Well there's only one way we'd find out isn't there...

So when does this start?

Agree with this. Compare poker to chess is just plain stupid so much different mindset. World class bridge players though almost all win at poker i would say like at least 95% of top 100 bridge players in the world are winners. Chess on the other hand just doesnt fitt as well.

Bridge has an element of deception in addition to the practice of being aware of the relativity of cards in a deck. Chess has much less deception. Having superior knowledge is enough deception as they won't understand where you are anyway.

The intuition in regards to deception is the x-factor in poker. The simple math is painfully easy in poker, it is gauging the variables in the more complex decisions that isn't quite as easy.

That's not to say there isn't psychology in chess. You prepare for lines of play you expect your opponent to play and try to guess what his mind is thinking early on. Where he might make a variation and go wrong, but you can overcome this with just brute preparation and not getting too psychological about it.

Here is a grandmaster that has played a ****ing ton of limit holdem.

[ ] anywhere close to world class

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Schmaltz

http://www.pokertableratings.com/sta...arch/gmhawkeye

There are way more chess players-turned-poker-players than people know of. Some of them are online and a lot of them are live cash game players.
There was a sort of mass exodus from chess between the years 2002-2004 and a lot of master level players (2300+) to high level players (2500+) quit school/work/chess etc and switched to poker.

There are less high level players ( grand masters, 2600+) who have switched to poker, but this is probably just due to the fact that the number of high level players is far less than the number of master level players in existence. At this point quitting chess and switching to poker is commonplace in the chess world and it is a real option for most chess players - which I think is great.

There are several mid to high level male and female players around the world who have made names for themselves in the poker world, most people just are not aware of their chess background. I could name a lot of them, most probably, but they probably would not appreciate it. One person though, who is also one of the more known names on here and in the American chess community is 'curtains' and was for a long time one of the best, if not the best, sng players in the world back before and during the poker boom.

Yes, I was going to mention Curtains as a good example. After SNG's, he then moved on to cash games. I used to read his blog and he seemed to be crushing the games.

my general feeling is that a lot of the skillsets for chess translate well and easily for poker. chess is very calculating, logical, and analytical. when I used to hang out at chess clubs, poker games would invariably break out. those guys would very quickly learn the technical side of it through study and observation.

by the way, carlsen is not just prodigy or good young world class player, he's probably a transcendent player. he's only 21, number 1 in the world, and knocking on the door of the highest rating of all time, held by kasparaov, who is probably the best player of all time. until a recent very large and unusual upswing by the world number 2 player (aronian) the gap between him and the other players was quite large (20 to 30 points) for a considerable amount of time.

http://www.2700chess.com/

Ya ppl in the thread not thinking about it properly saying chess is different mindset. That can be easily changed with a month or two of coaching and letting a guy with that amount of intelligence play the game and go through a few HH's with him he will pick it up at a rate ppl in here cant fathom. Also, as mentioned just because you dont know a players background of chess doesnt mean there isnt a ton of them who have switched. Another player that was a chess beast who made the switch is James "Andy Mcleod" Obst who has done extremely well in mtts. You ppl are fooling yourself if you think things like mindset cant be changed or taught or a "fearlessness" for poker cant be taught...

Such a pointless discussion ITT.
Newsflash - Smart people can succeed at various intellectual activities if they put their minds to it.

Curtains actually still makes chess videos for leggo poker. I haven't watched his most recent video...but his last video was pretty sick.

He mentioned that he's stopped poker for a bit because of black friday...but I'm guessing he'll be back soon

He is back to studying chess and pursuing his gm norms.
I'm not sure how much poker he is playing these days as I don't talk to him really, just his sister, who is one of my best friends (and also a well known chess/poker professional).

+1

Ivey has something that this kid will never have and that is a ridiculous drive (the degen factor). This kid doesn't have it. He's an incredible talent but it's pretty clear that he would want to live a life that was too well balanced to ever have what it takes to be the best poker player in the world. That being said, I'm sure he could rise through the ranks quickly and do quite well for himself.

Thanks for the info

Glad to hear he's still playing chess. He's clearly a really smart guy and even though he was crushing poker you could tell by reading his blog that he preferred chess and the mental challenge of it.

Not to compare myself to Magnus Carlsen but in about a month I will become the youngest grand life master in bridge so I can somewhat relate to this.

The thing about bridge that is different than chess is that "prodigies" start at an older age. This is because chess is a game of perfect information, it is very much about calculation and processing speed, and even when you are young your mind works very fast (and I wouldn't be surprised if your brains processing power was fastest at age 18 or early 20's or something). Bridge being a game of incomplete information is very much about making deductions about what they have, and experience matters a lot with this. It's also about psychology, weighting the probabability of various things based on a combination of technical skills (math) but also on experience and judgement. This requires more playing a lot to get good at, not to mention the partnership element.

I believe that a lot of those skills are important in poker, recalling past hands and using your judgement and experience to put them on a more narrow range based on their betting lines etc. Sure poker is much simpler than both bridge and chess, but the main skill set to be successful at poker is not raw processing skills, and it seems like that is the main thing about being good at chess (though I am not a chess expert, I could be wrong). Put another way, if we knew exactly what hand our opponent had, and we had to figure out the right line, that would be more similar to chess. However trying to put them on more precise ranges involves psychology, recall, and really is more about being in their head and understand why they do what they do, and how to exploit their errors. Yes, processing power and being very intelligent will be helpful, but I definitely think that that is a limited amount of what being good at poker is about. Bridge skills definitely transfer over better to poker.

The person with the highest iq in sweden is playing poker and doing well but he cant get to highstakes level. And if these chessgeniuses would crush poker why arent they? The profits for them would be higher than in chess. Chess is a pure skillgame, poker arent.

You're showing an immense amount of disrespect towards Carlsen by suggesting that he got where he is thanks to "talent" or any form of natural ability. No such thing has applied Jungleman, Ivey, Fischer or Carlsen to go where they now are, it's hard work and dedicating their lives to something that has made them great. Carlsen himself has stated multiple times that he does not consider himself a genius, far from it, but rather an insanely hard worker who had a passion for chess.

Maybe thinking that successful people have something that the average guy doesn't makes people feel good about not being the best at something, but goddamn is it ****ed up that people's hard work gets credited to a random genetic ****-a-magic.

The first big difference between poker and chess is, that if you do mistakes in chess you will see it really fast by analyzing. But in poker you oftentimes might not realize that you are doing a mistake.

Also chess is just a lot of work, the Top-GMs play 8h+/day, on a tourney I jokingly asked a friend of mine why Aronjan is that much better then him(He is FM and he knows Aronjan from his youth), he answered with "I didn`t want to spend all of my day with playing chess".

I`m pretty sure that carlsen if he would put in some work, would really do well in something like hyperturbosngs or SNGs overall, because they are easier to analyze and you know fast when you do mistakes.

Might seem strange but RTS-pros seem to do better at poker than Chess-pros do. Two random names that come to mind are obv Elky and mtw-davin. I know there are a lot others too. Even though chess might require more "raw brain computing power", RTS games seem to convert into poker skills better. Just watch any random starcraft broadcast and you'll soon see how similar poker and RTS games really are, while chess and poker are vastly different.

i wonder how for example terence tao would compare to carlsen in chess if he were to play chess all his life from early age instead of doing mathematics.

i do not believe that he would be able to play draw vs kasparov at the age of 11 or 13 or something, like carlsen did. but how would he perform at say 25-30 years.

whould he be #1 ?

I've tried playing chess online and it seems like I get owned every time lmao

You're going off half-cocked. I'm talking about mental talent because we're discussing how he would transition to poker.

I also said, if you read above, that the skills required to be where Carlsen is are beyond just intelligence...and include a great capacity for study, resilience and killer instinct. Any chess player who reaches the level where Carlsen plays has also put years worth of work into developing their abilities.

All these sports comparisons ITT. What about Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders? Both have played multiple sports at the highest level. Also I grew up with Owen Nolan (hockey player) and he was good at every sport he played and almost instantly better than most. Owen's first time bowling he crushed everyone there.

I'd say if you are good enough to be a grandmaster at chess, you'll certainly be "good" at poker. I guess hard to define good and as 2p2ers we have higher expectations for the term than most. But most grandmaster should be able to beat 1/2 NL online or 5/10 NL live if they set their mind to it

I agree to truly be an elite player, understanding the nuances of human psychology becomes increasingly important (guys like Dwan and Ivey are masters of this), and simply being a mathematical calculating genius won't cut it