"The biggest money-making secret in poker" comment

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The Biggest money-making secret in poker is...
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I agree. Over the last week or so I've dedicated myself to playing at least 1k hands/day. Gotta put the time in to win.

Fantastic post!!!!!

Good post, and surprisingly well written.

I remember reading an article by D. Negraneu on Cardplayer a few years ago when I first started playing, talking about how he always plays for hours instead of results or hands and it seemed like a good idea to me. So since I graduated and decided not to get a job, I play 5 hours of poker/day regardless of how I'm doing and I think setting up that system has been one of the smartest things I've done in terms of poker.

Originally Posted by Nehmer

I think setting up that system has been one of the smartest things I've done in terms of poker.

*cough* full ring *cough*

You still living in CU or have you since moved on?

Originally Posted by elipsesjeff

Good post, and surprisingly well written.

surprisingly??? ;]

Originally Posted by elipsesjeff

Originally Posted by Nehmer

I think setting up that system has been one of the smartest things I've done in terms of poker.

*cough* full ring *cough*

You still living in CU or have you since moved on?

Say what you will about me playing full ring, but my poker tracker stats show my hourly rate to be well higher at full ring than SH. It might be that the other players suck worse at SH, but apparently I do too, so it doesn't make much sense for me to play there I live in Decatur now, which is about 45 minutes from CU.

awesome post

I might print this one out.

Very nice post!

Wow, that's amazing how well Benjamin Graham's theories fit so well into poker. I just realized how similar stock performance is to poker performance. As long as the stock I bought is of a good, strong company, I don't need to be checking its price every day or even every week. Need to have faith in my research and decision =)

Awesome post Euph-

Nice. I've added it to the new Small Stakes LHE Digest sticky.

Not real sure why I had never seen this post before but it comes at a time that it was good for me to read...

After having a horrible last 1/2 of this month i sit no where near what I had wanted to be at...

well I take that back I’m not horribly off from what I expected I was only shooting for +$2k this month to move up to 5/10 well I made that and a lot more, but I slipped myself into a downward spiral didn't play all that optimal, and next thing you know I’m 1k short of what I had wanted...

Yesterday I was not very happy with the situation given that yesterday was the biggest - swing I have taken in 1 day... I was mad at myself for investing poorly in places and mad at myself that I like myself get into that predicament in the first place...

Shit happens, by learning from your own mistakes and others advice things will pain out... I’m happy I read this post today because it pulled my head out of my ass made me slap myself and keep my chin up...

Nice post…

Originally Posted by Nehmer

but apparently I do too, so it doesn't make much sense for me to play there Very Happy

It might be wise to learn the game sooner rather than later. If you ever plan on moving up and staying at Party, then you must learn 6 max no doubt about it. I'm glad you are doing so well at FR and you might not do as well at SH right off the bat. But, that doesn't mean it won't make you a better player.

Play what you will, but you should at least devote SOME of your time learning 6 max, whether its 1k hands a week or a day a week or something, but you should get accustomed to it.

Originally Posted by elipsesjeff

Originally Posted by Nehmer

but apparently I do too, so it doesn't make much sense for me to play there Very Happy

It might be wise to learn the game sooner rather than later. If you ever plan on moving up and staying at Party, then you must learn 6 max no doubt about it. I'm glad you are doing so well at FR and you might not do as well at SH right off the bat. But, that doesn't mean it won't make you a better player.

Play what you will, but you should at least devote SOME of your time learning 6 max, whether its 1k hands a week or a day a week or something, but you should get accustomed to it.

I played the 10/20 FR game durring the day and only thing that got me even was the fact i knew 6 max... hands were regulerly only 2-4 handed post folp (typical of a 6max game)... and was a lot more argo (also typical of a 6max game)... honestly i thought it blew big donkey balls...

great post...I'm pretty much a tournament player...a tournament player who obsessively checks his rank in the tourney as well as his chip stack in relation to the average, and how many double ups i will need to get to the average or to the chip lead or at this rate will i make the money etc.etc. Imagine how may patterns I might create. Next Tourney no lobby open for me until first break at least.

nice post connecting investing books to poker.

for a newbie like me who´s playing trying to improve his play, not primary to make cash, and learning every day it´s colliding with the quote " get the hell off ur computer when ur tilting", what prompts at least weekly in my mind.

hopefully i´ll get to the point finding that post useful to me one day.

fantastic post! this will be of great help to many players.

Amen!!!

AOK's rare siting on the limit forums, and it's 1 word!

But it was a good one word, and with triple exclamation!!!

Great post Euph. The basic logic is a great refresher, and I don't usually tilt, but I have been keeping the post in mind during my sessions and it is making short downswings easier to shrug off by keeping me focused.

Originally Posted by euphoricicsm

Yet how many people do you know check their stocks religiously throughout the day? Going so far as to have them beamed to their cell-phones so they can know anywhere, anytime.

Is it doing them any good?

In this day and age an intelligent investor always knows the price of their stock. When you see headlines like this screaming across your monitor, "Bush Cites Security, Waives SEC Reporting Rules" you had better pay attention to what your investment is doing. One can no longer afford not to have a grasp of what their stock is doing on a daily basis for if you forget about it one day, it may not be there the next time you look.

I think there are some similarites between the market and poker, paticularly in the department of psychology but most often the analogies fall a little flat.

Originally Posted by euphoricicsm

The real secret to making money in poker is speeding up the long-term process.

This is the easiest way to increase your poker profits. And it takes no effort. It is so simple, you do nothing different than what you usually do. You just do a little more of it.

You just play more poker.

If poker is like intelligent investing why should one try to speed up their profits in one day at poker and be so results oriented on a daily basis if at the same time they shouldn't be paying attention to what their results are on a daily basis if they are in the market? So in order to speed up ones return in the stock market are they supposed to make more trades or just keep buying more shares in the same stock? That is a recipe for disaster, especially since there is one very significant relationship between poker and investing. They are both minus sum games.

Not only are they both minus sum games, but unlike the market poker forces you to take positions in hands you might have otherwise passed up on. So poker eats away at your profits by forcing you to play when you might not want to, as well as taking a rake on ones profits. In attempting to speed up ones profits you might in the process decrease your net.

Originally Posted by strawman

Originally Posted by euphoricicsm

The real secret to making money in poker is speeding up the long-term process.

This is the easiest way to increase your poker profits. And it takes no effort. It is so simple, you do nothing different than what you usually do. You just do a little more of it.

You just play more poker.

If poker is like intelligent investing why should one try to speed up their profits in one day at poker and be so results oriented on a daily basis if at the same time they shouldn't be paying attention to what their results are on a daily basis if they are in the market? So in order to speed up ones return in the stock market are they supposed to make more trades or just keep buying more shares in the same stock? That is a recipe for disaster, especially since there is one very significant relationship between poker and investing. They are both minus sum games.

Not only are they both minus sum games, but unlike the market poker forces you to take positions in hands you might have otherwise passed up on. So poker eats away at your profits by forcing you to play when you might not want to, as well as taking a rake on ones profits. In attempting to speed up ones profits you might in the process decrease your net.

You are ignoring the time value of money.

When you invest, you are looking for long-term appreciation of capital over time - increases in the value of your stocks, dividends, gains from compound interest, etc.

In poker, your opportunity to make money ends with the end of the hand. You have to reinvest in the next hand for the process to continue. The more hands you play over time, the faster you make money.

And don't ever think that there's no rake taken on your investments. Brokerage fees, trailing commissions, MERs, interest rate speads...there's rake alright, and lots of it.

Originally Posted by Warpe

You are ignoring the time value of money.

When you invest, you are looking for long-term appreciation of capital over time - increases in the value of your stocks, dividends, gains from compound interest, etc.

In poker, your opportunity to make money ends with the end of the hand. You have to reinvest in the next hand for the process to continue. The more hands you play over time, the faster you make money.

And don't ever think that there's no rake taken on your investments. Brokerage fees, trailing commissions, MERs, interest rate speads...there's rake alright, and lots of it.

What am I ignoring? I stated clearly that they are both minus sum games. Obviously ones ability to capitalize on a poker hand ends with the hand and restarts with the next deal which in one manner makes poker a riskier endeavour than investing, but fairly on par with day trading. So in an example giving in the original post:

Originally Posted by euphoricicsm

"I went up 50 bets in 200 hands and I stopped playing. And I did it several times. But then I had big corrosponding losing sessions - the only difference being that I would play my full 1000 hand sessions on those days. Whats the net effect? I played less hands. Significantly less hands. And as such, I made significantly less profit."

how does it follow that playing more hands increases ones profits? Obviously it can, however as the quote indicates the author actually was losing money the more hands he played and somehow comes to the conclusion that it is better to play more?

Again, it doesn't follow that playing more hands increases profits, although it does increase the potential for profits. Playing well and playing against softer competition and picking an optimal seat would more strongly correlate to profits. Playing more hands simply increases the likelyhood of being dealt better starting hands but when the deck is cold or your game is off it can be significantly less profitable. As pros often opine, even when down for a session if the game is juicy, they are playing well and the competition is soft there's no reason to leave the table. They don't generally recommend playing more hands for the sake of playing hands until you reach a benchmark.

Overall I do believe there are similarities between investing/trading and poker and the discipline and diligence one must have when studying both fields, but just as poker has changed since Super System was written, the market has changed in the 50+ years since the Intelligent Investor was written. The underlining psychology of both pursuits is similar since they both are risk/reward oriented exposing ones own fears and greed and that IMO is the more significant issue to deal with, than how to apply one's investment methodology to their poker methodology.

Again, it doesn't follow that playing more hands increases profits, although it does increase the potential for profits. Playing well and playing against softer competition and picking an optimal seat would more strongly correlate to profits. Playing more hands simply increases the likelyhood of being dealt better starting hands but when the deck is cold or your game is off it can be significantly less profitable. As pros often opine, even when down for a session if the game is juicy, they are playing well and the competition is soft there's no reason to leave the table. They don't generally recommend playing more hands for the sake of playing hands until you reach a benchmark.

I disagree with this. Playing more hands does not increase the likelyhood of getting dealt better cards, as that probability stays the same no matter how many hands you play. Euphoricism is saying that he lost significant amount of money NOT because of bad play but because he didn't put in as many hands as he could/should have. One's profit that they make is DIRECTLY correlated to the number of hands they play, the winrate is affected by your play, your opponents play, and your table selection. Combining your winrate with the number of hands you play equals your profit, plane and simple.

Live professional poker players are retarded. Freddy Deeb himself said that if the cards are treating you poorly then leave, WRONG. Only leave the table if the conditions arent right for you to play well, whether that be having a bad table or you are too tired or you can't concentrate. They should recommend playing more hands for the sake of reaching a benchmark (in their case hours played) because that is the only way they make money, to play enough hours. As long as their play isnt affected then it shouldnt matter. Poker is just like a job, you cant expect to get paid if you don't put in the hours of work. A fun job though with great benefits.

Originally Posted by strawman

Overall I do believe there are similarities between investing/trading and poker and the discipline and diligence one must have when studying both fields, but just as poker has changed since Super System was written, the market has changed in the 50+ years since the Intelligent Investor was written. The underlining psychology of both pursuits is similar since they both are risk/reward oriented exposing ones own fears and greed and that IMO is the more significant issue to deal with, than how to apply one's investment methodology to their poker methodology.

Investment methodology is ALL ABOUT ameliorating the negative effects that making investment decisions based on emotion can have. Stocks are the only thing that people tend to sell when they're on sale and buy when they're at their most expensive. Markets move on emotion...hence, "dollar-cost average into a diversified portfolio appropriate to your risk profile with patience and discipline" and IGNORE what the market does.

Similarly, you could say that poker players should play a target number of hands every day/week/month at a level appropriate to their bankroll with patience and discipline and IGNORE variance.

Both are about applying a methodical system and sticking to fundamentals for long term profitability.

Warpe wins. And quotes Graham. Even talks about dollar-cost averaging. Jesus. Warpe wins twice.

I have become very, very, very, very, very, close to uninstalling pokertracker (several times). I honestly don't think it is doing me a whole lot of good. I know how to play the game.

I think my leaks are mental.

I think if I got a kitchen timer, set it to 4 hours, and played (and of course the underlying assumption is that I would play well, with good table selection, etc.) until it went off, and imported hands maybe every other sunday, I would be better off.

Frankly, I'm not capable of that discipline. It seems hard-wired into my brain to check my results every fucking minute. Not quite sure what to do there.

What do you mean check your results?

Originally Posted by euphoricism

Warpe wins. And quotes Graham. Even talks about dollar-cost averaging. Jesus. Warpe wins twice.

Yes, and there were a bunch of winners who dollar-cost averaged in such falling knife companies like Enron, Global Crossing LTD, WorldCom etc. And hey, Global Crossing managed to get up and do it all over again, emerging from bankruptcy only to have their books which were supposed to be meticulously checked while under Chapter 11 just as screwed up as before! I wonder if it is just coincidence that 8 of the top ten bankruptcies in the last 30 years have occured in the last 6? I'm glad quoting Graham doesn't win me arguments just like it doesn't bring home the bacon.

I have nothing against Graham nor the fundamentals he speaks of since the basis of his tenets still do apply to a degree, but if someone asks how your stock is doing and you don't know the basics of where your stock is at regarding price, market cap, float etc... in today's market you are just asking to get burned. Sure you can retort today that you are live in Boca Raton so what does it matter until you find yourself on skidrow tomorrow.

Yes, one of the diciples of this form of investing is Warren Buffet, but let's not forget that Buffet doesn't buy stock, he buys companies and your average investor isn't going to have the clout to have the CEO on speed dial at their leisure.

On the less successful side let's not forget that a few years back a hedge fund with two Noble Economist on board nearly collapsed the market. Let's also not forget that in the market of 1907, one paticular individual had such clout that he could have crippled the market through his hyper-bearish short-selling and it was only through the pleading of J.P. Morgan- some allude on behalf of the President- that he started to cover his positions in order to allow the economy to recover.

In this era buying a stock and not paying attention to it is the equivelent of giving some guy on the street your ATM and pin number and checking a couple of days later to see if he put in $20 or took out $600.

wow, how is making +EV decisions affected by whether you check the results or not?

It's not. Get over it.

+EV decisions will make you money in the long run no matter what

Originally Posted by strawman

Yes, and there were a bunch of winners who dollar-cost averaged in such falling knife companies like Enron, Global Crossing LTD, WorldCom etc. And hey, Global Crossing managed to get up and do it all over again, emerging from bankruptcy only to have their books which were supposed to be meticulously checked while under Chapter 11 just as screwed up as before!...

...if someone asks how your stock is doing and you don't know the basics of where your stock is at regarding price, market cap, float etc... in today's market you are just asking to get burned...

...In this era buying a stock and not paying attention to it is the equivelent of giving some guy on the street your ATM and pin number and checking a couple of days later to see if he put in $20 or took out $600.

I agree, in part. Putting all your eggs in one basket/stock, like many of the unfortunate Enron employees were encouraged to do through their company pension plan, and not watching it like a hawk is idiotic.

But the idiotic part is putting all the eggs in one basket in the first place. That's why a properly designed diversified portfolio, which most average Joes can gain access to through mutual funds, is the only way to go, so you don't need to watch it like a hawk.

Back to the real subject:

I believe using investing as an analogy for poker has a great deal of validity, even if it is only to put you in the mindset that there are proven strategies for playing +EV poker that will make you money over the long term. In fact, I can't think of many better ones, especially since they both deal with growing your money.

In my mind, poker is primarily a game of skill with a gambling element, which is not much different than the markets. There are factors you can control and factors you can't, and I think euph's point, and mine, is that there are ways to optimize your play with the factors that are under your control.

More of my thinking on this here:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...ight=efficient

Great post!! Definitely can take value from this. Every single day after my session I always load it up and see how I did... This can affect me, but since I've added my 1k/day rule, it isn't as bad. I stop at 1k up or down. I'm thinking about upping it from 1k or perhaps adding a time goal rather than hand goal.

Hi!

Great post!
I try to keep it in mind while playing.

Simmi

Originally Posted by DocSimmi

Hi!

Great post!
I try to keep it in mind while playing.

Simmi

Thanks, I'm glad people are still reading it. It feels like I wrote it decades ago.

Excellent post.

I have heard the comparision to investing before and is a good way to look at your cards preflop. Are they worth investing in?

New here to the forum and definately find it one of the best I've read.

JamesMH

Fabulous post Eupho, tnx!

classics are timeless imo

I agree with strawman from philosophical viewpoint. More hands=More profit is not correct logic. It all depends on who are playing the cards.

Great post by the way.

Seems like alot of words to say what can be summed up simply as 'the law of large numbers'

Read this months ago, thought it was good then. Re-read today as a part of my starting over and trying to actually get better... still a good concept and one I find hard to apply, but can genuinely see the benefit of it to my game.