tasuki’s blog

I haven’t made a blog post in quite a while, that’s because I was in Berlin and didn’t have much time.

There was a pair-go championship (two pairs playing against each other, partners alternate in making moves). We finished fifth with Anicka, which is quite nice considering we haven’t played pair-go together yet. Apart from that, it was a nice trip, I saw Berlin (I expected a bit more but I don’t complain), ate some sushi and various different japanese-style food.

I also met In-seong Hwang, who studied go (or baduk, as they use to call it in Korean) for five years at Korean Myongji university. There is a department of baduk at college of arts, it must be totally incredible to study go at university (instead of informatics, for example ).

I am pretty much a poker newbie, a bit similar to a go player who have read the rules and learned a few joseki. Now he can play the joseki he learned but he chooses them pretty much randomly, which has a devastating effect on his play.

Now I will sum up most of what I have learned so far, it assumes knowledge of rules of limit texas hold’em and a bit of thinking.
Pre flop play – play 15-35% of hands, according to number opponents, their style of play and their betting. When there are more players, suited cards and cards next to each other (such as 67) gain value, with small number of players even low pairs (33) are playable.

Flop play: don’t be afraid to fold. Do not play it out when you know you are going to lose (I think I should copy&paste this 100 times to remember ). If you have a totally winning hand be careful not to scare opponents (if you know they get scared easily), let them bet instead of you and kill them later on, if you have an agressive opponent just milk him as much as possible. With a good but not totally sure winning hand try to bet your opponents out (note: doesn’t work against compulsive maniacs).

Post flop play: Pot odds… example… when there is a pot of $80 and you need to call $5 you profit if you win in more than 1/16 of cases (if you think about it it is obvious why).

Well, that’s it. You might want to see my poker cheatsheet.

To sum it up, poker is a game of probabilities and psychology (and chance, but that is only short term, from long term perspective there is not much chance involved (if you don’t believe me go find a dice and roll it ten thousand times, then tell me the difference between number of times you rolled each value)).

This is by no means my original post, I’d link to the original if only I could find it (which seems almost impossible).

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Yeah, I am ill.

It’s a reason why I haven’t been to Pilsen tournament and it’s also a (pretty lame) excuse for ignoring my blog. But, it’s slowly getting better and I was able to get some work done, more specifically, Almanac of Czech Go Championship 2005 (hum, this link isn’t actually the link to the document but you will find it on that page pretty quickly I guess).

Good night, I am gonna sleep so that I get healthy and can go to Berlin pair-go tournament next weekend.