Go Feed on These Good Reads

Today I wanted to sign off for the week by pointing you to a few interesting articles that recently turned up in the strategy section over at PokerNews. All three are genuinely interesting and present evidence of some impressive brain work by the authors, I think.

The first is from Monday, another one by our friend Robert Woolley, a.k.a. the “Poker Grump.” It is titled “‘Gut Feelings’ in Poker -- What Do They Mean?” and explains how there is actually a meaningful link between that tightness you sometimes get in your stomach at the poker tables and what’s happening in your head as you try to make a decision. It’s kind of a fascinating observation Robert is sharing.

A second article I very much liked came from Gareth Chantler, one called “Obsessed With Your ‘All-in EV’? It’s a Negative Freeroll.” Gareth talks about that stat available in tracking programs showing your “all-in expected value” that allows players to see whether they’ve been “running good” or “running bad” in all-in situations. It’s is an irresistible stat for many, but as Gareth points out it’s hardly helpful and in fact can be potentially harmful.

Finally, today Nikolai Yakovenko shared the first of what will be a three-part discussion of artificial intelligence systems and “bots” in poker titled “Artificial Intelligence and Hold’em, Part 1: Counter-Factual Regret Minimization.” He brings us up-to-date on how far researchers have gotten with their efforts to “solve” limit hold’em and start working on the much more difficult case of NLHE. It’s lengthy, but very readable and gives a great overview of where things stand at present. (Looking forward to the rest next week.)

If your stomach for interesting poker content is rumbling and you’re hungry for some food for thought, go feast on those links.

Bright Ideas: Some Recommended Reading

Wanted today just to point to a few items over in the PokerNews Strategy section published this week that I think are especially interesting, for different reasons.

One is Bob Woolley’s lengthy response to the recently-revised Poker Tournament Directors Association rule book, titled “New Poker Tournament Rules You Need to Know.”

Bob (a.k.a. the Poker Grump) highlights 14 of the new additions/edits to rules for comment, serving both to inform readers of the rules and to give us something to think about when judging the changes as positive or otherwise. In most cases, Bob is in favor of what the Poker TDA has done, although there are a couple of exceptions. Check it out.

Another article I enjoyed was Nikolai Yakovenko’s discussion “Game Theory Optimal Solutions and Poker: A Few Thoughts.” It’s another long one, but well worth it if you’re at all interested in learning more about what “GTO” really is and what it has to do with poker.

Nikolai keeps it interesting throughout, and the discussion at the end about three-handed play between Daniel Negreanu, Dan Colman, and Christoph Vogelsang at the conclusion of the 2014 Big One for One Drop is enlightening, not to mention a helpful example with which to highlight some of the article’s main points.

Finally, I also liked Carlos Welch’s article from yesterday titled “Note to Self: If You’re Gonna Lose a Flip, At Least Lose It Right.” Carlos explores an interesting theory in that one, namely that since position is so important in poker, if you’re going to lose chips it is better to lose them to players on your right against whom you’ll have position and thus a better shot subsequently at getting those chips back.

Like the other two articles, there’s some genuinely original thought going on in Carlos’s article as he pursues this idea, the kind of thing that is sometimes hard to come by these days when it comes to poker strategy.

Indeed, for me all three of them feature actual “light bulb” moments. Check ’em out and see if they do for you, too.

Everything In Its Right Place: Watching Open-Face Chinese

Vera and I made it home in reasonably good shape, finally pulling up to the farm around midnight last night. Liked getting up today to feeds the horses and barn cats and see all were doing well. Felt like everything was where it was supposed to be again.

Spent some time this afternoon watching the livestream of this TonyBet Poker-sponsored €10K High Roller Open-Face Chinese Poker tournament playing out today in Prague in advance of the upcoming European Poker Tour stop. They are playing the Pineapple variant of OFC. That’s a screenshot from earlier today above, when Jason Mercier -- fresh off winning the WPT Alpha8 in St. Kitts -- was at the feature table. Pretty cool, and very fun to follow with the commentary by David Vanderheyden.

My appetite for all things OFC has been whetted somewhat over the last few weeks by some recent PokerNews articles by Nikolai Yakovenko. Yakovenko is a poker pro who was involved with creating the popular ABC Open-Face Chinese Poker app, and he’s been contributing strategy articles about OFC to PN for a while now.

A few weeks ago Yakovenko wrote a two-parter on the current state of OFC, then last week he both introduced how to play 2-7 Pineapple then offered some strategy for that variant.

It’s perhaps a narrow niche as far as topics go, but Yakovenko is a very good writer who explains everything well and keeps it interesting, too. If you’re at all curious about where open-face Chinese poker is (or is heading) at the moment or the “Deuce Pineapple” variant, check out those links.

Meanwhile, I dipped back into that High Roller live stream a short while ago to see Jennifer Shahade and Ilya Bulychev now heads-up for the title. Sounds like they’re working out a deal to end things fairly soon, so I’m gonna sign off and head back over. There will be another two-day €1K OFC Main Event starting tomorrow with the final table again being streamed on Wednesday, so that’ll be another chance to watch some live OFC.

Something surprisingly pleasing about watching players set their hands -- like they are putting everything where it belongs, sort of like the feeling we had when coming home.

(EDIT [added 12/9/14]: Jennifer Shahade won the €1OK OFC High Roller -- story here.)