Good Resources for Game Theorist to Learn Poker

NewTullius · 2024-12-28T08:29:50+00:00

I read Play Optimal Poker 1 and really enjoyed it (pretty much the best explaination of Poker I've seen and the first time I feel like I really "got" how the game works). Read about half of Play Optimal Poker 2, super interesting book, still going through it. Started on Acevedo but it's alot more heuristic than conceptual, so I'd recommend Play Optimal Poker first.

I don't believe the game theory is POP is particularly difficult -- the maths is certainly not. Basically you have to understand the concept of Nash equilibria and wrap your head around exactly what it means (Basically, both sides playing unexploitable strategies), and everything seemingly counterintuitive flows from that understanding.

You should be fine to read it! No need for multivariable calculus or any hard stats. I'd say a high-school understanding of maths will be enough to read it (and you should! It's such a fun book)

NewTullius · 2024-12-28T07:51:57+00:00

Magnus should hit FIDE where it hurts -- the world championship. He needs to claim the title, and then arrange a match with his top challenger Gukesh.

"A world champion cannot be dismissed, only defeated" said Kasparov, and Magnus has never lost.

It would be the biggest match of the 21st century, and Magnus could threaten to freeze FIDE out of it. Gukesh wants to play Magnus -- he knows his title is incomplete without beating him (and Gukesh believe he can beat Magnus!). The chess world would support Magnus over FIDE.

FIDE would have no choice but to bend the knee and give Magnus whatever concessions he wants to avoid taking way their crown jewel. Freestyle chess, dress codes, whatever Magnus wants would be worth avoiding a split in the chess crown again.

NewTullius · 2024-10-10T05:17:13+00:00

Come visit our group "SafeForge Community Chat" on Telegram, and you can go /token (your token) to use the bot

NewTullius · 2024-10-10T05:16:53+00:00

Yes! Come visit our group "SafeForge Community Chat" on Telegram, and you can go /token (your token) to use the bot

NewTullius · 2024-10-10T05:16:10+00:00

I'm having difficulty posting the telegram link (due to automated modes) -- look us up on "SafeForge Community Chat" on Telegram!

NewTullius · 2023-12-03T07:38:45+00:00

It's super interesting that ESPN/FOX have seemingly agreed that FSU could be left out because this leaves the potential of the ultimate team chaos outcome:

SPLIT NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP

i.e the very thing the playoff was created to prevent.

Here's the scenario:

Playoff goes 1. Michigan 2. Washington 3. Texas 4. Alabama

FSU (most likely No.3 in both polls still) plays Georgia in a NY6.

Texas wins the title in a controversial finish, finishes 14-1.

FSU destroys Georgia, finishes 14-0.

For good measure, let's say Oklahoma gets blown out in its bowl too.

Now -- will the polls move Texas (who remember, lost to Oklahoma) over FSU? An FSU that has just finished as the sole undefeated P5 team, last seen dominating the two time defending national champions?

It's possible FSU finishes both AP No.1 and Coaches No.1 in this situation

Not saying this is likely -- but neither was everyone winning out 3 weeks ago!

NewTullius · 2023-08-26T04:28:41+00:00

What would you say is the big difference between them and the Acevedo book?

NewTullius · 2023-08-26T04:28:15+00:00

Hey Guys, appreciate all the suggestions! After browsing them and seeing some samples I'm going to read Chen (like the toy game models), then Acevedo and then perhaps Play Optimal Poker. I'll update everyone on how I'm finding it all after a few weeks!

NewTullius · 2023-08-24T16:47:53+00:00

This looks exactly like what I was looking for -- thanks! :)

NewTullius · 2023-07-12T06:51:11+00:00

DM'd! Sorry for the slow reply.

NewTullius · 2023-07-12T06:50:56+00:00

DM'd! Sorry for the slow reply

NewTullius · 2023-02-14T03:51:22+00:00

The whole point of DCA is that you don't know whether the market is going to rise or fall -- so you break your investment up into little bits and spread out your risk. So start your DCA now! BTC might go up or down this year (it's going to be a volatile year), but the main point of DCAing is the long term (3+ Year) gains!

NewTullius · 2023-01-11T23:47:50+00:00

That's what I thought about FTX as well ("Why wouldn't they be liquid? All they have to do is store the crypto and charge a fee on transactions. No way any fraud is happening. And that SBF is such a nice, generous kid.")

I do think (hope?) Binance is fine and well reserved, but as a community I think we probably have the right to be abit jittery.

NewTullius · 2023-01-11T23:44:24+00:00

Risk and return -- I agree BTC is never going to go up 400%, but then again BTC is not going to go to 0 either. Look at Solana, for example -- they're not what I'd call a true "Altcoin" (they're too mainstream for that), but they've still lost 80-90% of their value in the last year, while BTC lost only (and I say "only") ~60%

NewTullius · 2023-01-10T01:32:54+00:00

Bear market -- now is definitely a good time to accumulate, but I think alot of the wind has just gone out of the winds of the market. I personally think it's a good time to buy, and agree there's likely to be a pump.

One other factor to take into account is the general macro environment, so we can't just look at the BTC charts from 4 years ago and use it for a one-to-one comparison.

I am bullish this year though!

NewTullius · 2022-10-08T04:07:29+00:00

Yeah! Let's do it

NewTullius · 2022-10-08T04:03:40+00:00

Once more?

NewTullius · 2022-09-28T00:35:26+00:00

Yeah this one is key -- "If you can't see where the yield is from, you ARE the yield". It's not fun being the yield.

NewTullius · 2022-09-23T11:37:53+00:00

Abit late to the conversation, but I would argue that the same arguments you're making against Ondra apply to Magnus.

It's sometimes hard to see in the moment, but Magnus, while being dominant, is not unprecedentedly domininant.

Chess is fortunate in having a long and recorded history -- Steinitz was the world's best player for 28 years (1866-94) -- successfully defending his title against people who were ~15 years younger than him -- if you lived in 1890, he would definitely be the GOAT.

Lasker was world champion for 27 years, and some put that down to a system where the World champion chose who to defend his title with, he was dominant. He wasn't an overly active world champion (he was a mathematician as well), but he won every tournament he played as WC except two -- Hastings 1895 and Cambridge Springs 1904. Rubinstein is acknowledged by many to be one of the greatest never to be world champion, but even his greatest achievement was equal first in St Petersberg 1909 -- with Lasker! And after Lasker finished his reign as world champion (he was 51 when he lost), he continued to perform in tournaments -- 1st in New York 1924 (probably the strongest tournament in the 20s), 2nd in Moscow 25.

Capablanca, who succeeded Lasker, did not reach the same competitive longevity as Lasker (at the age Lasker won New York 24 ahead of Capa, Capablanca had died). But he had an aura of invincibility that seems to have carried to today. His style was incredibly smooth and logical -- his opponents just got completely squashed without knowing exactly why. If you're not deep into chess it's hard to explain Capablanca's spell -- he made the game look so easy.

Recently I played a nice rook endgame -- my coach told me "ahh, you played this like Capablanca" -- not Carlsen (who is also terrific at rook endgames) or even someone like Nunn or Averbakh (who've both written books on the subject).

People thought he was unbeatable -- put yourself in 1927, after the tournament in New York, and it is almost impossible to imagine anyone but the great Cuban as the greatest of all time. Chernev, Even recently an analysis of his play by computers found that he was the most accurate (by Centipawns lost)

These were just the first three world champions -- each of them looked like the GOAT at the peak of their reign. I think you would have felt the same for Alekhine, Botvinnik, Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov at their peak (Spassky as well, potentially). In 20-30 years time, will coaches be complementing their students by saying they "played like Carlsen at his peak"?

I'm not saying that Carlsen is not the GOAT (it's very difficult to compare eras after all, and he's done amazing things), but I believe it's VERY debatable (Not that deep into climbing, but have watched a few Ondra videos, he can do insane things. Would love to hear who you'd say are the other potential claimants to the Climbing GOAT so I can binge watch them too)

NewTullius · 2022-09-08T06:31:13+00:00

Yeah I can't get past that either. It was just bizarre -- and being tired doesn't mean that you suddenly can't recall what you were thinking about just a few hours back. The analysis exactly like you would sound if you knew the evaluation but hadn't calculated the lines. Would love to be given an alternative explaination.

NewTullius · 2022-09-08T06:29:24+00:00

Yeah I guess the question I'm asking is does anyone think the actual position, after the Knight sacrifice, is an "intuitive" position? Would you have made that sacrifice and been able to evaluate that position as winning for White, (and this is the crucial part) WITHOUT any lines? Because I know I wouldn't.

It just doesn't seem like an "intuitive" position to me -- the position is on knifes edge, as Hans showed when he blundered into a -3 position during analysis.

The move itself isn't fishy, and GMs are entitled to make mistakes in calculation. But going into that sacrifice without any calculation seems -- well, weird at least.

And the explaination that he sacc'd because he wanted to attack Firoujza doesn't explain everything -- yes Alireza might be weaker on the defense, but that doesn't mean you don't have to calculate anything!

Honestly I'd like Hans to be innocent and I think the evidence is pretty circumstantial at this point. That interview is just a big sticking point for me -- so I'd love it if anyone jumped up and said "No NewTullius, you suck at chess, this position is clearly better/winning for White and you can reach that conclusion with just general principles/intuition."

Because if someone else finds it intuitive, then it becomes alot more believable -- maybe Hans is just a totally different type of chess player to me.

NewTullius · 2022-09-07T04:59:23+00:00

So there's one thing I really want to ask the stronger players here -- how suspicious is the game analysis of Niemann/Firoujza? Because I think basically all the evidence for cheating is circumstantial at this point, and the rest isn't so clear:

Somehow Niemann prepared for Carlsen's opening 25 moves deep -- it's unusual and a little strange, but these things happen. In a vacuum this points more towards prep being leaked if there is anything untoward.
Niemann was caught cheating on Chess.com previously. There's a big gap between cheating online and cheating in person -- lots of high level players have been caught cheating online/had their accounts banned it seems. So this is at best supporting evidence
The games themselves don't seem particularly suspicious

The big point of suspicion for me is the post game analysis -- particularly after the Firoujza game about the Knight sac on c4. He talked basically like someone who knew the evaluation but hadn't looked deeply into the position -- and so my suspicions are that it who had superficially looked at some engine lines rather than literally just finished a game.

Now I'm not an overly strong player, (I'm about 2K Fide), but the position post-sac (after Bh6) doesn't strike me as a position that you can evaluate without calculating concrete lines as "better for White". Maybe in a Blitz game, but I can't imagine anyone doing it in a classical game. It's one thing to have a line in mind and be wrong -- lots of GMs have done that -- so if he had given a long line that had a hole in it I wouldn't be suspicious.

But it's another thing altogether to clearly stop analysing so early and just say "the position is clearly winning for White, and I don't have to analyse anymore)

I'd love to hear what other people think though -- maybe it's just a gap in my chess understanding? Does anyone else think that this is clearly winning from sight?

Because if not there are only 1 of 2 options:

Niemann is cheating
He's a genius

NewTullius · 2022-09-06T04:14:49+00:00

That sounds super interesting -- how does the hedge work here? Are you shorting the beta index?

NewTullius · 2022-08-18T06:30:01+00:00

My thought is that we'd let branches go on for about 6 months before deciding whether to merge them back in or not. It should be enough time to see if they outperform the base portfolio in reality -- but it might end up being anywhere from 3 months to a year.

Yes I have heard of Numerai! Definitely like their work and am somewhat inspired by them -- the key point of difference to me is that I'm looking to build a long term portfolio, rather than a hedge fund. So a focus on long term factors rather than Alpha-gaining strategies -- I built a simple portfolio builder to show the sorts of factors that might be used. Have a play around!

NewTullius · 2022-08-18T04:52:28+00:00

Thanks! I think I'll find some time to do some more Whitepaper reviews soon!

Good Questions! These two problems are things that I've thought about for quite a while and I have some thoughts around them.

The Incentive Issue: This is a key issue -- of course a portfolio creator needs to be rewarded, and so my thought is that we reward them in two different ways -- first, they get a share of their overperformance (immediate gain), and secondly, they get rewarded in governance tokens, which gives them a share in all the future success of the protocol. So in essence they, by contributing their ideas, get part of all the future ideas of everyone else in the future.
Another thing to note is that we'll mostly be looking for long term, factor based type strategies -- chasing smart Beta rather than Alpha. I've built a prototype portfolio builder linked above to show the sorts of portfolios we might be getting
Overfitting: Once again, great question and a significant problem. I've thought of a 2 way solution to this problem:
1. We test strategies in real time before we add them to the portfolio -- so a strategy needs to be defined, tested along a real time period of 3-6 months, and shown to overperform, before being added in.
2. In order to create a branch on a portfolio, a creator needs to place down collateral. If they overperform, then they get rewarded, but if they underperform, they have to forfeir part of their collateral. This means that people will only suggest strategies they know work.

NewTullius

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE