Basic Economic Situation

[citanul]

fnord,

as you imply, a big problem is that individuals don't care about social utility. at the same time, individuals frequently suffer from various sorts of optimism biases. not only do people not consider that if they are the next short stacker, they will be not only entering a <=$0ev proposition, but changing many other people's edges, they don't care. firms are in general better at this. real world firms do consider how their entry in a market will effect it before putting in initial investment. just an aside.

an interesting point (to me at least) that i don't see brought up when people are discussing short stacks is the following:

short stacking has a variety of impacts - it is relatively simple to do, it is relatively simple to learn, the seat that is filled by a short stacker could have been filled by some non short stacker, and good short stackers are hard to squeeze money out of. (an aside to my aside - there's plenty of bad short stackers out there.) there's another type of player that exhibits many of the same qualities as a short stacker that no one ever complains about: good players.

sure, there was a bit of whining about how em2, bld, lolo, fwf, and samo or whatever were always at all of the biggest 6max games on party, but we never had anyone saying "well why don't we just sit out until there's only a maximum of 2 of them at a table?" it seems to me that a lot of the spite is because it's seen as a "cheap" path. that because they are playing a "low skill" game, they don't deserve to play. meh.

anyway, on the many firms in competitive action front, yes, in theory, firms enter until there's 0 profit for anyone. however in practice this doesn't happen. barriers to entry are immense. money, sunk costs, technology, patents, trade secrets, limited supply of skilled labor, etc, all mean that markets frequently stay relatively closed. many of these things have good analogues to poker. anyway, that's all for me for now without getting too economics or game theory technical. i'm sorry if i've breezed over any major points.

[Shadowrun]

Why not adopt a Tit-for-Tat strategy?

Also, buisness in a perfect competitive market may have 0 economic profit but >0 accounting profit.

[Phat Mack]

[ QUOTE ]
What will happen when the game is eventually 'killed'?

[/ QUOTE ]

It will metamorphose into a different game or format. Limit hold em was supplanted by no limit for this reason--too many people had learned to play it, so it was killed by the law of diminishing returns. No limit hold em will die the same way (as it has died before), if it isn't gone already. Another form of poker will take its place.

Will the poker boom last? Don't know. Just as different forms of poker have life spans, so do forms of entertainment. I don't see how the present level of players who think they can make a living at it can be maintained, however. They will be done in by not only the law of diminishing returns, but by the "greater fool" theory, unless television can continue generating interest in younger players.

[citanul]

phat,

wow, holy cow is it totally incorrect to think that limit poker was "killed by the law of diminishing returns."

[Phat Mack]

[ QUOTE ]
phat,

wow, holy cow is it totally incorrect to think that limit poker was "killed by the law of diminishing returns."

[/ QUOTE ]

What killed it?