Midlife Crisis? What Midlife Crisis?

Originally posted by HollyMichelle
Is Villas Boas in trouble now?

I just don't want to talk about it. It's too upsetting. And I don't want to talk about the England cricket team either.

RIP AVB

Harsh IMO

Just wanted to let you and your co-authors know that, having finished it a couple of nights ago, I think 'Education of a Modern Poker Player' is an excellent book - who knows, it might even become a classic. ("Talk about a crawly bum-lick!") The hand examples are the best part for me, but I enjoyed the discussion of and strong emphasis on mind-set, the Interlude on five-card draw, and even the risk-of-ruin derivation. It's fun and motivating to see glimpses of your progress through the stakes, and there is a lot of high-quality hand-analysis that is missing from most books.

I remain unconvinced by the book that learning about game theory is of substantive practical use, but am biased by my lack of comprehension, and I kind of hope that its inapplicability will remain (if so) the case because otherwise poker might become too dry, "scientific", quasi-solved, and intimidating for new players, as with the advanced state of chess opening theory.

It seems counter-intuitive that such huge samples of hands would be needed in order for a player to know whether he's genuinely profitable - my feeling is that if your graph is trending definitely upwards and not plunging downward too often with tilt-induced six-bet-shoves of Q6o, then after just a few thousand hands you should have some confidence you're beating the game; a break-even player's graph looks like zero-mean noise.

Would you be willing and able to say approximately how many copies have been sold so far - if that's not considered an indelicate question?

Perhaps an accompanying PokerStrategy video in which your dual coaches sweat your play would have nicely rounded out the project, but I'm not complaining.

Also I hadn't previously known you were a solid winner at NL100 (and beyond?) - respect!

Originally posted by Flashman1849
Just wanted to let you and your co-authors know that, having finished it a couple of nights ago, I think 'Education of a Modern Poker Player' is an excellent book - who knows, it might even become a classic. ("Talk about a crawly bum-lick!") The hand examples are the best part for me, but I enjoyed the discussion of and strong emphasis on mind-set, the Interlude on five-card draw, and even the risk-of-ruin derivation. It's fun and motivating to see glimpses of your progress through the stakes, and there is a lot of high-quality hand-analysis that is missing from most books.

You are indeed a crawly bum lick of the worst sort. You're welcome in my blog.

I remain unconvinced by the book that learning about game theory is of substantive practical use, but am biased by my lack of comprehension, and I kind of hope that its inapplicability will remain (if so) the case because otherwise poker might become too dry, "scientific", quasi-solved, and intimidating for new players, as with the advanced state of chess opening theory.

I'm not entirely convinced myself, and will hopefully have more to say about this at a later date. However, poker is undoubtedly a game, and game theory provides the correct theoretical framework within which to think about it, even if the way that poker players use the ideas of game theory to reflect on how they play may not be correct.

It seems counter-intuitive that such huge samples of hands would be needed in order for a player to know whether he's genuinely profitable - my feeling is that if your graph is trending definitely upwards and not plunging downward too often with tilt-induced six-bet-shoves of Q6o, then after just a few thousand hands you should have some confidence you're beating the game; a break-even player's graph looks like zero-mean noise.

You need to read that chapter again imo.

Would you be willing and able to say approximately how many copies have been sold so far - if that's not considered an indelicate question?

Maybe, but we haven't seen the numbers yet.

Perhaps an accompanying PokerStrategy video in which your dual coaches sweat your play would have nicely rounded out the project, but I'm not complaining.

We did a couple of coaching sessions. 6max NL100 - verdict - solid. HU v Manu - verdict - underprepared fish. Nuff said.

Also I hadn't previously known you were a solid winner at NL100 (and beyond?) - respect!

I think the jury's out on that one.

You are indeed a crawly bum lick of the worst sort. You're welcome in my blog.

Originally posted by jbpatzer

It seems counter-intuitive that such huge samples of hands would be needed in order for a player to know whether he's genuinely profitable - my feeling is that if your graph is trending definitely upwards and not plunging downward too often with tilt-induced six-bet-shoves of Q6o, then after just a few thousand hands you should have some confidence you're beating the game; a break-even player's graph looks like zero-mean noise.

You need to read that chapter again imo.

Yeah, you're probably right - something to do with a sample needing to be large enough to contain a good number of extreme events, including up- and down-swings, the outcome and (mis)handling of which strongly influences the long-term win-rate? But... (thinks hard, neurons straining) on the other hand, for example, I'm loath to relinquish my gut feeling that I'm certainly a loser at NL200, despite the tiny sample - my graph trends downward too sharply. And a poker player surely has to quickly assess whether he has a substantial edge at a given table? The magnitude of that edge is unknown, and there's some chance that the player's past experience will lead him to incorrectly assess a particular set of table-conditions (his heuristics are sometimes wrong), but this seems like a domain in which statistical certainty is out of reach in practice, partly because a hand sample covers a wide variety of different table-conditions that are inherently unquantifiable, yet can be controlled to a degree (mostly by avoiding tables that are likely unprofitable).

The player must instead attain a kind of instinctual understanding (of elusive meta-game factors) that defies explanation, just as a person can't say exactly how he is able to walk/swim/play the guitar, and would not be able to do so under the most unfavourable conditions. So I suppose I'm saying the meta-game factors must be what's important even though they can't be measured, and statistical analysis is somehow misguided because the space of factors is too large and poorly understood and we don't even sample tables at random.

I just took an hour to work out what all the poker books have been saying for years.

Dear MrFlashMan,

Please write your nice review of the book on amazon, not in my blog; nobody reads it anymore, because it's not as good as it used to be, even with semi-colons.

Love,

JB

------------------------------------------------------------

I did my radio interview last night, but before that, chess!

I played the world's most boring opening, successfully aimed for this position

and then realised that I had no idea how to proceed.....draw. Luckily we won 4-1. Top of the league!

Oh, you want to hear about the radio interview? It seemed to go alright, although some of his questions were a bit odd. He seemed to think that I might know Tony Holden and be able to play in his home game. Maybe he thinks England is like a tiny village. He also said he'd take me to Vegas and corrupt me. I said I was already pretty corrupt. I'll post a link when it comes out.

Originally posted by jbpatzer
Dear MrFlashMan,

Please write your nice review of the book on amazon, not in my blog; nobody reads it anymore, because it's not as good as it used to be, even with semi-colons.

Love,

JB

Nuff said.

next song ?

Merry Christmas everyone!

Originally posted by Waiboy

Merry Christmas everyone!

I thought the new Peter Jackson movie might flush you out of your hobbithole.

Btw, I'm happy to receive musical Xmas cards here, as long as they're not all so bloody miserable. Here's mine.

Merry Xmas everybody. Ho ho ho!

Surely this qualifies as an excuse to post the cabin song, in case there's a human alive who hasn't seen it yet and needs cheering up.

Originally posted by Flashman1849
Surely this qualifies as an excuse to post the cabin song, in case there's a human alive who hasn't seen it yet and needs cheering up.

This song is more poker-esque.