Gambling Question

[Nexus6]

I'm one of those people who make a significant amount of money from this game.



Essentially, in order to be good at this game, you need to be rational. If you believe in luck, magic, ... you're in for big trouble. And the reason poker is hard is that a lot of your short term results are driven by luck, so you get fooled by that and rationalize your magic thinking by using short term results as justification.

The actual skills you need to learn are details compared to this essential quality of rationality.

BTW, i think it's good things that religions overwhelmingly frown upon gambling. If you're gullible enough to believe in one or several gods, you should not be gambling because you're obviously too likely to fall for magic thinking. Atheists should not have that kind of problem.

Please make that the topic of your research and establish a strong correlation between religiosity and problem gambling.

This is the guy at holiday dinners that everyone tries to ignore...

 

[BelgoSuisse]

you sound like your a sitting duck at the table .. No offense

This is the guy at holiday dinners that everyone tries to ignore...

Two quotes of the same message of mine, neither with any relevant comment and both mildly offensive. :congrats: :congrats: :congrats:

Can I ask you what offenses you in what i said above? That I called people with religious faith gullible? It's not an offense. It's a pleonasm. Religions do teach that gullibility / faith without proof is a quality, don't they? It's the whole point of John 20:29, isn't it? Either you do believe that and you should rejoice when i call you gullible, or you are a hypocrite.

 

[F Paulsson]

I'm not sure I'd use the word "gullibility," (it's, ahem, not a neutrally charged word) but it's true that unquestioning faith is a virtue in most (at least seen to the size) religions. The founder of the Jesuits is quoted as saying that he'd believe that white was black, if that's what the pope told him.

Personally, I'm not sure how I'd manage severe downswings if I really truly believed God was behind everything that happened. I'd constantly ask myself why I was being punished. I mean, as if running insanely bad at poker wasn't bad enough on its own, I now have to live with the fact that God Almight has a grudge against me and I don't know why, heh.

 

[slycbnew]

Wow, severe thread hijack!!!

 

[Stu_Ungar]

just to throw a curve ball at BelgoSuisse. The concept of religion is more complex than simply is there a God?

If we take the stance that there is not a God, we have to offer up an explanation as to why people throughout the world believe in God. It doesn't matter where in the world you look, you will find people who believe in God. You could go to a remote African tribe who have had no contact with the outside world and still find belief in God.

If you examined their beliefs you would find similarities, rituals, common metaphors and such that seem to be echoed in other religions throughout the world.

Now as we have taken the stance that God does not exist, we could explain all this away with human behaviour. There is something about being human, that causes these beliefs.

Now the interesting part -- if belief in God is a natural human behaviour, are atheists going against the grain, so to speak, of natural human behaviour? When we look at psychology, we find that fighting natural behaviour causes problems. So regardless of whether or not God exists, are their benefits in terms of psychological well-being to believe?

 

[BelgoSuisse]

Stu, it's actually possible to explain this quite elegantly in terms of evolutionary biology. I don't have time right now to write a long explanation here, but i'm sure FP could point you to a good book about that.

 

[F Paulsson]

just to throw a curve ball at BelgoSuisse. The concept of religion is more complex than simply is there a God?

If we take the stance that there is not a God, we have to offer up an explanation as to why people throughout the world believe in God. It doesn't matter where in the world you look, you will find people who believe in God. You could go to a remote African tribe who have had no contact with the outside world and still find belief in God.

If you examined their beliefs you would find similarities, rituals, common metaphors and such that seem to be echoed in other religions throughout the world.

Now as we have taken the stance that God does not exist, we could explain all this away with human behaviour. There is something about being human, that causes these beliefs.

Now the interesting part -- if belief in God is a natural human behaviour, are atheists going against the grain, so to speak, of natural human behaviour? When we look at psychology, we find that fighting natural behaviour causes problems. So regardless of whether or not God exists, are their benefits in terms of psychological well-being to believe?

Awesome book that answers every question you just asked, and then some: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon: Amazon.co.uk: Daniel C. Dennett: Books

 

[F Paulsson]

Stu, it's actually possible to explain this quite elegantly in terms of evolutionary biology. I don't have time right now to write a long explanation here, but i'm sure FP could point you to a good book about that.

There's something very funny about the fact that I made my reply without having seen this post.

 

[BelgoSuisse]

 

[F Paulsson]

Okay, this really IS becoming the mother of all derails. I think the topic is worthy of discussion, though, but not necessarily under the header "gambling Question" (and I really do think a civil discussion on the topic of the general origin of religion(s) can be had without civil war breaking out). If anyone wants to discuss this further, feel free to create a new thread, preferably with an appropriate, non-inflammatory title.

 

[Stu_Ungar]

Stu, it's actually possible to explain this quite elegantly in terms of evolutionary biology. I don't have time right now to write a long explanation here, but i'm sure FP could point you to a good book about that.

Awesome book that answers every question you just asked, and then some: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon: Amazon.co.uk: Daniel C. Dennett: Books

There's something very funny about the fact that I made my reply without having seen this post.

Is this evidence of paranormal psychic activity??

 

[IveGot0uts]

Well first off. HAHAHAHAH WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

So being a good poker player takes much of what bellagio was saying, though I'd hardly say being atheist makes you a rational person. I'm one, I'd like to think both. Love the thread derailment.

All religions do not require faith. Buddhism requires only that you not be an ass, basically. Thought there's also no god there, so I guess it depends on where you're drawing your lines. Technically its an atheistic religion for many/most practitioners. And you want quantity of gods forget egypt, check out Hinduism, they win I'm pretty sure.

Avoiding a gambling problem I think comes down to personality traits in large part. Some people have a tendency towards addiction, others do not. Addiction can be a learned behavior for those who do not, and can be avoided for those who do, but in large part there is some determinism here. For me there is no rush from the gamble, its just about taking advantage of a statistical advantage and relying on math working.

To explain away the development of and similarities in religion we can simply look to what it hopes to accomplish if we view it as a societal construct. It is the attempt of people to explain their surroundings on the one hand, and to control the masses on the other. One could argue that now we have science taking the former position, and rule of law/government the latter. The similarities between systems emerge due to the broad similarities in the challenges the religions were designed to answer.

I could probably have said things better but meh, I'm on the exhuasting side of having just watched a sunrise. Sleep time.

 

[BelgoSuisse]

Is this evidence of paranormal psychic activity??

To be honest, I saw FP was reading this thread, and I know the kind of book he reads, so it wasn't really difficult to put his next post in a pretty narrow range of possible posts. Not really different from hand reading at poker...

 

[Debi]

I would also be willing to move relevant posts to that thread - if someone would tell me where to start with them. The transition is a bit tricky lol.

 

[Stu_Ungar]

To be honest, I saw FP was reading this thread, and I know the kind of book he reads, so it wasn't really difficult to put his next post in a pretty narrow range of possible posts. Not really different from hand reading at poker...

Burn him!

 

[F Paulsson]

I remember reading awhile back about some genetic correlation with gambling addiction. I also don't know how strongly (if at all) risk aversion (inversely) correlates with gambling problems.

 

[F Paulsson]

Look, ma, I'm back on topic!

 

[BelgoSuisse]

Burn him!

there's a natural human tendency to attribute supernatural powers to people who performs tricks you don't understand.

There's nothing magic about hand reading in poker. It's about assigning a range of hands to your opponent, and narrowing down this range with every piece of information you manage to gather. Until a point where you need to make a decision about folding, calling, betting or raising based on that narrowed range. To the naive observer, though, it sure looks like magic.

 

[Jagsti]

I was sort of gonna jump to Belgo's defence when Snow got a bit personal about things, but hey why should I bother. He does a remarkable job at explaining himself far more eloquently than I ever could. Keep up the good work Belgo!

 

[Egon Towst]

No doubt you will find very quickly that 'gambling' is a bad word among serious poker players here and elsewhere; I suggest you get away from it ASAP.

Good advice. Over the long term, poker isn`t gambling, and that accusation is quite offensive to those of us who take the game seriously. Good players win and weak players lose. It is only short-term variance that creates the illusion that it might be otherwise.

Essentially, in order to be good at this game, you need to be rational. If you believe in luck, magic, ... you're in for big trouble. And the reason poker is hard is that a lot of your short term results are driven by luck, so you get fooled by that and rationalize your magic thinking by using short term results as justification.

The actual skills you need to learn are details compared to this essential quality of rationality.

I concur.

BTW, i think it's good things that religions overwhelmingly frown upon gambling. If you're gullible enough to believe in one or several gods, you should not be gambling because you're obviously too likely to fall for magic thinking. Atheists should not have that kind of problem.

Please make that the topic of your research and establish a strong correlation between religiosity and problem gambling.

Now then, Olivier, stop being naughty and stirring up controversy.

I would suggest that your certainty that all religion is entirely nonsense is itself a belief system which cannot be proven and is based on faith. Agnosticism is the only rational position.

 

[Mase31683]

Over the long term, poker isn`t gambling, and that accusation is quite offensive to those of us who take the game seriously.

I disagree with this. Poker is indeed a gambling game. Just because a good player can make his wagers that will have a positive return over the long run, this doesn't mean he isn't gambling.

Take a roulette game in a casino. Someone comes in, and bets $X on red. Is he gambling? I would argue he is, as I believe most people would agree with. Is the house gambling? Again I would say yes. Just because the house will over the long run win, this doesn't mean they are not gambling. They are gambling with favorable odds, very much the same as a winning poker player.

 

[Egon Towst]

Poker is indeed a gambling game. Just because a good player can make his wagers that will have a positive return over the long run, this doesn't mean he isn't gambling.

But gambling is (according to my dictionary) "a transaction which depends on chance". If you agree with the contention that a good poker player will be guaranteed of a positive return over the long run, it follows that the eventual outcome is not a matter of chance (it will always be positive). Therefore, poker is not gambling.

 

[Crudelis]

Religion has nothing to do with poker. Period!! The thing with luck and magic and stuff of that sort is that it allows you a means of self-deception. If you believe that your opponent won just because hes lucky then it indeed MIGHT be true, however most of the time it isn't. When you automatically credits every win on your opponent's part to luck then you are deceiving yourself, you are using luck as an excuse to justify playing the hand poorly. Every hand you lose you should open the HUD and watch the hand to see if you really did play it correctly or post it on the forums and see what other people think.

As for the questions the OP asked. "What makes a good poker player?" Its already been said that practice is important, and thats true. But I think determination and confidence are just as important. Determination is important in all things, you need to be determined to be the best at what you do, because if you aren't determined to be the best then you never will and you won't even come close. You also need to be confident, without confidence then every time you lose you will doubt yourself, its easy to get thoughts like: "I'll never be as good a player as he is."

Now for the question of "When does poker becomes a gambling problem?" To be honest I really don't know how to answer that question. I guess when you know you can't afford to play at a certain level but you do so anyway, and when you know you are playing badly but continue to sit there because you feel that you absolutely HAVE to win back what you have lost.

 

[Makwa]

Point of Order

I hope everyone is aware that OP is milking this thread, will be copying and quoting what you say for their own academic purpose, and probably skewing it all.

These so called researchers are stealing your thoughts, contrary to CC and other forum rules.

You are feeding them by responding here.

 

[BelgoSuisse]

I would suggest that your certainty that all religion is entirely nonsense is itself a belief system which cannot be proven and is based on faith. Agnosticism is the only rational position.

I'm essentially agnostic about the existence of a god. I would be disappointed if there was one because a god is a rather inelegant explanation for the mysteries left in this world. But who knows?

Also, I didn't say religions were entirely nonsense. Most of them gathered a decent amount of philosophical, moral and social virtues while they evolved through the ages. And although a lot of it tends to be quite outdated for these days, it is part of our heritage and therefore deserves some respect.

What I attacked in my OP is strictly one thing that all religions - apart from Buddhism, but Buddhism is not really a religion stricto sensu - require from their followers: unquestioning faith, a.k.a. gullibility. I am only dogmatic on one point. When you face something you don't understand, you should investigate, you should not blindly believe the first magic explanation that is put before you. And this is very relevant to poker too.