Steven Levitt: Measuring Skill Level in Poker

[csquard]

From an interview I did yesterday after he'd taken his first table down in the $1.5k Shootout. "A large online site has given us access to some of their data, so we feel it is very promising," he said. Levitt was at the Rio last year conducting research using poker players, which is where I met him.

Steven Levitt Article

[captZEEbo]

Levitt is awesome. I highly recommend reading Freakonomics if you get a chance. It's also pretty cool that Levitt is actually a +EV player (according to other winning 2+2rs).

I think he's working on writing a poker book about the poker economy that should be really interesting.

[Victor]

poker is horrible for this dude. hes gonna become a degenerate and waste away. seemed so promising too...

[Event Duality]

He definitely is not the type to turn degenerate. He will play if it is more +EV for him to do so, and not otherwise.

(Also, +EV for him would include more than just pure dollars, he would also need to have as much fun as he is having as an economist, I would suspect.)

[Sciolist]

The freakonomics blog is good too. Also, I don't think you can say that intelligence is proportional to likelyhood of becoming a degenerate...

[Victor]

"He definitely is not the type to turn degenerate. He will play if it is more +EV for him to do so, and not otherwise."

ev has nothing to do with degeneracy.

[hanster]

Zeebo,
Wow I remember reading about him donking up a hand yesterday and I was wondering if that's really him. lol. Do you have the name of the project by any chance?

[citanul]

Victor,

I have many reasons why I think the chances he turns in to a degenerate are close to 0. Do you have even one reason for your opinion that you would like to share?

[Daddy Warbucks]

Jesus christ, do any of you people understand tongue in cheek humour?

And Levitt went deep in the shootout event yesterday. He wrote about it in his blog this morning. He went out after defending his blind with K7 and called Phil Gordon one of poker's greatest teachers, so i'm a little skeptical of him right now.....

[w_alloy]

[ QUOTE ]
Jesus christ, do any of you people understand tongue in cheek humour?

And Levitt went deep in the shootout event yesterday. He wrote about it in his blog this morning. He went out after defending his blind with K7 and called Phil Gordon one of poker's greatest teachers, so i'm a little skeptical of him right now.....

[/ QUOTE ]

Ya... I was a little disappointed in him after reading the bust out hand. Granted its heads up, so some pretty weird plays can be correct given the right circumstances, but it seems he played the hand pretty badly. Defend oop with K7o, donk the flop when you hit top pair, and go for a c/r (and call the 3 bet) on the turn with just TPNK on a scary board. And his explanation of his play in his blog, along with the Phil Gordon comment, are perhaps more damning than his actual play.

That being said, I enjoy the Freakonomics blog from time to time, and I'm really not sure why I care how good he is at poker.