For the avid poker player, sometimes finding the game that is right for you can be difficult task. You’ll probably sit through games that were organized by the husbands of your wives friends and take all of their money on a weekly basis but haven’t found a game that is at your level yet. Here’s where a valuable poker lesson comes into play.
After months of not being able to find yourself the perfect game you’ve been waiting for, you finally found the game that has players at your level and meets at a time that is right for you. It is very important to never get too comfortable in that one game and decide not to go to any more games.
There are a few reasons for this. First, in order to develop into a well-rounded poker player, it is imperative that you keep playing different people and experiencing different styles of play. By doing this you are preparing yourself with all the types of players that may sit across from you both in the future or in tournament play. The other reason why you should always rotate games and never get too comfortable in one spot is because the players around you will begin to learn the tendencies of your game.
If you only play with that group once a month, you’ll keep your competitive advantage because that group won’t be able to learn your tendencies and strategies. This is especially important because as soon as you become comfortable with a group, and your individual player tendencies are exposed, then you could potentially lose a lot of money.
The bottom line is, never get too comfortable in one game and broaden your poker horizons. It will keep the game interesting both for you and for those around you, and save you from losing lots of money!
Broaden your Poker Horizon
Poker Bot
There are a number of important parts of a poker bot. Most people would think that the hardest part is making it play well but that is very far from the truth.
The first obstacle is actually reading the information on the poker table. To our luck we had a lot of experience doing this as we’ve been building bots for a lot of games earlier. To be honest, this is the biggest problem for most people but it if you’re used to reading data fron first person shooters poker is honestly nothing. The need for speed is close to nothing and the different kinds of information that you can get is very limited. Compared to make a bot that aims for your enemies in a constantly changing world, reading cards is simple.
The second obstacle is bypassing anti-bot programs. Most poker rooms actually apply some sort of security in this matter but the truth is they don’t really put their heart in to it. They do make a lot of money from bots, raking all day, they just want to make it seem they are putting a lot of effort into it.
Poker Tools
As a bot builder the different kinds of Poker Tools has always fascinated me. There are perhaps 10 different poker tools on the market today and 5 of them actual poker statistics software. Poker statistics is one of the most complex parts of poker but you can make a lot out of your and others hand histories if you apply a scientific method to it. Lets take a look at one of the most basic, but very useful, areas to apply some statistics skills. When you play with someone a lot you will instinctivly know if he is a loose or a tight player. You will know that this guy will call you a lot and you will know if he folds if you bet hard on the flop and he didn’t hit. Playing online though this can get tricky because you play so many different players.
By keeping track of your hands and building a database you will actually get a library of your played hands and if you can only filter and sort it in the right way and fast then you have a massive advantage on your opponent. For example, by just calculating how big percent of the hands your opponent calls preflop will tell you wether he is a loose or tight player, it’s not harder than that as statisticly he should call a certain amount of hands over time. Him being loose does not of course that he is a bad player, there are lots of very good players that do play loose. It is still a piece of information you have that he doesn’t (as long as he isn’t using the tool himself). It doesn’t stop there either, if you measure how big percent of his hands he folds after the flop you can see if he is weak or tough post flop. If you know your opponent is weak post flop, placing a bigger bet to get him to fold might be a good idea or if you hit a quad maybe you need to slowplay him.
There are of course a lot of more useful info on your opponents that you can get from a high quality poker tool but it doesn’t even stop there. By looking at your own game in retrospect you can learn things about yourself, maybe you are a tight and passive player and to be honest even though being careful is good that is a combination that will never win you any real money.
There is even more to it than that, what if a tool could tell you which table you should play. You want to find a table with lots of fish and no sharks. Well, todays tools keep track of this too.
If you aren’t using a tool today, you definately should, that is my advice for today.
Inspiration: Poker Tools
Buzzluck Casino
I have recently seen a new casino online (it’s not a random encounter as I know some of the people working there) and it goes under the name of Buzzluck, promoting itself as a “super casino”. The Buzzluck team have introduced some new features to online casino with the most important: Their Live Lounge. The Live Lounge is a live broadcast that you can watch while you are playing (in theory at least). The Live Lounge of Buzzluck is not always active but Friday to Sunday there is activity during the nights. Mostly it is a show about funny clips from the net (sort of here is your Funny YouTube Clip of the day show). It is pretty entertaining and the three presenters seem very professional, I would guess they have worked in TV in one way or another earlier.
One of the things that bother me some with Buzzluck is that it is all Flash, and a flash that I had to download as well. Once I had it installed in my browser it still kept giving me problems. I’m not a big fan of explorer so I use either Chrome or FF and the site had problems with both. There are some really annoying bugs that have been torturing me but me guess is that they will take care of them pretty soon, the site is brand new after all.
As a casino I wouldn’t say that there is anything really special, it looks good, it’s a 3D flash-casino and they have the usual games (You know; Black Jack, Slots, Roulette, Craps etc). The biggest advantage here is that the site looks very good but to be honest I never really care for that. They have a whole big lobby section that I never quite figured out. It’s like a big 3D room where you, sort of, can walk around and approach avatars. Me using Chrome might be the reason that this was a pretty crappy experience and I just couldn’t understand what to do there. The good thing is that you can skip the lobby and head directly to the casino or the Live Lounge if that is what you came for.
All in all Buzzluck is a nice Casino and chatting with the hosts of the Live Lounge gives a bit of a warm feeling, it is nice with real people in a casinoworld that is almost completely automated elsewhere.
Mike on Pokeriot has written about Buzzluck too and that is the only other review that I could find.
aaaPoker.org
We have upgraded this blog with a brand new domain (instead of the wordpress subdomain). If you have bookmarks please change them to AAAPOKER.ORG. I’m not sure if it will make a big difference but it feels good to have the blog on it’s own domain, feels more like it’s an important blog.
For the love of the game
I’m getting a lot of reactions to this blog, obviously people have strong feelings about poker bots. This is of course understandable but the most common point taken in these reactions is that we should not build bots “for the love of the game”. People are claiming that we are destroying poker. I disagree and coulnd’t disagree more. We are building a poker bot for the love of the game. If you claim that poker bots are destroying the game you obvously don’t play that well. A bot, at least of this quality, will never beat a good human player, it will only beat really bad players. If the bot does something it’s to teach the fundamentals of poker, if you can’t outsmart a machine maybe you’re just not cut out for poker. The bot plays only on statistics, it bluffs like a 6 year old and it can never learn to read you, it’s just a machine. Maybe in the future we might build a smarter AI but so far it’s nothing more than a beefed up calculator.
The challenge of building a bot is something you take on because you love the game of poker, it’s not a small task and it demands that you learn to do things by rules instead of by instinct, this is really hard and it has certainly made me a better poker player. Understanding the basics in poker is something most players actually skip to go directly to the fancy stuff and this is why a bot can still win. If you had just bothered to learn pot odds, outs and some basic statistics you would have beaten the bot every time, but you didn’t did you? How can you claim your love for the game to be bigger than ours when you didn’t even bother to learn the basics.
Bot for Backgammon
As bots have always been one of my interests I have been taking a few looks at other games where botting should be possible. One game that I took an extra look at is Backgammon. There are a few differences between backgammon and poker that makes a backgammon bot a lot easier to build than a poker bot. If you have followed this blog you will have noticed our struggle with the poker bot and it felt quite relaxing thinking about a backgammon bot.
The main reason backgammon is more suitable for botting is that the game is more or less deterministic. All variables are known except the dice that adds the little randomness there is. The thing with backgammon is that there is a right way of playing it. You can’t be smarter or better, the best you can do is playing the game right and hope that your opponent makes mistakes or that the dice are on your side. There is an optimal move in every given situation. If there hadn’t been dice involved it would have been the same game as tic tac toe, if you play it correctly noone can win.
This makes it perfect for a bot, a bot will never make mistakes. As long as the bot has the correct algorithm or, as in the scenario I considered have all the situations in the database and knows how to handle them, it will play an optimal game.
After a lot of thinking about this I realized that it is so easy that there has to be one out on the net already. A few minutes of Google Jockeing and I found it. It’s names Snowie and even does cooperation with some gaming companies offering backgammon. Well, it was an interesting day thinking about it at least.
Increasing interest for poker bots
As you might be aware I have blogged a lot bout our Poker Bot Project. I decided to do a little searching on the net to see if it would actually be possible to sell our poker bot in the end and it looks like there is actually a lot of interest. After taking a look at Google trends and comparing the interest for poker bots compared to poker in general the bots are (of course smaller though) increasing during the summer compared to poker. A lot of articles about poker bots have been written the last few months and one of my favourites (because it is not very argumentative but sticking to facts) is Poker Bots myth or reality.
If you are interested too I’d like to show you the Poker Bot article series:
”Lucky you”
Every time I see an American movie about poker I am a bit disappointed. They are always a bit over the top, and it doesn’t feel credible at all. And there aren’t many movies being made about poker in the first place. There are some movies where poker is added to films as an element of an “under world” or a dodgy, criminal culture but that isn’t really what I mean.
What I have been looking for is a film like “Lucky you”. It casts Erica Bana and Drew Barrymore and is a really well made movie. The choice of actors was great I think, since they are both such good ones and nice to look at as well. They are easy for the audience identify with.
The plot is naturally set in Las Vegas, and the year is 2003. Here lives the poker player Huck who is gambling to win big. Even though he is good at what he is doing, he has yet to learn when to get out of the game. One day he comes across a girl named Billie, played by Drew Barrymore. Progressively they start having a relationship, while Huck’s dad arrives to the city. He is greatly played by actor Robert Duvall, and is a character that has a competitive relationship with his son. They are both high stake game players and since the WSOP is coming up, they both have their eyes set on it…
The real competition of World Series of Poker was actually in many ways similar to the one in the movie. They both had 839 players and the winner turned out to be someone who didn’t have much experience of the game at all. Maybe that says something about the forces of luck that are involved?
One problem with the movie is that it is a bit to slow. I think that it could have been ten minutes shorter and then it would feel more action-like. Also, the movie isn’t overwhelmingly credible; if Huck was such a great poker player then he probably wouldn’t be leading such a poor man’s life.
But the acting is good in the movie. Drew Barrymore proved already in indie flick Donnie Darko that she is a talented actress, and Eric Bana captured the audience both in The Hulk and in Troy.
All in all – a good movie, especially for someone that likes poker!
Poker Blogs
I do a lot of reading of poker blogs. Not that there is always much to learn or news that’s interesting but it’s nice to read about other players games, how they do, things they think about. Thought I’d share the blogs I read with you:
The earliest signs and where poker is believed to have started is in New Orleans around 1820.
Doyle Brunson is quite of an idol to me because of his many skills in pokerplaying. He was born in Longworth Texas in August 10, 1933.
One night in April I met with my friends in Barcelona for a marvellous poker game. We were four guys that went to Barcelona on vacation.
When you start playing poker it might be hard at first and you might want to learn a bit faster then the hard way. In that case a book that teach you should be a great option and you should advance quite fast.
It started of with a kid living in Las Vegas with his father who was a drunk and an addict at gambling. The boy grow up with the image of his drunken father in his head and was thinking all the time that he was not going to turn up like that.
Omega has existed since 1848 when it was developed in Schweiz. 1903 they got together with Tissot, which was followed by several other collaborations. It feels like Omega is the brand that has the most profound place in modern culture. Look at NASA, for example: they specifically chose the brand to be worn at the Apollo-assignments.
