And why would you choose that?
I’m thinking the ability to see everyone’s hand when you’re not playing in that hand would only be an advantage in that you could study your opponent’s habits.
I’ll take 10% wrong, playing conservatively you can do a lot with 90% accuracy.
Bonus question: if you chose option #2, what % of misinformation would it take for you to switch your answer to #1?
Me, I’d choose #2 and say up to 20%.
Not only that, but if what you see makes absolutely no sense for the other player to be holding, then you can make a judgment based on that as well.
i chose #1 because #2 would ruin the enjoyment of the game for me but allow me to get better at it. if my goal was just to turn poker into a full time job and make a shit-ton of money, i’d choose #2. if there was a way to choose #2 long enough to get comfortably wealthy and then switch back to #1, i’d choose that.
I went with #2. I can’t read people’s tells well enough to bump my reading of them over 90%. I think I’d go with option #2 up to about a 50% failure rate. I think that with study I could get to where I could read people’s body language up to that percent.
In no-limit hold-em, I pick #1. Being able to see others’ cards while I’m not playing in a hand gives me insight into how they play, witch I can use when I do play. The limitations are known to me. Not knowing when the 10% time comes could be disastrous.
In other games, where the 10% time probably couldn’t bust me completely, I’d consider #2.
Number 1 is useless for most players. People play pretty much randomly, and on hunches, and based on their own particular mood at that exact moment. Knowing how someone played last hand is absolutely not a predictor of how they will play next hand, because people play poker so irrationally, except at the highest skill levels.
This exactly. I’d take #2 and just play limit games, which I’m more comfortable with anyhow. Knowing my limitations, even after a year of power #1, playing against the same players every day, I don’t think my ability to read opponents would reach the level necessary to be a pro and make as much as money as I could have with #2.
ETA: At some point as the error % goes up, I’d prefer #1. Maybe around 25-30%.
Having #2 I’d be able to become a millionaire without a ton of effort. Having #1 I’d still have to be a decent poker player. I’d take two in a heartbeat. Poker would be boring, but it’d pay the bills and I could indulge all sorts of hobbies.
I chose 2. I don’t play poker for fun, anyway, but if I had that ability, I’d sure as heck play it for money.
As to how low the percentage would have to go, it depends on what “completely wrong” means. If it means that when I get it wrong I see a random draw of cards, or even a random draw of cards excluding the ones I can see normally, then even if the chance of a correct reading were only 10%, I’d still have a huge advantage. Heck, it’d still be an advantage at only a one in a million or one in a billion success rate, though in that case it would take lifetimes of play to actually realize the advantage.
If “completely wrong” means that I see bad hands as good ones and vice-versa, it’d still be profitable at least down to 50% accuracy, and probably even lower (since folks with bad hands are likely to fold even if I think they have a good one). Come to think of it, if I see bad hands as good and vice-versa, then a low success rate is just as good as a high one, since I’d just work from the assumption that my ESP is wrong, rather than the assumption that it’s right.
I suppose the “completely wrong” can better be defined as “giving them hands in which it’s impossible to determine whether you’re seeing the real or the fake hands.”
So say you have 99 and the board’s J-9-7. You see they have J-7. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. 10% of the time they could have Q-T or JJ or complete junk. You just never know.
Option 2, and it’s not even close. Those who say they picked #1 because the 10% false hands could be disastrous have the wrong mindset. You’re (hopefully) never going to have your entire bankroll on the table at once, so getting stacked shouldn’t be a big concern – hell, that happens all the time with or without faulty card-seeing magic. On balance, over time, just treating the cards you see as the gospel truth and acting accordingly would make you the greatest and most profitable poker player who ever lived.
I don’t know how low the percentage would have to get before I switch to option #1. I’d probably still take #2 at 50/50 – even with all the uncertainty, knowing that a specific hand represents at least 50% of your opponent’s range is a *huge *edge.
I would think if you got 10% of it wrong, it would be easier to hide your betting system in Texas Hold’em.
B is an easy choice. Knowing the other guy’s cards with 90 percent certainty is waaaaaaay +EV.
VarlosZ:
And I totally agree with this.
In fact, I’ll take Varlos’s observation one step further: I’d opt for knowing a definitive weighted range for each opponent, but not their actual cards, over option #1. Say, if I know with complete accuracy that the guy has a suited ace 40 percent of the time, an overpair 40 percent of the time, and air 20 percent of the time on a given board.