Card Player Skills Trainer

The House Committee on Financial Services held a  hearing on Internet gambling on December 3, 2009 Chaired by Congressman Barney Frank, a proponent of online gambling, up for consideration were H.R. 2266, Reasonable Prudence in Regulation Act, and H.R. 2267, the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act.  Seven witnesses volunteered their opinions.

Some online gambling sites previously prohibited American players, after passage of the  Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), a six month delay was applied to these regulations last month by the Treasury and Federal Reserve. One bank representative testified “The added burden [of enforcing the UIGEA] would drain our resources. The law doesn’t define unlawful internet gambling. As a result, the burden rests solely on financial institutions.”  HR 2266 would delay UIGEA for s year, HR 2267 would establish licensing and regulation for the industry, defining lawful gambling in the process. Critics were concerned about the corrupting effect of anonymous online gambling on under-aged children, an FBI letter doubting the assurances of online operators that cheating and underage players could be prevented was cited.

The bills were not advanced, at the end of the 90 minute hearing Frank announced the issue would be taken up again in 2010.

Status: No change as of feb 27, 2010 The majority of bills and resolutions never make it out of committee.

The Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative spokesman had brief comments after the hearing

Youtube Video: Michael Waxman comments on the House hearing on Internet gambling

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Another experimental brain exercises, this program is a crossword puzzle of sorts that requires no spelling ability. Instead of spelling words, you make poker hands with the combination of 2 hole cards and a set of 5 selected cards, Texas Holdem style. It might improve one’s at a glance hand recognization, and enhance the intuitive hand odds sense.

Cross-Cards Program

The other experimental exercises:

Pre-flop hand strength ranking exercise. Do you remember your starting hand tables.

Winning chances at Flop, Turn & River. You can guess the odds at one point of this passive demonstration.

Brain Training, Texas Hold'em Poker

interested in seeing the actual benefits of position tailored play , where the late positions have the strategic edge, I examined a number of Poker Stars hand histories from late 2008. Comparing $0.25/$0.50 blind no limit to $3/$6 no limit games, the latter expected to show more intelligent play.

Starting at the bottom line: This real world Texas Hold’em history data reveals that the biggest winning table position in terms of the number of wins and moneys collected is, by a mile is the big blind. But the most important statistic, the Return On Investment is actually a loosing proposition for the Big Blind.

Percentage of wins or pots collected without shootout, by table position

Read more…

Texas Hold'em Poker Add new tag, statistical curiosity

Texas Hold’em Experts offer various strategies for adjusting your play according to table position, unlike hand ranking which can be readily determined mathematically, position strategies are a bit more of a black art.  I was curious to see just what effect position may have on your outcome.  I extracted winner table position statistics from 270,000 hand histories. Only pot winner’s positions were noted,  return on pot investment data was not available. Read more…

Texas Hold'em Poker Add new tag, statistical curiosity

A number of on line odds calculators, as well as the starting hand exercise holsted here predict winning odds based strictly on mathematical ranking of card combinations.  Curious to see how well real world hand choices coincide to the odd calculator recommendations, I generated a winning hand stats chart based on real game history data.

Utilizing game history data from about 1/4 million IRC “no robot holdem” hands played by a couple thousand players from 1988 to 2000, to create a chart comparably to statistically generated tables.  Some issues:

• Winning and tied hands are combined here (it’s more work to separate ties)
• Some data skewing may result from the exclusion of foldout wins in which the hole cards aren’t revealed.
• The size of the sampled tables varied, probably more weak winners sneaked in from small tables.

Perhaps the most interest, but not surprising difference between the theoretical and real world hand choices, is the lower success of junk hands (those ranked below 36 of 169) of real world players (in Red). This no doubt is due to lousy hands being folded well before the river, while the calculated odds (in Blue) assume all hands are played to the end.

The complete comparison table is shown below Read more…

Texas Hold'em Poker statistical curiosity

This drill exercise experiment is intended to improve preflop hand evaluation skills, for those who are not that good at memorizing tables of data, this module provides some start hand reading experience, hopefully faster than just playing a bunch of games. Play strategy tips for each specific combination have been included.

Check out the Start Hand Drill module.

This unit uses precomputed statistics collected in about 4 million hand simulations (monte carlo). Exact odds calculation techniques not relying on repeated “rolls of the dice” have been devised, one uses a pre-calculated intermediate table that a computer spent a month calculating.

Focusing on the top 60 of the 169 different unique combinations, the deals look like you have the most friendly dealer in town. These 60 combinations all have a better than 10% chance of winning the hand. These top combinations come up 26% of the time, suggesting folding 74% of the time may be part of a winning strategy.  Suite variations cause these 60 combinations to come up in about 345 different hands out of the 1326 possible 2 card combinations.

You may also want to try the newer “Cross Cards” Hand Recognition Exercise, using a crossword game like format to test your eye’s card combination finding abilities.

Texas Hold'em Poker starting hand strategy, training module

Finally found time to fiddle with an interactive trainer idea.

Flop-Turn-River Odds Exercise

Attempting to address an issue that deserves a bit more attention, this one shows the winning card odds in graphical form, based strictly on what is displayed on the flop-turn-river. Too often one focuses on how these cards add to the value of your hole cards, while it’s equally important to project what hands your opponents may end up with.

Check “Guess the odds” to bring up a quiz stage at the river, you click on the graph to show your estimate of the odds. The error scoring is a simple total of percentage mis-matches. This trial version has a small fixed pre-calculated data set, for a 10 player table. These stats don’t take into considerations player folds before the river, showing the likely best hands, should all hands play out.

Sorry, no odds calculation tips are given here, the module should still be useful for those less mathematically inclined, who play by the seat of their pants, this sort of exercise may speed the development of an intuitive sense for the odds based on experience.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated…

Your suggestions and feedback will help shape the future, refined version of this application.

The other experimental exercises:

Pre-flop hand strength ranking exercise. Do you remember your starting hand tables.

Simple Hand Recognition Exercise Cross-Cards.  A laid back eye test of sorts.

Texas Hold'em Poker Poker drill, Texas Holdem, Training

Those holdout Macintosh users, still using a Mac perhaps for it’s relative immunity to internet viruses, might be interested in these quality poker programs available for the Mac.

Poker Academy Pro, the Texas Hold’em version comes in a Mac version.

This program, using artificial intelligence, offers challenging robot opponents who adapt to your playing style.  Here’s a chance to advance you skills,  playing tough opponents without burning down your bank.

Read more…

Reviews

I ran across a couple of online jewelry stores that carry poker themed jewelry. It may not dazzle the ladies, but there’s a chance of blinding the competition. Most pieces are well under $50.

Pendant Samples

(click image for a larger view)

Hip Hop Bling Money Clips, Buckles, Cuf Links, and a $14 watch.

Similar Designs at  Outrageous Jewelry blog

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.Try Our Cross-Cards Mind Game

Iced Out Gear Pendants

Iced Out Gear has a slightly smaller selection, but some unique pieces.

icedoutgear belt buckles

Player Life Style

Welcome Visitor…

This site is behind schedule, less entertaining projects have consumed our time.

The main intent of this site is to provide brain enhancing, Flash based interactive exercises. Thee exercises should ultimately help one make complex decisions more quickly, without breaking a visible sweat.

Originally planned to be focused on the pure mathematics of playing 21, it now looks like Texas Holdem skills enhancement exercises may have a larger audience.

As one doesn’t not learn to speed read by just doing a lot of reading, but by expanding specific skills by isolated, focused exercises, like those provided by the infomercial Eye-Q package. Likewise some card playing skills may be best improved by specific, focused exercises.

The intended focus is on enhancing brain functions using in the process poker hand analysis. As examined in the Public Television Brain Fitness programs detailing the brain’s plasticity, the ability to reorganize it’s structure to meet new demands. Narrowly focused mental exercises can enhance very specific brain functions, an expensive ($400-$500) software package is marketed in association with the PBS program.  A more realistically priced set of brain exercises are available at one of the better commercial brain enhancement sites,  Lumosity for a cost of about $6/mo., these are not brain teaser puzzles like Sudoku, but rather simple categorized exercises designed to focus on:  Response Inhibition, Verbal Fluency, Information Processing, Spatial Orientation, Spatial Recall, Focus, Working Memory, Logical Reasoning, Task Switching, Face-Name Recall, Visual Field, Quantitative Reasoning and Arithmetic.

lumocity module samples

I recommend you try the 1 week free trial at Lumocity, registration only requires an unconfirmed email address. Some free, less focused exercises can be found at: braincurls.com, Brain-Gym, Brainwaves and Queendom.

Any requests or recommendations for card skill exercises would be greatly appreciated.

Brain Training