Pokerwiner.com → Games of texas holdem poker

1.ADJUST YOUR PLAY TO CONDITIONS

1st hour (late morning):

Sid had begun at a full table and everyone had played in almost every hand.

Passive play had ruled no one had raised pre-flop or in any other betting rounds. Mostly players had called. In this environment, Sid had played looser than otherwise. Drawing hands had become profitable because he could see the flop cheaply and had known that a big pot had waited for him if he were to hit the draw. Drawing hand had been playable from almost any position since he had ‘known’ everyone would have called and no one would have raised.

Sid had to fold high pairs quickly if they hadn’t improved on the flop, because with so many people in the hand, someone had always hit the draw. It had generally taken trips or better to win, and with the pots large, there had always been a showdown, so there had been no point in trying to bluff.

The big pots had also covered his mistakes.

2nd hour (lunch time):

The game had been frequently play short-handed because players had kept leaving for twenty thirty minute intervals to eat. Sometimes only five to six players had been present which had led to confusion on blinds, since people had kept missing their blind.

Sid’s cost to play had gone up because he had stayed at the table, so his blind position had come up more frequently. Players had remained passive.

Sid had played poker aggressively, particularly with big pairs and premium starting hands. Drawing hands had become unplayable from any position since there had been so few poker players to contribute to the pot. Two pair, particularly if one had been large, had often won.

Fewer showdowns had occurred, so he had stolen some pots with aggressive raising. He had needed to steal pots or the frequent blinds would have eaten up his chip pile.

3rd hour (early afternoon):

The table had filled with aggressive poker players. Almost always a pre-flop raise had occurred. Playing cards appropriate for his position had become critical. Sid could not have limped in with weak starting cards because he would have raised. Sid had needed to have premium starting cards and had to be prepared to raise or call a raise to stay in a hand. Mistakes had become costly since the aggressive poker play had meant he had paid dearly to chase.

4th hour (mid-afternoon):

The action had dried up and the game had tightened considerably. Most poker players had folded their starting cards. Whether Sid’s hand had been mediocre or a monster hadn’t mattered much since he couldn’t have attracted bettors wither way. With little money in play, his earning potential had dropped to near nothing. While keeping his seat, he had started scouting other tables, having considered a switch.

5th hour (late afternoon):

Frustration with the lack of action had set in. Someone had raised pre-flop, there had been a re-raise,and then some had yelled ‘cap it. ’Everyone had put in three bets to see a flop. Suddenly, the entire table had been on a tilt. Chips had flown everywhere, even when poker players had held the flimsiest of cards. Wild swings had occurred in everyone’s bankroll. To play profitably, Sid had needed a lot of money and the very best cards.

Playing with anything less than premium cards from any position wouldn’t have been worth it,because the pre-flop expenses would become too high.

Sid had needed to be a heavy favorite pre-flop to have justified putting up so much money. You would have noticed as the day had progressed, strategy that had been correct one hour had become incorrect later on.

This had hardly ever been true at chess, where a strong move had always been a strong move. online poker players would have constantly had to adjust to the changing social dynamic. Computers have been very poor at adjusting.

The great British mathematician, Alan Turing, had argued in a famous article entitled ‘Computer Machinery and Intelligence’ that had been published in 1950 in the philosophical journal,

Mind, that a computer could have been said to ‘think’ if interacting with the computer had proved indistinguishable from interacting with a human.

If a human and the computer had been put in two separate rooms, and had allowed a human to interrogate them unseen.

If the interrogator, through a series of probing questions, couldn’t have distinguished the computer’s answers from the human’s, the computer would be said to pass the ‘Turing Test’and, according to Turin, would actually be thinking.

If you restrict interactions to the microcosm of chess, and computers today could almost pass the Turing Test.

Based on chess moves alone, it would be difficult for the expert to distinguish a human grandmaster from a computer.

But when it would come to poker, would the Turing Test even be meaningful? There would be an insidious problem with programming computers to play that in Sid’s opinion would raise the Turing test to a higher level.

The problem would not be whether people could figure out if they were up against a computer. It would be whether the computer could figure out people, particularly the ever-changing social dynamics in a randomly selected group of people. Nobody at a poker table would care whether or not the computer would play pokerlike a person.

In fact, people would welcome a computer, since computers would tend to play predictably. Computers would be, by definition, predictable, which would be the meaning of the word ‘programmed.

’ If you would play a computer simulation for a short amount of time, you would learn the machine’s betting patterns, adjust would mean the computer would be distinguishable from a person.

Many people would play poker as predictably as a computer. They would be welcomed at the table, too. If you would find a predictable poker opponent and would learn his or her patterns, you could exploit that knowledge for profit. Most people,however, have been unpredictable and human unpredictability would be an advantage at poker.

To play poker successfully, computers would not only have to develop human unpredictability, hey would have to learn to adjust to human unpredictability as well. Computers would fail miserably at the problem of adjusting to ever changing social conditions that would result from human interactions.

That would be why beating a computer at poker has been so easy. Of course, the same requirement, the ability to adjust unpredictability, would apply to poker playing humans who would want to be successful. You should go back and study how Sid had adjusted each hour in his poker session. However, as humans, we have been more accustomed to human unpredictability, so we have been far better at learning how to adjust.