Poker by Mail

[Gelford]

In theory you are right, but since you only play one 20% of the hand you are dealt and a lot of those are mucked quickly, then mailpoker would become slower than paint waiting to dry ... not forgetting, that you have to wait for 8 to 10 players to make there decision (and if one raises, then we need wait another round at least before betting is over)

While mailpoker sound slow, slow and fairly boring, there is one comparison that hold up to chess, you can analyse your plays after the game is over

Run simulations over your handhistories and such

[JoshuaD]

You mean like an internet discussion forum?

...

[lgas]

Well, what I'm suggesting could actually be done in a forum (like this one), but there would be some differences... Amoung other things I am specifically encouraging doing time-consuming tasks such as computer simulations or game-theory oriented analysis of the situation, and other things which aren't practical to do at the table in a real hand -- and most of the hand history discussions here don't involve those types of things for that very reason -- they aren't practical to do at the table.

I suppose the traditional hand history discussion model is pretty good though and perhaps this doesn't really offer any significant improvement over that.

[lgas]

That's true -- trying to play full ring this way would drag out much longer than chess-by-mail. Although it could perhaps still be interesting for analyzing heads-up play because you play almost every hand heads up and there would only be 2 players to wait on, not 8-10.