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Many players say game selection is the most important skill for a player to half. I don't agree, as I think learning poker strategy is more important than picking a good game, I promise that poor game selection is a recipe for disaster. There's an old adage that says, you could be the 10th best poker player in the world, but if you sit in a game with the best nine then you are a fish. We make money in this game from bad players. We don't make money getting into kissing contests with professionals. You should play against good players, every once in a while to improve your game, but you shouldn't play for high stakes. And you certainly shouldn't play again, you don't know well.
An excerpt from The Making Of A Poker Player by Matt Matros After wandering around for a few minutes, now stuck more than $1000 for the trip, I returned to the table to talk about my call with Joe and Patri. I already described Patri's excellent analysis. Joe's was less useful. "If you call me withdraws all day, eventually I'll have the money." Wow, that's really helpful. I thanked him. [Lord knows why], and then he left me with this beauty: "yeah. And I hope we can play again.... if you win the lotto or something." Over the past few years, Joe has been much more respectful of me and my game. [I'm a much, much better player now than I was then], and has grown up a little himself, in my opinion. But I don't think we'll ever be friends. I could be wrong.
The most common example of a game theory problem is the prisoners dilemma. Here's how it works: two suspects in a crime are put into separate cells. If they both confess, each will be sentenced to three years in prison. If only one of them confesses, he will be set free after testifying against the other, who will receive a sentence of 10 years. If neither confesses, they will both be convicted of minor offenses and spend just a year in prison. Naturally, if the prisoners could somehow be forced to cooperate, neither would confess and both will be out of jail in a year. This, however, is a non-cooperative situation, of the type Nash studied, where the prisoners have no reason to trust each other.
It turns out that the Nash equilibrium for the prisoners dilemma is for both prisoners to confess. This is because, at that point, there is no way for either prisoner to gain by making a unilateral change in his strategy. [That is, once one prisoner has confessed, it does the other prisoner no good to remain silent]. Nash showed that this is actually the best solution, for both prisoners to confess, even though there are scenarios where each individual could do better. It is these kinds of counter intuitive insights that make game theory fun. |
