Your third point about Ed Miller’s book makes me think you missed the goal of our site. We’re not exploring biases the way poker instruction typically does. Their method is, “Look at how biased your stupid opponents are! Hahaha! Here’s how to exploit those chumps.” Our point is “YOU are in every hand of poker you play—so YOUR biases are the ones we need to focus on before we start worrying about the other players.”
We fully expect to cover odds and statistics in upcoming posts. But we’re writing The Sequences for Poker, not “another poker blog where we discuss our big hands from tournaments.” Our feeling was that those things are covered well in other places but that the links between our own cognitive biases and poker have mostly been covered poorly or not at all… so this material is higher priority.
Also, if we follow your advice and craft our site to talk about how to grind SnGs and only discuss object level poker strategy, I agree, we would have lots of trouble differentiating ourselves. I think you’re assuming that because this is how poker is presented on other sites. So your urging that we should change our style to be more like everyone else and then your follow-on concern that we will then not be able to differentiate ourselves is not just circular, but flawed logic. It ignores what our site is trying to do. We’re not trying to be the most popular blog about SnG grinding instruction ever. Those sites are aimed at IQ100 frat-boys who don’t care about being rational. They teach how to memorize a system (that a rational person created) and tell people to duplicate it as best as they can. It’s no wonder that people who learn to play this way only have compartmentalized gains in “rational” behavior at the poker table.
We’re explaining how to use poker for self-development in general. We’re pointing out how poker can provide a training ground to learn about your biases in a way where you can actually notice and correct them. I think you’ll enjoy the future posts as our series goes on. We will eventually incorporate more math and object-level discussion of poker into our curriculum as it continues.
Thanks for the clarification. I understand your goals better now. That said, let me suggest that there’s a tension between some of what you’re saying. On the one hand, you want to focus on the links between rationality/bias-overcoming and poker. That’s a great plan, and it seems like you could make a great contribution there. (I’m envisioning a less-mystical Tommy Angelo here.)
But on the other hand, you seem to also be focusing on poker instruction, which I think might be a problem. Are you planning on deriving and teaching a strategy for poker based on first principles? I think that’s impractical, because the game is just too complicated. However, it seems like any other approach would dilute your brand and distract your from making a truly novel contribution.
I think you would be well advised to ditch the idea of teaching players who are complete novices and focus more on helping players who are at an intermediate+ level now develop a rational approach to the game.
I agree with most of this, but I don’t think it dilutes the brand to focus on our comparative advantage, namely highlighting the aspects of poker most relevant to rationality training.
Thanks for mentioning Tommy—I should ask him if he wants to make any guest posts.
Your third point about Ed Miller’s book makes me think you missed the goal of our site. We’re not exploring biases the way poker instruction typically does. Their method is, “Look at how biased your stupid opponents are! Hahaha! Here’s how to exploit those chumps.” Our point is “YOU are in every hand of poker you play—so YOUR biases are the ones we need to focus on before we start worrying about the other players.”
We fully expect to cover odds and statistics in upcoming posts. But we’re writing The Sequences for Poker, not “another poker blog where we discuss our big hands from tournaments.” Our feeling was that those things are covered well in other places but that the links between our own cognitive biases and poker have mostly been covered poorly or not at all… so this material is higher priority.
Also, if we follow your advice and craft our site to talk about how to grind SnGs and only discuss object level poker strategy, I agree, we would have lots of trouble differentiating ourselves. I think you’re assuming that because this is how poker is presented on other sites. So your urging that we should change our style to be more like everyone else and then your follow-on concern that we will then not be able to differentiate ourselves is not just circular, but flawed logic. It ignores what our site is trying to do. We’re not trying to be the most popular blog about SnG grinding instruction ever. Those sites are aimed at IQ100 frat-boys who don’t care about being rational. They teach how to memorize a system (that a rational person created) and tell people to duplicate it as best as they can. It’s no wonder that people who learn to play this way only have compartmentalized gains in “rational” behavior at the poker table.
We’re explaining how to use poker for self-development in general. We’re pointing out how poker can provide a training ground to learn about your biases in a way where you can actually notice and correct them. I think you’ll enjoy the future posts as our series goes on. We will eventually incorporate more math and object-level discussion of poker into our curriculum as it continues.
Thanks for the clarification. I understand your goals better now. That said, let me suggest that there’s a tension between some of what you’re saying. On the one hand, you want to focus on the links between rationality/bias-overcoming and poker. That’s a great plan, and it seems like you could make a great contribution there. (I’m envisioning a less-mystical Tommy Angelo here.)
But on the other hand, you seem to also be focusing on poker instruction, which I think might be a problem. Are you planning on deriving and teaching a strategy for poker based on first principles? I think that’s impractical, because the game is just too complicated. However, it seems like any other approach would dilute your brand and distract your from making a truly novel contribution.
I think you would be well advised to ditch the idea of teaching players who are complete novices and focus more on helping players who are at an intermediate+ level now develop a rational approach to the game.
Best of luck with the project!
I agree with most of this, but I don’t think it dilutes the brand to focus on our comparative advantage, namely highlighting the aspects of poker most relevant to rationality training.
Thanks for mentioning Tommy—I should ask him if he wants to make any guest posts.