Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Armchair psychology and Tournament poker – Preparation

I want to explore why a player can be fundamentally sound, understand the math, and still never be better than a “zero sum player”. Or stated another, more entertaining way, if I were programming a robot (with artificial intelligence) to play poker, what would I program if I wanted the robot to play NO LIMIT instead of limit? This is a LARGE topic and I do not wish to write a dissertation, so the flow of the articles may not be perfect. So be it. What do you want for nothing, rubber biscuit?

Let’s start with a solid foundation of play. With that, just assume we have all read the post “Absinthe revisited” . Sets, bigger pairs, flops that ‘hit a suited connector over the head’. These are your money winners. Dominated holdings, skill moves against push monkeys, races. These are your leaks.
Also, note from DoubleAs, As the tournament gets to the long middle stage, finding pressure points is important.
And from any good poker book and many poker forums, At the end stages, stealing and catching is paramount.
And from my post on “rules of engagement” a set of clichés that help your play (such as “Don’t eat the peppered beef”).

After each chapter, except this intro, I will attempt to update the rule-set for my mythical NO LIMIT robot. Discussion and counter arguments HIGHLY encouraged...

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