Wednesday, April 07, 2010

time to update

i know when it's time to update my blog because either
1) someone has commented and therefore at least one person has read it
or
2) i'm the last one to update on yakshi's list of blogs, and then i feel like i'm letting them all down

luckily, i do have a couple of things to say

firstly, i have definitely improved my poker skills as i finally received some abusive comments on ptr. something along the lines of
you ****ing suck, you're ****. why are you playing at 2/4? you ****ing suck.

thanks to the villain who wrote that, mainly for their generosity. if everyone paid me thousands of dollars to dish out a line of abuse i would happily take a few more lines of anonymous internet abuse. but only if you paid well.

secondly, i would like to offer some poker advice. not because i want to share, but because what i am about to describe annoys me so much; and i very very often hear/read people talking/writing about making a play due to how much (or little) they have invested in the pot.
this myth is dispelled in poker 101 namely:
money in the pot is no longer yours
how much you have put in the pot is wholly and totally irrelevant. the only thing that matters is what odds the pot is offering you, and how much equity you think you have against your opponent.

it's also a poker lesson that can be transferred into real life.
how much time/money you have invested in something shouldn't affect your future decisions, (as that is effectively money in the pot which is no longer yours), rather how your future will be affected by the current decision is all that matters.


it's halfway through the month and i've played about 3 hands. i'm away for the week next week as i will be hunting moose (and shooting them but only with cameras) on snowmobiles in Sweden, so will have to get 15k hands in this and next weekends.

3 comments:

Yakshi said...

The concept you describe has a label in economics: sunk cost. I think that it is one of its most misunderstood concepts. It's really wonderful how well economics applies to poker.

Mudwig said...

interesting, i'll look it up. i really should learn some economics inc game theory.

Mudwig said...

wise words from a spammer. how very odd.

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