MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Boston
I always enjoy attending the poker sessions here. My Rounders hat is squarely on. FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver is a cornerstone of these sessions and he’s on the panel today, with the incomparable Jack Ma moderating.
The first time I attended poker at this conference I met the amazing champion and New Yorker writer Maria Konnikova. Her book on poker, The Biggest Bluff, is a wonderful read. This panel on the “Evolution of Poker Strategy” features three world-class poker champions: Maria Ho (in photo), Jennifer Shahade (a chess champ, too) and Xuan Liu.
“Poker is about bluffing just some of the time but not all the time. The key is to know when,” Shahade said. Silver added that players don’t bluff enough and that the best bluffs “are often the ones that aren’t intuitive” and therefore harder to read.
The panelists talked about poor players being “inelastic” because, for example, they’re convinced their pair of aces is a winning hand no matter what else might change or be observable.
On tells and reverse tells, panelists said new research shows that fit, well-rested, and well-hydrated players are less likely to give away tells and better able to read tells.
Life lessons from poker? Ho said it’s important to understand that just because you won doesn’t mean your decision making was sound and vice versa. Losing in life might be because you didn’t take sufficient risks, Shahade added. Liu said that poker (and life) presents many variables, most of which you have little or no control. Silver said people can be irrational; just witness politics Twitter, which is the opposite temperament needed to win at poker and most other things in life.
This reminds me of a story. Walt and I were staying at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. I smartly announced at dinner that I was going to the poker room to play Texas Hold’em first thing the next morning. I’d lose my $250 or so and that would be it. Nice, safe environment with clear amateurs such as myself.
Hah! I arrived at 8:00 a.m. to just one active table of tired but intense players. All guys and all looking like extras from the poker scene in Casino Royal. Turns out these were very high stakes players in a game that started after midnight. Never mind.
Image of Maria Ho courtesy of Poker News.