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No interview this week, but Gareth Chantler makes an extended appearance to share his on-the-ground experience with the civil unrest in Istanbul and his thoughts on The Mental Game of Poker 2. Plus Nate and Andrew discuss the ethics of mark-up and whether and how to bluff-raise a dry flop.
Timestamps
0:37 Hello and Welcome
26:30 Strategy
42:05 Civil Unrest in Istanbul
52:48 Book Club
This is the thread that spurred Nate’s simulation of the WSOP $10K Heads Up event. This is a new thread he started about the simulation.
Strategy
Effective stacks $260. Villain opened MP over a few limpers to $11. Hero flatted the CO with 10c8c. Limpers all folded.
(Pot: $29 before rake) Flop is: Js2h6s
Villain c-bet $20
Hero raises to $65
Villain asks for a count after about 20 seconds, I tell him, then he counts his stack of green (about $400) and calls after an additional 30-40 seconds.
(Pot: $159 before rake) Turn is: 7d
Villain leads for $175
Hero folds
There was the exchange of impressions of Mental Game of Poker in the podcast.
I share my impression with you.
I still believe that title: Mental Game of Poker is misleading title.
The book is an effort to apply generic concepts from sport psychology to poker.That’s all.
There are much better books about the zone,decision making,learning,focus,goals.
I would expect from Mental Game of Poker to have very specific poker problems.
An article by by Phil Newall in last 2+2 magazine articulates what mental game of poker is about.
Phis Nawall discuss several truly poker topics which should be mandatory topics in Mental Game of Poker.
For example:The topic of potential coalition partners.
What should I do, or know to prevent potential coalition partners from gaining influence over my decision making?
Another interesting topic is about the illusion of an undivided and continuous consciousness.
The generic concept with wide and practical application in poker.
Sometimes I have impression that there is more mental game content in your pod-casts and Andrew blog than in Mental Game of Poker.
There was some good chat about the marketplace this week in the pokercast with one of sheets&bax which might be relevant to the selling pieces discussion. It’s not really clear to me why the ability to short players is really necessary to complete the market – it’s only really in financial markets that shorting exists, and plenty of other markets seem to work pretty well. Even without shorting, people are free to not buy pieces, potentially state at what prices they would be prepared to buy, etc. etc. to enable price discovery. And as discussed, shorting opens up a whole host of other risks.
The thing that strikes me as interesting is that the staking market seems to be set up like it should be a classic market for lemons. But (and I confess I don’t follow it beyond podcast discussion of it) it seems not to be the case. I guess perhaps there are a few reasons:
– reputation counts for something, and people try to use the market repeatedly and so tend not to overprice
– there’s a lot of money that wants to find a home, and people who want a sweat, so people are less discriminating than they ought to be
– there is some basis for evaluating people – track record, people like Nate fighting the good fight, who knows what else
Man, the market for lemons thing is a good insight. A few preliminary thoughts:
-People are incentivized to sell even when they know it’d be +$EV to keep the action–variance keeps some of the market-for-lemons conditions from holding.
-It can be harder to judge your poker ROI than, say, the value of your car.
That said, the “winner’s curse” model might illuminate this situation well.
I didn’t know Nate was Nate on 2 plus 2. Holy shit, that raaaavages.
This made me smile. Thanks!
Man we need more of Gareth. But why do I feel so clueless when the 3 of you get together. I feel like Im sitting at the kids table at the Thanksgiving dinner. But seriously he has a wonderful mind.
Kind words Keone! I get to cut the audio for these things so sounding not stupid is usually straightforward.
The staking marketplace is simply immature. It will become more structured as poker continues to grow and be accepted. And that should reduce markup, as it becomes easier/safer for players to access capital.
I expect it to ultimately end up similar to private investments (real estate or hedge funds) where a player sells 100% of his action in exchange for a salary that compensates him for his time and effort, plus a portion of all profits (say 10-20%) to incentivize good play. This would be handled via written agreements and contracts. This is probably similar to how many individual backing deals work today, except there would be no makeup. Player gives up some upside in exchange for a salary and no makeup.
If you think of staking as hiring skill/decision-making, then staking someone is analogous to hiring them. But in the traditional employment model, the employer advertises and the job candidates vie to be hired. Does this ever happen in staking? Where someone with money offers to stake and then chooses from those who reply?
Didn’t the whole level chip objective come from Deeb’s famous post about $180’s (stop and go, go and go, etc.)? I forget whether he was really serious about needing to be at the chip levels he posted or if that was just a rough guide (or if he was serious and later re-thought the issue).
I hadn’t heard that but it sounds plausible. I think there’s a tradeoff between teaching someone oversimplified rules or teaching complex decision-making with a lot of variables and exceptions. I tend to err towards the latter, but I’m not at all certain that’s best in all cases or for all people.