Poker theory: completely blind strategy

[thechainsaw]

Hi All - I'm new to this forum, so i hope i am not broaching a topic that has already been raised:

Is it a legitimate tactic in poker to bet without seeing your cards?

I will elaborate, for example in texas holdem, is it legitimate to bet
A) without looking at your cards
B) to do this in such a way that your opponents are aware of this

How can this tactic be succesffully employed. What implications does this have on theoretical poker?

I will post my thoughts if anyone has interest, because i believe there is a successful possible game theory tactic using the above conditions, along the lines of successful new strategies in the prisoner's dilema game.

[meandi]

To play completely blind is spewing chips in my opinion. Unless you can read one particular opponent correctly 100% of the time, you'd have to fold to any type of re-raise. I suppose you could just shove when faced with said re-raise, but if I'm playing somebody that's playing blind like that, I'm calling with any pair or better, and quite possibly with just an ace high. I can't see any redeeming value in it honestly.

[onetimeuse]

People who employ this tactic do so for practice. They want to learn to play the man and not the cards.

Poker is a game of information. Nuff said.

[captain2man]

I just can't imagine that playing blind could ever have any sort of positive benefit over the long run, nonetheless, please share those thoughts of yours. Would be curious to hear where you're coming from. I also confess to being unaware of the prisoner's dilema game - so if you could elaborate on that a little bit, I'd appreciate it.

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi All - I'm new to this forum, so i hope i am not broaching a topic that has already been raised:

Is it a legitimate tactic in poker to bet without seeing your cards?

I will elaborate, for example in texas holdem, is it legitimate to bet
A) without looking at your cards
B) to do this in such a way that your opponents are aware of this

How can this tactic be succesffully employed. What implications does this have on theoretical poker?

I will post my thoughts if anyone has interest, because i believe there is a successful possible game theory tactic using the above conditions, along the lines of successful new strategies in the prisoner's dilema game.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am curious. Tell us.

[thechainsaw]

Prisoner's dilemma is probably THE classic game theory problem. For a very long time the tit-for-tat strategy was considered unbeatable, until recently where the master slave code theory solution defeated it. Here is a link that tell you more. http://tinyurl.com/y4ono4

I have a similar application of this to poker, that is very simple.

Assuming that playing your cards blind is legal (something i didnt know about before, it is NOT, for example, in bridge) I draw this analogy with prisoners dilemma.

There are a number of possible strategies using blind cards, and I will discuss one practical application as follows:

You aim as a poker player is to maximize your earning per hour. Given this, let's take the example of the most common tournament on the internet, freerolls with large numbers of players. It strikes me (though i cant prove it) that it is possible that 2 agents going allin against each other on the first hand with random cards, could increase the potential COMBINED earnings per hour of the 2 players, creating a win win situation. The rationale for this is that the losing player has wasted very little time, and the winning player has a significantly increased chance of earning something from the tournament.

If you can somehow signal that you are blind to your opponent (either via a code or even more cleverly through a known betting pattern, say go allin-1 on the first hand), other honorable agents in the master-slave situation can generate a win-win EV situation for both players by following the pattern.

A seemingly losing strategy could be turned into one where both agents have a mutually benefical system for cooperation, (similar to cooperation plays in poker), either implicitly or explicitly.

I would be interested to know if i have my logic correct here, or if anyone has thoughts on the subject.

[techferment]

Very fascinating. However, in the Prisoner's dilemma all agents are fairly equal and if one agent is more intelligent than another his or her edge cannot be exploited as greatly when only given two choices. If they had more choices their edge over other agents would be more apparent in the long run.

On the other hand, poker tournaments, esp NL, give expert players an enormous edge to begin with because of so many options available to them. Therefore, an expert player will lose value by taking blind 50/50 gambles. Furthermore, each chip you gain in a tournament is worth less than the one before it so doubling up early on a big gamble does not raise your EV significantly.

Yet, informed cooperation in poker, eg. two expert players going after the dead money before each other, may be a loose example of the prisoners dilemma working in a poker tourney.

[GardenaMiracle]

Yeah, that's an interesting post and it brings back some memories. In the late eighties, while fresh off Zadeh's book, I started thinking about poker differently. I thought that maybe I could distill limit Holdem down to a two round game by applying PD tit4tat strategy to middle rounds, thereby suggesting mutual cooperation until the river. Of course, people thought I was a lunatic and it was an overly simplistic approach, but it was fun to experiment with at the time.

[Shandrax]

[ QUOTE ]
Prisoner's dilemma is probably THE classic game theory problem. For a very long time the tit-for-tat strategy was considered unbeatable, until recently where the master slave code theory solution defeated it. Here is a link that tell you more. http://tinyurl.com/y4ono4

I have a similar application of this to poker, that is very simple.

Assuming that playing your cards blind is legal (something i didnt know about before, it is NOT, for example, in bridge) I draw this analogy with prisoners dilemma.

There are a number of possible strategies using blind cards, and I will discuss one practical application as follows:

You aim as a poker player is to maximize your earning per hour. Given this, let's take the example of the most common tournament on the internet, freerolls with large numbers of players. It strikes me (though i cant prove it) that it is possible that 2 agents going allin against each other on the first hand with random cards, could increase the potential COMBINED earnings per hour of the 2 players, creating a win win situation. The rationale for this is that the losing player has wasted very little time, and the winning player has a significantly increased chance of earning something from the tournament.

If you can somehow signal that you are blind to your opponent (either via a code or even more cleverly through a known betting pattern, say go allin-1 on the first hand), other honorable agents in the master-slave situation can generate a win-win EV situation for both players by following the pattern.

A seemingly losing strategy could be turned into one where both agents have a mutually benefical system for cooperation, (similar to cooperation plays in poker), either implicitly or explicitly.

I would be interested to know if i have my logic correct here, or if anyone has thoughts on the subject.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very interesting article about the master&slave tactics, although it was more like an attempt to exploit a specific weakness in the tournament setup, than a winning strategy by itsself. Still when you think of master&slave, then some bells are ringing in conjunction with the rumors about Men the Master and certain forms of chipdumping by his students.

[bbartlog]

In general I second what was said above about spewing chips - playing blind is not a winning strategy.

There might be some psychological edges you could cultivate by making this play sparingly, e.g. if you think creating a 'crazy weirdo' table image will work to your advantage or you think your opponents are going to go on tilt when you do this for some reason.

The other exceptional case I can think of is if you're playing against someone who can read you at a near-telepathic level. The correct move is to get up from the table, of course. However, if you must continue playing for some reason, you will lose less money if you (and therefore your opponent) don't know what cards you hold.