Things You Don't "Get"

[Rugeley Villa]

 

[mjmooney]

As a complete cardgamesophobic, I always thought the whole point of poker was bluffing? 

[Mark Albrighton]

I guess there’s a point when bluffing is advisable as a tactic and by the sounds of it the play there it wasn’t advisable.

If that’s the case it’s not clear when that point is. 

Just seems to me that fella didn’t have as good a hand as he thought he did.
 

[Chindie]

1 hour ago, Mark Albrighton said:

I guess I’m struggling with what is considered bad play and what is considered good bluffing.

 

47 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

As a complete cardgamesophobic, I always thought the whole point of poker was bluffing? 

This isn't really bluffing. He's not bluffing as he's got a decent hand and statistically he's got decent chances of making a very good hand, his play is basically betting on the likelihood of him getting that hand. She's got nothing, by the 4th card she can only make a fairly weak hand, and is reacting to his bets in an illogical way - when you've got nothing, the board indicates a good chance there's flush or straight opportunities, your opponent is aggressively betting, and your hand is weak, everything says fold. She ultimately calls an all in with the rubbish hand, at which point she's decided that all her money can be wagered on jack high, an appalling hand, and leaves it up to chance. That's just bad play, she can't bluff in that position, she's simply decided that risking $100k+ on jack high is a good idea when everything indicates the opponent has better than that and even if you make a hand it'll be fairly weak.

[Mark Albrighton]

Thanks, I kinda get what you’re saying, but only up to a point. I get the gist.

It’s always the same with poker when it presents itself, I start out being mildly curious then I quickly lose that interest as there seems to be too much to learn.

I have a passing interest in game theory (I take some smug joy that I can see how the Monty Hall problem works and my much more mathematically inclined dad and brother don’t really get it), and as such I feel I should like poker. But every time I ultimately kinda just think “Urgh, this isn’t for me…”

[villa4europe]

theres a lot to digest with that

i dont get watching other people play cards for a start

i'll throw it out there...she does nothing for mr picky over here beyond the obvious "talents", i dont find her pretty at all

is she leaning forward and showing more boob as a distraction tactic?

at professional level is bad play part of a really clever bluff? or just bad play? is she actually professional or just rich and therefore decided to buy her way in to it because she's got nothing better to do with her money? if it's the latter that takes me all the way to who wants to watch that?

 

Edited October 6, 2022 by villa4europe

[mjmooney]

Nope, don't get it. How is it 'bad play' if she won the hand (or round, or move, or whatever you cardists call it)? My knowledge (such as it is) of poker is derived entirely from old western movies, where this sort of thing is standard. Baddy McBadguy has a killer hand, The Arizona Kid has a pile of crap, but with his poker face, he keeps upping the ante. Baddy McBadguy sweats, gets spooked and folds. The Arizona Kid reveals his rubbish hand, laughs and scoops up the pile of money. 

Then the gunfight breaks out. 

[sidcow]

5 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Nope, don't get it. How is it 'bad play' if she won the hand (or round, or move, or whatever you cardists call it)? My knowledge (such as it is) of poker is derived entirely from old western movies, where this sort of thing is standard. Baddy McBadguy has a killer hand, The Arizona Kid has a pile of crap, but with his poker face, he keeps upping the ante. Baddy McBadguy sweats, gets spooked and folds. The Arizona Kid reveals his rubbish hand, laughs and scoops up the pile of money. 

Then the gunfight breaks out. 

it was pretty much the same except the gunfight involved a couple of bazookas.

[Mr_Dogg]

It's bad form, it annoys poker players. It's also strange as playing in a high stakes game implies that she is good at poker but played like someone who isn't.

[bannedfromHandV]

7 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Nope, don't get it. How is it 'bad play' if she won the hand (or round, or move, or whatever you cardists call it)? My knowledge (such as it is) of poker is derived entirely from old western movies, where this sort of thing is standard. Baddy McBadguy has a killer hand, The Arizona Kid has a pile of crap, but with his poker face, he keeps upping the ante. Baddy McBadguy sweats, gets spooked and folds. The Arizona Kid reveals his rubbish hand, laughs and scoops up the pile of money. 

Then the gunfight breaks out. 

Poker is a game of percentages, from the first two cards each player receives to the final card plonked down in the middle the percentages fluctuate.

At no point other than when the final card came down did she have any favourable mathematical chance of winning, so either she plays like that all the time and gets lucky often, or she doesn’t play often and got lucky or she knew something everyone else didn’t.

Like any card game, poker is ultimately a game of chance but generally speaking, you want to be playing hands where your chances are high, which was absolutely not the case for her.

[Stevo985]

18 hours ago, Chindie said:

This made the news.

It's been lumped in with a bunch of bizarre sports cheating claims, including chess (where a guy had been accused of using vibrating sex toys to cheat, bizarrely) and fishing (where 2 competitors were caught loading the weight of their catch with lead in order to win a cash prize). But in this one, unless I'm missing something, it's just a case of 'bad' play getting lucky.

Bear in mind I watched that without the sound so not sure if anything was said, but I'm not sure anything is wrong with that.

She's got the high card, the obvious hands are the draws for the straight and the flush, which given the way the other guy has bet you wouldn't have to be a genius to guess that that's what he's waiting on.

You can see from the odds they put up that it's almost a 50/50 call.

 

Don't get me wrong, it's a ballsy call if you don't know what the other guy has given you're on a high card. I don't think it's necessarily the "right" thing to do, but I don't think it's that outrageous.
I guess it depends ono what she's thinking. If she's thought "**** it" and just called then that's crap poker. If she's thought "I think he's on a draw and there's a 50% chance he doesn't hit it" then to be honest it's brilliant

Edited October 6, 2022 by Stevo985

[Stevo985]

4 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

I guess I’m struggling with what is considered bad play and what is considered good bluffing.

She didn't bluff. She was the one calling and she had to go all in to do that, so to pretend you've got a better hand there is pointless. it makes no difference

[Stevo985]

46 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Nope, don't get it. How is it 'bad play' if she won the hand (or round, or move, or whatever you cardists call it)?

Think of it like this. If a Villa player received the ball on the halfway line and had a shot when the opposing keeper was on his line and it went along the ground, would that be good play? No

If the ball trickled to the goalkeeper who caught his studs in the ground and fell over and it ended going in anyway, would that be good play? No. it would be doing something bad that by luck ended up being good.

 

That's kind of what this is, and what poker is in general. If you do good things you'll usually end up doing well. but you can't count out the luck factor which can sometimes reward bad play

 

(FWIW for this clip in particular you could frame it as good play depending on what she's thinking)

Edited October 6, 2022 by Stevo985

[Chindie]

39 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Nope, don't get it. How is it 'bad play' if she won the hand (or round, or move, or whatever you cardists call it)? My knowledge (such as it is) of poker is derived entirely from old western movies, where this sort of thing is standard. Baddy McBadguy has a killer hand, The Arizona Kid has a pile of crap, but with his poker face, he keeps upping the ante. Baddy McBadguy sweats, gets spooked and folds. The Arizona Kid reveals his rubbish hand, laughs and scoops up the pile of money. 

Then the gunfight breaks out. 

Poker played at pro level is all about maths, and that forms the foundation of your play. You want to calculate your chances of making a good hand, and the chances of a better hand being with an opponent, and bet accordingly, together with an understanding of the amount of money in play and the 'value' of betting.

In this case that was thrown out the window. She reacts to his moves in a way you never would if playing well, and at the end calls his all in with nothing, which is stupid as means she's placing her success purely on luck, but with a really crap position to start with. You can argue it's actually good play in that it's a very ballsy call, but someone playing like that often is not going to be as successful as someone who plays well.

Bluffing doesn't really come into it in this case.

[Rds1983]

54 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Think of it like this. If a Villa player received the ball on the halfway line and had a shot when the opposing keeper was on his line and it went along the ground, would that be good play? No

If the ball trickled to the goalkeeper who caught his studs in the ground and fell over and it ended going in anyway, would that be good play? No. it would be doing something bad that by luck ended up being good.

 

That's kind of what this is, and what poker is in general. If you do good things you'll usually end up doing well. but you can't count out the luck factor which can sometimes reward bad play

 

(FWIW for this clip in particular you could frame it as good play depending on what she's thinking)

You could say if a Villa player tried to score directly from a corner then they shouldn't try as statistically it would be bad play as it's very rare and there's better options. 

If she's thinking he's got nothing and is bluffing, and seeing the odds of this increasing as the cards drop then fair play to her. 

I'm also mildly curious how many people judge this as bad or lucky play because it was done by a woman and not a man. I'm assuming something mildly similar must have happened before but I've never seen it shared before. 

[Stevo985]

Just now, Rds1983 said:

You could say if a Villa player tried to score directly from a corner then they shouldn't try as statistically it would be bad play as it's very rare and there's better options. 

Exactly

[Wainy316]

And yet it is currently our only goal threat!

[Genie]

19 hours ago, Chindie said:

This made the news.

It's been lumped in with a bunch of bizarre sports cheating claims, including chess (where a guy had been accused of using vibrating sex toys to cheat, bizarrely) and fishing (where 2 competitors were caught loading the weight of their catch with lead in order to win a cash prize). But in this one, unless I'm missing something, it's just a case of 'bad' play getting lucky.

It’s a strange game, whilst the opponents hand is known to the spectators then there is always going to be the opportunity to cheat in some way. Or at least create suspicions of cheating when very bizarre patterns occur.

[Stevo985]

9 minutes ago, Genie said:

It’s a strange game, whilst the opponents hand is known to the spectators then there is always going to be the opportunity to cheat in some way. Or at least create suspicions of cheating when very bizarre patterns occur.

The TV feed is always delayed for this reason. The spectators at these events don't know what cards the players have (Until they show them obviously)

Edited October 6, 2022 by Stevo985

[Chindie]

There was a case recently where it was alleged that a player had someone working for the casino/venue/production that was able to see the cards of the opponents in real time and feed the player information on whether he had a winning hand or not via their phone, which got around the stream delay thing. Which could be the case here, but you'd have to be a moron to do it like this - it's such a bizarre move and high profile enough you'd bring heat on you immediately.

But this is just someone playing extremely loose (to the point of idiocy) and getting lucky. Which happens.