Poker Books

There's a thread on 2+2 suggesting that Sklansky should write a book on mathematics of poker.

He did. A long time ago.

It's called Getting the Best of It

To those kids at 2+2 it didn't happen if they haven't seen it on TV.

Brandi Hawbaker causes two plus two upheavel

There's enough other blogs out there that will tell me about what's going on at twoplustwo.com that I don't need to read it anymore. It's like all you have to do to follow the soap opera storylines is go to the beauty parlor. I learned about the most recent storyline development from Wicked Chops Poker.

David Sklansky has been banned from posting on twoplustwo.com. It's a temporary ban, but even after the ban is over he'll be on probation and his posting activity will be monitered closely by Mason.

That's pretty much what Mason promised me when I stopped posting over there. He promised to allow me to post again if I promised to be nice to him. Of course Mason never figured out that I wasn't actually banned until a few months after I'd stopped posting. None of those guys are what you might call real bright.

Maybe if Mason started a new policy of not employing 60 year old men who dated 16 year old runaways, 21 year old autistic women, or 30 year old alcholoic hookers then some of this stuff would not happen so often.

What's the law in Nevada about men having sex with women who aren't mentally capable of giving consent?

I'm glad the writer's strike is over. Mason would never be able to come up with these story lines without his team of comedy writer's back in action.

Theory of Poker and mistakes

Somebody asked about the two mistakes in Theory of Poker.

First is the Fundemental Theorem of Poker. It's not fundemental, it's not a theorem, and it's not about poker.

It basically says that if I have KK and you raise for all the chips and I know you have AA, KK, QQ, JJ and each of those possibilities is equally likely then I've made a mistake if I call and it turns out you have AA.

It's results oriented, it says it's a mistake to act on what you actually know, it has nothing to do with expected value. It's wrong.

The other error is David's idea about playing hours, not results. He claims that if you have an overall expected value of $1 per hour and you play 10 hours then you've earned $10 no matter what the actual outcome.

That's wrong on so many levels it takes more than a single blog post to discuss it. It's just an absurd idea.

David Sklansky is an idiot.

An idiot. A total idiot. He has the brains of a dead armadillo.

He not only carries a vibrator in the glove compartment of his car, he thinks incest causes blindness.

I'm not the only one who thinks he's an idiot.

And Theory of Poker has at least 2 major errors.

More nonsense from Sklansky

I don't know where he got the article, but pokerblog.com has reprinted some nonsense written by Sklansky and Shoonmaker, two of poker's shallowest thinkers, making a list of all the social benefits of poker.

The whole thing is just intellectually empty. Everything they say in the article is still true if you replace poker with "crossing the street" so the same arguement they try to use to legalize poker as special form of gambling could be used to argue against jaywalking laws.

Just look at that belly button. Stare at it. Keep staring, eventually it will look like a doughnut.

Update:
Lou Krieger, who should really know better, seems to actually think the sklansky/shoonmaker clown act actually has meaningful content in that empty article. It's really embarrasing for so many poker types to be so empty of intellectul talent.

Just to give a flavor of how empty the article is let's look at it from sentence one.

Many people have argued that poker should be considered differently from gambling in general. This argument has been made in discussions of legalization and related topics. Their argument is usually that poker is a skill game, while other gambling games are much less dependent upon skill.

Well, I guess they start of with something that's accurate. People have made that claim. The problem with the arguement is almost always that they never make a clear statement about what it actually means to be a "skill game". And that's where the Sklansky/Shoonmaker teams slips off the track.

We agree, but believe that they have not gone far enough in explaining many of poker's unique attributes. Poker does not just require skill. It demands and develops many skills and personal qualities which are essential for making all types of decisions, such as choosing a career, investing money, performing a job, and buying a house.

While it's certianly true that poker can be used to develop attributes which can be helpful in other aspects of life, it's simply delusional the think that poker has any unique attributes along those lines. Lot's and lot's of people get along just fine in life without ever playing poker and without ever even thinking about poker. There's nothing unique about poker as an avenue for learning life skills, not one damn thing.

It gets worse. They then make the astoundingly ignorant claim

Research clearly proves that people tend to repeat rewarded actions and to discontinue punished ones.

Research does no such thing.

First of all, proving things isn't part of science anyway, that's a math concept, not a science concept. Science looks for evidence, not for proof. In fact, the way science gathers evidence is by trying to find counter-examples, not by trying to find proof. Failure to find evidence of not P is taken as evidence of P. But it's not proof.

Also, the Father of that branch of Behaviorlism, BF Skinner, did his research with birds, not people (maybe some of it was with people). And what he found isn't as simple as what the Sklansky/Shoonmaker team claim. Here's one description of what Skinner thought about operant conditioning.

Skinner believed that positive reinforcement was more effective than punishment in the long run. He also stated that any reinforcement must come immediately after the behavior so as to not confuse the organism.

That actually doesn't sound to me like the kind of reinforcement that comes from poker. The kind of reinforcment that tends to come from poker is the kind that opponents of gambling argue is bad for people and teaches people bad habits.

And, those opponents are right. That's what makes gambling games so good for those who don't need the kind of reinforcement that the game provides naturally.

Sklanksy is basically an uneducated buffon. I don't expect much better from him. Shoonmaker actually has a PhD in industrial psychology. He should be ashamed of himself for spouting this kind of nonsense.

Luck v. Skill

I havn't read The Poker Chronicles in a while and was catching up on it this afternoon. I ran across an old post from back in May about a really stupid idea from David Sklansky, Howard Lederer, and Annie Duke that Freakonomics picked up on and actually seemed to think it was a meaningful idea about poker as a skill game. It's not a meaningful idea at all.

You might notice that Annie had made her blog post promoting the idea as part of her pimping from that scam organization, PPA.

Let me quote Annie's statement of the idea.

But now let's say that we have our two equally matched poker players and I lean into one of them and whisper in their ear that I want them to lose the next match as quickly as possible. The player would be able to do it, and fast. They could easily come up with a strategy that would insure that they lost (for example they could check fold every single flop). Baseball would work the same way. Remember the Chicago Blacksox?

The ability to purposely lose is a very definitive argument that a game is all skill. Notice that if I asked you to purposely lose at a roulette game or Baccarat game (where the house took no edge) you could not do it.

The Poker Chronicles points out how stupid that idea is by pointing out how to structure bets in roulette, craps, and baccaret to ensure a loss. In poker you have to depend on your opponent not taking counter measure if you want to ensure a loss, that's not even true if you want to ensure a loss in table games.

It's idiots like Annie Duke, with the apparant brains of a dead turnip, that are pimping your support of the PPA. Keep that in mind.

Do the right thing

I was just watching David Sklansky playing in some poker tournament on the Travel Channel and the contrast between two different hands he played is kind of interesting.

The first one he gets all in with a 66 vs. an AT. Ten hits the flop, 6 hits the turn, David was frowning the whole way.

The second one he gets all in with AQ against KQ. Small smile from David. An Ace hits the flop. Big grin from David.

He really misplayed the first hand. A player in front of him came in for a small raise and David went allin, only doubling the original bet. There was no way the guy was going to fold, the player in front of him had lots of chips. With no chance the guy will fold a 66 isn't really much of a card to get committed with, even if it is a favorite over two overcards.

I think David was so focused on making sure he didn't make any odds type mistakes on TV that he was too busy being upset about his mistake to be able to be happy about winning the damn pot.

The second hand he had much the best of it all the way and I think he was so pleased about that he couldn't help but grin.

What does it take for Sklansky to cheat?

David Skalansky talks about his cheating history. He recounts two instances, one when Tony Spilantro offers to back in as part of a 4 man team in a Vegas game, and the other when a woman he wanted to sleep with wanted to collude in a Paradise game.

So it takes either 1. Being afraid to say no to a homicidal maniac or 2. Not being able to figure out another way to get laid.

At least he has standards.