Pattern Recognition

wartic

Article in the Times last Monday(Its the free paper on virgin trains) and was talking about chess grand masters and top football players assessing all the players on the pitch/board and reacting instantly depending on what they saw/perceived . The players here who play 10+tables like Donttelmum and are winning players must have the same skills in my opinion. I am purely a recreational player and sit with the lappy on my knee and I have tried but I cant play more than 4 tables without timing out and/or concentrating on the one hand at the expense of another.
So would the great and the good of the lobby agree that winning multitable players use the same skill set in Poker like a chess grandmaster?

Slipwater

In Response to Pattern Recognition:

Article in the Times last Monday(Its the free paper on virgin trains) and was talking about chess grand masters and top football players assessing all the players on the pitch/board and reacting instantly depending on what they saw/perceived . The players here who play 10+tables like Donttelmum and are winning players must have the same skills in my opinion. I am purely a recreational player and sit with the lappy on my knee and I have tried but I cant play more than 4 tables without timing out and/or concentrating on the one hand at the expense of another. So would the great and the good of the lobby agree that winning multitable players use the same skill set in Poker like a chess grandmaster?
Posted by wartic

Er, no.

It's hard to compare the two because there is no luck in chess and it's an extremely complex game to master. The great and good at chess usually think half a dozen moves in advance, and you just can't do that in poker because each hand is a short term situation.

DOHHHHHHH

Poker is abit like chess/snooker in that good players are always thinking 2/3 moves ahead. 

When a good player bets, or raises, he'll have a plan for what he's going to do next no matter what the opponent does... raises x size, raises y size, raises z size etc, and also a very good idea what he'll do on every possible turn or river card before it even comes. 

Bet/call if a heart comes, bet//fold on 7s, 8s, 9s, check/call blanks, check/fold on 2c for example. 

As all the opponents are farmiliar a good player wont often find themselves in tough spots, so it allows them to play loads at once. Alot of it is just clicking buttons  

Ofc not many are that good! If I go above 3 I start struggling even more. Need some thinking time! 

Slipwater

In Response to Re: Pattern Recognition:

Many winning poker players I have encountered are indeed very well establish at chess ....also a very good friend of mine Mr James Browning is  I believe  a very well accomplished  Backgammon Champion!!!.slightly of subject ..but you get the drift. As Slip points out rightly so.......There is no luck in chess ...But I do beg to differ with his full assumption.
Posted by footsie66

No surprise there.

jordz16

Yeah A lot of the top well known pros are very capable chess players, and there are a few who originally started at chess and then turned to poker. so  obviously there is a big link in skill sets, but general mathmatical intelligence will get you a long way in both.

Nuggy962

Yeah I can agree on a level.

You need to have a good mind and playing that many tables the winning players will probably auto pilot a lot of the time. As dohhh stated, they know what they will do when see certain flops faced with certain bets sizes.

You play enough hands you get a pretty good grasp on what play means what.. Yeah is some variance Neville's but the point slip is missing is there is a reason there are poker pro's and poker rec players, like amateur footballers vs pro. Grand master vs me lol.

A poker pro will have a similar skill that they have learnt to think ahead and gain an edge on their opponent. 

Slipwater

I think we can safely remove footballers from the equation.

Ice_Tiger

About three years ago, someone said on an EPT show that over half the players that had cashed that year for over £500k for the first time had studied Maths beyond the age of 18. Maybe that is a clue as to what kind of mind helps.

FCHD

What on earth has that last post got to do with this thread?

wartic

In Response to Re: Pattern Recognition:

In Response to Pattern Recognition : Er, no. It's hard to compare the two because there is no luck in chess and it's an extremely complex game to master. The great and good at chess usually think half a dozen moves in advance, and you just can't do that in poker because each hand is a short term situation.
Posted by Slipwater

If any of the better players on this site played me enough they would take all my money and it's not because they are luckier it's because they are better more skillfull players and if a given number of hands are played you can discount variance and then skill will show through. Thanks everyone for your thoughts

LancyAA

i find my couple of decades as a grand master at the game of SNAP help me recognise the suits in poker literally a milisecond after my hand is dealt.

As yet i have too low a sample to see what percentage this is upping my win rate. 

seanallen

If you're playing the same players day in day out though its not like each hand is just a short term situation, you are obviously most of the time trying to win as much money from the hand you're playing in, but at the same time taking consideration how it will affect future hands/ is affected by previous hands, can go on for a long while.

In chess, even though the best the players are thinking a lot of moves ahead in each game, once a new game starts it starts afresh. As a battle between two or more poker players can often go on for years, enough time for the variance/ luck side of it to more or less even out, it almost becomes exactly like a game of chess really.

Maybe its some of the psychological tilt related stuff that makes it a bit different, chess is purely a technical game so I suppose the best technical players are going to make the top, whereas in poker you have to deal with a whole lot more to make it. Mastering that ability to have control over your emotions is a pretty tough thing to do, wonder if the best technical poker players in the world don't actually get that far for this reason?

Slipwater

In Response to Re: Pattern Recognition:

In Response to Re: Pattern Recognition : If any of the better players on this site played me enough they would take all my money and it's not because they are luckier it's because they are better more skillfull players and if a given number of hands are played you can discount variance and then skill will show through. Thanks everyone for your thoughts
Posted by wartic

While it may be true that a lot of chess players are good at poker and vice versa, the two activities are vastly different and not really comparable on a game level at all.

unknown_username

Nice question W and certainly promotes some thought. 

Certainly, all games need some analytical process and planning to becoming succesful. The level of analysis does vary however imo. I agree with Slipwater that there are less decisions/planning to be made in poker than chess, for instance. The 'plan' can be made fairly quickly based on stack size , position, hand quality and ,on occasion, player observation of his plays. However one thing is revealed in poker that cannot exist in chess and that is the reaction to a completely new situation is the flop, turn and river cards which transform the players positions whereas in chess a players makes or breaks his opponent with his own moves and absolutely no outside influence.

To my mind its more that game 'solving' appeals to minds that are more mathematically biassed. The maths needs for poker based on probability is actually rather small and easily learnt. However, the ability to read a opponent and sense their fear or strength is a different matter completely and may not appeal to a mathematically thoughtful player. I wonder whether poker needs a gamblers approach and the search for that edge whatever that may be. I know that i dont like to gamble and when i see pro poker players betting on anything outside poker and see pro players losing vast amounts just to be bankrolled by others then i see that i'm not going to beat this game so play cheaply just for fun.

Personally, i have a maths degree but that has only enabled me to search for a winning strategy with an analytical approach. However, i am a losing player. Dym's were fine but ive lost the enthusiasm to play them. MTT's have an inherent busto factor whether you have an edge or not due to game changing events throughout ie the flop, turn and river. You are playing against chance. Unless you play multiple tables then im afraid chance will catch up on you before your bankroll runs out. I dont enjoy or skillful at the game enough to play for large amounts of time and on large amounts of tables to try to be a success by dumbing down the variance involved. i just dont have that mentality of a gambler who can think, ill win next time. 

hope this rings a bell with some. Cheers

hagisboy

In Response to Pattern Recognition:

Article in the Times last Monday(Its the free paper on virgin trains) and was talking about chess grand masters and top football players assessing all the players on the pitch/board and reacting instantly depending on what they saw/perceived . The players here who play 10+tables like Donttelmum and are winning players must have the same skills in my opinion. I am purely a recreational player and sit with the lappy on my knee and I have tried but I cant play more than 4 tables without timing out and/or concentrating on the one hand at the expense of another. So would the great and the good of the lobby agree that winning multitable players use the same skill set in Poker like a chess grandmaster?
Posted by wartic

It's just practice imo to be able to multitable. Though is harder on skypoker as the tables don't pop to the front like on other sites. Defo not gonna 10 table with your laptop balanced on your knee.

seanallen

Maybe it's because I was looking at the question mostly from a cash players perspective, I do feel like playing cash the amount you win or lose over maybe a hundred or so hours, even one tabling, will really closely reflect how you've played over that time. I do feel like as the variance side of the game becomes smaller and smaller with volume it definitely becomes at least comparable to a game of chess.

Definitely understand a lot of what you say about MTTs though Prof, I really struggle a lot of the time with the same sort of things. Find it takes quite a toll on me emotionally having to deal with the disappointment of not winning over and over. Main reason I don't play so many relative to everything else. Personally think cash is a completely different thing altogether. Things like dynamics and game flow stretch over a way longer time.

Might be just be me but I actually feel like the games way more math based than you maybe think. The pot odds type stuff is just the simpler maths. The psychological thing you talk of where you figure out where some ones mentally at comes into, once you get that though I personally think it becomes a case of numbers affecting ranges.