Date: 04/21/1999
From: Jim Geary
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker
Subject: To young student players (This Post Voted Least Likely to be Plagarized..)
On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Mark D Hiatt wrote: > Yeah. I'll give you that. Matt does indeed grow and learn from his mistakes, > doesn't make the same one twice and prospers as a result. He didn't make the same one twice? Misevaluating the utitilty of winning and losing is not assuaged just because in the second instance he won. > I don't get "An addict is doomed" from the film at all. I was gonna just say, "Your bad, then." But read on. I hope I explain it satisfactorally enough that I change your mind. > I do find "Do not succumb to ego" in a lot of places, especially in the > character of Teddy KGB and Worm. Teddy KGB is fine. You've conflated the results of a single hand with the protagonists respective long-term prospects. He's not gonna go broke losing a few dimes to some kid. > At the end of the movie, Matt does get challenged to a rematch. I don't > recall death being a part of the equation, but yeah, it's clear that KGB > doesn't want to let the money leave the table. The threat was implied, but not too subtly. > And Matt Damon has a choice to make. As he says, you can't lose what you > don't put in the middle. But also as he says, you can't win what's not in > there, either. He accepts the challenge, wins, and takes the cab to Vegas. I think Abdul knows something about pay to play, but speaking for him, he would tell you that there's a difference between appropriately risking a portion of your bankroll in any given session to make money vs not maximizing your long-run bankroll growth utility. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in Kelly criterion to surmise that the Matt Damon character didn't maximize this function in the instance to which you refer. The irony is that he apparently had done just this for many months as he slowly built up the wad (implied prior to the movie beginning). > It's obvious to *you* that he is doomed as a professional gambler. It's obvious to me too. > It isn't obvious to me at all. Not making this ad hominem, but seriously, have you ever supported yourself exclusively from gambling for many years? It is fraught with traps. It takes more than card-sharpness to dodge these. It takes character. Hopefully, I've cogently enough explained why it is so, but to sum it up in one sentence: The Matt Damon character apparently doesn't appreciate the risk of ruin, or if he does, he makes decisions contrary to his long-run viability. > He's tempered his skills with good judgement, bzzt. Good skills. Bad judgment. (I haven't even mentioned seeing the writing on the wall regarding worm). > he's > done the work, he's played the hands. He knows how to cheat but doesn't. He > has faced Chan and beaten him, once, if only in a small way. Completely meaningless from a statistical viewpoint. However it is potentially significant if he has now incorrectly measured his risk of ruin, which I find highly probable. > I see him going > to LasVegas and doing well in the WSOP, maybe taking the title in a year or > two or maybe not. Maybe he decides that he doesn't *need* to be crowned King > of All Poker. Maybe he spends his days at the pool and his nights at the > 5:15 tables. I dunno... I think how we see his future from the cab ride on > is more of a reflection of ourselves than what we've seen in the film. Here's my prediction: He immediately sits in the 150-300 game at the Mirage (with what a 100-unit bankroll?), wins a little bit in the beginning, but is ground down by world-class players and gets broke in about eleven weeks. As his bankroll diminishes, he never even contemplates going over to the 40-80 game or 20-40 game(he might be able to beat the latter for a living, but by the time he ever gets into that game, I know he is going to be undercapitalized). He continually scrapes up buyins, works his way up, and always gets busted playing too big for his bankroll, even in games where his skill would otherwise warrant his participation. > Learning when a gamble is "too risky" is what it's all about, isn't it? Ding. Those that learn may succeed. He has yet to demonstrate that he has learned. > We > have to make these decisions every day. Should we cross the street against > the light? Should we shave another $50 out of our income taxes? Should we > shine up to the cocktail waitress whose boyfriend just left her? Should we > 'get lucky' with her and not have a condom, is going ahead without one worth > the risk involved? There is risk in everything. It's how we handle that risk > that determines whether or not we're a success. Part of becoming a > professional gambler or a professional anything else is learning how and > when to say no to our egos, I'd imagine. DING! The last sentence you have right on. The point is that it appears that despite a very harsh lesson in appropriate risk he has failed to learn anything. He is doomed. > When he gets into the cab and heads for the airport, I don't see Damon's > character as an addict. I see him as a professional poker player. And happy. He's happy now. But he won't be. The happy ones are bagel(or is it knish, I forget which one was the real one and which one was the character now) who keeps making that rent payment, keeps paying for his kids' clothes, and knows that he is going to be there next year and KGB who lives on and continues to get cool non-starring roles. Regards, JG (quotation of the poster to whom I am replying of Abdul's post to which he replied follows): > In article yer3e1u7yic.fsf@shell9.ba.best.com , Abdul Jalib wrote: > > > > > The lesson I saw was something like "He who does not learn from his > > own mistakes is doomed" or "An addict is doomed" or "Do not succumb > > to ego." At the end of the movie, Matt gets challenged to a rematch, > > a double or nothing gamble, where the nothing part has the added bonus > > of death. He accepts. He wins. But as he flies off the Vegas it's > > obvious to me that he is doomed as a professional gambler. We all have > > a bit of the Matt Damon character in us, times when our ego or desire > > for a quick increase in bankroll causes us to consider gambles that > > are too risky. > > >
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