SPORTS BETTING AT BETONLINE.AG SPORTSBOOK. BetOnline.ag is more than just an online betting platform. We boast a 'focus on the player' approach and have built our reputation on offering clients nothing but the best, from cutting-edge technology, enticing promotions and the latest sports betting odds. Feb 17, 2016 AMA I'm Max Silver, High Stakes Poker Player and creator of SnapShove (Giveaway!), AMA. Submitted 3 years ago. by goodeh. Hey everyone, Max Silver here, I've been playing poker professionally for 5 years now and now play some of the biggest tournaments in the world.
Poker is a family of card games that combines gambling, strategy and different skills. All poker variants involve betting as an intrinsic part of play, and determine the winner of each hand according to the combinations of players' cards, at least some of which remain hidden until the end of the hand. Poker games vary in the number of cards dealt, the number of shared or 'community' cards, the number of cards that remain hidden, and the betting procedures.
In most modern poker games the first round of betting begins with one or more of the players making some form of a forced bet (the blind or ante). In standard poker, each player bets according to the rank they believe their hand is worth as compared to the other players. The action then proceeds clockwise as each player in turn must either match (or 'call') the maximum previous bet, or fold, losing the amount bet so far and all further involvement in the hand. A player who matches a bet may also 'raise' (increase) the bet. The betting round ends when all players have either called the last bet or folded. If all but one player folds on any round, the remaining player collects the pot without being required to reveal their hand. If more than one player remains in contention after the final betting round, a showdown takes place where the hands are revealed, and the player with the winning hand takes the pot.
With the exception of initial forced bets, money is only placed into the pot voluntarily by a player who either believes the bet has positive expected value or who is trying to bluff other players for various strategic reasons. Thus, while the outcome of any particular hand significantly involves chance, the long-run expectations of the players are determined by their actions chosen on the basis of probability, psychology, and game theory.
Poker has increased in popularity since the beginning of the 20th century and has gone from being primarily a recreational activity confined to small groups of enthusiasts to a widely popular activity, both for participants and spectators, including online, with many professional players and multimillion-dollar tournament prizes.
History[edit]
Poker was developed sometime during the early 19th century in the United States. Since those early beginnings, the game has grown to become an extremely popular pastime worldwide.
In the 1937 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle, R. F. Foster wrote: 'the game of poker, as first played in the United States, five cards to each player from a twenty-card pack, is undoubtedly the Persian game of As-Nas.' By the 1990s some gaming historians including David Parlett started to challenge the notion that poker is a direct derivative of As-Nas. Developments in the 1970s led to poker becoming far more popular than it was before. Modern tournament play became popular in American casinos after the World Series of Poker began, in 1970.[1]
Gameplay[edit]
In casual play, the right to deal a hand typically rotates among the players and is marked by a token called a dealer button (or buck). In a casino, a house dealer handles the cards for each hand, but the button (typically a white plastic disk) is rotated clockwise among the players to indicate a nominal dealer to determine the order of betting. The cards are dealt clockwise around the poker table, one at a time.
One or more players are usually required to make forced bets, usually either an ante or a blind bet (sometimes both). The dealer shuffles the cards, the player on the chair to his or her right cuts, and the dealer deals the appropriate number of cards to the players one at a time, beginning with the player to his or her left. Cards may be dealt either face-up or face-down, depending on the variant of poker being played. After the initial deal, the first of what may be several betting rounds begins. Between rounds, the players' hands develop in some way, often by being dealt additional cards or replacing cards previously dealt. At the end of each round, all bets are gathered into the central pot.
At any time during a betting round, if one player bets, no opponents choose to call (match) the bet, and all opponents instead fold, the hand ends immediately, the bettor is awarded the pot, no cards are required to be shown, and the next hand begins. This is what makes bluffing possible. Bluffing is a primary feature of poker, one that distinguishes it from other vying games and from other games that make use of poker hand rankings.
At the end of the last betting round, if more than one player remains, there is a showdown, in which the players reveal their previously hidden cards and evaluate their hands. The player with the best hand according to the poker variant being played wins the pot. A poker hand comprises five cards; in variants where a player has more than five cards available to them, only the best five-card combination counts.
Variants[edit]
Poker variations are played where a 'high hand' or a 'low hand' may be the best desired hand. In other words, when playing a poker variant with 'low poker' the best hand is one that contains the lowest cards (and it can get further complicated by including or not including flushes and straights etc. from 'high hand poker'). So while the 'majority' of poker game variations are played 'high hand', where the best high 'straight, flush etc.' wins, there are poker variations where the 'worst hand' wins, such as 'low ball, acey-ducey, high-lo split etc. game variations'. To summarize, there can be variations that are 'high poker', 'low poker', and 'high low split'. In the case of 'high low split' the pot is divided among the best high hand and low hand.
Poker has many variations,[2][3] all following a similar pattern of play[4] and generally using the same hand ranking hierarchy. There are four main families of variants, largely grouped by the protocol of card-dealing and betting:
- Straight
- A complete hand is dealt to each player, and players bet in one round, with raising and re-raising allowed. This is the oldest poker family; the root of the game as now played was a game known as Primero, which evolved into the game three-card brag, a very popular gentleman's game around the time of the American Revolutionary War and still enjoyed in the U.K. today. Straight hands of five cards are sometimes used as a final showdown, but poker is almost always played in a more complex form to allow for additional strategy.
- Stud poker
- Cards are dealt in a prearranged combination of face-down and face-up rounds, or streets, with a round of betting following each. This is the next-oldest family; as poker progressed from three to five-card hands, they were often dealt one card at a time, either face-down or face-up, with a betting round between each. The most popular stud variant today, seven-card stud, deals two extra cards to each player (three face-down, four face-up) from which they must make the best possible 5-card hand.
- Draw poker
- A complete hand is dealt to each player, face-down, and after betting, players are allowed to attempt to change their hand (with the object of improving it) by discarding unwanted cards and being dealt new ones. Five-card draw is the most famous variation in this family.
- Community card poker
- Also known as 'flop poker', community card poker is a variation of stud poker. Players are dealt an incomplete hand of face-down cards, and then a number of face-up community cards are dealt to the center of the table, each of which can be used by one or more of the players to make a 5-card hand. Texas hold 'em and Omaha are two well-known variants of the community card family.
There are several methods for defining the structure of betting during a hand of poker. The three most common structures are known as 'fixed-limit', 'pot-limit', and 'no-limit'. In fixed-limit poker, betting and raising must be done by standardized amounts. For instance, if the required bet is X, an initial bettor may only bet X; if a player wishes to raise a bet, they may only raise by X. In pot-limit poker, a player may bet or raise any amount up to the size of the pot. When calculating the maximum raise allowed, all previous bets and calls, including the intending raiser's call, are first added to the pot. The raiser may then raise the previous bet by the full amount of the pot. In no-limit poker, a player may wager their entire betting stack at any point that they are allowed to make a bet. In all games, if a player does not have enough betting chips to fully match a bet, they may go 'all-in', allowing them to show down their hand for the amount of chips they have remaining.
Other games that use poker hand rankings may likewise be referred to as poker. Video poker is a single-player video game that functions much like a slot machine; most video poker machines play draw poker, where the player bets, a hand is dealt, and the player can discard and replace cards. Payout is dependent on the hand resulting after the draw and the player's initial bet.
Strip poker is a traditional poker variation where players remove clothing when they lose bets. Since it depends only on the basic mechanic of betting in rounds, strip poker can be played with any form of poker; however, it is usually based on simple variants with few betting rounds, like five card draw.
Another game with the poker name, but with a vastly different mode of play, is called Acey-Deucey or Red Dog poker. This game is more similar to Blackjack in its layout and betting; each player bets against the house, and then is dealt two cards. For the player to win, the third card dealt (after an opportunity to raise the bet) must have a value in-between the first two. Payout is based on the odds that this is possible, based on the difference in values of the first two cards. Other poker-like games played at casinos against the house include three card poker and pai gow poker.
Computer programs[edit]
A variety of computer poker players have been developed by researchers at the University of Alberta, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Auckland amongst others.
In a January 2015 article[5] published in Science, a group of researchers mostly from the University of Alberta announced that they 'essentially weakly solved' heads-up limit Texas Hold 'em with their development of their Cepheus poker bot. The authors claimed that Cepheus would lose at most 0.001 big blinds per game on average against its worst-case opponent, and the strategy is thus so 'close to optimal' that 'it can't be beaten with statistical significance within a lifetime of human poker playing'.[6]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^'World Series of Poker Retrospective: Horseshoe History'. gaming.unlv.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-13.
- ^Richard D. Harroch, Lou Krieger. Poker for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons, 2010
- ^Reuben, Stewart 2001. Starting out in Poker. London: Everyman/Mind Sports. ISBN1-85744-272-5
- ^Sklansky, David. The Theory of Poker. Two Plus Two Pub, 1999.
- ^Bowling, M.; Burch, N.; Johanson, M.; Tammelin, O. (2015). 'Heads-up limit hold'em poker is solved'(PDF). Science. 347 (6218): 145–149. CiteSeerX10.1.1.697.72. doi:10.1126/science.1259433. PMID25574016.
- ^Computer program 'perfect at poker' (2015-01-08), BBC
External links[edit]
| Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: poker |
| Wikiquote has quotations related to: Poker |
| Look up poker in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
| Wikimedia Commons has media related to Poker. |
- Poker at Curlie
There's a new poker app on the market, and it really is one all poker players should have on their mobile device.
SnapShove, available now on Android and iOS platforms, was created by poker pro Max Silver, who has more than $2.3 million in lifetime earnings, to help players determine proper shove ranges.
'While playing live, Max noticed there was no easy-to-use poker app with precise information on correct shoving ranges,' the app states. 'Even top pros can't remember every shoving range and a small mistake can cost your tournament life. Drawing on his poker expertise as well as five years experience working for gaming and poker companies, Max decided to fill that gap and set up the SnapShove team.'
SnapShove's data is based on a perfect ChipEV Nash Equilibrium solution, and while that may sound intimidating, it's really quite simple to use. Users simple fill in the information – including number of players, ante/big blind, their stack and position – and hit calculate. It's really that simple.
The app is available for free, but for users to get the full experience, they'll need to go pro — SnapShove Pro that is. For just $9.99, players will gain access to the full set of ranges, the Call mode, and unlimited sessions of Training Mode, designed to help take their game to the next level.
PokerNews recently had the chance to talk to Silver about his app.
PokerNews: What inspired you to create this app?
Silver: I decided to do a bunch of work on my short-stack poker game and while running simulations I had the idea for SnapShove. I looked around and there was nothing like SnapShove in a portable form. I can easily check hand equity calculations on my phone, but why not shove ranges? The actual learning curve was far steeper. I thought I could create something usable in a few weeks when in actuality it took me six months of careful revision and testing to get this out there.
Silver Online Financial Planning
For those who may be intimidated by an 'Independent Chip Model' and 'Nash Equilibrium,' can you explain in layman terms what they are and a general idea of what you app does?
Max Silver Online Poker Name Generator
Basically it's an unexploitable way to play poker in certain situations, for example when you are short stacked. A Nash Equilibrium poker strategy is a strategy in which its impossible for your opponents to gain anything by deviating from their own nash response; in other words to be 'unexploitable'. SnapShove will show you optimal ranges for shoving all in.
On the app it says 'precise ranges, verified by the pros.' Which pros have you consulted or worked with on SnapShove?
I've worked closely with a number of pros including Dominik Nitsche and my business partner, Sadan Turker, to make sure these ranges are complete and accurate. Several weeks ago I opened the app to a wider audience, letting pros and poker industry friends beta test before and during the Aussie Millions. I've had very positive feedback on the app from several of the top 100 ranked players on the Global Poker Index, as well as some good suggestions for improvements, which I've incorporated into the latest version.
There is a lot of debate about using tools/programs in online poker. Do you envision any problems with live players having access to an app during play? Any worries an app like SnapShove could be banned at poker events?
I think as long as players respect and abide by the existing rules of no electronic devices while cards are out there will be no issue. Push/fold charts are already commonly looked at before a hand is dealt to players of all ability. SnapShove is aimed at being a strategic planning and review tool, not a real-time device.
In addition, a key aspect of the SnapShove app is the Training mode. Players can use the hand simulations to brush up on range knowledge and speed up decision times when they're away from the table.
For more, follow SnapShove on Twitter @SnapShove.
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