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Comment by jackschultz | Hacker News Reader

There's another element in there. The one about relative skill. Let's say that you're a much better player than the other person, and that you would win 90% of the time heads up (one on one, which we are going to assume at this point for simplicity). If this were the case, you would need to have a greater than 90% chance to win the hand all in for it to be a correct move.

This is also easy to understand if you, a novice, are heads up against one of the pros. It's a much better move for you to go all in on any decent hand and just try to get lucky to win, since if you try to play their game, you're going to lose.

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Many poker players who study theory see this as incorrect. Ill try explain the other side.

I will avoid the fact that a 90% winrate in a format like you describe (heads up sit and go) is not even remotely possible vs anyone who knows the basic rules. In heads up sit and goes 2-5% roi is generally considered great at any non micro level. Poker (especially online) is more of a volume game. However, roi is very flawed which I will get to. Generally the most profitable players are ones who crank out a small winrate over large amounts of volume.

Here is the problem though, we really are not concerned with winning a single game in a format like this. Our top concern is making money. In a winner take all heads up tournament chipEV == $EV so we can just call it EV in this format and not worry about ICM. If we are playing for a living we want to make the most amount of money, so each session we want to maximize our EV (win the most amount of chips). Most internet players worry about their winrate in BB/100 or EV adjusted $/hr.

When we get into a situation which we are a 1% favorite for full stacks vs a player we have a large edge on, we should still take it, its money in our pocket long term. If we lose we pray the opponent accepts a rematch. This is especially true for heads up games which usually only last a few minutes and its possible to play 100-200 games per day. A 3% winrate at $100 stakes with this volume becomes a significant amount of money even before factoring in site bonuses (likely a bit over $1/game) etc.

Not related to your comment, but doesn't deserve another post is that poker really is a great game and its unfortunate how its perceived by so many. Ive been playing for 3 years professionally and coached on a popular training site, yet after transitioning to programming (With a cs degree) I get laughed at by recruiters and seen as a degenerate.

why tell them you play in the interview?

why not? It demonstrates the ability to hold a huge amount of information in your head at once, make rapid decisions in a high pressure environment, and do what are essentially Bayesian probability calculations in your head. I may be biased as someone that played poker to put myself through grad school and had a nice hourly rate by the end of it, but I think that it requires a high intelligence, the ability to emotionally disconnect from decisions, and the ability to retain and act on such large amounts of information that it's a definite positive. (It's also really boring and psychologically brutal at times and I wouldn't recommend it to many folks.)

Are you still a winning player? Were you playing before Black Friday? I heard it was easier. I studied the game a lot these past few months and I barely break even. I'm only winning in live poker.

As the field narrows to just the devoted players, it will get harder.

Also, as the article suggests, poker strategies are advancing quickly. I started in 2004, and by 2012 I was still ahead of the curve, but the game had clearly gone light-years forward in terms of general strategy--in particular I'm speaking to HUSNGs, my game of choice.

Not sure...there is a dearth of games now for US players and I was so disgusted with my money getting wrapped up in the Full Tilt BS that I went away from poker for about a year. I am certainly still a winning player at live poker, but the hourly rate can be a bit dismal and I don't enjoy it enough to do it everyday, or even once a week.

I would say that by 2008 the average live game was strong enough that I definitely had to practice disciplined game/seat selection, couldn't just sit down anywhere and expect my edge was higher than the rake.

I agree HU strategies advanced exponentially once stoxpoker and some other video sites came on and people started being heads-up specialists.

I'm hoping the US players can come back online soon. I'm not saying US players are bad but it can't be harder than playing Russians hyper-LAGs all day.

I agree. I also played professionally for 3 years, and I found that when applying for devloper positions, my poker experience has been lauded as related.

He was greatly mistaken in his 90% estimate, but the players with the best winrates when I quit (2011) were still winning ~60% of games.

My ROI was ~14% at 100s when I played professionally, totaling 1000s of games. I agree that at 1ks+ the best players were making ~5% ROI, but there were much better winrates up thru the 500s, which I don't consider "micros."

Also, ROI is generally less at micros, because rake is a bigger issue.

Yes, but then the pros determine that you have a very wide range for going all in. If needed, they will pick a spot where they have a very strong hand to beat what you have, at best an average hand. Additionally, if you're a novice going all in a lot, the whole table will eventually recognize this and all of them will adapt their playing to take your chips. Certainly, you'll get lucky perhaps on a few all ins and win against a pro. And you might actually be right, that this playing style is better than just trying your best as a novice, but it's analogous on a true/false test to just filling in true for every answer. That's only recommended if you know you'll do poorly on the test even if you try. And it's also analogous that playing a pro would be like trying to answer true every time of a professor known to have false be every answer on some tests--i.e., it's a really dumb poker strategy, especially versus pros who are expecting your strategy and thinking one level deeper.

Also, the real reason you're wrong is that if you're heads up against a pro and you go all in, the pro can fold and live to see the next hand.

When I play ring game (non-tournament) poker, I'm attempting to maximize my hourly rate, not minimize my variance. Therefore I am pushing every edge I have, even when small.

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