UCLA Poker Panel and Another Poker Riddle

Last week, as I mentioned, I went to see Chris Ferguson and Bill Chen at UCLA. The event was entertaining, as the panelists recounted anecdotes about Chris and joked about how he well-known he is. I had been hoping it would be more informative, perhaps with some online poker-data analysis or even a mathematical proof or two. However, nothing even approached that level, and it seemed like nobody there had ever even tried looking at online data. There was some discussion of the state of poker game theory and whether poker computer programs would ever be able to beat the best human players. Ferguson and Chen agreed that heads-up limit hold'em might be solved within ten years, and that computer programs might already be as good as people (only in heads-up limit hold'em), but it would be very hard to judge who is "best" unless many hundreds of thousands of hands were played. Chris's dad added that poker in general is unsolvable, since with more than two players, you can expect more than one equilibrium point (a well-known, general result of game theory). The event seemed to be at least partly for promotional purposes, as it was put online and Bill Chen made frequent book references, while the backdrop was initially a Full Tilt advertisement.

At the reception afterward, I didn't see Chris Ferguson, but I spoke a bit with Chris's dad and a bit more with Bill Chen. I asked Bill a little about his book, and jokingly asked when the sequel would be coming out. He said that they might be writing an example book where they look at 100 hands and analyze them with game theory. Sounds interesting. In order to slip away from my group of 3-4 people, Chen left us with the following riddle: if you hold 9333 in Omaha, what are 3 ways you can make the nuts? One way is to have 999 on the board (without a bigger quads or straight flush possible, of course). The other two are harder to see... as a group it took three of us a few minutes to figure them out, but none of us are Omaha players.



Here is the video of the event. I don't recommend viewing it, but I think it's about time for this blog to become a multimedia experience. I didn't watch most of it, but it seems to begin in the middle of Professor Tom Ferguson's tribute to his son.

Chris Ferguson at UCLA

A friend at UCLA just registered me for an event at UCLA with Chris Ferguson and several other people discussing "Math, Computer Science and Poker." Among the other panelists are Chris's father Tom Ferguson (one of Brigid's professors) and Bill Chen, author of The Mathematics of Poker.

I'm tempted to go back and look at my notes from Mathematics of Poker to try to come up with some intelligent questions. It might be more interesting to try to get opinions on more general poker theory, though. I don't really know if I'll get to ask any questions, but it should be pretty interesting.

Tom Ferguson Invitational Poker Tournament

Not much poker for me the past two weeks. I've successfully made the move to LA, and I hope to find some sort of routine soon. On Friday I had a somewhat notable, out-of-the-ordinary poker experience. My girlfriend Brigid has just joined the statistics department at UCLA as a PhD student. One of the professors in the department, Tom Ferguson, just finished his 50th year as a member of the faculty. He's an expert in several fields, including game theory (I've actually read one of his papers). More interestingly, he's the father of Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, probably one of the five most recognizable poker players in the world. Anyway, to commemorate Ferguson's 50th year, the faculty organized the "first annual Tom Ferguson Invitational Poker Tournament." The tournament was free and open to department members and friends, with prizes donated by the faculty.

Most of the 28 players were very inexperienced, with a reasonable idea of how the game worked but almost no grasp of appropriate strategy, so I felt a little bad winning their first prize of the iPod Nano. I quickly handed it over to Brigid so that at least there was some feeling that a department member was involved (Brigid won a prize too with her 9th place finish). My victory was far from a certainty, though. With M's starting below 6 and blinds increasing every round, it was imperative to get in and gamble. I was fortunate enough to double up with AA on the fourth hand and to win some coin flips after that. Although it was fun to play some poker and meet Brigid's new colleagues, the main reason I wanted to go was that I hoped Chris might show up for his dad's party. Unfortunately, he didn't make an appearance.

Later tonight I'm off to play in Aaron's weekly home game. Actually, I might be playing in a lot of home games this year. Aaron's invited me to another weekly game down in Orange County that I haven't been to yet, and supposedly the stats department has a monthly tournament. I also live about a mile from the UCLA frats, where I suspect there may be some poker, but I'm not the type of person who's good at talking my way into games like that, nor am I particularly comfortable with it. In fact, I'm not perfectly comfortable playing in Aaron's home games, despite actually having been invited. A little discomfort might be worth sparing me from driving through the traffic to the casinos a few nights a week, though. Given recent legistlation, I'm not very optimistic about playing on the internet.