also note that my expected value is higher in poker -- winning a couple of thousand dollars once outweighs a lot of Moxes -- but I've already conceded that poker is better as a money-making vehicle. I'm trying to compare them as intellectually rewarding hobbies instead.)
- Compare what the top poker players are able to accomplish in a season of WSOP bracelet events versus what the top Magic players can do in a season of Grand Prixs. There's 50+ WSOP events and someone like a Daniel Negreaneau or a Phil Hellmuth is probably going to play 30 or more of them. In any given year their odds of winning a braclet are well below 50/50. Meanwhile there are maybe 20 GP's in a year, and Saito's expected value is probably to win 2-3 of them.
- I have never played enough Magic Online or enough online poker to make this comparison first-hand, but I would think that comparing booster drafts versus sit-and-go's is also a fair way to measure skill / edge / variance.
I actually want you to talk me out of my perspective. It's so much easier to find a poker tournament that I kind of wish I believed they could satisfy my competitive urges.
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Well, first of all, tournament poker is the variant of poker with the largest variance. A good player grinding out cash games over a 2 day period is going to have a bigger +ev than the best magic player in the world playing a pt (obviously i have no real facts to support this claim but whatever).
And of course even if poker had only a few big events each year it still would have these "big stars" since they are made by media as much as by results (kinda like I was myself gods gift to limited magic for a year or so).
And yes of course when you lose at magic you can find stuff that you could have done differently to secure a win, but most of the time (if you aren't a bad player) those other options would on average be bad decisions.
And no, I am not just saying that poker is the game thats better for making money. My point is that over a given amount of time, poker will have less variance and reward the better player more than magic does. To be fair though, I am defining "poker" as "on line poker" since I do not really know how fast live poker plays (although my suspicion is that this will still hold true for live poker).
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As an old online poker player, I'd have to agree that normal table variance is minimized. In over 500K hands, I had a ROI that moved from -.5% to +3%, logarithmically.
That being said, tournament poker is a game where you generally end your day by making a single decision that puts you >50% odds. Make every decision +80% and all you've given yourself is an advantage, but not one insurmountable by the kid who can suck out in the corner. Does Magic feel like that as often as tournament poker, necessarily, does?
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Ok, I now think we're all saying true things. My initial claim should be refined to "Tournament Magic has less variance than tournament poker." While Magic does have its top-decks, there just aren't nearly as many as in a poker tournament and the swings are rarely as big.
As far as online poker goes, I never played a lot and I haven't played at all since the state of Washington, in its infinite wisdom and with no inappropriate influence from the local casino industry I'm sure, made it explicitly a felony to play poker online. It seems pretty clear now that they aren't enforcing the law versus individuals but I still haven't played since. It makes sense to me that when playing online you get so many hands that you get to see long-run behaviors kicking in reasonably quickly. My real point with this blog entry was not to criticize poker in general, but just to vent that its variance is frustrating *to me* because I don't play enough to get to the long run. And meanwhile since my competitive streak means my ideal hobby is "thinking game tournaments," I prefer Magic with its lower variance.
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I'm curious if you've ever been much of a bridge player. Doesn't have the money stakes of poker, or even Magic, but bridge seems to be considered the most strategic of traditional card games. And I see a lot of overlap between people who play "our kind of games" and people who play bridge.
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Bridge is a fine game and has the luck versus skill meter dialed into an excellent spot, in my opinion. Like Magic, the gameplay sits about halfway between poker and chess. The one advantage that Magic has over Bridge, though, is that Magic changes. The steady progression of new card sets presents new challenges and new puzzles to solve, which keeps Magic fresh and interesting. The fact that the 52 cards never change makes Bridge a little repetitive for my tastes and you don't get rewarded as much for preparation and practice as much as in Magic. This variety is also Magic's biggest advantage versus chess -- it forces you to innovate and improvise on the fly because you constantly find yourself in new situations. That said, I agree that Bridge is in the pantheon of excellent thinking games.
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Hmm, I would describe bridge and Magic the other way around. Bridge takes a lot more preparation than Magic, at least if you compare at a tournament level. There's a lot more complexity in a set of bidding conventions than there is in a Magic deck, plus you need to practice to understand how your partner makes the edge decisions. In fact bridge takes so much preparation it's hard for me to convince my game-loving friends to learn to play bridge.
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I think you misunderstood my point. My claim is that practice and preparation are more *rewarded* in Magic. Bridge is kind of like chess in that there are decades worth of playtesting results that you must digest and lots of conclusions that have already been worked out. Magic, on the other hand, changes multiple times per year and thus provides both an opportunity for innovation and a re-boot that allows new players to jump on board without feeling miles behind the old guard.
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Poker has this very same problem. It takes a lot of hands to get to the long run, and by the time you get there the lack of variety makes it pretty dull. The only thing poker really has going for it is the money aspect.
I'd also like to point out that the trend in recent years with Magic seems to me intended to reduce the amount of edge a person can have from skill. Players seem to like powerful gold cards, but they do make limited more random.
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Yeah, I agree that Magic's trajectory is away from skill testingness. The Alara block in particular is pretty frustrating for me (and I've been drafting Tempest-Stronghold on MTGO for this reason despite my need/desire to accumulate constructed cards on MTGO). It's still a good bit less frustrating than poker to me, and I also understand and respect the need for Wizards to cater to the masses rather than to us specifically, but yeah ... I'm definitely hoping the mana is more consistent next block.
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To me, the primary advantage of Bridge is that "duplicate" is an awesome tournament structure.
Just to avoid commenting multiple times. I don't think I agree that drafting (at least by itself) is the best way to crown a "thinking gamer."
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An excellent article, but to really do well in poker tournaments you need to spend some time preparing for the tournament. There are situations that you would react to totally different in tournament poker compared to a cash game. Most of these are about how much easier it is for you and your opponents to become pot committed in tournament poker. You also need to spend some time playing at the Stack to BB size you expect to play at in the tournament most of the time.
As far as the 10,000 hours, deep thinking about an activity results in rapid gain in ability for just about anything.
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I'm a former competitive chess player, current professional poker player. From where I stand, the problem with poker is that it's not a very interesting game (compared to some others). The good thing about it is that for some reason a lot of people want to play for money. If I was going to play a game for fun, poker would we way down on my list. Chess too, but for different reasons. Chess is a very demanding game. As you say, there's a lot to learn. The great thing about chess is it rewards people who put in the work with an amazing amount of depth and nuance. But for someone who enjoys playing a lot of games, putting in the time to get decent at chess probably isn't worth it.
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Part 2/2
“ I've never gone back through my yearly spreadsheets to do this calculation, but I think I am down lifetime despite being up at least 20 grand when I play within 20 miles of my house.”
If you cannot account for every cent you have ever earned at poker, you are not thinking like a professional poker player. You cannot accuse Poker of having higher variance then – since you play poker as an amateur and yet you were a profesional MTG players.
“In Magic, good players have a bigger edge over bad ones. I think the randomness, and thus the balance between skill and luck, is dialed in to a perfect spot”
As discussed this depends entirely on your apetite for variance in the games you play.
“Magic is the best strategy game in the world. You can't win as much money at Magic as you can at poker, but if we all got together and wanted to crown the King Thinking Gamer, we wouldn't play Hold Em ... we'd draft.”
I disagree we would play Go. Atm club level Go players are still consistently beating the strongest AIs.
“However, his flush got there on the river to win the $700 pot and I ended the night down about that much. I try to tell myself that all I can control is whether I make good decisions, but it's tough emotionally when I also know I simply don't play enough hands to actually get to the long run.”
“Ok, I think I'm done steaming. Time to go to bed now ...”
Tilt much? May I suggest “Zen and the Art of Poker”. If you are done steaming and you are serious about turning around your poker “career” I am sure the ex-MTG community will get you there in no time.
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Part 1/2 (please excuse the long and double post)
Mr. Buehler's blog article (according to my read) raises two key issues. One is the debate over whether poker has more variance than magic. Secondly that someone who contributed a great deal to my favourite game (Magic) is not thinking like a professional when he plays poker. With so many ex-MTGers being succesful at poker the situation is untenable. Please allow me to offer some advice in return for your services to the game. I also issue an open challenge to other ex-MTGers who have had great success from poker to help the man out. Lets make sure Mr. Buehler becomes a winning player if he so desires. I will adress both issues starting with variance.
Variance.
"Tournament Magic has less variance than tournament poker."
Judged how ? You seem to suggest that we line them up temporally against each other. This is as good as comparing apples and oranges. There is no luck in poker in the long run just as there is no luck in MTG in the long run. Good play will eventually be rewarded and you will perform up to your expected value (EV) in the long run.
“variance is frustrating *to me* because I don't play enough to get to the long run.”
This is just based on a preference for less but some variance in your games. If you like low level variance play Chess or Go. If you want more try MTG or Backgammon. If that is not enough there is poker. It will all even out to your EV in the long run anyway.
“I think you misunderstood my point. My claim is that practice and preparation are more *rewarded* in Magic. Bridge is kind of like chess in that there are decades worth of playtesting results that you must digest and lots of conclusions that have already been worked out. Magic, on the other hand, changes multiple times per year and thus provides both an opportunity for innovation and a re-boot that allows new players to jump on board without feeling miles behind the old guard.”
Magic has never been problematized and analysed to the same extent that poker and chess have. Can you honestly tell me there is a Magic equivalent to Sklansky's “Theory of Poker?” Or Fischers' “My 60 Memorable Games?” If you do not believe me imagine your reaction if you walked into a bookstore and saw Finkel's “My 60 Most Memorable Magic Duels.” or Budde's “Blitzkrieg und Magic”. You will have to agree that Magic theory is not there yet.
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