Author Archives: Louie Helm
Poker vs Tennis: Career Trajectory, Earnings, Exposure, and Costs Are All Similar
(Cross-posted excerpt from research I did for Raising for Effective Giving.) Professional-level poker and tennis are both competitive endeavors that take years to train for. The size of the player pools are similar. And the top players in each make … Continue reading
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Poker’s Positive Economic Impact; Including over 119,000 jobs
(Cross-posted excerpt from research I did for Raising for Effective Giving.) Amazingly, no one has ever calculated the full economic impact of poker. Some top line statistics on poker’s annual worldwide economic impact: $5.16 billion in economic impact 108,240 jobs … Continue reading
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REG player Martin Jacobson wins 2014 WSOP Main Event
Congrats to Martin Jacobson who won the 2014 WSOP Main Event for $10,000,000! Both REG players at the final table, Jorryt Von Hoof and Martin Jacobson, navigated their way down to 3 handed play for monster scores of $3.8M and … Continue reading
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Raising for Effective Giving
As an effective altruist, I’ve written before about how passionate I am when it comes to identifying and giving to the highest impact charities. So I was really excited this summer to join REG, the new effective giving group for poker players. In fact, I … Continue reading
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23 Cognitive Mistakes that make People Play Bad Poker
Like other complex activities, poker is easier to learn when you build skills in the right order. So I’ve compiled the top 23 cognitive mistakes that make people play bad poker. I’ve listed these roughly in order of priority. In other words, if … Continue reading
ClubWPT: The most hilariously bad online poker software ever
In an attempt to start playing online poker again and perhaps help find a better training tool for our readers, I recently tried out ClubWPT. Their subscription-based $19.95/mo model allows people to play online poker in the U.S. without violating … Continue reading
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“This is what 5% feels like.”
Today I’m going to give you an explicit technique to improve your rationality. But first, a short digression: Have you ever seen poker players on TV talk to themselves? It’s an interesting phenomenon and there’s a few different motivations behind it. … Continue reading
Hindsight Bias
Hindsight bias is our tendency to overestimate the obviousness of events… once they’ve already occurred. “I knew it!” is a common utterance at the poker table. I hear it all the time. Often it will be right after someone calls a … Continue reading
Watch some “TV Poker” online
If you’re completely new to poker, watching some TV poker can be a fun, entertaining way to learn the basics about the game. I recommend this kind of learning since it’s easier to learn when you’re having fun. TV poker … Continue reading
Train to be rational?
Rationality is the process of coming to correct beliefs. Correct beliefs turn out to be really important. Being correct about how the world works gives you a huge advantage in achieving your goals. No matter what you want to do … Continue reading
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Tagged bias, overconfidence, rationality
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Correcting Self-Serving Bias
Follow-up to: Self-serving bias in Poker We’ve noted before how self-serving bias can eat you alive in poker. Now we’re going to discuss how to correct for it. Yes, there’s actually a solution. It was developed by an online poker … Continue reading
Poker as a Transferable Skill
Several researchers have studied poker. Most of what they’ve concluded is that poker is a game of skill, not luck. Perhaps more interesting though is recent work that has been done on the transferability of the skills involved in poker. It appears poker players experience … Continue reading
Self-Serving Bias in Poker
Self-serving bias – the tendency to attribute success to internal or personal factors but attribute failure to situational factors beyond our control. You ever notice how people who are late never say ,”Sorry I’m late. I’m lazy and irresponsible.” No. … Continue reading
Knowledge of biases isn’t enough
Learning about biases is a great first step to becoming more rational, but ultimately, it’s not enough. Why? Because facts don’t change minds. To a first approximation, we actually never change our minds. So how do you expect to change the … Continue reading
Poker as Rationality Training
Looking for the best known form of rationality training? How about a fun, addictive game you can play from anywhere that rewards you with more money as you become more rational? Welcome to online poker! Poker can be the key to conquering … Continue reading
Rational Poker 