Just Poker Talk

On Tuesday the North Carolina state Court of Appeals ruled that poker is a game chance. The ruling is a response to Howard Fierman who sued Durham county after they said he could not open a poker club. The three judges ruled that a player faced the chance of losing at every turn of the card. Here is what one of the judges had to say:

From Wilmington Star:

“Although skills such as knowledge of human psychology, bluffing, and the ability to calculate and analyze odds make it more likely for skilled players to defeat novices, novices may yet prevail with a simple run of luck,” wrote judge Ann Marie Calabria. “No amount of skill can change a deuce into an ace.”

Staying with my basketball theme as of late, I could say that a bad team can lose to a good team on any given night. A player could get hot from three and shoot lights out or a player on the good team may have an off night. By this reasoning, a bad team can “prevail with a simple run of luck”.

But now let’s change the scenario to the NBA playoffs. In a seven game series, the better team almost always wins. the underdog can get steal a game or team, but they rarely upset the better team. That’s a big reason why there have only been two 8 seeds that have beaten the 1 seed, and so far no 8 seed has gotten out of the first round since the NBA moved to a seven game series.

Even though the Warriors, up three games to two, are on the verge of beating the Mavericks and upsetting the one seed, that is not a given. The Mavericks are the better team and can still comeback and win the series. The Warriors have been lucky. Dirk does not shoot 4/16 every game, and the Mavericks do not shoot sub 40% from the field very often. But that’s the case with this series. The Warriors have been lucky.

But I do understand that an amateur basketball cannot beat a professional team. No luck can change that, but it is possible for an amateur to beat a pro poker player on any given night. So I can understand what they are trying to say that luck plays a larger role in poker than in most skill based games.

Luck plays a role in all games of skill. The question is how much luck does it take to consider something a game of luck versus skill. I still contest that if it’s possible for the better, more skilled, players to win in the long, that skill is the dominant force in a player’s success.

In poker, the best players will win in the long run. They may have a losing night, but eventually they will come out ahead. Granted sometimes these losing streaks can last a long time. Another thing is that the best hand does not always win. It’s possible to bluff a player out of the best hand. The problem with the judges’ logic is that they don’t take into account that the novice will lose in the long-run, while the pros will win. How do they explain that? How does luck prevail then?

poker, Golden State Warriors, Dallas Mavericks, NBA playoffs, luck, gambling

I haven’t read or heard much about Gus Hansen in a long time, so it was nice to read an interview with him, conducted by Poker Player. In terms of the interview, it’s mostly a fluff piece. It’s not all that interesting, like most interviews with famous people. I’m not sure whether it’s because the questions people ask are so generic and mechanical, or whether famous people are only interesting because they’re famous. I would say it’s a little bit of both. A lot of times, these types of magazine interviews just feel so unnatural.

I vaguely remember reading an interview in an old issue of the Paris Review. In that issue, they interviewed Haruki Murakami, who happens to be one of my favorite writers, and the interview was more like a conversation. I wish I could remember what they talked about, but the topics went all over the place, with many digressions off topic. The interview felt natural and was allowed to grow and develop into something. Or maybe, writers are just more fascinating than everyone else in this world.

Anyway, in the interview, Hansen talks about his win at the Aussie Millions Tournament. His answers are pretty vague, but I found one part pretty interesting. I’ve always thought of Hansen as a very loose and reckless player, because that’s how he’s portrayed on the WPT. But I’ve watched him on Poker After Dark a few times and even in the WSOP one year, and he’s really not that loose a player. So it was interesting when Hansen said that the WPT portrayed him as a different player than who really is.

The funny thing is that I became a fan of Gus Hansen after watching those WPT episodes, so I’m not really sure what to think. My penchant to be over aggressive and bluff almost every other hand was influenced a lot by Hansen’s style. But I do understand that there’s a certain allure to a loose aggressive strategy. Playing that way is a lot more fun than folding every single hand, not to mention that it’s a huge ego boost to make a successful bluff.

You can read the interview at Poker Player.

poker, Gus Hansen, World Poker Tour, Poker Player Magazine, Haruki Murakami, Paris Review