Is there any chance that a 1300 rated player can beat a 2700 rated player?

These guys do it for a living, so me questioning them is like someone who just learned the rules questioning a grandmaster...

But as a layman, his small ball strategy (if he still uses it) seems not good for winning an event. It seems excellent for getting to the final table lets say... but the guy with the big stack is the guy who made outrageous plays and was lucky enough to win them.

Ok, sure, if all your opponents are trying to play smart, then maybe it's the best. But lets say there are 1000 idiots who make crazy plays that fail 999 times out of 1000... at the final table here comes that 1 idiot whose stack is 10x yours lol

Well, my analysis may be laughable to poker people, anyway, that's just some thoughts.

Big stacks will play more hands pre- flop, but do not make outrageous moves on turn and river; till maybe table is 4 handed Final table leaders will steal blinds, but will let the small stacks knock each other out before making big moves. Negreanu would play more hands than most, getting in cheaply. Old days players were very tight. Like you said, if you're going to win, chanches have to be taken. When more players are willing to gamble, obviously individual odds shorten.

So you say

Obviously will never be possible for you .

You're the ultimate authority on the subject. I'll defer

Influencing ones surroundings for a favorable result has been practiced for a very long time. Maybe you are thinking I'm referring to "changing" a card from the original to a new one. No....no.

Kinda of a tree falling in the woods reasoning yeah? If I don't see where the cards are, they're not really anywhere until influenced to be there.

Something like that. I'm not the expert. I will not say it is "impossible" like a 1300 beating a 2700.

Maybe sticking pins in a rag doll can negatively influence a persons health, maybe the cards dealt do not exist until observed. Anybody stake me in the next WSOP?

Man, you could really screw with a magician with a skill like that!

"No, that's not my card, but if you did the trick right, the next 4 cards are..." (and then you predict them!)

Maybe better to use it on those lottery scratch off cards though.

Or on a blind date lol!

"I thought your online pictures were fake... but I made you look like a model anyway!'

There is an amazing card trick "Around The World" whereby a person is asked to predict red or black as the cards are dealt face down, then placed in either of two piles. People are absolutely stunned when the cards are turned over, each pile all red or black.

My best is I'll have someone pick any card (after presenting a full deck with cards visible ), return it to the deck and let them shuffle. A knife is then given to said person and they are asked to concentrate on their card. The knife is quite sharp. They are then asked to "stab" the deck of cards. The knife will penetrate usually about half way

Take a guess?

That's right!

Their card is shown on the end of the knife when lifted away.

My favorite.

I think I remember that red and black one, you need a pre-arranged deck. It doesn't matter which pile they choose to place a card because the first half is one color, 2nd half the other, then you trick them somehow and make it seem like all the red are where you said they should be (and same for blacks).

I don't know the knife one. Card tricks are a lot of fun to watch... I don't think they're magic, but it's fun when the performer makes the unexpected happen.

Hmmm... never reveal how it is done. The person is not tricked, the cards really are all one color, not seemed to be.

Yep, it's all in the presentation, the flow followed by a startling ending.

Ever seen the movie "The Prestige", if not you'd enjoy it.

The Prestige is the third part of any illusion or trick.

1st a bird is presented and 2nd it is made to disappear. (Anybody can do this)

3rd is the prestige whereby the bird is made to reappear. The beauty lies in how the performer creates the final effect

Of course he would. It's just the chances are very low.

"It sounds like a coin flip... but in this case flipping heads means you're winning 63% (or more) of the time haha."

Yeah, that's a good explanation actually, thanks. It's like, yeah, only 50% chance of getting heads, but even if you get tails, it will, in this case, still probably be over 50% wins anyway, just under 63%.

"But because our information is limited (and because it works) statistics can be useful."

Yes, this. And I'm not sure mdinnerspace truly appreciates this point? "Chances" are just the best guesses you can make based on your information, and their quality is not determined by the predicted event actually being true or false, but by the information you took into account in your prediction. So if you had a 90% prediction that turned out false, well, sure, it's just as false as anything, but that doesn't mean that trusting the prediction was dumb or arbitrary.

I must say it's a bit ironic that for someone that criticizes the whole "anything is possible" idea, you seem oddly optimistic about influencing cards with your mind! :)

Ain't it though!

Let's take the old roulette example. Before any rolls the odds of red 10 times in succession is? (I hav'nt calculated it, besides the point). After 9 rolls of red, next comes the 10th roll. At the beginning, you'd bet a bundle on a black showing at some point. But that 10th roll the odds remain the same as the 1st roll . I'm sure you've heard this all before, but do You appreciate the point? Effects are not influenced by any previous observations, by any statistical analysis. The information taken into account is a guess, often biased, because a certain outcome is believed to be true. Making best guesses to predict results, leave it to the pollsters and wall street brokers who go through life in a fish bowl.

"Effects are not influenced by any previous observations, by any statistical analysis."

Yes but that's not what is purported to give statistical analysis its strength.

But I would agree that even smart people tend to use statistics quite irrationally, in practice. Even in so called "studies" that say 67% of people who prefer hello over hi eat a lot of fruit, you can only choose a few variables out of all the millions in the world to compare, and how do you know which ones will make for a useful experiment? Sometimes even so called scientists bite off more than they can chew, like how IQ thinks that taking a math test can actually measure intelligence as if you could just put it on a scale and weigh it! You can try to summarize thousands of variables by only looking at a few, but you might get some strange results.