Poker: Of knowledge, pyschology and confidence

Posted: March 20, 2012 by The CouchExpert in Others, Poker
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Laurent Riley

Many people that play casino games feel that poker is a game of chance like blackjack, roulette, and craps.  In reality, poker is a mind game that requires a superior strategy in order to be successful in the long-term.  While short-term luck can play a factor in poker, those that develop a long-term strategy will be successful over time.  Let’s look at the three pieces that comprise great poker strategy.

Knowledge

The first piece of developing a successful strategy at the game requires knowledge.  That knowledge starts when a player learns what the best starting hands are and how to use their position at the poker table to their advantage.  Next, that knowledge continues as a player learns the concept of pot odds and hand odds.  This allows them to know what percentage of the time a hand will hit given a set of circumstance.  It will also help them determine whether to draw at a hand, or abandon it in lieu of a better spot. 

Cricketer Warne, known for his gambling instincts on the field, is now a keen Poker player

Psychology

The next piece of a successful strategy is psychology.  Poker is not about having the best cards.  Sometimes, it is convincing the other player that you have the best cards or taking advantage of their fear of losing to make them fold.  This starts by a player learning how to evaluate his opponents and spotting their weaknesses.  Part of this is based on what the player shows down, but sometimes it can involve subtle hints called tells.  Tells are more than just a nervous tick.  Tells can also involve how a player bets when they have a hand or even the way they bet when they don’t.  It also can involve things as subtle as how willing a player looks to fold his hand.  

Confidence

The third, and many times the most important piece of developing a strategy is confidence.  Confidence in knowing what type of play to make and having the confidence to pull off a play.  When a player is confident in his ability, it is reflective in his play and can even be intimidating to other players.  Inferior players will many times stay out of the way of a confident player unless they have strong hands.  They perceive that the player has exceptional skill and refuse to risk their bankroll to them. 

As you can see from above, developing a superior strategy in poker is not just about playing the best cards.  Unlike other games like video poker, the game also requires being able to evaluate and even manipulate the other players to achieve the results.  More times than not, the game is about playing the player more than the cards.  This makes poker less of a game of chance and more of a mind sport than any other casino or gambling game.

This Week in Cricket: Random Ramblings

Posted: March 15, 2012 by thecognitivenomad in Cricket, Opinion, South Africa Cricket
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Chandrasekhar Jayaramakrishnan

It was a real shame that the first test between South Africa and New Zealand had to end indecisively with weather inhibiting a game that would, in all likelihood, have had a result on the cards. On face value, the South Africans seemed the more likely of the two teams to have had a result tilted in their favor. And the critical difference between the two teams was evident on Day One of the 2nd Test at Hamilton. For those who bothered to watch/follow it in the first place.

It is understandable that the cricket fan’s focus is on the (meaningless) Asia Cup and the prospect of Tendulkar reaching his awaited milestone against Pakistan. As honorable as that intention (or wish) is, this milestone is a skeleton which perhaps only the most loyal sympathizers of Tendulkar really think worth discussing any more.

Whether or not this assertion is debatable, the fact remains that there is a pretty good game of Test Cricket being fought down in New Zealand. Yes, being oblivious to a Tendulkar milestone is suicidal in India – but not at the cost of quality cricket elsewhere. I’d fancy watching the ball bounce and seam at Hamilton, as against dead rubbers of the subcontinent. No disrespect – just my choice.

But I’ll close the milestone topic thus: Fans. Don’t worry. Tendulkar has said that “he’ll miss Dravid in the dressing room”. And you read that between the lines, it means that he’s going to be around for a while – plenty of time to reach there (I know it has been more than a year now, but good things happen to those who wait). But it is a shame that for all the nostalgia, for all the great memories that we have and cherish of this legend, the last one year will be a slight blot on an otherwise serene landscape.

Just kidding – my friends from the media (and from thousands of other relatively unknown newspapers) tell me that they’ve had their 100 page Tendulkar supplement ready (barring Page 1) ever since he’d reached his 99th ton. There’s even a Tendulkar special Crossword and Sudoku, amongst others.

Coming back to what I started with – yes, Vernon Philander. No, I don’t think I mentioned his name anywhere earlier – but goodness me! Had this guy been Indian, he’d have been all over the news for what he has achieved/and is achieving (and, if he’d had an equivalent, literally-translated Indian name, you’d have been tired of seeing newspapers compete for ‘pathetic sense-of-humor’ headlines). Closing in on forty wickets and he’s only playing his sixth test! It is not often that you come across a bowler who looks likely to take five wickets every time the red cherry is thrown to him.

Review Time: “You must be joking. This ain’t International Cricket, Umps?”

Given that South Africa is traveling to England next, record books beware! There might arise a need to erase history and rewrite what this guy is potentially capable of achieving, having represented Middlesex in the English County circuit (he’s no stranger to the conditions there – even if he is, he’s got a contract with Somerset starting April this year). I know its early days, but we’ve made heroes out of one-week wonders – I’m not even remotely close to crossing the line. And this guy seems genuinely good.

Graeme Smith has been wise enough to look at Philander in the eye and tell him that tougher times will come. Yes, at the present moment, the game looks way too easy for him. But browner pastures of Motera and SSC (with Jayawardene potentially notching up another ton/double ton) will await him with stark glimpses of reality checks.

It is a travesty, though, from New Zealand’s perspective – the only two players who seem capable of scoring runs end up throwing their wickets once they get starts. Certainly, neither McCullum nor Taylor would be batsmen you’d be willing to put your wager on in Test Cricket, but they bat at three and four – pivotal positions that demand a penchant for responsibility. And, Rob Nicol at the top of the order seems a batsman who could compete with yesteryear Indian opener Debang Gandhi (I find it hard to rewind to an earlier era and quote a better example) in to becoming laughable parody of themselves.

It looks likely that he wouldn’t hang around the setup once Dean Brownlie is back. Or after Jesse Ryder gives up alcohol (and sheds a few tons). As won’t Kane Williamson unless he makes an attempt to prove his detractors wrong.  He hasn’t even come close to living up to the ‘next best kid since Martin Crowe’ advertisements that took precedent (and briefly aired) after his ton against India on debut at … Motera (again!).

But the bright spot – at the end of Day One – is that the South Africans are two down for 27. Dale Steyn’s stay as night-watchman didn’t last too long, while Graeme Smith is still cursing over South African exports who seem to do so well when not playing for South Africa (van Wyk’s catch to dismiss Smith was a stunner).

P.S.  On Dravid – later.

The Impregnable Fortress Calls It A Day

Posted: March 9, 2012 by binisajan in Cricket, India Cricket, Opinion
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Bini Sathyan

‘If I wanted someone to bat for my life, it would be Rahul’ said one of Crickets finest batsman, Brian Lara.

There could be no better compliment to Dravid, the Wall of Indian cricket and no better expression on the style of play that Rahul Dravid adopted.

Always the silent warrior who never got his due. Fought pitched battles across the world and defended with his life. People call you ‘The Wall’. In fact, you were ‘The impregnable Fortress’ who held up one end all through your career. But the mighty blows that you took for more than a decade has worn you down and the cracks started showing. There should surely be a way to mend those cracks. But then, you have decided to let time pass you by. To us, you are one of the bravest warriors India has seen.

You were the savior that team mates and we fans looked upon to carry the team when it was all at sea. You were the silent warrior who kept the wolves at bay when the lambs were being slaughtered. You were the ray of hope when all else seemed lost. With a rock solid defence that the best in the game had no clue about breaching, you built a wall brick by brick that many a time held its fort and saved India from defeats and many times brought victory with some master strokes.

Rahul Dravid is one of the greats of the game who got late recognition. He went unnoticed whenever he played a valuable innings as fate would have it or call it bad luck, some one else would always steal the limelight.

In 1996, on debut, in the swinging pitches of England, when the Indian team was writing its famous collapse story, Dravid walked in and and almost made a century but then the innings was not so much noticed as the century crafted by the elegant co-debutante Ganguly. Even though Dravid and Ganguly made dream debuts and both of them went on to play many good innings together, Ganguly always had the luck to come out better. The 145 runs that he scored in the 1999 world cup match against Sri Lanka was also not praised much as Saurav Ganguly again pipped him when he made 183 in the same match. Even though there was a world record partnership there, it was the 183 that naturally caught everyone’s attention. Then in a test regarded as one of the most remarkable turnarounds by any country, Dravid started the resistance and went on to score 180 valuable runs but the test later came to be known as Laxman’s Test as the flamboyant Laxman played a gem of an innings which Wisden has rated as the second best innings ever played in cricket.

One of India's finest calls it a day

Dravid’s valuable contributions always came as partnerships which served the team’s cause but little did it contribute to individual glory. The two partnerships with Laxman in Tests and the partnerships with Ganguly and Sachin in ODIs are world records. He is involved in 80 century partnerships for India which is another world record. He may not be as elegant as Ganguly or as flamboyant as Laxman. He might not match the master stroke for stroke. But with a great technique and tons of determination he was a selfless fighter who went on climbing heights and created a space of his own. Most of his contributions to the team were overshadowed by the big trio’s achievements.

Dravid also was a team player who adapted very well to all forms of cricket and any conditions better than anyone else though rather slowly. When he was labeled as a misfit in ODIs for being a slow run-getter and faced the axe, he went onto score at a faster pace. There came a time when the team needed a keeper-cum-batsman to accommodate an extra batsman and Dravid was more than keen to play the role for the teams benefit. His fans thought it as an insult or a punishment but he took it all in his stride. Wonder whether any other star cricketer of India would have done that. But here was a great player who put team before self and was ready to play any role that would benefit the team and make sacrifices regardless of individual concerns.

And it was at this time that he produced some of his finest knocks in ODIs. The match that he scored 145 against Sri Lanka in the world cup was the first in which he kept wickets for India. This not being enough his batting position was constantly changed to find out where he fitted best. This landed the team management in more trouble as he excelled in any position he was thrown in. When he was tried as an opener he fitted in easily. Once when he came as a finisher, he had scored 50 runs from a mere 22 balls against New Zealand which is the 2nd fastest for an Indian in ODIs. I still remember a shot hit by him which looked like a square cut but went for six. And I don’t think there is someone more adaptable to the game than Rahul Dravid.

After the epic Test against Australia, he slowly started emerging from the shadows of the giants. He came on his own and achieved a near Bradmanesque feat when he hit 4 consecutive centuries in Tests in 2002 and also went on to score 5 double tons in all which was an Indian record before Sehwag overtook him recently. No one else in the world has scored Test centuries in all the Test playing nations. He has produced his best outside India in the hard and fast difficult pitches. Especially in England. He has another unique record of scoring 23% of the teams total runs in wins which came under a single captain, Saurav Ganguly. Now that makes one ponder whether it was Ganguly’s captaincy skills or Dravid’s silent contribution which made this team the most successful one. He went on to forge century partnerships with 18 different partners and partnered Sachin in 19 of his centuries.

A hard working, selfless cricketer, he was the rock on which the Indian team was built in the new millennium which saw India rise to the No. 1 status, slowly and steadily. And the beginning of the new decade which also saw the decline of India in Tests in harsh conditions, India looked to Rahul Dravid to stand up and deliver. And he delivered in style. In his favourite land, England, he was the lone man standing with three centuries. But the next battle in Australia was the defining moment which has led to his decision to retire from the game he loved most. He must be respected for the decision to bow out with grace.

The Aussie paceman Glen McGrath is believed to have said ‘if there was one Indian player who would get an automatic entry into an Australian team filled with stars, it would be Rahul Dravid’. That sums up the respect that he earned from the team known as the invincibles.

AB is the right man to take South Africa forward

Posted: March 4, 2012 by thecognitivenomad in Cricket, South Africa Cricket
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Chandrasekhar Jayaramakrishnan

The best captains often walk a fine line between leadership and performance. And as the South Africans swept the Kiwis 3-0 in the ODI series, the moment seemed quaintly out of time. As much as the World Cup defeat last year to the Kiwis would’ve hurt them, the whitewash seamlessly fits in to the scheme of things falling under skipper AB de Villiers.

The tour to New Zealand has offered a whiff of fresh air. From Richard Levi’s pyrotechnics, to the bounce and brilliance of de Lange, the series has encapsulated many a solid performance (notably Amla’s solidity at the top of the order and AB de Villiers’ raising claims to take over the batsman-ship baton from Jacques Kallis) to throw a glimmer of hope under a new regime.

The convincing manner in which the ODI series down under was wrapped (partly due to New Zealand’s new-look outfit) has more to reveal – opening with Wayne Parnell in the final ODI is a reflection of the scales in which confidence is being measured in their dressing room. Parnell, a player who hails from one of South Africa’s poorest province, had got his break during the days when the quota system had enforced the administrators to invest in his scholarship to a sporting high school in Eastern Cape. He looks likely to be one of South Africa’s all-rounder mainstays for many a year to come, even if a few statistics point elsewhere.

3-0, easy as it comes.

In the fan’s gaze, this phase of South African cricket is in the midst of a now-familiar cycle. The foundation for their ‘success-to-be’ is likely to be built on the captaincy structures laid by de Villiers, often regarded as a paragon for versatility. Like his predecessors, de Villiers will realize that he will have no excuses for failure at all: his country has a brilliant set of athletes to choose from, even though it has traditionally found it difficult to provide the rudiments of success expected out of it in major tournaments.

The distress surrounding their ICC campaigns have historically been deeper than exhaustion. As skipper, de Villiers would do well to make efforts to escape the grilling claustrophobia of ICC tournament post-mortems. The repealing of the quota system after the post-apartheid pendulum cycle has soft-pedaled any attempt to point fingers towards cricketing structures. After all, a thorough analysis on a topic that had received most public notoriety can reveal invisible histories that the quota system, with its focus on abstraction, had hidden.

Of course, Graeme Smith’s peremptory approach during his reign had made things look a bit more secure, but did little to erase the ‘chokers’ tag that has been dubiously associated with this brilliant outfit. Smith was a captain who was pretty optimistic about the public’s perceived ability to accept excuses. But he was smart enough to know that if you’re telling the fans something they don’t want to hear, an apt convincing counter-offer was needed to balance things.

Most fans have respected the past South African skippers for their effort, but have often been left confused and disappointed by the results. It is possible that de Villiers will continue to do what worked for them in the past. Historically, South African cricket’s problems had lied largely with its administrative deficiencies. But now, with a large set of bottlenecks out of the way (at least, if the news coming out of their local media is to be believed), de Villiers has an easier road to rally his troops along.

Of course, as the battle mode shifts to a five-day mode, a more familiar leader in the form of Graeme Smith will lead his team out on the seventh of March. But it is well worth keeping an eye on AB, for he is the right man to take South Africa forward for the best part of this decade.

A new era in the beckoning?

Posted: January 31, 2012 by thecognitivenomad in Cricket, India in Australia 2011-12
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Chandrasekhar Jayaramakrishnan

Siege warfare has been their stock in trade. For Australia, this series was a case of truth being stranger than fiction – in the good sense. Consistency across four tests reaped benefits earlier not thought-of, and it certainly wasn’t a case of a chain being as strong as its weakest link when a few individuals failed to step up to the occasion. Not a single test seemed likely to enter the fifth day, with the exception of the final one that might have not lasted so long had Australia enforced a follow on.

The worst thing about India’s 4-0 whitewash down under was the inevitability of it. That a large set of the players looked withdrawn and out-of-sync (every time the cameras focused on them) didn’t help the cause either. Astronomical numbers gathered over years of batting is what constituted the middle order, but there was little evidence to suggest that this was the barometer by which their performance was being gauged.

As unpopular as this view will probably be, the proverbial rant surrounding why Rohit hasn’t played a Test yet will continue for some time to come. After all, when wickets fall at intervals so short that the same old advertisements are shoehorned every five minutes (in some cases, ironically featuring the stars that are on the field – or ones who had just lost their wicket), little can be said in defense of their numbers, irrespective of how large they are.  They are statistical quirks, no more, and cringe-worthy.

How meekly the Australians made a team of eleven Indians capitulate throughout the series ranks alongside General Friedrich Paulus’ surrender at Stalingrad in 1943.  Never before had a German Field Marshall surrendered to enemy forces. And the Indian fans’ displeasure is as much as that, if not more, experienced by Adolf Hitler back then. The Australians have dominated the series with an air of perfection that would have made Michelangelo knock of the Sistine Chapel ceiling on a Sunday afternoon to target a work of art likewise.

Playing a Test in Australia is never a pleasant experience – precisely why it is so fervently anticipated. The IPL might have forged opportunistic alliances between these two nations (among many others), but nothing further seems to have transpired. The Indians’ only comforting presence in the Australian dressing room would be that of Shaun Marsh, whose IPL image contrasts that which he has built during this series, albeit the formats being grossly different. Marsh is an unlikely candidate to catch the plane to the Caribbean, come this April. He has cut a lonely figure, resembling a Greek window-shopper unable to buy runs.

Australia’s biggest gain over the series (apart from unearthing/refining an outstanding pace attack) has been the resurgence of Clarke as both a batsman and skipper. For some, Clarke’s Midas touch could’ve come as a greater shock than American Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s tax returns. Just as it seemed during the build up that Clarke’s perceived image would receive boo-eliciting responses to every remark he makes, given how unpopular he was among certain sections of the public, the response couldn’t have been more timely and stronger. That he had Ponting by his side all along the course of this series is a tribute to how the two of them have responded to immense pressure.

Now who is more subservient of the two? © Sportsbanter

Premonitions over their roles and future in the Australian setup have finally been buried. With Brad Hogg making a comeback at 40, it would be hard to stop a rampaging Ponting from continuing to play on until he experiences another lean patch like he did in 2011. As will Mike Hussey fancy his chances in hanging around the International setup for some time to come – given how the influx of promising youngsters hasn’t quite worked out the way that the selectors might have anticipated. It would require a Marsh-esque run with a virgin willow for either of these two batsmen to have their performances under intense scrutiny once again.

Haddin’s forgettable patch has rightfully seen him relegated, as much as claims may state that he was rested. At 35, it seems that his path henceforth is a foregone conclusion. The absence (injury) of Paine brings in a whiff of fresh air via Matthew Wade, a youngster who has shown potential to dazzle crowds with his reassuringly simplistic approach to the game – more reassuring than Mickey Arthur’s claims that Haddin is on the right track for Ashes 2013. In truth, Haddin was only marginally better than being hopeless.

Wade’s outing in International Cricket has been much anticipated

Wade, on the other hand, will be in action as early as tomorrow when the two teams face off against each other in the first T20I at Sydney. He’ll feature alongside a few veterans, a few new names, a quirky Marsh and his younger brother Mitch (possibly), under the leadership of George Bailey after Cameron White’s inconsistent form relegated him into oblivion.

Australia sits at a disappointing fifth in the ICC T20I Rankings. A new stadium, a new home outfit; the Aussie fans will hope that it is the same old result though.

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