Ha nice! I think I'll watch that MIT class to see how it's presented. Thanks for the link.

Also, I recall Brandon Adams teaching a poker class but I might be conflating it with the fact that he is a professional poker player who also teaches at Harvard.

As is, my university (UC Davis, shoutout to nanonoko) has something called "First-Year Seminars." Anyone can propose a class, and there is funding available that goes back to the instructor's department. Almost no subject is off-limits, so long as you can demonstrate some value to it. For example, one of my friends is a huge Yankee fan and thus teaches a seminar on that club's history. (I've long considered creating a rival course on Red Sox history.)

Now this thread makes me think it might be fun to draw up a Poker 101 course. In fact, the subject could easily lend itself to remote learning, as every training video has already demonstrated. But no, "loosey goosey, having a sandwich" will not be on the syllabus.

................. other than the unknown information in your opponents head.

Since people are interested....

Poker - Estimating, gambling, imprecise calculation, play for $$, luck, has cheating

Chess - Visual thinking, geometry, razor sharp calculation, play for points, all skill, no cheating

Two great posts BACK TO BACK!

Excellent work guys!

I think poker is naturally heading in this direction tbh. The game seems to be becoming more technical than ever, and a new generation of quants are leading the frontlines of poker theory.

As a competitive chess player and tournament organizer, I can tell you there's plenty of luck in chess. There are plenty of upsets, and cheating is a very real problem. Anyone that tells you otherwise has never competed at the game for money.

It's funny because the chess community often says it should become more like the poker community, specifically when it comes to commercializing the game and making it more popular.

discounting the draw of your opponent for a sec (I assume that is random thus luck)

what are some examples of luck in chess?

This is Nick’s way of coping with not playing more online during 2008-2010 as well as +1’ing his Chess buddies.

The fact that there are are plenty of upsets doesn’t mean there is plenty of luck. I lose to 2000 rated players occasionally. Every one has bad days/games and vice versa.

Cheating is in fact a very real problem.

Getting 3 whites in a 5 round tournament.

High level opponent blundering.

Opponent getting no sleep the night before

etc.

There’s no luck in that If you played perfectly you would never lose, even as black, just draw.

It has not been proven to a shadow of a doubt that chess is a draw though.

RoadToPro,

Is that an avatar of yourself?

It looks familiar for some reason.

Depending on one’s rating, people’s perception will change as well. I thought there was a lot of luck when I was 1800. I no longer think this as a master. People are too solid. The winner of every game is pretty deserving and a much higher % of games end in a draw.

Just an opinion though.

Tom Dwan re avatar (not sure if serious.gif)

He knows that's dwan. He keeps a pic in his wallet. Anyone remember when dwan cried while bluffing Ivey? Elezra asked him why the tears, and he said it was the lights. Cannot find it (only checked youtube)

You think a guy who joined in 2007 and has 30k+ posts doesn't know what Dwan looks like? For a super-smart chess wizard that really isn't too smart

I take things at face value. Life is more simple that way.

I don’t care what his join date and post quantity is.

Sarcasm is overrated.

OK black vs white is obv all luck.

why don't tournament organizers take that factor away. would seem easy to do. each match against another player always has to be even number of games wuth each getting black/white equally.

but the opponent not sleeping the night before? luck? huh. thats kind if pushing it.

If it is true that there is a convo amongst chess players to make it more like poker, why not add some real luck to the game? a roll of dice at the beginning of each turn that hurts or helps that player. double moves, lose a turn, remove a piece, reclaim a piece.

with that in place I would have a shot of beating you (a micro shot !) That would make it interesting to play you where as without any luck you would crush me every time like the chess cockroach that I am and game would be NO fun for either one of us.

I'd love that in my home country. Most people here think poker is literal slot machines "pokies".

Dunno if this has already been asked/suggested, but if one were to try and devise a weighting formula to determine who's the best poker player in a given format, what would it look like? Aka What variables would be used to control for the luck aspect?

Is there anything more stupid than taking a troll at face value? 'Life is more simple that way' is a totally irrelevant statement. I genuinely don't mean to be another one of these guys attacking you, but you say some very silly things

It's probably been discussed often on these forums, but I've also been thinking about how to declare a poker "world champion" after watching some old WSOP broadcasts and pondering the absurdity of giving that title to random people who run hot in a single $10k NLHE flippament. There's no universe where people like Rob Varkonyi and Jerry Yang deserve to be called "world champion" in poker.

It's hard to find the correct alternative. One argument is that whoever wins the most money playing poker in a given year is the world champion. Even so, someone who randomly ships the WSOP ME or something like a big high roller will have an unfair edge. Also, people who can get into big cash games against whales would have an edge here even if they aren't actually better than a lot of players who simply can't get into those games.

Another approach would be to look at something like GPI or WSOP POTY. I think that's much closer to reaching a valid conclusion. I would say these titles are a lot more prestigious than just shipping the WSOP Main Event, but...it also drastically favors people who have the bankroll to splash around in lots of big events. And that only covers tournaments, with no consideration for cash games, which many would argue is the real domain of the world's best.

The best method for determining the "world champion" might be to have something like a pro tour where a small-ish number of players (let's say 200-300) compete in a long series of cash games and tournaments. Let's say the top 100 players earn automatic qualification for the next year and then the other 100 spots are allocated through a series of qualifiers.

The problem is that the money isn't there to support a PGA Tour-like system, and it's simply not worth the time for people like Ivey/etc who can just jump into high stakes cash games without having to bother with some type of qualifier gauntlet that's well below their normal stakes.

To finally answer your question, I would think several key variables merit consideration for determining who is best in a given format:

Stakes - How high is the person playing?
Results - How much $$$ are they winning?
Opposition - How tough are their opponents?
Volume - Over what sample size are they thriving?

The reason why calling the WSOP ME winner the "world champion" is so silly is because it's a sample size of one tournament. If they ran a $10k every weekend over the course of the calendar year and then had a points system based on total annual results, it would be a lot more valid because the volume would be a lot higher. Even then, if nosebleeds players didn't participate then it wouldn't necessarily be as meaningful. On the other hand, if you crank up the buy-in to $100k per each event, the pool of people able to play a full schedule would drop near zero, excluding most of the potential contenders.

There's no real solution that's going to be as valid as something like the NBA Playoffs or World Chess Championship, but I'd say WSOP POTY and GPI POTY are the closest thing in the MTT universe. It's all murky in cash games because that stuff isn't tracked, but you could probably poll the high stakes regs about who is the best player in a given year and reach some type of rough consensus.

Being so easily trolled isn't indicative of his chess ability, but doesn't bode well for live poker.

TLDR poast incoming:

1) Tournament organizers can’t really take that factor away. In lots of big tournaments, held over 3-day weekends and during the holidays for example you only play 2 games a day. Sections can be quite large. To determine a winner and a small group of top finishers you typically use a Swiss format. I don’t want to go to in depth about how that works here but since white vs. black really doesn’t matter much until a highish level, it’s not worth playing 2 games vs each person to account for that.

2) unpopular opinion, but chess is okay the way it is imo. It’s not the same at all but let’s just say hypothetically chess was like HU poker . I and many others love competing vs players at a similar skill level and seeing who comes out on top. Nobody really plays it for the money anyways. I like that if I play a better game than my opponent, I have no chance of losing.

3) yes, if I played you it may be no fun for either one of us. But if you’re passionate about chess, playing someone your own level is typically fun so I don’t see how that matters. Right?

Take something like golf. Just like chess, the better player would win at a high frequency in some sort of “HU battle”. Incorporating outside things to add a luck element in sports or games is interesting but meh.

Poker players have a hard time with these discussions since they look down on the fact that chess doesn’t really involve money to any large degree. But the reality is that the overwhelming majority of poker enthusiasts are long term losers, so that view is rather hypocritical.

I.e. there’s no problem imo with a hobby not involving money, similarly to poasting on here for example.

No, but I presume there to be at least some correlation between the intelligence required to be that good at chess and the ability to identify BLATENTLY obvious trolling

Not so...logical-mathematical intelligence is separate from interpersonal intelligence
And while they are of course connected in so much as they exist within the same brain, and your mind uses different types of intelligence to function, one type can excel greatly while the other remains rather stunted.

The 20-30k+ hours I’ve spent playing/studying/watching/reading/teaching chess in my lifetime so far is time I haven’t spent socializing.

Zero regrets. Many of the most successful people are/were aloof/ostracized.

Thanks Nutella. Re live poker, Phil Ivey, Phil Galfond, Andrew Robl, Andy on LATB etc. rarely engage with people on the felt. Same with Stephen Chidwick/David Peters etc. for tourneys.

Iz fine. May have trouble getting into juicy high stakes home games one day though.

I've gotten back into chess lately and I'm trying to learn, but it's a steep curve. I'm struggling to get my ELO rating above 1400 consistently lol. I'm curious, given 20-30k hours of chess experience, what's your current ELO rating? So I can get a sense of how much time is needed to advance to xyz level.