Poker: Winning $1000 by Chance, Skill, or Powerful Play?
Poker: Winning $1000 by Chance, Skill, or Powerful Play?
I was once a semi-professional poker player – good enough to bet US$ thousands, good enough to grind out winnings online, but also good enough to recognize the gap between that level and making a living at it. Once I got married and had to explain the occasional losing days to my wife, that made playing more challenging. And with the UIGEA's passage in 2016, the risks of playing part-time grew unacceptable in the US regulatory regime. Risking the pot is one thing; risking jail time for pulling your winnings into the American payments system is another. My wife did get a few nice bags and spa treatments in Vegas out of the deal.
But one does learn a fair bit about how to evaluate risk and reward. There are plenty of good books out there on the mechanics of poker and how to play the odds. But in reading the classics like Super System or Cowboys Full, one will start to get a feel for the real challenge in poker: how to play the people.
Poker's ascendance in the US can be linked to Texas Hold 'Em, a game you might not have started with but have probably heard about, or have seen on ESPN's poker coverage. More traditional games like five-card draw and seven-card stud rely on gradual exposure of hands, limited opportunities to better them, and adjustments to betting as the hand progresses. Texas Hold 'Em relies on a much higher proportion of "community cards" with limited information held by players and more open betting. It is faster-paced. In no-limit, fortunes can swing wildly on the last card. You can buy your way out of trouble with a spirited all-in bet. And you can play a hand perfectly and still lose your shirt to an amateur.
Those conditions force attention on the role of perception in risk. Having the best cards is only half the battle, since they might be invalidated on the next turn of the card. Having the best mindset, being able to manipulate perceived risk for your opponents to force bad decisions, is the difference between mechanically correct play and winning play.
Risk has a component of personal "skin in the game". If you are on a winning streak and playing aggressively, you can overwhelm better players with sheer aggression. If you are hit with a bad beat, it is mentally challenging to continue play at the same level. Your risks have not changed, but your perception of the risk has changed drastically. Decision-making can be influenced, and in a game where perception matters, if you are compromised in your decisions, players will react rather like sharks drawn to chum in the water.
My own experience in a World Series of Poker event brought this to the fore. I had drawn a table with a well-known poker celebrity, who played more hands than I would have expected but generally was aggressive and risked a lot early. This being one of the "undercard" tournaments, she was willing to "go big or go home". She ended up home that day, but had several more events to play, and eventually made the final day of the Main Event.
Me, I played more tightly. It's a lot of money even in the undercards, and was my first event at this level. I played reasonably well and made it through most of the first day. But then misfortune struck. I had two aces in hand, the best starting cards in the game) and had a relatively innocuous common board, looking solid early. I did not bet as aggressively, and an opponent called with a lower pair which eventually matched. My aces were "cracked" – unlucky -- but my slower play was the real problem. And at that point other players knew I'd likely play even more conservatively and bid up hands early, knowing I'd be reluctant to call. I lasted only another hour.
Had I hit the aces, would I have played more aggressively, and been the shark instead of the minnow? Maybe. But in a lengthy tournament, luck will come and go, and the best players know how to handle that variance in risk. They manipulate risk to their advantage in both winning and losing situations. They are incredibly mentally tough, or accomplished enough where they can ride out the rough spots. They don't draw any better cards. They simply play them better.
The debate in US regulatory circles is whether poker is a game of luck or one of skill. It's unquestionably one of skill, though luck plays a short-term role. Winning players might lose on a given night but they win over time, and win more against less skilled competition.
The good news for now is that poker skills are not easily programmable – AI has not made quite the progress in No-Limit Hold 'Em it has in Chess, Go, and other board-rule games. Poker bots are a well-known issue in online play and they can beat casual players, but strong professional players can mostly hold their own… though that too is changing as AIs shore up weaknesses and build the ability to consistently win over time. AI can increasingly adjust risk strategies faster than humans can counter.
That speed of adjustment – the ability to manipulate risk – is an area worth further study as we try to make heads or tails of human approaches to risk and decision-making. If we can see the ways our perception of risk is being changed, perhaps we can manage those perceptions better and achieve better risk outcomes.