For the record, the last line of the OP seems deliberately vague on this -
As stated upthread, we’re having fun because it’s vague. But IMHO, a single hand would constitute a win for the 1 in 100 in the context of the OP’s initial example: loss of 100 of 100 games of chess against a grandmaster. Winning a poker tourney, or other extended sequence seems to be outside of the intent.
But again, that’s IMHO. I think part of the difficulty in the examples, is that in a number of sports, you have many, many chances to claw back a win if you make a minor screwup, or if RNGesus was against you, but in several of the poker tactics / styles discussed above, your ability to do so is curtailed.
No one is suggesting (or at least as I read it) that it’s a winning strategy in terms of making money (or more honestly against a pro, losing it slower) - but in terms of forcing ‘fluke’ wins, sure.
Yeah, and I’m being much more generous than that, not single hands, but when the money runs out in a head-to-head Texas hold-'em matchup. The pro would have to fold hand after hand (so many individual hand losses) to get to a suitable position to take the all-in bet and even then with the best possible pocket cards, they go broke about 15% of the time. In the long run, the pro comfortably wins. But going all-in without even looking at your hole cards will win, at worst, 15% of hands that play to completion.
I would agree that a “game” of poker is both players start with some stack of chips and they play hands of poker until one of them has all the chips. I think you’d have to strain pretty hard to define it in some other way. Certainly a single hand of poker is not a game.
It depends some, but with an infinite stack:ante ratio, the pro still has to go all in on AA, and they still lose that hand (per above) 15% of the time, so 15% is the floor of what an amateur would win this strategy. If the ratio is smaller, then the pro either has to go all in on worse pocket cards than AA or has to do so multiple times to win, which gives the amateur better than 15% to win.
Well, Steven Bradbury’s speed skating gold medal is probably the canonical example of that. But although he was ‘way’ behind (1-2 seconds maybe?) and won due to a crash, had he been a complete amateur he wouldn’t have finished first - he would have been so far behind that the other skaters would comfortably had time to pick themselves up and still win.
I think it’s a good demonstration of the relatively high variance/luck factor in poker compared with most other pro sports/games. But as you say, no-one is claiming that the amateur will win consistently in the long run (unless they learn and improve, like some amateur WSOP have done).
Because of these online satellite play in tournaments, poker may be one of the few sports/games where an amateur can have a chance to play against the best in the world. Maybe that is why we can’t find that many examples in other sports. There really isn’t that much chance that an average person would get the opportunity to play a match against Nadal or do a lap against Hamilton.
Other sports simply have too little reliance on random chance. The poker pro relies on placing the odds in his favor over the long term because the cards aren’t under his control. Nadal will rely on my being unable to physically put my racket on his serve, or his return of my serve.
Have you ever seen the Beat the Freeze videos? That’s why we don’t put amateurs up against pros, the pros are just too good.
I also think this looks really fun and I’m planning to make a set to play with my kids. Ignore the people you are annoyed with and thanks for introducing this game to me
So with an infinite ante ratio (as in an ante of zero, though technically that is an ante ratio which is not a number n/0 is not infinity ) then its exactly 50:50 odds assuming both players do the rational thing, which is fold on everything except pocket rockets. It will be really long, boring game of poker mind you.
It’s fun for every age, assuming you can keep your balance! And it’s also a game where size and strength don’t really matter, it’s all about strategy and balance and the judicious application of force and if you watch someone play you can get a really good read on their style if you pay attention, then play to their weaknesses. There aren’t many physical games an adult can play against a child without having to handicap themselves to let the kid win so this is a great way to give a kid confidence and get them thinking and observing to better their strategy.
My pleasure! It really is a blast and the best part is that when you break out the set and start playing in, like say, a campground, you’ll draw a group in no time and then everyone starts doing a “play the winner of the last bout” lineup and it can go on for HOURS–great way to get to know people and make friends. In the video the kids are playing without a referee, it’s even better when you have a third person–the referee holds the slack of the rope, each player starts with the knot in one hand and the other behind their back. The referee then tosses up the rope to signal the start of the match. The referee can watch to see if, say, one player sets a foot down a fraction before the other lets go the rope to decide who won. Cuts down on squabbling when it’s a bunch of kids playing lol.
I used to do SCA “demos” a LOT because the middle school history classes in our area were coincidentally studying the Middle Ages right at the end of the school year when the weather was nice. They’d donate a couple hundred bucks and the local seneschal and I were SAHP so we’d bring her home schooled kids along with catapults and trebuchets (her husband was a fanatic combat engineer!) and I’d teach them medieval dances and hunker hauser. We’d usually have 50-100 kids at each demo so keeping them busy and tiring them out was a biggie (and we were GOOD at it, which is why they kept calling us back and spreading the word to other schools) so we’d do maybe ten minutes of explaining what the SCA is and does then we’d split the groups up and half would go downfield to try to catch the catapult and trebuchet flung “boulders” ( big wads of foam wrapped in layers of duct tape, about the size of a football but round) and the other half would come with me to dance (usually the Saracen’s Bransle because it’s basically medieval aerobics) then we’d switch, and afterward if there was enough time we’d start a hunker hauser competition. Since the matches generally only last a minute or two each, it’s possible to let a lot of kids play through and when one kid figures it out fast and beats ten people in a row it’s a huge ego boost for them.
If we were doing a demo for younger elementary school kids I’d also bring along another game I invented, a hobby horse joust with foam noodle lances wrapped in duct tape. That was a hoot and a half to watch, you betcha!
Dooo eet! You can throw together a set in about a half hour and the most expensive bit is the soft rope–that braided polyester stuff in 3/4-1 inch diameter is perfect. Make 3 sets and you can keep a brigade of Scouts busy for basically forever!
I used to golf a fair amount when I was in Japan, but I never did as well as the guys I went with. I knew a couple of people who had single digit handicaps, so they were on the very, very top end of the amateurs, but these were guys who already had many years of practice and instruction.
They may beat a pro on one of their best days and the pro’s worst days, but that’s like saying that a minor league pitcher could strike out a major league hitter if the minor league guy had a great day against a guy with a bad day.
ISTM that the OP is asking if there is a sport where one week’s training (or even a couple) that could raise an amateur to a even slightly competitive level to a pro and if there is one, golf isn’t it.
Has anyone mentioned horse racing yet? Could a (suitably petite) average person, riding on the fastest horse in the world and being given a week to bond and practise with said horse, be able to beat a horse ridden by a top jockey? Presumably the best chance would be over a short sprint, and definitely flat rather than jumps.
I think the horse racing is more or less similar to the issues (whereby the horse and training for said horse?) motorsport racing we discussed earlier, but with the advantage that a well trained horse could finish well despite the jockey. Such as…
Not a win against the top 10 in the world, but a question in this case (ha! another rules lawyering!) is it the horse or the jockey that needs to be in the top 10 in the world?!
Perfect description of at least what I thought we were talking about.
In that vein, sports where natural ability or physical characteristics play a part might qualify. Shooting sports or archery, for example. Chuck Yeager was a great fighter pilot in part because he had freakish 20/10 vision. Most great fighter pilots in WWII were known to have superior vision.
How long would it take someone to learn to shoot at targets well enough to compete with the pros, given that they already have physical characteristics like great vision, slow heart rate, low natural tremors, etc?
Take Geena Davis. She did not consider herself athletic as a kid, and didn’t play much sports. But when she got into movies she had to learn all kinds of physical things - Tae Kwon Do, fencing, dancing, skating, etc. And she was a natural. She’s muscular, 6’0", a MENSA member (meaning she may have better than average body awareness and coordination), etc.
At age 41, she decided to take up archery. Three years later she just missed qualifying for the women’s Olympic team. To do that, you’d have to beat pro archers pretty regularly. Now, she practiced pretty heavily and had a coach for three years, but I’m guessing she was at the, “I can beat a pro on a good day” level very quickly.
I have some experience with this. I picked up archery as a teen, and very quickly got to the point where I could occasionally put up a number better than some of the ‘house pros’. The real problem with competition in accuracy sports is consistency. It doesn’t take long to get to the point where you can have the occasional spectacular performance. What takes years is learning to do it again and again, under pressure.
I suspect there are people out there who could take three week training in shooting and be able to make some incredible shots. Just not 50 times in a row. But once in a while they’d beat a pro having a bad day.
Here’s another physical attribute related sport: If an amateur is 7’6" tall and physically fit, how long would it take to teach that person to be able to beat a regular sized pro at basketball, or be competitive on a pro team?
Archery is an interesting suggestion, and it brings up a couple of points.
First, the number of participants in any given sport will be a factor in the odds. For major sports the selection process to achieve a professional level is such that only the best of the best can make it. Other sports are such that there aren’t any many professional participants or there aren’t any many barriers to becoming a professional.
I also participated in archery, and after two years of high school archery, I won the state championship in my class. Note that this is much less impressive than it seemed to various inebriated people in various bars over the years. It was also Utah, not a large state such as California and there may have been 30 to 50 kids in all of the various classes, total from all over the state. Maybe only five to 10 in my division.
Anyone in my high school who wanted to could join the archery team, but not anyone could make the football team.
Archer may be a candidate because traditionally it wasn’t a pro sport and the “professionals” are close to “house pros”.
So the gap between the haves and have-nots just isn’t as high.
As you noted, consistency is the real kicker. Most serious amateurs can have a few rounds (groups of arrows) where we shoot “as well” as a professional, but do that for ten rounds in a formal tournament with all that pressure and it’s less likely.
Most people are susceptible to “nerves”, that is, we get stressed participating in something big and that is something what real professionals have to learn to deal with. That’s not something that can be taught in seven to 14 days.
Former Jazz great, 7’ 4" Mark Eaton didn’t start on his high school basketball team because he wasn’t particularly coordinated or fast. He went on to became a car mechanic before getting recruited to a community college, then went on the UCLA where he only had minimal playing time.
The Jazz took him in the fourth round as a long term, low cost investment ($45,000 for his first year in 1982) and while he was never an offensive threat, he excelled in his role as a shot blocker, setting an NBA record in his third year, going on to be voted the defensive player of the year twice, among other accomplishments.
However, while his best average was 9.7 PPG, his career average was only 6.0.
As basketball is a team sport, it would be difficult to define what beating a pro would mean. One a one-on-one half court game, I don’t know how he would have done. He wasn’t a good outside shooter and his dribbling would have been picked apart.
No, the best strategy is to absolutely look at your cards, and then get all your money in if you have a solid hand. Reduce the game to two rounds of betting. Even a a beginner can remember what the 20 best hands are and just dump the money in pre or postflop.
That is, in fact, precisely what Ed Miller describes in “Getting Started in Hold Em” for the beginner player to do. It still neutralizes the pro’s advantages of skill but doesn’t entirely rely on blind luck.
Amateurs win in sessions against pros all the time. You can watch old episodes of “High Stakes Poker” online where you can see exactly that happening - your odds are certainly better than 1 in 100.
Even if I played a pro on just a local course, the odds of my winning aren’t 1 in 100. They are zero. It’s just not possible.
Amateurs who average 90 don’t just up and shoot a 68 every 100 games. Golf scores are pretty consistent from round to round. Conversely, a pro isn’t going to shoot a +20 on a common golf course. I looked up the full leaderboard for this year’s US Open, and the worst round by any professional golfer was 83 (a few guys shot that at some point.) That’s at a course that was vastly more challenging that the courses a clown like me plays on. 83 on such a course is a pretty decent score and the average golfer isn’t nearly that good.
) then its exactly 50:50 odds assuming both players do the rational thing, which is fold on everything except pocket rockets. It will be really long, boring game of poker mind you.