Poker and the Beginning Trader

[kempo]

Quote from hii a_ooiioo_a:
Like paper trading, the Play Money tables are not exactly the same as playing with real money, but only because of psychology. The actual mechanics of the game in the tables is exactly the same, including the house cut ("Rake"), which is like having a paper trading system that takes broker commissions into account.

As far as them having me pegged, well I have a poker face of my own: once I decide to play a hand, I don't fuss over each turn. I just hit Raise with practically no hesitation. I do this consistently, and the other players cannot tell whether I am bluffing or not. Especially in the 5 player tables, it can really freak them out, and they fold.
That's also part of my winning strategy. If you keep raising the stakes right from the start, it creates a much bigger pot. The pot is much bigger in the rounds I play, and when I win I win big. When I lose to a slightly better hand, that player benefits from my being in that round, but my loss is much less than his gain, because most of the pot was built up by the other players by forcing them to raise early on. Also, if they can't read if I'm bluffing or not, sometimes that lures them in thinking I may be bluffing when I'm not, and increases my pot.

[/B]

The term in the poker world for someone playing as you describe is "maniac". You will create a highly active table and as the good players get cards they will pick you off. They won't be in against you unless they have good odds of having the best hand. And if there are 2 or 3 callers as play continues, you are very likely to get drawn out on and pay them off. In the long run what you describe is a losing strategy.

The term you want to be called in the poker world is "tight aggressive". This player sees the flop with good cards, which come up 30% or less of total hands dealt. This player only then continues if he has the best hand or a good chance of drawing the best hand. When this player has the best of it, he bets and raises aggressively. He occassionally check raises and rarely bluffs. Once this "image" is established, then he might rarely try to steal a blind.

The play money tables are not even remotely like real money. Even at .50/1.00 level the play is dramatically different. The psychological difference between real and play shouldn't be underestimated, as they are active on many levels.

kempo

 

[pokertrader1]

in November at the World Poker Finals....nice guy...but didn't know he was a trader, if I did, I would loved to have discussed that with him. Wonder if he is/was one of Bright's best traders....
Living only 8 miles from Foxwoods, I'm there all the time when I'm not trading, and play alot of poker.....You can't really compare online poker to "live" casino poker, psychology is totally different (like trading from home vs. trading in the Chicago pits; BIG difference).

I would like to know how some of you are doing in the lower stakes online poker games? Profitable? Max. Drawdown? Does it seem like it's rigged?

There are MANY similarities in trading and poker.....glad to see this thread thriving.........

 

[YoungNAmbitious]

But you could probably still win. The house makes an incredible amount of money from the rake. very conservatively 100 hour per game x 100 games equals 10k hour or say $200000 day. I have not bothered to go to paradise to see if these estimates are that close because they are just estimates. if you think that they can't run the site for this kind of money and still make a profit........then maybe your right but its hard to believe. Anyway certainly there is collusion and could very well be some kind of bots (which may or may not be a need for concern.) However no one who can play at all would bother to collude in a 10 cent 20 cent game or anything there abouts. I don't know what the rake is in these little games - make sure its not TOO high.....Anyway all this said I know a couple of people who have won money playing 2/4 and 3/6 one friend beat the 2/4 game for $4 an hour over a period that is probably at least 500 hours which is not forever but its still quite a while. Anyway you could probably win at this level but if you guys have never ever played holdem in a casino then it will be very hard to win at all at first. The games online at a given limit are MUCH tougher then there real life counterparts. Of course there is no 10/20 cent in real life. As for me I lost about a grand online. However I could never stand playing in the smaller games for very long and of course cheating will become a bigger problem as the stakes increase. Not to mention that there are many players in the bigger games who are certainly a lot better then me. So in conclusion I belive that you could win some money but it will never be very much however if its just a training exercise then it doesn't matter much anyway.

Good Luck.........

 

[hii a_ooiioo_a]

I absolutely always shared BigMike's suspicions about online gambling and would never have considered trying them out before this week. I thought the people who ran these things must be totally unethical and whenever I got an e-mail spam trying to lure me in with "get $50 free money to play with" I would delete them right away, thinking "what kind of a total sucker do you think I am?".

But to think that the 3% Rake itself is not enough, and that they would be "greedy" and want to rig it to get all the money, denies the simple mathematical fact that the casino does get all the money eventually through the Rake. YoungNAmbitious's calculations are quite apt. If there's 50 different Real Money tables on a site, making $5 average rake per hand, averaging 40 hands per hour . . . they're making far more on auto-pilot than it would be worth their while to try to pay some professional cardshark to sit at their tables.

TraderNik and easyrider you guys have nerve to jump right in playing with real money without having developed your strategy first in the play money tables. There's also analogies to that in trading, and think to yourself what advice you and others might give to newbie posters on Elite Trader claiming that they just jumped right into trading without developing a strategy first.

 

[hii a_ooiioo_a]

I'm sure at real physical casinos there are professional cardsharks sitting at tables. And that they can see me coming and know how to thoroughly fleece me.

But online
1. they don't know who I am or what I look like. I can create different accounts with different screen names if I want. I don't have to stay around at any one table, or any one casino site long enough for anyone to get to know me.
2. all I need to do is click my mouse to change tables. I don't need to stay physically seated at one table, or get up and even spend the time walking from one table to another. I don't have to stay at any one table long enough for anyone to get any kind of idea what kind of player I am.
3. I don't have to worry about being watched, or followed. Or physically intimidated by other players. Oh my god I would be so much more nervous trekking out to a physical casino, worrying who might pick my pockets, steal my chips, or beat me up in the parking lot! That's so much more likely to happen than for NETeller to suddenly start making unauthorized withdrawals from your bank account.
Anyone wanting to claim that an online casino would be inherently riskier than a real casino I think is ignoring a lot of actual reality. And as I said earlier, I'm the worst poker face! They wouldn't need to study my play strategy, all they'd have to do is look at my face, they would know immediately what kind of hand I had!

And to think that playing cards at a real casino would be to your advantage over online? At a real casino, part of the way it's slanted in their favor is they know, and you know, that you're only there for the time that you're there. That will entice you to taking on excess risk, because you're thinking "well, I don't want to wait around all night. If I'm going to play any more hands, I might as well do it now before I leave to go home." Online you have the complete luxury and convenience that you can log on and play for 10 minutes at a time, anytime you want. And then log off. If the game's not going your way at the moment, no need to feel any pressure to push your luck. You're going to take much more unnecessary risks at a physical casino.

That's also part of why I feel online poker is a strategic advantage for me over trading stocks. With the stock market, there's this pressure: "it's 9:30 am, the game is on! I have to get in the game while it's going!" and you end up making bad trades out of this haste. NO NEED for that with the poker. The game is always on, never let yourself feel pressured into sitting in at any particular moment.

Your analogy of online trading to pit trading is perfect. I totally prefer online casinos to physical casinos precisely the same way I prefer online trading to the notion of the trading pit madhouse. I don't need to be bumped around, stepped on, bullied, have my view blocked, put up with the insane noise and environment. And any time I want I can log off and go do something else.

I would never have anything to do with trading stocks if I had to go to physical trading pits to do it. Just seeing photos of those mad arenas turns my stomach in knots.

 

[freealways]

>>they're making far more on auto-pilot than it would be worth their while to try to pay some professional cardshark to sit at their tables.>>

Yes that sounds very logical but ................., we may not necessarily be dealing with logical people.

If we assume that some casino's are run by 'crooks' we can also safely assume that some of these just cannot help themselves being greedy and may therefore be trying to 'increase' their take a bit with some unsavoury practices.

Jack

 

[YoungNAmbitious]

Its hard to believe that you would feel intimidated in a real life card room. I never had and I am not tough by any stretch of the imagination. The main problem with online poker is that the game is about a thousand times tougher then in a brick and mortar casino. For example it would not be a stretch to say that an online 3-6 game is like a real life 10-20 game at least. In a real life 3-6 game nobody at the table has any clue whatsoever how to play. In an online 3-6 games most of the players will play quite well. Of course online poker is amazingly convenient......

 

[easyrider]

"TraderNik and easyrider you guys have nerve to jump right in playing with real money without having developed your strategy first in the play money tables.

I'd be willing to bet that Ive been playing poker for more years than you have been alive.

I find it hard to believe that too much funny business could be going on, at least in the larger games. Guys who are playing 20/40 are not dummies and would smell a rat pretty fast, imo.

 

[hii a_ooiioo_a]

Ok, all I had to go on was "Played for the first time this morning and really enjoyed it." which sounded like you had played the game itself for the first time. I have the impression that TraderNik is less experienced with this game than you are.

We're all making a certain amount of conjectures about things we don't know everything about and are somewhat suspicious of. I've never been to an actual casino myself, so my statements about being physically intimidated are not based on experience.

So, in the smaller stakes (online) tables, we're pretty much agreeing that it wouldn't be worth it for the casino to set up rooms with cardsharks. And in the larger stakes rooms, most people would "not be dummies" and smell a rat generally. And anyhow, people in those rooms are expecting tough competition too.

I suppose these days at real casinos they have machines to shuffle the cards. I really can't believe that in cases where the cards are shuffled by human dealers, that the shuffling could ever be quite as truly random as it is in a computer simulation. Not that I'm saying the dealers are cheating, but just that the physical shuffling, no matter how skilled, can't be as absolutely random as the virtual cards are.

And in a real casino, can you really have the kind of information that you get online, where you can click on the table list and see the precise numbers of how much money each player has, what the average pot size is, what the average rake is, etc?

I think the online games are giving access to a lot of ordinary people (like me, for example) to get into these games, especially as they become more established, and the internet becomes more widely used by the average person. So the notions that the online games are more difficult, may be something that was more true at the beginning, and becomes in some ways less true.

Like the stock market, there's a wide mixture of participants that are all ingredients in the formula.

 

[hii a_ooiioo_a]

Quote from traderNik:

I watched a guy just betting 'horribly'... all of a sudden I started breaking my own rules because he was raising and raising and I had seen him raise with nothing in the past... so I try to call him when my rules say CLEARLY that I shouldn't... just sick of seeing him win with 'bad' play.

Don't base your bets on what you think the other person is thinking. Base it on what cards you know you have, what cards you need, and what cards can beat you.

Maybe the fact that you're playing with real money, even though small amounts, makes it harder to just fold if you suspect you're being bluffed.