Diamonds

[navybuttons 15]

Gigabet: How Darrel Dicken looked to me

 

For Gigabet

 

This is a story of sacrifice. He was a man. He played online but I never got to watch him play. I read his posts. He explained things that were above my head. But the more I read them the more I understood them. I see now that playing poker has nothing to do with cards.

 

And I recall that he once said that.

 

And I say that being the best poker player in the world has nothing to do with cards. It has to do with being a man.

 

To me it looks like Gigabet ended up tarnished by the poker community. And...

 

He was responsible for everything they knew. At least that's how it looks to me.

 

Darrel Dicken was poker's sacrifice.

 

Jesus is my soul's.

 

I hope that whatever he is doing he is happy and continuing to be the best poker player in the world. Thank you, but I have a new poker hero here.

[navybuttons 15]

Riddle:

 

The world's best mathematician is beat by the physicist who is beat by the chemist. The best at this trumps them all.

[nutzbuster 7]

And then Satan said: "put the alphabet in math"

 

 

 

'ello Dustin ;-)

[navybuttons 15]

And then everyone said: "get behind me satan, for you are nothing to me."

 

I can't know how my amigo draws, but I have to at least ask myself.

[navybuttons 15]

"The center square theory"

 

Try and follow me now. Imagine a game probably not unlike one you have already seen or played.

 

It takes place on a round court. Of course the court has a grid. If your opponent enters a square you've already entered you win.

 

Two opponents face each other head up. They each ride 16,000 horsepower fixed gear bicycles. The first to the center square can ensure that after he or she gets that square then they can't be exploited. But here's the thing.

 

Lets say you're riding a fixed gear bike with 16,000 hp and the person 2 miles away directly on the opposite side of the court is too. You can't go for that square just as they can't. In a sense you are balancing each other. It is never correct to go for the square.

 

Just as its correct never to play. You put your life in someone else's hands since human error prevents the efficiency of their breaking.

 

I don't think I've ever met a father who would be proud of his son for playing this game.

 

But two things arise. The first is that the more dangerous the race the more thrilling. It is inherent.

 

The second is that when God plays Jesus in Go (the game)...whoever goes first takes the center point and wins the game.

[navybuttons 15]

But JUST like the game go players take turns in poker.

 

unlike the game go, after the first move the solution still rests in the center. Or at least it can.

 

Some games...

 

Riddle: a father is not proud when the game is played for death. Only what...

[navybuttons 15]

Joke: <3 <3

 

Double scoops.

[navybuttons 15]

Some Dogs are bred to be prisoners

 

A short story for Bob

 

Some men are easily... You can guess where that goes. That is where I go. I used to go easily with them. I recall a hand you played. To me it almost seems ludacris that I can recall the details so well. I just couldn't understand your line. If I couldn't understand it then I wasn't ready to hear justification.

 

I was backwards. I should have been ready to hear justification and learn understanding. For that is where understanding comes from.

 

Some men can't make it on the outside. They sit next to me on a bench they pretend they wish was somewhere else. But what is the outside. Dad, those men sit on a beach and pretend they are sitting next to me. It's because they love me dad. It's because I am in society's repressed memory and I show kindness.

 

I met a man today who was educated. What has he ever done in his life to change what that beach holds for him. Can he pretend he does not recognize my kindness. If I show him my brotherhood does it not impress upon him.

 

Dad, I figured out the solution, but first I need your forgiveness.

[navybuttons 15]

Joke:

 

0+0

_=__nothing to see here

[navybuttons 15]

Now, if you are following this thread, I hope we've captured your interest.

 

We're discussing a game called diamonds.

 

Pull up a chair. It's about to begin.

[navybuttons 15]

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

 

that the perfect game was golf. (just for the time being of course)

 

buddy, i have to call a clock.

 

if you couldn't profit off it, should you first ask why?

[navybuttons 15]

son: father, what is fear?

father: nothing.

[navybuttons 15]

if you couldn't profit off it, should you first ask why?

 

that's a difficult

 

i'll do an easy: DO NOT practice putting. You do not yet know how to hold the perfect putter.

[navybuttons 15]

And so now the property of golf that i did not understand i now do.

[navybuttons 15]

How beautiful do you think a music box can be?

[navybuttons 15]

1) Friend 1: What is a snowflake?

2) Friend 2: It is what a bonded molecule looks like.

3) ????

4) Profit

[navybuttons 15]

If you need to know one thing it's that a stripes man takes a lot of pride in being a stripes man.

 

Homie, I haven't begun to break your brain yet.

[navybuttons 15]

Snowflake

 

If you only read one post in this thread this is it.

 

Love.

 

Remember Game snowflake.

[MinhLyFan 1]

If you could break my brain, you would have a lot more play chips.

 

Stripes:

 

I would like to preface this post by saying two things: One, Stripes is a beautiful game. And two, I would like this to be my only post about stripes.

 

Stripes is a game that someone stands alone, but in order to relate a lot of the strategical concepts, I will refer to optimal strategies used in other games to describe the optimal strategy in stripes.

 

So to remind everyone, stripes is no limit 5 card triple draw with a 1/2 blind structure.

 

First of all, I recognize that optimal betting sizes in no limit games are infinitely complex, and I don't presume to have optimal betting strategies, but I think I have decent intuition as to how to bet my hands so that it plays relatively close to what an optimal strategy would look like.

 

Anyway, on to the game play.

 

Stripes strategy, like most card games, is about gaining and leveraging information. Conversely, in order to prevent your opponent from doing that to you, it's imperative that you conceal as much information as possible. In some games, concealing information is not that important, as your opponents cannot leverage such information for a profit. But in certain card games, there is a threshold of information disclosure that, if crossed, will be overwhelming. For instance, in the game Gin, it is almost never an appropriate strategy to draw from the discard pile, unless you are completing a meld, or somehow making your hand much more valuable. This is because drawing from the discard pile crosses the threshold of information disclosure, whereby a competent opponent will, over time, leverage that information into an edge that you cannot overcome by how often you will be making hands strong enough to win by simply drawing at the deck, or whatever psychological damage you are trying to cause your opponent. Stripes, at least in my mind, has a very similar strategical concept in the drawing process. Every time you draw, you are relinquishing information about your hand. And the more cards you draw, and the later the draw, the more information you give to your opponent. For instance, if you draw three on the third draw, it's incredibly unlikely that you will end up with a five card hand, which are the absolute nuts in draw games, particularly in big bet draw games. As a result, it's almost impossible to make a legitimate case for throwing in tons of money in after the third draw with a balanced range of hands and bet sizes that your opponent will not be able to gauge much better intuitively than that same player will be able to against a perfectly balanced drawing strategy. This is because there simply aren't enough combinations of possible five card hands that will be completed when drawing three. Now, although this is an exaggerated example, it becomes apparent that a mixed drawing strategy causes some problems, as the probabilities that lie inherently within a deck of cards will limit a players ability to be as dynamic and balanced as possible with an imbalanced drawing strategy. As I understand it, with my limited amount of practice, successful practice!, this game has a threshold of information disclosure in the drawing process, just like Gin.

 

As a result of this threshold, I had to come up with a strategy that accomplishes a few goals, inherent in optimal poker strategies. One, I could not cross this mentioned threshold, at least not as far as my opponent does on the whole, unless I am exploiting him. Two, I need to be as dynamic as possible, as long as possible. And three, I need to be able to incorporate a balanced, cooperative betting strategy into this balanced card-play strategy. In order to do this, you have to think about the strongest, most reputable hands and the hands that are most fearful to your opponent, because it is in these hands that your opponent is going to have the most difficult time playing against in all situations. In Stripes, they are 5 card made hands and draws to 5 card made hands. Both these hands, no matter what you have, are always going to be threatening. And depending on how big the pot gets, the more worried your opponent has to be, especially if he is repping a hand of less than 5 card strength. At that point, he is going to be the one doing all the guessing, as he has only seen the same drawing strategy as every hand but a different betting strategy, and you have seen his hand shape more clearly throughout the hand and his betting strategy, giving you an informational advantage, however small or exploitable. And with the big bet game structure, the player who can most credibly rep the strongest hands most often with the informational advantage is going to win. Again, with a variable draw size, you are at the whim of the possibilities that lie inherently within the deck, no matter how well you balance your drawing strategy in combination with its cooperative betting strategy.

 

Now, although I have, for the time being, adopted a completely balanced drawing strategy, I am not saying that the threshold of information disclosure lies at drawing one, but I think it does. Let's talk about why. First and foremost, it accomplishes all the necessary goals required in an optimal poker strategy very easily, maybe too easily, but whether thats a good thing or a bad thing is still unclear. Next comes the beautiful part. How to draw and the balanced cooperative betting strategy that goes along with your hand shape is purely exploitive, just like in open faced chinese poker, at least in position, and after the first draw OOP. Let's look at an example, where I am on the button, as I always am. I am dealt 5h5c6h2hAs. I raise to 3x and my opponent calls and draws one. Against the one card draw, the most powerful, making a 5 card hand is going to be priority one, as you are, in most likely scenarios, considerably behind, as long as your opponent is playing a variable draw strategy. So, you MUST pitch the As. With the goals you have in mind, the As is irrelevant and only hurts your equity vs your opponents range. However, if your opponent just calls and draws two, one of two far more likely things are happening: One, your opponent has a pair and is concealing. Or two, he has a three card run. Because you have a range of lower middle to middle cards, you can assume that this run is going to most likely start at 8+, weighted most likely to broadway cards. As a result, it's much more likely that drawing to a six is much cleaner than drawing to an ace for a few reasons. The most obvious is that the six gives you two backdoor draws to a five card hand. Plus, if your pair is good, your kicker does not matter. But more subtly, though, there are, on average, less aces in the deck than sixes taking into account your opponents range. Now, depending on how you draw on first is going to completely dictate your betting strategies from this point on, as you may have picked up a ton of equity, or just lost a ton, but that will also depend on how your opponent reacts to his draw. Depending on what happens, you are going to inflate or deflate the pot. If I make a two pair hand, a 5 or combo draw, I am going to bet potish sizes, when checked to. Ill call bets with 2 pair hands and mediocre draws, raising nut hands and draws, most of the time, leaving some for 2nd and 3rd street raises. Back tot draw one,If I completely wiff, hit a five, or make a medium fd, I am going to check it back when checked to, and react again after 2nd, (The strategical concepts here are much like those in PLO, whereby you just have to keep your hands in their optimal pot size ranges as often and as long as possible, at least as much as you have control). This will allow me to get to second with a completely balanced range vs my opponent in all situations, as sometimes I bet big throughout with nut hands and nut draws, as any big action from my opponent is going to require me to have a lot of hand or equity vs my opponents range. But when I check back, I still have a range that's going to value raise on 2nd and third, while also giving me chances to turn big draws to balance my nut hands on later streets as well. With such a strategy, in cases where you make nutty hands that have little chance to improve on third, (which in most cases it is) it's almost always going to be best to stay pat after second and rep as dynamically as possible, balancing this with hands that were drawing and just drew dead after first. To me, this (drawing on third) is another threshold of information disclosure. Of course there are times and places for this, drawing on third, much more so than a variable drawing strategy, but nonetheless, it exists. Oop is a little more complicated, and pot control is much more important on the early streets, but the concepts are relatively still the same.

 

How to draw properly is incredibly complex and full of interesting nuances, but going through them all would be exhausting for the purposes of this post. But the hand above is just one of the most simple examples that is representative of how stripes works on the most fundamental levels. In any case, once you get a strong sense of hand equities and draw probabilities, you can develop efficient betting strategies vs every type of drawing strategy that will be very clean, dynamic, and incredibly difficult to beat. Depending on how these numbers end up shaking down will dictate in just what situations drawing more than one on any street will be more profitable than not, but my intuition says that the average draw and hand strengths are too weak to overcome how much information you give up by doing so, but like most card games, sometimes you are put into desperate situations where there's only one way to win, to suck out. This never came up, but I felt like it might have been there.

 

Stripes is a great game, and I could write a book on this game, and it's original solution, as well as the two that are created by the existence of the first, but this post is crossing the threshold of how much time I can dedicate to this game and still be the man I need be. So, enjoy stripes. It's a beautiful game.

 

Oh, and if you want to make any poker game 10x more fun, instate the rule that if the button can correctly guess the winning hand of any pot, he wins it, whether or not he was involved. It's called the Navybutton.

[MinhLyFan 1]

2x post

Edited December 1, 2013 by MinhLyFan

[navybuttons 15]

If you want that to be your only post about SIRENS! it may be so.

 

I call the game Sirens now because that is how he thinks of it.

 

I think of the game as Stripes and in his head he calls it Sirens.

 

If you recall one of His (MLF's) earlier posts he talked about a cop and a speeder. If you haven't, go back and re-read it until you feel comfortable that you get the concept.

 

Here's the thing about Stripes vs. Sirens: I start EVERY hand as the speeder.

 

I start EVERY hand as the Speeder

 

I start every hand as the SPEEDER.

 

Look at a picture of a snowflake. This post will never be as important as smiling at the beauty of one.

 

Stripes vs. Sirens is a game snowflake.

 

Just as every snowflake is determined upon tiny details that make it unique so too does each snowflake game have. And as every bonded chemical has it's own common characteristics so to does a snowflake game have.

 

I wanna start with the common characteristics of Stripes vs. Sirens that make every hand the same.

 

1) NONE.

 

Now we can start to play. You see he can't beat me on a personal level and I can't beat him on a personal level. Unless we each play our own strategy. If he tries to play like me I'll demolish him and if he tries to play like me I'll demolish him. Of course if I play like he does I'm basically a dead fish.

 

You see he always draws one and I draw as many as I choose.

 

Who is a Stripes and who is a Sirens only God can say.

 

Now we can begin to have fun. His job is to leverage me, my job is to manage how I want him to leverage me and then leverage that. Got it? Read it until you do.

 

This game is the most fun game I have ever played.

 

Now we get to the beautiful. I can give him all the information I want so long as I know how to leverage it and he gets demolished if he ever gives me anything. Example is in that hand he listed above. Now think about this homeboy: Think about facing a river 3xpot bet post 3rd. He told me one draw and now I'm demolishing him in that spot.

 

Think about how this fits with poker psychology. You know nothing about poker psychology. You fancy yourself the best poker player in the world and across the table from you is a young, goodlooking, fit, well-dressed, boss. He plays nothing like you, he takes forever, he always only draws one, and every time he beats you it's because you got outplayed.

 

A younger mind could have blocked that realization but there's a catch.

 

There's love. You see the speeder gets it in the end. Or rather, he's on the wrong end.

 

Stripes takes pride. He works harder and faster. And he takes pride in the friend who feels nothing but love for this.

[navybuttons 15]

PPPPPYUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNTTTTTTTTTTTTTOOOOOOOOOOOO!.......BLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNCCCCCCCCCCOOOOOOOOOOO

[MinhLyFan 1]

So I can't speed drawing one?

 

You're going to need every bit of Punto Blanco to tie your brother.

[navybuttons 15]

You can be the speeding cop sure, but you start every hand as the cop.

 

And yeah duh to needing every bit of punto/blanco.

[MinhLyFan 1]

why do i start every hand as the cop?