Woo at the poker table

NewtonTrino

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NewtonTrino
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Jul 2, 2007
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Has anyone heard of stopcancer.com? I'm sitting at a table in Vegas and this guy starts talking About vitamin b and ph balance as a cure fir cancer. I asked for peer reviewed study and he sent me to that wackaloon site. Has anyone heard of this before or is just another of the multitude of scam sites.
 
I suspect that someone who is susceptible to such ideas is also likely to fall for similar "Win at Poker" "theories." Learn them and you should be able to take them to the cleaners, er, triumph logically every time.
 
I'm a big fan of poker and love watching different poker shows on TV, there's quite a lot of woo in there, from the "power of positive thinking" to "remote viewing". I almost sent an e-mail to Phil Laak asking for more details about something he said on HSP or PAD, he seems like a smart guy and also the kind of guy who would raise the issue again on TV and correct himself publically.
 
dropzone said:
I suspect that someone who is susceptible to such ideas is also likely to fall for similar "Win at Poker" "theories." Learn them and you should be able to take them to the cleaners, er, triumph logically every time.
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Just to make sure, are you implying that there are no legit "theories" for winning in poker?
 
The site is the usual woonatic hijacking of old cancer research information to push woo woo "therapies" while ignoring real evidence based cancer therapies based on the research. It's cheaper to give people junk instead of becoming a specialist via a real education to use the real therapy.

Out of control cancer cells metabolize more than normal cells (this is what Otto found, which is obvious anyways). The woo woos have just taken this to mean, incorrectly, that you if you try to change the body's environment to be more basic or something dumb, then you'll starve the cancer cells. This of course just leads to idiotic advice about diet and even infusing people with baking soda or hydrogen peroxide.

Real treatments target the out of control cells. Woo woos are attempting to address the products of out of control cells instead (kind of like killing flies instead of cleaning up the garbage that their larvae is living in).
 
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But you don't understand!! The drug companies make MONEY from chemotherapy so of course there is a conspiracy to prevent showing that vitamins and baking soda cure cancer. Where do people get this stuff? I mean seriously...
 
Kuko 4000 said:
Just to make sure, are you implying that there are no legit "theories" for winning in poker?
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No, but I assume the successful ones (over a period of several hours or days) are mathematical in nature and are not the ones that appeal to rubes and suckers. Wish I still had my "Scarne on Cards." John Scarne was to card games what Randi is to spoon bending, and what I drew from the first couple chapters was that the House always wins. You may come out ahead of what you started out with, but if the House took a cut of every hand it still ate the lunch of an individual player.
 
NewtonTrino said:
Where do people get this stuff? I mean seriously...
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From the people selling intravenous baking soda and encouraging you to OD on vitamins, of course.

They don't make a killing on that cheap chit at all! That, and they don't have to pay a bunch of money to go to a real school. NDs can get their diplomas for a hundred bucks over the net. There's a billion articles and sites on the net that will tell you that cancer cures are cheap and easy from said internet edumacated alties.
 
dropzone said:
No, but I assume the successful ones (over a period of several hours or days) are mathematical in nature and are not the ones that appeal to rubes and suckers. Wish I still had my "Scarne on Cards." John Scarne was to card games what Randi is to spoon bending, and what I drew from the first couple chapters was that the House always wins. You may come out ahead of what you started out with, but if the House took a cut of every hand it still ate the lunch of an individual player.
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We ARE talking about poker here, not casino games. I haven't heard of any weird theories about poker, and Mr. Scarne died before the game was even around.
 
NewtonTrino said:
Has anyone heard of stopcancer.com? I'm sitting at a table in Vegas and this guy starts talking About vitamin b and ph balance as a cure fir cancer. I asked for peer reviewed study and he sent me to that wackaloon site. Has anyone heard of this before or is just another of the multitude of scam sites.
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Well, IIRC B-complex will reduce oxidative stress and therefore reduce chances of developing cancer in the first place. I don't know what to say about pH imbalance, other than that it could probably contribute to cancer developing in the first place. As a cure, however, I believe he'd find both rather lacking.

McHrozni
 
dropzone said:
what I drew from the first couple chapters was that the House always wins. You may come out ahead of what you started out with, but if the House took a cut of every hand it still ate the lunch of an individual player.
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Except that poker has a degree of skill, and you're playing against the other players. If your superiority exceeds the house rake, you'll win in the long run.

Which is why there are professional limit poker players, but no professional roulette players.
 
dropzone said:
No, but I assume the successful ones (over a period of several hours or days) are mathematical in nature and are not the ones that appeal to rubes and suckers. Wish I still had my "Scarne on Cards." John Scarne was to card games what Randi is to spoon bending, and what I drew from the first couple chapters was that the House always wins. You may come out ahead of what you started out with, but if the House took a cut of every hand it still ate the lunch of an individual player.
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As Careyp and Glenn pointed out, in poker (the most popular variations of Hold 'Em Poker, No Limit and Omaha) you play against another human not the house (even though in cash games the house always takes "rake", otherwise they would not benefit enough for having poker tables in the Casinos), so one of the most effective strategies is simply to play against a weaker opponent. You are on the right track though, it's not a matter of hours or days, but of months and years, and even the best players can have losing years. The strategies poker players implement differ against every opponent, and whether they are in a cash game or in a tournament.

Here's a good book about one aspect of NL Hold 'Em strategy, this one is more mechanical and math based than creative, the great players are of course good at both approaches:

http://www.amazon.com/No-Limit-Hold-Theory-Practice/dp/188068537X

I can teach you the best NL strategy I know in 30 minutes, you practice for 3 days to make it automatic and after that I can pretty much guarantee you are a winning player in online poker (well, let's give it percentage of 80%). The downside is that it feels like work, takes a LOT of time, discipline, and the money is VERY small, a few dollars per hour on average (in NL 10 games, where the buy-in is 2-10 dollars).
 
GlennB said:
Which is why there are professional limit poker players, but no professional roulette players.
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Not true. There are professional roulette players. Trouble is it's not very lucrative, except for the house! ;)
 
Kuko 4000 said:
I can teach you the best NL strategy I know in 30 minutes, you practice for 3 days to make it automatic and after that I can pretty much guarantee you are a winning player in online poker (well, let's give it percentage of 80%). The downside is that it feels like work, takes a LOT of time, discipline, and the money is VERY small, a few dollars per hour on average (in NL 10 games, where the buy-in is 2-10 dollars).
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A good poker strategy will beat any stakes of online poker for about 8bb/100
(8 big blinds every 100 hands)

It's not possible to learn such a strategy in 30 minutes, although there are very simple strategies that exist to beat most poker games up to say $500NL cash games for 1bb/100 that are robust, if very, very boring to implement.

Though as NL10 and lower tend to play a lot differently to NL25 - NL100 (much much higher ratio of terrible players per table that are easily identifiable), then yes you could learn to beat NL10 in 30 mins.

You win at poker by making bets that have a positive expectation long term and by avoiding bets that have a negative expectation long term. As well as finding and exploiting bad players.

Tournaments are harder to beat because of the way they are structured. When the blinds are small relative to your stack size the correct strategy very often differs wildly from how you should play when the blinds represent a much larger portion of your remaining stack.

The average person can probably learn a good poker strategy that will allow them to make 1 full buyin in profit every 500 or so hands played, inside of about a year, with about 2-3 hours working at it a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year.

So if poker is a game you enjoy playing and 90mins playing and 90 mins studying about it most days for a year doesn't sound too bad then you can likely be making $75-100 a day on average a year from now if you were to play 4 tables at once by then for 2 hours a day.

Getting from that kind of level to beating much higher stakes poker is a lot more work. There are hundreds of professional poker players.
 
Ambrosia said:
A good poker strategy will beat any stakes of online poker for about 8bb/100
(8 big blinds every 100 hands)

It's not possible to learn such a strategy in 30 minutes, although there are very simple strategies that exist to beat most poker games up to say $500NL cash games for 1bb/100 that are robust, if very, very boring to implement.

Though as NL10 and lower tend to play a lot differently to NL25 - NL100 (much much higher ratio of terrible players per table that are easily identifiable), then yes you could learn to beat NL10 in 30 mins.
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Yes, I'm talking about one of these simple, robust and boring strategies. This has nothing to do with the more finer nuances of poker (being able to identify and succesfully target weaker players) or even most of the very basics. It's strictly automatic play, where you have a certain set of rules that you obey each and every time for the optimal outcome in the long run.

This includes only choosing a suitable table to join, the size of your buy-in, when to reload, when to leave the table, recognizing what your position is at the table, what starting hands to play, and how to play them every single time, and when to move up (or down) levels. It is not required to understand why you do what you do, all one needs to do is to follow the instructions blindly. You can keep one A4 paper at your side at all times from where you can check everytime you can't remember what you are supposed to do in any given situation.

For a beginner*, 3 days (or 9 hours of play time) is probably enough for them to learn these simple steps by heart. In my opinion / experience a beginner can start playing after 30 minutes with the paper next to them without making too many mistakes, that is the maximum time I estimate it takes a normal person to understand and apply the instructions. A more experienced recreational player can probably grasp the strategy in 10 minutes.

* Someone who already knows how to use the online poker software and is familiar with a deck of cards.


There are hundreds of professional poker players.
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That sounds awfully low, what is your criteria for a professional? For me it is someone who can earn their living (rent + food + little to spare) playing only poker.

Btw. I'm strictly a recreational player (balance heavily on fun rather than income), but would like to step up my cash game. So far (3-4 years) I've been playing only by feel. What are the first important things you think I should look into?
 
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I can see how putting all the information out there on how to use the cheat sheet and what else to do only takes 30 minutes. And, with the claim that you can use it to win at online poker, you don't have to memorize the cheat sheet.

If you are looking for a way to make money like this, there are actually programs that can play for you. There is an added benefit to using them. They track other players habits and use them either against them, or to move tables (yes, the program moves you to another table automatically)

If you are looking for a way to have fun playing, read some books and learn the theories behind what is proper play. Also, play various games, not just Hold em. Omaha and stud are great games, and knowing the strategies of what to do in other games can help you understand the reasons for not doing other things in Hold Em.
 
Kuko 4000 said:
Yes, I'm talking about one of these simple, robust and boring strategies. This has nothing to do with the more finer nuances of poker (being able to identify and succesfully target weaker players) or even most of the very basics. It's strictly automatic play, where you have a certain set of rules that you obey each and every time for the optimal outcome in the long run.

This includes only choosing a suitable table to join, the size of your buy-in, when to reload, when to leave the table, recognizing what your position is at the table, what starting hands to play, and how to play them every single time, and when to move up (or down) levels. It is not required to understand why you do what you do, all one needs to do is to follow the instructions blindly. You can keep one A4 paper at your side at all times from where you can check everytime you can't remember what you are supposed to do in any given situation.

For a beginner*, 3 days (or 9 hours of play time) is probably enough for them to learn these simple steps by heart. In my opinion / experience a beginner can start playing after 30 minutes with the paper next to them without making too many mistakes, that is the maximum time I estimate it takes a normal person to understand and apply the instructions. A more experienced recreational player can probably grasp the strategy in 10 minutes.

* Someone who already knows how to use the online poker software and is familiar with a deck of cards.





That sounds awfully low, what is your criteria for a professional? For me it is someone who can earn their living (rent + food + little to spare) playing only poker.

Btw. I'm strictly a recreational player (balance heavily on fun rather than income), but would like to step up my cash game. So far (3-4 years) I've been playing only by feel. What are the first important things you think I should look into?
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Did you read that book you recommended? I got it for Christmas, very good read. Also, check out the two plus two website, great resources and forum for anything dealing with cards.
 
Careyp74 said:
Did you read that book you recommended? I got it for Christmas, very good read. Also, check out the two plus two website, great resources and forum for anything dealing with cards.
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I've skimmed it only, and found it to be good and worth a more thorough read. I have another from Sklansky, two from Harrington and a couple of Finnish poker books on my shelf, just being lazy here :o Yeah, I've kind of been avoiding the more professional info on poker, even though quite many of my friends play poker professionally and talk the talk all the time. I guess I just wanted to learn / experience the game by feel before really starting to study it from other angles. The website you mentioned is probably a great place to start.
 
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