Poker talk

I realize there is no poker in the commune, but this isn't really poker questions, it's more about communication. I've been given the following task and have thought a lot about it, but was very curious to see what FTR came up with.

You've been asked to give a 40-50 minute talk to a general audience of 50 people about the science and/or math behind poker. The audience overall is quite bright, but they know next to nothing about poker.

What topics do you include in your talk? Which do you avoid?

Can you think of any activities to do with the audience to get them involved/engaged?

Rent some poker tables for seating. Make them learn while they play. Take their stacks.

Describe it as risk management theory and how understanding a range of possible outcomes allows you to plan better. Some bullshit like that.

I would cover:
Hand rankings.
Betting structure.
Basic probability.
Power of position.
Basic hud stats (just to describe basic player types)
Concept of ranges.
Optimal betting strategy for a couple of examples using different player types with different ranges.

TELL THEM ABOUT THE TIME SOME ASSHOLE CALLED YOUR ACES WITH 47o AND WON!

Getting super specific in such a short talk about actual poker might be tough. I would think that talking more in terms of general concepts would be better for that length of a talk and that particular audience since they will be intelligent enough to understand really good analogies or toy games.

seeing as there is an open bar at this seminar simply shout

LOL DONKAMENTS

and get everyone drunk.

best seminar ever

Can you give them some prerequisite reading?

I can't do anything like set-up tables. And no, reading ahead of time isn't an option. There is alcohol available, but I think i'm the only one that gets free drinks... while I'm talking. (boom.)

I've pretty much reached spoon's conclusion. Thought I could tap into a few different areas of math and science stuff, but nothing is going to be in depth. I'm thinking of discussing one hand in depth... to give them a sense of "woah, there's more too this than i thought". I also wanted to gear it a bit for advocacy for poker being different from house-wins table games. Also a brief bit about tournament poker see on TV and try to give them a sense of what that's really like.

I had come to the conclusion that all the online bits might be best to leave out, other than as an aside. I'll be tempted to mention my lifetime winnings vs. investment, just to give poker a bit of legitimacy. I haven't made that much, but for irl people it sounds like i won the lottery. I could see mentioning "player types" of sorts when walking through a hand, but I think any mention of hud stats is going to confuse people. It's a lot of new information/vocab to take on all at once and working memory = 7+/-2 and such.

I'd still love to hear more ideas. Can you think back to anything you first learned that you thought... OOHHH that's what that means.. or this connects with that other idea, etc.??

I think it's important for people to walk away thinking it's a strategy game. That's why I like the idea of hud stats and player types. I wouldn't show a hud or touch on any stats other than vpip, pfr & 3b, but avoid acronyms. The point is to show how we categorize by strategy ( ie nit, lagg) and adjust our strategy accordingly and can use maths to demonstrate why.

Definitely stress that it is a game of skill.

I don't think having them play hands will show them anything as they'll remain oblivious to the stuff you haven't taught them.

I also wouldn't worry about the mechanics of the game like Aces and 8s beat Queens and Kings. Or this is a bet, that's a raise, that's a fold.

I think it'd be very interesting if you instead start with a different game. Chess.

Start with a history of chess and demonstrate how it is clearly a game of skill. How is has umpteen-million possible games. How it is studied rigorously but its greatest practitioners play a game of predicting and trapping their opponent, of knowing the mind of their opponent, of playing the game of trying to think and feel through the board as your opponent would.

Then bring up poker.

In this way, the specifics of playing a hand are boring and immaterial, but the spirit of the game is presented in full force. It is a game of skill much like chess where you are attempting to think and feel as your opponent would so that you can outflank them.

But poker differs in two key regards - One of information, the other of chaos.

In poker, cards are hidden from you and and a sure thing can be upended by the next draw.

There is also a wealth of parallels to mine. Top poker pros have played bots, top chess pros have played bots. Top plays by chess pros explained versus top plays by poker pros explained. All sorts of stuff.

That's how I'd try to put it together.

rilla for PPA president

I could see aggression being an engaging topic for these types of people since it's easy to relate to other games. You could use it as a context for basic ideas like bluffing, inducing bluffs and slow-playing instead of trying to discuss anything like that independently so it's all framed with a common idea.

Any chance we could get this talk recorded?

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Originally Posted by kingnat

You've been asked to give a 40-50 minute talk to a general audience of 50 people about the science and/or math behind poker. The audience overall is quite bright, but they know next to nothing about poker.

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The science behind poker is that every hand is an experiment. The outcome is hypothesized at every draw, and the betting/checking/folding is the trial run. After every hand, there is a definite conclusion, which can be observed by all present. The repeatability of the "experiment" is difficult to assess, as there is a strong psychological element, even when the same cards are dealt to the same players repeatedly. However, after many thousands of hands, trends begin to emerge in the data, which can be shown to be consistent with disparately acquired data sets. These trends can be predicted with mathematical models that take in to account only the rules of the game.

Set the psychology aside, with a huge emphasis on the fact that it means setting aside the most important part of the game. Stress the topic of your presentation and go for a laugh.

For the math behind poker:
I'd start with hand rankings, and why they are the rank they are.
I'd continue with outs to odds.
Then I'd go on for a bit about pot odds and the connection to drawing odds.

That's already a bit ambitious for a 40 minute presentation. Aim for 40 minutes. Leave time for Q&A, plus, everyone likes it when it ends a bit short (yourself included). There's only about 15 minutes of attention most of them will give you anyway. The few that are interested will come to you afterward.

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Originally Posted by kingnat

What topics do you include in your talk?

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Science and math as pertains to poker

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Originally Posted by kingnat

Which do you avoid?

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Anything that is neither science nor math or which is not poker.

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Originally Posted by kingnat

Can you think of any activities to do with the audience to get them involved/engaged?

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Distribute a 1-page summary including your contact info before you begin. Adults will like the opportunity to take notes if they wish, and will have something to take with them that reminds them of the presentation.

I like rilla's ideas and the first two paragraphs of MMM's post a lot.

I would stay away from any specific hand analysis because people just don't want to hear or accept it. I would discuss game theory ideas like a one card game with one street of betting and how it's most profitable to bet A-T for value and 5-2 as a bluff (these ranges might not be correct). You could use this idea to explain how understanding an opponents tendencies gives you an edge (this might be a good way to touch on the psychology aspect).

If you feel compelled to include a hand, which is totally understandable, I would focus on turn action where you know the opponents hand. Say they have AA and you have a flush draw, why calling a $10 bet with a $100 pot is good, but calling a $50 bet is bad. Or, you could have KK and they either have AA or a flush and shove all-in, you could use the math to show a balance cutoff percentage where it's correct on one side and incorrect on the other.

In theory I also like tying the game to the stock market, it's about long term results not immediate results so bankroll management is huge (i.e. you shouldn't put all your assets in apple stock, but it's fine to invest 5%). I also like how this relates to sports betting, but that's probably outside the scope of your presentation.

P.S. I tried to proof read but I've been drinking. Good luck sir (although we know it's not about luck)

P.S.S. I will spend the rest of the night playing your flash game, unless it sucks, in which case you will hear about it.

I read half of this thread and I've narrowed down my advice to n00bs to the following teaching pts:

1) teach hand rankings
2) chances of having a good hand ie. pair or AQ+
3) importance of position
4) think about what they think you have

BOOM
PROFITABLE PLAYER

Visual aid would help in this case.Try making up a few sheets on poker for some kind of slide show to help out understanding table plays.

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Originally Posted by kingnat

I realize there is no poker in the commune, but this isn't really poker questions, it's more about communication. I've been given the following task and have thought a lot about it, but was very curious to see what FTR came up with.

You've been asked to give a 40-50 minute talk to a general audience of 50 people about the science and/or math behind poker. The audience overall is quite bright, but they know next to nothing about poker.

What topics do you include in your talk? Which do you avoid?

Can you think of any activities to do with the audience to get them involved/engaged?

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What's the end-goal. To come out if it with the highest winrate possible on day one? To make them understand the game theory of the game as best as possible? To convince them that poker's crazy and awesome and involves a lot of skill and kewl stuff like that? Etc.

What is the value whose expectation I'm tryin' to maximize here, if ya know what I'm sayin.

Also, I'm going to assume by "next to nothing," you mean that they at least understand that SF>Quads>FH>Flush, etc. This exercise seems really boring otherwise. If I had an hour to sit down with my father (who is very smart but is the level of ignorance I'm talking about), then it would take so much work just to get the rules intuitive to him that I don' tthink we'd get far.

Assuming they at least have the rules down pat, we can probably get into basic preflop strategy and exploitation within the first 15 minutes.

Screw it, I'll also assume that we're giving them the best grasp on poker game theory as possible because the making have a positive winrate in 50 mins thing is boring (give 'em a hand chart, teach them about value betting, tell them to never bluff, and they're on their way).

So I would start with a story. It's a true story and a very common story in live poker, but it just stuck out in my head because this particular player was really really grilling me. So I played a game at Harrah's where a guy was limping a ton, like a typical live player, and I was playing my typical Positionally Aware Aggressive play preflop and iso'ing a ton in position and all this stuff. Eventually he was all, "LOL You're opening again?! Of COURSE I'm not gonna fold because you're such easy money." After a few more iso's he started limping in front of me a massive percentage of the time, being like "I can't fold knowing that you'll probably raise and be in the hand." This player also just happened to lead for small whenever he hit okay and check whenever he whiffed or was trying to trap me. Yadda yadda yadda.

There's more to the story, but this is an opening into a lot of the most important concepts imo.

1) This would be a very easy basis for a proof that poker's a skill game because if I'm playing the best 20% of hands (let's say) whereas he's playing well over 50% of hands, and I have a more disguised range AND position, then regardless of what luck happens from that point on, those $12 that he kept putting into the pot are much more mine than it is his.

2) I'm not necessarily a huge fan of the Hand + Skill + Position consideration thingy because it's a simplification of things, but I have found that it lends to conclusions that I can get on board with a massive percentage of the time, so it's good for a 50 min. intro to poker. Anyway, this scenario illustrates this perfectly. When I have all 3 of these advantages, then I'm going to win the hand a high %age of the time when the pot is big, and I'm unlikely to lose a ton of money when I'm behind. In this instance, we can even assume that we are of equivalent skill postflop, but even the fact that my hand range is more disguised (because he's unlikely to have very strong hands, and he was quite clueless of what exactly I kept raising with) is effectively a skill advantage. My read on how faceup he played the flop, then gives me another clear skill advantage without going into great detail about value betting and semi-bluffs and all that.

3) It would be very easy to go from #2 to get into Exploitation, which is essentially the basis of all poker moneyz. Over the course of 1 and 2, I would probably get into how I could continue to bet on a lot of flops without him having much of an idea of what I had. I could get away from his medium-strength hands when I had nothing without bluffing my money away, and he was unlikely to beat me nothing vs nothing because I didn't expect him to check raise me much. Etc and so forth.

4) I could then get into how poker is essentially just how you play your entire range versus how they play their entire range. I realize that people wouldn't get into shania in the first 50 minutes of teaching people how to play poker, but I think this would perfectly illustrate how all of poker boils down to hand range vs hand range. Villain's mistake is that he is playing such a wide range in such a bad spot that it's damned near impossible for him to make money unless I'm the worst player in the universe. I am able to print money against him because my hands are on average better than his. The more hands I add, the more difficult it will be for me to bluff effectively, so I should be deciding how many bluffs I can get away with and choose a range that makes this rate sustainable. Maybe I'm good enough (and the players behind me are clueless enough to not adjust) to iso him with 72o, but this would involve being very very careful about value betting enough and bluffing infrequently enough and bet/calling the flop enough and all of this stuff to make it so that I AM not the one who is exploited.

5) That's it. That's basically the foundation of poker. You still have no idea what hands to play or anything like that, but be sure to play better hands more disguised in better positions and with sustainable strategies postflop, and you'll be gravy (don't worry, it's totally that easy).

I don't mind the idea of showing some teaser math of like 5b bluffs or triple barrel semi-bluffs or something like that to show how complicated the game gets quickly (which is lol because these are like 50nl concepts) so that they realize that they have a waaaaaays to go before they actually understand the game. But they would understand the game well enough to be able to know what's a good reason and a bad reason to do something, even if it takes them forever to quantify (for lack of a better word) concepts like "good hands" and stuff like that.

The goal isn't to teach them how to play poker, right? It's to present an educational and entertaining lecture about the topic of poker?

I would cover things like risk/reward, BRM, variance, and then maybe cover a few simple preflop examples of all-in equity, how those situations play into that variance. If you have time you could get into how we accommodate the incomplete information given with hand ranges, expanding on the earlier simple preflop examples..

The only thing i have to add is

You should emphasize that pro players actually do what you are describing. I feel that most people who have never played online poker...or who have never played poker professionally in general, lack any kind of understanding about how good players make decisions. If you confront these people with maths and ranges and ev's and such, i feel many are going to be like "lol, no way. bs!" even though the math is applicable and is used.

The topic of the presentation is "The science and/or math behind poker". The audience will be expecting you to talk about science and/or math. If you talk about poker theory, strategy, or mastery, or anything else, then your audience will wonder when you will be getting to the point.

If you're going to talk about anything besides science and/or math, then you should definitely change the title to reflect that, and do so enough in advance that the target audience has a chance to find out and plan to attend. I don't assume that the audience that would want to attend a beginners strategy talk is the same audience that would want to attend a math/science talk.

Another simple math topic I thought of today, how betting a draw is better than check/calling a draw (again assuming it's all-in for simlicity) because of the extra equity gained by them folding some percentage of the time which could be accompanied by garphs and such.

Expanding on what dozer said, you could represent what dozer said about all-in preflop equity and show how it can be modeled by brownian motion (with bias) and show that some percentage of the time a bad player will show a better short term win rate vs a good player because of the variance.

Excellent suggestions people. Thanks for all the thoughtful responses. I hadn't considered the all-in equity ideas, those are pretty straightforward. Even though it's more sloppy, I thought going through how a single, interesting hand would be entertaining and show off all the things poker players think about in a given hand for a set of circumstances.

I think it is supposed to be an entertaining overview of poker with insights into the game from a science-y and mathematical point of view. I think surviva316 gave a good description of my goal: "To convince them that poker's crazy and awesome and involves a lot of skill and kewl stuff like that?" I think that's basically it.

I even think I'll throw in a few slides on tells because it's a psychology thing, and people will probably expect to hear something about it since irl people think tells are the tits.

So this is coming up next month... I had to write up a title and an abstract for the posters:

Luck is the Statistics of Small Samples: The Science and Mathematics of the Game of Poker.

A smoky back room, stacks of chips and cash, eccentric and wild gamblers sit around the table. A table filled with friends, beverages, snacks, and nickels and dimes. A televised event with millions of dollars on the line, bright lights and sunglasses, where the chips go all in after only two cards. These are the images most people conjure when thinking about a game of poker, a game most associate with luck and risky gambling. Each image misrepresents how professionals actually play poker, leads to the perception that it is “just gambling” like blackjack or roulette. I will provide a glimpse into modern-day poker, including how players use mathematics and insights from science to play better than their opponents. I will unpack why the game is so misunderstood and why there are heavy state and federal restrictions on how poker is played.

What are you gonna follow with?

Please post a vid of this if you are at all able.

How picky should I be about the advertising poster? The image depicts a 5-card draw hand, but I'm going to almost exclusively talk about Texas Hold Them.

On one hand people tend to think of 5-card draw (old people at least)... so maybe it's ok? idk. Thoughts?

http://i.imgur.com/T7QPB.png

5 card draw hands are cooler to look at compared to Holdem hands. Plus, I'm pretty sure most other advertising still uses that kind of hand. Plus, it's hard to show a Holdem set up nicely. I also believe if you went and showed just two cards people would be more likely to relate it to Blackjack.

My opinion may not be valid though because I'm not a poker outsider, and I'm old enough that I grew up during a time when 5 card was the game people played so I'll naturally recognize a 5 card hand as a poker hand while some little internet kid might not.

Looks good to me - it's still a 5 card hand. You can always mention the difference in games briefly relating it to the advert

You don't need to mention it and nobody will even notice it. Showing a royal flush is standard really. I can't see anyone young or old not realising its a poker hand.

The picture is clear and uncomplicated . The text is whats speaks out, the picture compliments it.

Yeah I wouldn't worry how technically accurate your marketing material is. Marketing people rarely do, and they seem to sell shit well :?:

WHY IS THERE A COLON????

Sweetness. Thanks for the feedback gents! The colon is there because the rest of the title (The Science and Mathematics of Poker) is shown below the image.

Did an interview with local TV... talked with them for an hour and a half. Not sure how they'll piece it together and hopefully i didn't say anything too stupid..., the cameraman had the best line. When I asked if the interview went ok, he said, "Yeah man, I learned a lot. I think everything I've learned about poker is wrong."

You're such a physist

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Originally Posted by kingnat

he said, "Yeah man, I learned a lot. I think everything I've learned about poker is wrong."

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did he think these ladies were ladies when they weren't his ladies?

^^^ ++1

but I already voted.

Does anyone have a .dmg for pokerstove? I'd love to have it for my talk, but the website is down. Not sure if it ever had a mac version now that I think of it.

no mac version, gotta get it going through wine

So this talk probably already happened a long time ago, and even if it didn't, you're probably not gonna change your whole approach anyway, but I had a thought about how to talk about poker in a comprehensive mathematical sense (though it would be theoretical to the degree of retardation).

You could hypothetically breakdown all poker players into 5 different types who have very certain VPIP/PFR numbers. There are LAggs (50/25), TAggs (25/20), stations (40/10), live nits (15/5) and online nits (15/12).

Even though in this hypothetical there are only 5 types of players in the entire universe and they have very predictable preflop numbers, their postflop play isn't a pure extrapolation from their preflop play. In other words, even though TAggs and LAggs have similar "aggression stats" preflop, a TAgg is going to have more balanced betting ranges postflop, and they're going to choose different types of hands to bluff and value bet (for example TAggs are going to bluff a lot of draws on flops and turns and bluff a lot of blockers/nut lows on the river, whereas LAggs are more likely to bet their best hands, check/fold their worst hands and check/call things in-between).

When you set up such stringent premises (that aren't true, obviously), then every decision in poker can just be a combination of Bayes Theorem and exploitation theory. So you can play out a hand against someone that you only have a 10-hand sample size against then you can use Bayes Theorem to calculate the likelihood that they are each given player type, and then maximize your exploitation of a player who is, eg, 40% likely to be a LAgg, 30% likely to be a TAgg, 24% likely to be a station, 4% likely to be an online nit and 2% likely to be a live nit. You can play a hand out to the river in a situation where each of those players would have very very different ranges (say, a draw-heavy board where the opponent raised once: the passive players would have really strong ranges, the LAgg would be all over the place and the TAgg would have a balanced range of draws and value hands). The calculations would get kinda sorta on the complicated side, and you would get out of it a certain, optimal strategy on how to play every single hand in your range, which I think would be a good balance of daunting yet cool.

Then, you flip the switch, and instead of the player having volunteered money in 4/10 pots, raising 2 of them, now we say that he's played 3 of them, raising 2 of them, and we see how such a small change can make the player makeup ever so slightly more likely to be an okay player (TAgg or online nit), which changes the balance of how to play the situation. Then, you can make the sample size 1,000 hands larger and show how now you're dealing with player makeups that are more like 99.something% likely to be one type, and now you have much more specific exploitative strategies instead of just taking a mean approach.

I mean, since player types don't work this way, no one uses Bayes Theorem like this in the real world, but I think it's a cool way to simplify the game just enough to be able to talk about math and game theory in a very certain way.

Again, this is probably the dumbest bump ever because no one's going to use it either for poker or for poker talks, but I just thought I'd share.

Kingnat, you owe.