Comparing Chess to Poker

A chess player of FIDE master strength was asking about the conversion from Chess to Poker. Here was my response:

If you are FIDE master strength, you have no problems looking at things analytically and are probably already ready to tackle complicated situations where there are many pieces of strategic possibilities.

You're already at a head start because most of your opponents aren't thinking players. They throw their money in and hope they make a pair by the river. The fact that you are making this post puts you way ahead of most low-limit players out there.

So you are used to reading through tomes of chess books. The ability to study material and apply it to your game will be very important. Reviewing your hand histories are as important as reviewing chess games. The only way to improve is to seek out and find your mistakes in past hands you have played.

In my opinion, the major poker books are all available from Two Plus Two Publishing. Definitely learn the material from the following two books inside and out:

- The Theory of Poker by Sklansky
- Small Stakes Hold'em by Miller

Also very important, although it covers more mid/high limit games:

- Hold'em Poker For Advanced Players by Sklansky and Malmuth

Poker is very similar and very different from chess in several ways.

In chess, we often think of things in terms of imbalances that add together to form the strategy and decision of the moves we want to make. Similarly, poker has many complex pieces of information that singularly do not tell you what move you should make, but in their entirety can lead you to a correct decision.

Learning poker pre-flop strategy is much like learning chess openings. You could go the route of memorizing pre-flop hand tables, with all the creativity of memorizing say the French Defense without understanding the purposes of each move.
And pre-flop strategy will only get you so far. Some people learn how to play pre-flop and play terribly when the next three cards come down. It's almost like if you're white with 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 f6, falling out of book lines, would you be able to see 3. Nxe5 fxe5 4. Qh6+?

Now there is a lot of complexity in chess by how many possible moves you can make at any given turn, and computers face combinatorial explosion when they try to evaluate every possible path. Meanwhile Limit Hold'em has at most four choices at any given situation, check, bet, raise or fold. But the complexity comes from the fact that you do not know what your opponent holds.

The key to poker is that it is a game of incomplete information. In chess, there are no secrets, everything in the game is available for everyone to see, and to some degree a best move can be decided for a given position. In poker, since you do not know what your opponent holds, you must, based on the betting patterns of your opponent, be able to put your opponent on a reasonable range of hands and decide on the best course of action from that. This is further complicated by the fact that your choices to check, bet, raise or fold will affect your oppoents guess of your hand and also your table image, or how they will adjust their play based on what they think of you.

The biggest change from chess is that chess is results based, and limit poker is not. If you play the best chess game possible, you will win, plain and simple. If you play perfect poker without a single mistake, you will face losing streaks and have losing sessions. It is hard to determine how well you are applying the material based on the money you are making or losing. You could play terrible poker and win, you could play amazing poker and still lose. The problem is that in poker you are making a decision that will maximize your winnings IN THE LONG TERM.

In a roulette game, if people only bet on red or black, the house has a slight edge. And although for a short period of time the house may be down by a lot of money, in the long run, they are confident they will profit. When playing poker it is the same principle. You make decisions that maximize your profit in the long term, by always keeping the odds in your favor. In the long term you will be rewarded handsomely.

Anyway, I've rambled on and on, but I'd strongly recommend reading Theory of Poker and Small Stakes Hold'em as probably a good place to start. And start with the microlimits (25c/50c) so that you can learn how to play without going broke.