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Comment by thenomad | Hacker News Reader

"A great poker player demonstrates commitment by going “All In”."

This is a minor point, but given I live with a very serious poker player, I've started to twitch about poker misunderstandings.

Going all-in is not a rare event - at least not in no-limit Holdem, which is the game most people think of as "poker". Nor is it limited to the "great" poker players - in fact, it's one of the more basic and more common strategies, otherwise known as "shoving", to intimidate others out of a pot or for half a dozen reasons.

I know there are probably a lot of people on HN with more poker knowledge than me, so I'll shut up now (and wait for the inevitable discovery, possibly from my SO, that I've got the entire concept backward) - but it just irked me.

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I read it just as a sort of throw away line in the article. But you're right, going all in isn't rare. In tournament play when your stack size is below certain thresholds & you're in certain positions relative to the blinds [1] going all in is the proper play to make 100% of the time, so it's quite common.

For cash games, which most people are less familiar with, going all in is still generally based more in math than "commitment" or being a man. If the way you've played a hand gives you a certain range, you can estimate what bet sizes your opponent thinks he can profitably call. Beyond the psychology, going all in is just a means to make your opponent commit a math error, that long-term would be an unprofitable course of action.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-ratio -though this is a very generic explanation that doesn't go into position.

But his point wasn't about the rarity of the action; commitment doesn't have to be rare. It does have to be demonstrated and that demonstration is a meaningful gesture that signals other players. That's his point: that commitment needs to be seen.

I guess the bit that made me twitch was the "great poker players do X". It's true, great poker players do indeed go all in to demonstrate, amongst other things, commitment to a hand (well, ish. Actually it's more to reduce the value of the pot for other players. Amongst other reasons. Sort of.) - but so do good poker players, average poker players, and crap poker players who've read about 2/3 of a short book on no limit (the latter would be me).

Given that the point of the statement was to compare how Mark Pinkus could be great, rather than average or crap, that rather undermines the whole rhetorical point.

Good point - I was equating the rarity of the action w/ it being a genuine demonstration. The demonstration of showing such commitment by going "all in", at least in poker, isn't really meaningful. It's a function of math and happens all the time. But, poker on ESPN for example, makes it into a dramatic event for their viewers. My favorite is when they would have the "all-in" moments brought to you by X sponsor.

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