I'd have called that "studying poker", rather than playing it. But that's just semantics, at that point. Besides, don't you think accumulating a big chip stack is fun? :) (I'm reminded of an anecdote about Don Kardong, who went to my high school and was 4th in the 1976 Olympic Marathon--he and a friend were at a "fun run", and took off like bats out of hell, because they were actually competitive runners, and when the organizer said "hey, this is a fun run!" one of them said "It's fun to run fast!")
The problem is, the "strategies" that come out of it are kind of...odd, if the object isn't to accumulate the most chips. That's like saying "well, we were playing war, but the object wasn't to defeat the other side," isn't it? I understand the idea of wanting to take out the psychology from normal poker, and then noting that this wild-card thing puts it back even for a non-learning robot player, but hell, even chess grandmasters use psychology, and that's a game of complete information. I don't think you can separate psychology from the basic strategy of poker, nor, therefore, the cost of information. Beating someone who plays strictly positive poker (i.e. always value bets and never bluffs) is very easy, so you can't really call that a decent strategy. Or, at least, I sure wouldn't.
Actually, the things you describe (wanting people to stay in, etc.) are pretty common if you play at any of the online play money sites, especially "cash" (i.e. non-tournament) games with low limits. Since it's play money, there's little incentive to play "rationally" (or "purist" if you prefer), so there's actually social pressure against pre-flop raises and things like that, which can be really annoying, since that takes away a lot of the value of position--which is actually how professional poker players make their money; if you look at their winnings by seat, nearly all of them are negative in all the seats except for the button(dealer's seat) and a couple seats before it, in games that use position. (obviously we're talking about hold-em in that case, since that's about 97% of all online poker, near as I can tell)
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Well that's different.
Date: 2007-02-26 12:51 am (UTC)The problem is, the "strategies" that come out of it are kind of...odd, if the object isn't to accumulate the most chips. That's like saying "well, we were playing war, but the object wasn't to defeat the other side," isn't it? I understand the idea of wanting to take out the psychology from normal poker, and then noting that this wild-card thing puts it back even for a non-learning robot player, but hell, even chess grandmasters use psychology, and that's a game of complete information. I don't think you can separate psychology from the basic strategy of poker, nor, therefore, the cost of information. Beating someone who plays strictly positive poker (i.e. always value bets and never bluffs) is very easy, so you can't really call that a decent strategy. Or, at least, I sure wouldn't.
Actually, the things you describe (wanting people to stay in, etc.) are pretty common if you play at any of the online play money sites, especially "cash" (i.e. non-tournament) games with low limits. Since it's play money, there's little incentive to play "rationally" (or "purist" if you prefer), so there's actually social pressure against pre-flop raises and things like that, which can be really annoying, since that takes away a lot of the value of position--which is actually how professional poker players make their money; if you look at their winnings by seat, nearly all of them are negative in all the seats except for the button(dealer's seat) and a couple seats before it, in games that use position. (obviously we're talking about hold-em in that case, since that's about 97% of all online poker, near as I can tell)