> As a parent, I’m pleased that I’ve given her the tools to put herself through college hustling poker games, and then go work at a proprietary trading firm.
which is presumably written with the same sardonic intent as any other Matt Levine work.
When my kids were maybe 6 and 4 we started playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf as a family. It very quickly became clear this was a bad choice: the oldest went from being terrible at lying (and so ~never doing it) to actually being pretty good, surprisingly quickly. As soon as we noticed this we stopped, and while she didn't go back to how she had been there was definitely much less lying and she didn't remain good at it.
I think it's simpler than that: people get better at things with practice.
Werewolf isn't like poker where people typically try to conceal their emotions and leak nothing; instead you're trying to act like you're on the Villager team regardless of whether you actually are.
It's an essential skill in life anyway, but you also teach the usual ethics and morals and come down hard on them when you catch them in a meaningful lie.
I think it's also considered a developmental milestone as lying requires a pretty sophisticated theory of mind, and an understanding of the perspective of another person
I’d say bluffing in poker isn’t really lying. I mean you certainly can look at it that way, but another way to look at it is “I have good hands here more often than you do so here strategically you have to fold when I bet”
The difference between a lie and a surprise is that soon everyone will know what the surprise was. A lie has the intention of concealing the truth forever.
We tell plenty of lies that aren't intended to hold up forever — whether it's a lie to a stranger that you hope to be away from before the lie becomes apparent, or a lie to a acquaintance that you hope is small enough that the social friction of confronting you over it would be worse than the lie.
Correct, and a bluff is not intended to last forever. Bluffing is revealed eventually, because you can only have a pair of aces so often, statistically speaking.
At that point, the table awareness of the bluff is still profitable because it forces others to bet into your strong hands.
A bluff that is revealed is just as good as one kept secret. Many people seem to misunderstand this.
Bluffing and detecting bluffing is a useful skill as long as used morally. Sort of like learning martial arts - just because we teach kids karate doesn't mean we want them to go around beating people up.
Gambling however can very easily ruin lives and be very adicting.
As someone else pointed out, bluffing is not lying. Bluffing is about applying some randomness to your betting patterns to force your opponents into overbetting slightly on average.
Lying would be trying to introduce a negative correlation between hand strength and bet size; bluffing is merely removing some of the positive correlation that exists.
It's a common misconception that poker is about lying or that you need to lie to play poker.
You can bet with a bad hand, but you don't need to say you have a good hand, if asked you can say you either have a bad hand or a good hand, without any impact to your strategy.
Lying holds no advantage in poker, you can easily play poker without lying, no correlation is intrinsic to the game or its rules, it's just a common association people make
Instead of thinking of a bet as saying "I have good cards" think of it instead as "I have an advantage in this pot", which is not a lie.
In poker advantages can come from cards, or from other objective measures such as position, stack size. And of course from subjective measures like being able to read your opponent.
It’s not tedious at all. Many games have structural information asymmetry, and part of the fun is navigating this. To add an extra verbal lie is categorically different from playing within the bounds of the game
The world order is falling apart and being an intelligent person makes you a target of the "anti-elite". I think teaching kids strategy and deception has never been more important.
The article ends
> As a parent, I’m pleased that I’ve given her the tools to put herself through college hustling poker games, and then go work at a proprietary trading firm.
which is presumably written with the same sardonic intent as any other Matt Levine work.
When my kids were maybe 6 and 4 we started playing One Night Ultimate Werewolf as a family. It very quickly became clear this was a bad choice: the oldest went from being terrible at lying (and so ~never doing it) to actually being pretty good, surprisingly quickly. As soon as we noticed this we stopped, and while she didn't go back to how she had been there was definitely much less lying and she didn't remain good at it.
Do you think she adopted her pokerface she learned it against you or was there another reason?
I think it's simpler than that: people get better at things with practice.
Werewolf isn't like poker where people typically try to conceal their emotions and leak nothing; instead you're trying to act like you're on the Villager team regardless of whether you actually are.
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I think it's balanced by having him or her learn skepticism, game theory, information asymmetry, and adverse selection, among other useful skills.
It's an essential skill in life anyway, but you also teach the usual ethics and morals and come down hard on them when you catch them in a meaningful lie.
You never got away with anything as a teenager?
I think it's also considered a developmental milestone as lying requires a pretty sophisticated theory of mind, and an understanding of the perspective of another person
Ha. I got news for you. They are going to learn that playing poker or not.
I’d say bluffing in poker isn’t really lying. I mean you certainly can look at it that way, but another way to look at it is “I have good hands here more often than you do so here strategically you have to fold when I bet”
The difference between a lie and a surprise is that soon everyone will know what the surprise was. A lie has the intention of concealing the truth forever.
We tell plenty of lies that aren't intended to hold up forever — whether it's a lie to a stranger that you hope to be away from before the lie becomes apparent, or a lie to a acquaintance that you hope is small enough that the social friction of confronting you over it would be worse than the lie.
Correct, and a bluff is not intended to last forever. Bluffing is revealed eventually, because you can only have a pair of aces so often, statistically speaking.
At that point, the table awareness of the bluff is still profitable because it forces others to bet into your strong hands.
A bluff that is revealed is just as good as one kept secret. Many people seem to misunderstand this.
> A lie has the intention of concealing the truth forever.
Is that a thing... in English? Or in some specific part of the world?
Well I guess you better hope your kid kindly shows their hand after you fold to their shove.
I'd be more concerned about encouraging gambling.
Bluffing and detecting bluffing is a useful skill as long as used morally. Sort of like learning martial arts - just because we teach kids karate doesn't mean we want them to go around beating people up.
Gambling however can very easily ruin lives and be very adicting.
As someone else pointed out, bluffing is not lying. Bluffing is about applying some randomness to your betting patterns to force your opponents into overbetting slightly on average.
Lying would be trying to introduce a negative correlation between hand strength and bet size; bluffing is merely removing some of the positive correlation that exists.
It's a common misconception that poker is about lying or that you need to lie to play poker.
You can bet with a bad hand, but you don't need to say you have a good hand, if asked you can say you either have a bad hand or a good hand, without any impact to your strategy.
Lying holds no advantage in poker, you can easily play poker without lying, no correlation is intrinsic to the game or its rules, it's just a common association people make
If we replace the word "lying" with "deception" does that change anything?
Poker players very seldom outright lie, like saying out loud "hey everybody, my hand is great!", and it's usually not just simple "deception" either.
How about "behaving in a way that increases the probability of your particular adversaries making incorrect inferences about your situation"?
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I wouldn’t consider the type of deception fully within the bounds of a game the type of deception I would want to avoided teaching my kids.
or "fraud" or "misrepresentation. No, these would be synonyms.
I’m not sure what meaningful distinction you think you're making between verbally lying and implicitly lying with your bet but it's quite tedious.
You inferred it, but it's not implied.
Instead of thinking of a bet as saying "I have good cards" think of it instead as "I have an advantage in this pot", which is not a lie.
In poker advantages can come from cards, or from other objective measures such as position, stack size. And of course from subjective measures like being able to read your opponent.
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It’s not tedious at all. Many games have structural information asymmetry, and part of the fun is navigating this. To add an extra verbal lie is categorically different from playing within the bounds of the game
The world order is falling apart and being an intelligent person makes you a target of the "anti-elite". I think teaching kids strategy and deception has never been more important.