Poker and Technology

There was a time, not too very long ago, when if you were not standing along the rail, you would have no idea what was happening on the felt until sometime later as you were regaled with the poker version of some old fish story, a mix of truth and elaboration about what went down.

I’m excited! Mike Caro's Poker1 is reborn! And I’ve played a part in it.

One for mankind!" (after winning a hand against Polaris) -Phil Laak, Man versus Polaris Poker Competition, Vancouver, Canada, July 2007

Which is better, online poker or live poker? It's an ongoing debate in the poker world.

This column will contribute to this debate on the side of live poker. Nothing beats having your opponent sitting in front of you when you're playing. Online poker is a great training lab, but online poker is no substitute, now or at any time in the future, for live poker, especially at the championship level.

Recently, I began using a piece of software called Table Ninja (found at www.tableninja.com) when playing at PokerStars. Table Ninja allows you to set hotkeys to execute actions by hovering your mouse over any part of a table's window and pushing the appropriate key. These actions range from "fold" to betting custom percentages of the pot. Table Ninja's functionality goes beyond helping in-hand play. I have hotkeys set to sit out the next big blind and to close tables.

Imagine this scenario in a realworld cardroom: You make a river bet, get called, and turn over your hand. Your opponent mucks his cards without showing, but curiosity gets the best of you, so you reach into the muck and peek at his discards. How many times do you think you could do this before they threw your sorry, angle-shooting ass out of the casino? Yet online you can do it all day, every day, and if you're not aware of it you should be. Every online poker site has a handy little feature called instant hand histories.

Why is poker so entertaining to us? Part of its appeal is that you are rarely in the same situation twice. Variability. Imagine the number of combinations there are in a shuffled deck of 52 cards [It's approximately 8×10^67 -Ed.]. Combine that with the number of players with varying play styles you're likely to see, and you've got quite a decision space in which to act. Just when you think you've seen it all, another deal of the cards makes you shake your head. The foundation of our pastime lies in the concept of a fair shuffle.