Phil Ivey vs. Magnus Carlsen..poker and chess

There are of lot of situational, behavioural and mathematical aspects that go towards deciding when is right to bluff.

If you are just going to dismiss it as taking a risk you shouldn't even enter the discussion. It's just ignorance.

The only fact here is that you're making a judgment on poker, obviously without studying it. Your comments are ridiculous to anyone who has so perhaps you should consider whether you can pass opinion on it.

I would never claim poker is more complicated than chess. It requires different skill sets. The people that are dismissing the complexities of poker though are the ones that have never made effort to study the game.

But I do consider these things. But given how easy it is to BS just about anything by saying something about psychology, I'm not going to put much weight on it.

If people can justify calling a urinal art, they can justify just about anything. I don't deny you can put some thought into making a urinal art, but if that's the best you can say about it, and if there's no way to objectively check any of the logic, I'm not too impressed.

Scottrf, you are confusing being able to know for sure with being able to make a judgment. I can never know for sure that poker is easier than chess because I haven't played it as much as chess. I can still consider their arguments and compare making a judgment to the cost of giving them the benefit of the doubt (you can justify the most utter bs when you are given the benefit of the doubt). You apparently don't find this to be a problem but I very much do. It's at least, if not more of a problem, than judging something rashly.

Meh.

Indeed if I am seeing a constant stream of ideas in chess analysis compared to wishy washy poker talk like "I thought maybe I should bluff here, but then I thought maybe I shouldn't, but then I thought," it would be unreasonable for me to buy into the latter because someone just insisted it was "really complex" and babbled something about psychology.

Oh no, someone brought up psychology, and we aren't in their heads, ok, let's just give up on trying to know anything then.

Even poker commentators don't know what they're talking about. If Phil Ivey bluffs then it's really good. And if they were playing with their friends they would call such a bluff ridiculous.

So we can either conclude 1. Some random guy in your home game is as good as Ivey or 2. You don't know what the hell you're talking about and a game you are completely ignorant about is more complex than you think.

Julio,

Why are you wasting your time arguing with idiots?

Chess and poker are very different, but both are enormously rich and complex games.  Comparing the two directly is kind of like asking which is more satisfying, a filet mignon, or a bottle of Shiraz?

Chess is a two-player game of perfect information, and its difficulty largely stems from its combinatorial nature.  Poker is a sometimes-two-person, sometimes-multi-player, game of imperfect information, and its difficulty largely stems from the many and varied considerations that must all be taken into account for any decision.  The different nature of the games almost guarantees that someone who is familiar with only one game, but not the other, will be certain in their belief of the "superiority" of the game they know. 

Nevertheless, learning about either game will definitely improve your ability at the other:

http://web.mit.edu/willma/www/2013lec7.pdf

(Jennifer Shahade lecture at MIT on poker and chess.  Oh, btw, did you know MIT has an entire class devoted to poker theory?  I guess the people at MIT just don't get how "easy" poker really is.)

"The beauty of poker is that on the surface it is a game of utter simplicity, yet beneath the surface it is profound, rich, and full of subtlety.  Because its basic rules are so simple, anyone can learn poker in a few minutes, and novice players may even think they're pretty good after a few hours. From the expert's point of view, the veneer of simplicity that deludes so many players into thinking they're good is the profitability side of the game's beauty." -- David Sklansky

One of my bigger problems with glorifying "the art of bluffing" is that how can we even know, rather than just believe, when a bluff is good or not? All I can really do is see that good poker players win more often than bad ones. Sure. But that doesn't make for a really seamless argument. It shows that there is a lot more skill than luck.

And of course I'm oversimplifying it. It's better to do that than to imagine other random complexities that may simply not exist.

And dare I say chess doesn't have this same problem? Every tactic can be explained by clear goals, clear logic, and a clear result, often a winning position, and any winning position can be explained by how it leads to even simpler winning positions, and so on. If I want to talk about the complexities of chess I can literally point to variations you need to understand.

bogus

Oh no, you called me ignorant, which is an irrelevant point. A more convincing argument would be to find fault with the points I brought up, which you have not attempted to do. Unless you count this strange dichotomy you are bringing up here, which I will not :)

I can call you ignorant too. And that isn't making my argument any better or worse.

You can't know. But you can logically argue for why a move is good the same way as you can in chess.

But why are you pretending to debate it?

It takes effort to explain the ways you can see the quality of a bluff, and you're not interested to learn, you just dismiss things that you don't understand as hocus pocus. If you want to learn, join a poker forum.

The basic measures would be equity vs perceived ranges and fold equity. Of course it's not an exact science.

Your analogy doesn't hold. In chess you can point to clear results of a move. Although to a beginner this may require taking them through many sub variations. But that's just a problem of time -- in poker, there isn't anything clear you can point to.

I admit I'm not digging deep into specifically addressing poker strategies. Mainly because of time. Also because, let's face it, I could spend hours going into details but we're both going to think the same thing we did originally anyway. So I'm staying general. But I do think my posts have been worthwhile because it is a good skill to be able to know what to do with the information you have. You believe that we should just not have any judgment on anything we are not acquainted with but this allows you to be subject to plenty of BS arguments that you are forced to just "respect."

Yes there is. You just don't know them. So why do you speak with such certainty?

"The basic measures would be equity vs perceived ranges and fold equity. Of course it's not an exact science."

So this is what I mean. I have an impression of poker, but I'm supposed to glorify it just because someone mentioned a few technical terms? As if chess doesn't have unfathomable, often paradoxical concepts to learn? I can only know things for sure if I actually studied poker, but given that I haven't, it makes more sense to think chess is much more complex.

Sure, there are probably a few things, maybe the odds that your opponent has a good hand or something. Maybe plugging in a few formulas. But I don't think a math test is harder than chess, in which there aren't clear cut formulas.

No, you're supposed to not claim you know anything at all about the complexity of poker.

Instead you dismiss it without any real knowledge of what it's about. Make a incorrect statement then dismiss corrections.

Anyway this is over, you're not interested in learning.

I have an honest question:  Is there anything in poker that can't be learned? 

"One of my bigger problems with glorifying "the art of bluffing" is that how can we even know, rather than just believe, when a bluff is good or not?"

One of the sure signs of someone who knows little about poker is that they greatly over-emphasize the aspect of bluffing, and they think poker is won or loss on the basis of bluffs.  This would be the chess equivalent of saying you can become a GM, just because you have good pawn and rook endgame technique.

Question for you, Elubas.  Do you know what a "semi-bluff" is?

"No, you're supposed to not claim you know anything at all about the complexity of poker."

Yes, this is what you think. But it's a misguided assumption. The cost of giving the benefit of the doubt is not inherently any less than the cost of making a rash judgment. I can at least base what I'm saying on something, even if not much. To just have no judgment at all would be even worse because then I am totally vulnerable to anyone wanting to glorify poker making it look more complex than it is. So you have to factor both things in. Make judgments, but try to consider other arguments. That's what I did. And in doing so, I am more than 50% certain in my opinion, which is better than chance.