Any suggestions for a future 3-Bet, feel free to drop a note in the comments.
Today in the 3-Bet we find a mercenary trader ripping into a recent academic study on poker tells, a special re-watching of the best poker reality series ever made with added commentary and yet another moment showing poker will always be alive and profitable in Europe.
1) Tells in the Arms? Hogwash.
Remember this academic study about arm tells that caught a bit of buzz/attention from the scientific community last week?
The gist: a Stanford grad student tested a small group of people on their ability to judge a poker player’s hand strength by either their faces (the proverbial “poker face”) or by their arm/hand action putting chips in the pot.
Regardless of the subject’s understanding of poker the conclusion was there was a heightened ability to predict hand strength by watching the arms over the face. Not exactly groundbreaking, sure, but grist for the poker player mill.
It got at least one poker player a bit miffed, though. In a post called “It Just Ain’t That Simple" on the Mercenary Trader blog today the aggrieved rips into the study for a bunch of reasons - not the least of which are the sample size and the under recognized subtleties of the game:
"In respect to highly competitive, skill-based human endeavors with zero sum or minus sum outcomes (like poker and trading), tentative hypotheses generated by non-practitioner research are generally worthless.
"This is because far too many nuances, subtleties, and empirically critical factors (hidden edges discovered and verified through ample experience — things one wouldn’t even know to consider without experience) are completely overlooked by those outside the game."
It’s in the arms, it’s not in the arms (kneels on ground, shakes fist in the air)… will we ever solve this magical game?
2) 2M2MM Getting Commentary Treatment
Remember how great the G4 reality show 2 Months, 2 Million – which followed Dani “Ansky” Stern, Jay Rosenkrantz, Emil “Whitelime” Patel and Brian “flawless_victory” Roberts as they tried to amass $2m over the summer in Vegas – was?
If you’re fans like we are, you’re in for a treat. Rosenkrantz announced today he’ll be hosting a series rewatch with live Twitter commentary in the lead-up to the new BET RAISE FOLD documentary release. Details to come next week if you follow him here.
In the interim, in case you’ve forgotten just how entertaining it was and/or need to research a few question to ask him, revisit the series starting with Episode 1 Part 1 below:
3) Matt Stout Reminds Followers of European Gold
Think the games have got too tough to be profitable online?
Matt Stout reminded us all - and himself - today that we’re just a plane ride away from 2004 all over again:
Just watched older gent open shove 65BB on the button w K7o in the EPT Berlin €1100 6max turbo. Y do I not play poker in Europe more often?
— Matt Stout (@MattStoutPoker) April 25, 2013Visit www.pokerlistings.com