All Things Gambling Tropes

[Idolater]

I'm pulling a concurrent conversation into a new thread.

...There's a lot of math in poker. The best players are mathematicians, some of them even credentialed mathematicians, but they are all mathematicians, to win at the biggest stakes reliably.

Poker boils down to betting, folding, and raising. The only thing that matters is betting, folding, and raising. When to best bet, fold, or raise, for successful players, is determined by math. It's about odds.

There's pot odds, which is the size of the pot, compared with the size of your bet. There are the odds of drawing out and making a hand on a future street, which depends upon how many 'outs' you have in the deck, and how many cards are left. There are 'implied odds,' which attempts to take into account the future size of the pot, comparing it also to the required bets to stay in the hand to win that larger pot. There are also things like the rake, and tipping on winning hands, that all go into successfully determining odds that guides successful betting, folding, and raising.

There's also the notion of 'tropes' that appear in poker, but also irl, where instead of a card game and chips, the situations and currency is substituted for other things.

Spoiler

In betting on sports and racing, there is really only betting, which is similar to stock picking, but is only applicable in limited areas irl.

There are obvious poker tropes like 'bluffing,' 'betting,' 'folding,' but also more nuanced ones like 'slow-playing,' 'check-raising,' and 're-raising-over-the-top-all-in.'

Spoiler

But the one that I'm going to mention now is 'pot-committed.' It's when a player has already put most of their stack of chips into the pot, and other players therefore can perceive that they aren't going to fold, but will push the rest of their stack into the pot rather than leave all the chips they've already put into it out there for someone else. Pot commitment is a tell, a telegraph, that can be seen by other players. The other players in the pot with a pot-committed player need to figure on there being a 'show down,' which means that the pot-committed player will not fold to a big raise, but will call all the rest of their chips, forcing a show down of all the players' hands to determine who wins.

And that is a problem that has been identified by psychologists as a 'cognitive error,' like the Fundamental Attribution Error that we are all susceptible to. It's related to the 'sunken cost fallacy,' which is a cognitive error that falsely believes that currency that has already been spent or 'sunk,' is actually still in your possession. When we make choices according to these errors, we make poor choices, and wind up costing ourselves more dearly than if we remain rational.

Deception is of course part of poker. Many of the poker tropes involve deception, and poker helps us to characterize deception according to real patterns that play out in poker, but also, again, irl.

Spoiler

Most people deceive with standard poker bluffs, making a bet that requires others to 'fold' to win. If they are called, then their deception is revealed, just like in poker. But 'slow-playing,' 'playing fast,' and 'check-raising' are also poker tropes, patterns of deception, that appear irl. 'Slow playing,' for example, is when a player has a strong hand, and wants to get as many chips into the pot from other players as possible, so as not to scare them away with aggressive betting, and instead they place smaller bets, to entice players with medium strong hands, or those on draws, to remain in the hand, but to pay a price for it. A price that the slow-player, with a strong hand, hopes to win at the end of the hand.

More sophisticated deceptive tropes than these, appear in the game of poker also.

There are two types of deception in poker. One is when you figure that your hand is weaker, and one is when you figure that your hand is stronger.

A basic bluff is when you figure your hand is weaker, but you bet hard and fast. Betting hard and fast, when deception isn't a possibility, telegraphs that you think you've got a strong hand. Players unsuspecting that you're bluffing will fold unless they believe they've got a strong hand too.

The reality is that a medium strong hand will win, and even many weak hands will beat a basic poker bluff.

The next level of deception is hiding what you figure is a stronger hand. You encourage other players to call your careful bets. Instead of telegraphing strength by betting hard and fast, you do the opposite, you telegraph weakness, even though you believe your hand is strong.

Unsuspecting players with weak and medium strong hands can wind up losing a lot of chips to players who can play in this way. They can pour chips into the pot as the eventual winner ratchets up the betting, boiling the frog slowly until it's too late.

And then the more sophisticated deceptive tropes than even this. Again when your hand is what you figure is weaker. This only works with players who are good enough to telegraph weakness when they are holding strong hands. You pretend that you've got a strong hand, but you build upon this pretend strength, with 'pretend' weakness (I say 'pretend,' because you do this when you are actually weak, so acting weak is not pretending at all, since you are weak). You slowly ratchet up the betting. More sophisticated players will smell deception, but they'll think that you've got strength, and that your telegraphing of weakness, is actually a secret telegraph of strength, and they will fold and surrender the pot to you, thinking they just prevented a big loss on their part.

It gets more and more sophisticated, and here's where it all ends, and converges to: Randomness. You can't 'figger out' randomness, that's why it's at the top of the strategic hill. But randomness should only be employed when dealing with sophisticated opponents. Simple, unsuspecting opponents will not bite on sophisticated deceptive tropes, they will just go with what appears obvious. So being random against such opponents is an overall losing strategy. Don't waste sophisticated techniques upon unaware players, who also happen to be, the players as a poker player, you're looking to prey upon. They'll fall for simpler tropes, or they may not fall for any, and just continue to call you down on whatever you're betting, unable to 'get away from' their hand.

With such players, you just play your strong hands hard and fast, and you check or fold your weak hands. That's the overall superior strategy in poker, against simpler players.

It's like stock picking, or just general investment. You examine the situation, gather the facts, and assign something like pot odds, the cost/benefit analysis, and place your bets accordingly....

There's a huge jackpot available in a big lottery today. The trope here is 'expected value,' or EV for short. It's simple. You know the potential jackpot, in this case it approaches a billion clams. Then you determine your odds of winning the jackpot. It's hundreds of millions to 1 against. So now you discount the jackpot, it's discounted according to your odds of winning it. It's 1-3 dollars, depending upon how many hundreds of millions to 1 against the odds of winning are.

If a ticket costs 2 dollars, and the discounted value of the jackpot is 3 dollars, then the expected value on your ticket purchase is 1 dollar. It's a 50% return on your investment of 2 dollars. The ticket you pay 2 dollars for is actually worth 3 dollars, so you're getting it at a discount, so it's a reasonable decision to buy a ticket.

It's like arbitrage, it's a guaranteed good investment.

The added fact without which you might feel mathematically justified in buying that ticket, are the number of other players, and taxes. Taxes discount the jackpot off the top, I think you can figure on only retrieving 2/3 of the jackpot after taxes. Also, if you opt for the 'lump sum,' that's another huge discounting of the jackpot.

As the jackpot grows to where it is now, with it making national news, everybody thinks about playing the game. I'm thinking about it myself. We are people who never play the lottery, except on these rare occasions when the jackpot is so bulbous and gaudy that we just have to ride the roller coaster, just on these rare occasions. We justify it through something like the EV determination we're making now.

What we see, is that when the jackpot exceeds the value at which the ticket you buy is no longer an automatic loser (according to EV), the odds that there will be multiple winners, each with an equal claim to the jackpot, becomes more likely than at any other time. And just one other winner chops the jackpot right in half, so your EV calculation goes back to the lottery being a negative EV proposition, which is where it always is.

Playing the lottery is a negative EV proposition, even when there's a huge jackpot.

 

[Stripe]

I'm all in.

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[Idolater]

I'm all in.

entfro mySM-520 usng apaalk

LLLB

An excellent example of a gambling trope, again borrowed from, and featuring in, the gambling game of poker.

'All-in' means in poker, that you push (in fact, 'to push' in poker, means to put yourself 'all-in') all your chips into the pot. This can either be done aggressively, as a bet, or as a 'raise-over-the-top-all-in;' or responsively, as a call, when someone else has already bet so much, that all your remaining chips are required to remain in the hand. (This is called 'putting someone all-in,' another related gambling trope, when you bet as much as, or more than, your opponents' remaining chip stacks. You as the bettor, force your opponents to make a decision for all their chips.)

When an 'all-in' bet is a call, there will be a 'show down,' where at least the called bettor will need to show everyone their hand. At this point, the 'all-in' caller can 'muck' (throw their hand face down into the discarded card pile) if their hand is a loser, or show that their own hand is the winner (a 'slow roll' is when a winner takes their time in revealing their winning hand, and it is considered impolite).

The trope 'all-in' is applicable in many situations not involving cards and chips, again, a very good example of a gambling trope. tyvm, Stripe. :thumb:

 

[Stripe]

You do range reading?

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[Idolater]

You do range reading?

Snt fom m SM-520Fusin Taptalk

LLLLB

What's that? Never heard of it.

 

[JudgeRightly]

On Gambling:

A man has a right to do what he wants with his own money.

The government does not have the right to interfere with that, and since gambling is a business, it has no right to run or interfere with gambling sites/businesses, let alone take a cut from winnings. It only has a right to tax income, and since 0% tax is not enough to fund the government, and according to God, 10% is tyrannical, 5% (split the difference) should be more than enough to fund the government (assuming it's only doing what it has the responsibility to do and nothing more, which is to provide and regulate infrastructure (ie, roads, bridges, waterways, airwaves, etc), and criminal justice (both foreign (military) and domestic (police and judiciary))).

 

[Idolater]

A general note and disclaimer to all: I don't care if you veer off-topic in any of your posts in 'my' threads. So please don't worry about anything being off-topic here. I plant seeds, and whatever grows from them is what grows.

:carryon:

 

[Stripe]

LLLLB

What's that? Never heard of it.

What's an LLLLB?

A range is the combinations of hole cards that are most likely given a player's actions.

So if I raise pre-fall, I'm more likely to have a medium pocket pair or better. I'm not likely to have Q8 offsuit.

This sort of analysis can allow players to narrow down an opponent's possible holdings, at times down to the exact two cards.

https://youtu.be/9RRHhWqsDRw

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[JudgeRightly]

What's an LLLLB?

A range is the combinations of hole cards...

Aaaand you lost me....

that are most likely given a player's actions.

So if I raise pre-fall, I'm more likely to have a medium pocket pair or better. I'm not likely to have Q8 offsuit.

This sort of analysis can allow players to narrow down an opponent's possible holdings, at times down to the exact two cards.

https://youtu.be/9RRHhWqsDRw

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[Idolater]

Aaaand you lost me....

Stripe's talking about the two face-down cards you're dealt in Hold Em, a popular poker game the world over.

What's an LLLLB?
...
Sn rmm MA2FuigTptl

BL

This is a code for how I play around with automatic signatures that devices make in posts. If these devices are going to imprint themselves into the discussion, then I'm sometimes going to use an equally mechanical algorithm to disrupt them. BL stands for 'Backspace, Left.' LLLLB is four Lefts, followed by a Backspace.

A range is the combinations of hole cards that are most likely given a player's actions.

Ah. I'm unfamiliar with the use of 'range reading,' but I'm surely familiar with reading hands, yes. It's a sophisticated analysis of the hand, in-game, that very good poker players do reflexively. A good poker player is always considering the 'range' of hands that other players have, and it's always wrt their opponents' betting and raising patterns.

So if I raise pre-fall, I'm more likely to have a medium pocket pair or better. I'm not likely to have Q8 offsuit.

I get what you mean, but there are lots of reasons to bet before the flop with nothing but rags/crap. In such a case, it's a form of bluffing, called a 'semi-bluff,' where, while your current hand is probably weak/weakest, as cards come off the deck, it stands to improve to a stronger hand on later streets.

In Hold Em, making a pre-flop raise can be somewhat dictated by your betting position also. If you are last to bet, then you've seen what all the other players' initial plays are, whether they all just called the big blind, or whether someone raised before you. One popular bluff is to, when 'on the button,' which is the dealer's position, and all previous players have either called or folded, to put in a raise in the hopes of simply 'stealing' the pot, because the other callers, being out of position for the remainder of the hand (strategically weak), and who probably do have medium to weak hands anyway (which is why they called instead of raised themselves), will just fold all around to you.

Even if you get a caller or two, you've thinned out the herd for the hand, which automatically increases your odds of catching a card or three to make a winning hand over the ones who stayed in the hand with you. You also maintain the coveted and strategically superior betting position (all other things being equal of course) throughout the hand, so you can limit your losses if you do wind up folding on a later street.

And on the other hand, even with 'pocket rockets' (two Aces), you might want to 'limp' (call), just to invite as many chips/players into the pot as you can, in the anticipation that your aces will hold up (pocket aces are something like an 80% chance of winning any given hand in a showdown).

The conventional wisdom is to raise about three times the big blind, with either aces or kings in the hole. Variance from this constitutes some sort of hopefully, for you, sneaky play on your opponents.

This sort of analysis can allow players to narrow down an opponent's possible holdings, at times down to the exact two cards.

Yup. For those just beginning to understand this concept/trope, a 'flush board' is probably the easiest one to learn on. You have either three or four cards all of the same suit on an un-paired board (community cards), and you need to determine whether your opponents have a flush. You keep mental note of everything they do from the start of the hand, particularly their betting and raising, to kind of 'work backwards' to the cards that they're actually holding in their hands. Some common hands that players like to play with are suited pairs, with one of the cards being an ace or a king, and they play those hands with the hope of getting a flush board, in their suit, to make the flush. Otherwise, it's just an ace and a four, which will probably wind up after all the cards are out, as an ace-high hand, which is weak.

Flush boards are also opportunities for bluffing like you made a flush when you haven't, if you think that nobody else made the flush. The hope is that the other players will give you credit for the flush, and fold to your bets.

 

[Stripe]

I'm sometimes going to use an equally mechanical algorithm to disrupt them.

I don't think it's working.

Flush boards are also opportunities for bluffing like you made a flush when you haven't, if you think that nobody else made the flush. The hope is that the other players will give you credit for the flush, and fold to your bets.

We should organize a TOL tournament.

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[Stripe]

We should organize a TOL tournament.

Any takers? I found an Android app that might work. Five seats available:

1. Stripe.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Time, date and duration TBD.

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[Idolater]

Any takers? I found an Android app that might work. Five seats available:

1. Stripe.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Time, date and duration TBD.

Str -2 i pa

BBL

Will it run on a laptop? I have a laptop/notebook, but not an Android device.

 

[Stripe]

BBL

Will it run on a laptop? I have a laptop/notebook, but not an Android device.

No. I'll set up my desktop one of these days and get back to you.

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[Idolater]

AI can now beat the best poker players in the world at online poker. But is this a reason to fear AI?

In order to be a threat, AI would need to figure out how to make money. How would it ever do that?

To be a threat, AI would also need to be able to observe people, presumably through the widespread installation of surveillance cameras, somehow all connected to itself, through some sort of "world wide web." How could AI ever do such a large project, especially without anybody noticing?

AI would also need to get refined and detailed data about individual people, such as photographs, names, address, etc. It would probably also try to get information about the relationships that exist between different individual people, like friendships and blood or marriage. It couldn't get this from news media, it would need to create some sort of "social media," with lots of refined and detailed and specific data about lots of individual people, not just news makers, who only represent a tiny minority of us. It would have to do this also without anybody noticing---impossible.

Even if AI did manage to get such information, it might only have 20-yearold photographs of people instead of recent photographs, so it would need to be able to artificially 'age' photos of people, to identify individual people at the greatest scale.

AI would also need a way to figure out how to drive cars, trucks, and even aircraft. It would also need to somehow arm the vehicles it drove or piloted. How could it ever arrange such things?

It's pretty clear that AI can't possibly do all this, and that we have nothing to worry about.

 

[Right Divider]

AI can now beat the best poker players in the world at online poker. But is this a reason to fear AI?

I believe that what you are referring to regarding AI is actually only in limit poker and not no-limit poker.

Limit poker is a lot like blackjack. You must play a very strict and narrow pattern to win.

No-limit is far more unpredictable and virtually impossible to "AI".

 

[Idolater]

I believe that what you are referring to regarding AI is actually only in limit poker and not no-limit poker.

Limit poker is a lot like blackjack. You must play a very strict and narrow pattern to win.

No-limit is far more unpredictable and virtually impossible to "AI".

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9

 

[Right Divider]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9

Thanks... I'm still pretty skeptical.

 

[Stripe]

I've got no problem with the fact that a computer win at poker. A computer can determine the best path forward according to a mathematical model and if its programmer has gotten the coding good enough, it will be more successful than a human can be. Same with chess or any other game that has a fixed range of options. All the computer is good for is looking down the path of options and choosing the best one. It can do this in tic-tac-toe, but nobody fears it is becoming sentient because it might beat a child at that game. It simply has the possible moves stored and chooses the best one each time. The computer simply responds to its inputs; it doesn't make any decisions. Never will.

 

[Idolater]

I've got no problem with the fact that a computer win at poker. A computer can determine the best path forward according to a mathematical model and if its programmer has gotten the coding good enough, it will be more successful than a human can be. Same with chess or any other game that has a fixed range of options. All the computer is good for is looking down the path of options and choosing the best one. It can do this in tic-tac-toe, but nobody fears it is becoming sentient because it might beat a child at that game. It simply has the possible moves stored and chooses the best one each time. The computer simply responds to its inputs; it doesn't make any decisions. Never will.

The issue was that the best poker players prey on the bad poker players, especially the wealthy ones who for one reason or other wandered into the poker room, with great big giant gobs of money. In my above satire I'm explaining why in-person poker is always going to be superior to online poker. There are still ways for players to cheat and use computer AI (there was just a case within the last year or two I believe, where a player was using his smart phone to cheat, somehow using computer /AI tech, and it was like televised tournament level poker, he was doing it right under everybody's noses), but you easily limit the chances that you're playing against computer AI, if you're playing in person, live. This is just a "poker sense" thing.