HUDs and Data Mining: Moral? Mandatory, or Unfair?

To my amazement, I read fairly often in forums of people objecting to HUDs and to Data mining.


If you have been living under a poker rock, a HUD is a heads-up display - when you play online, it shows you for the hands you've played against everybody how loose/ aggressive (and much much more) they are.  Data mining is using the billions of hands played on sites, and extracting information about a player (profitability, and looseness/ aggression) and selling it to people who use it to play better.

Both are fine with me. (And would be if I were an amateur or pro.)

Here is why.  Online poker is a lot like securities trading.  There is some math, there is some psychology, and there is balancing risk and security.  When I traded stocks and bonds online, I had data on all my companies/ securities, as well as information about who was buying and selling a given stock, as well as market analyses, graphs, trends, and 'forecasts'.

Some people don't.  Some buy 'tips'.  Some do what their broker says. Some play hunches.  All are valid strategies.  But to INSIST that I, who take things seriously, have to play hunches, or seat of pants, and use only my memory to remember thousands (tens of thousands) of stocks, profit and losses, charts, news events, and 'math' is daft.

I maintain that online poker is morally exactly the same pursuit as day trading.  Duh, it is not the same thing - but they differ in ways that are not relevant morally.

A poker day-trader can sit with a few beers, gambol-gambol, and vaguely remember that IamaHUGEfish likes to get it in light, whereas Immasuckyoudry is a solid reg.  It is his money, and I hope he can afford to lose.  He would get better odds in roulette, but he likes poker more.  He plays for fun.

Our other day trader (poker pro) dropped out of MIT where he was a Math and Finance major.  He treats poker as if he were trading stocks.  He could no more buy a stock on a 'hunch' than he would put 10k on a roulette table.  He could work at Goldman analyzing stocks easily enough, but he prefers poker.  He has three monitors, and securities (player) data, market data (table and game selection), and analytical tools (Stove, SnG Wiz, Flopzilla, etc).  He records and studies his hands and opponent hands.   He loves the game, but he plays to make money.

Both are valid. To insist that both people play like the first (beer drinking, hunch following, barely remembering) is completely absurd.

Just like poker, there is a trading equivalent of live poker. (Most stock trading is in offices now.)  You remember the scene from Trading Places (Murphy and Nolte) - where they traded on the 'floor'.  No computers, no databases, no math - just hunch, psychology, fear and greed.  They probably knew that when the guy from Lake Forest came to the front of the crowed he was going to sell a ton (and move the market downward), but they kept no 'player notes'.

In trading,both forms (live and 'online') co-exist.  In trading there are math guys, and there are intuitives; there are 'regs' (pros) and fish.

I'm no libertarian (more socialist), but in this instance interfering with the market would be absurd.  The market will rearrange itself so fish can play anonymously (Bovada), and some fish will learn to use the tools (it isn't very hard!) and get better.

Data mining will wait for another day - but the same sorts of principals apply.

For those who care, I'm a poker pro, former investment banker, former entrepreneur, with a Masters degree in Moral Philosophy (among others).

Poker as a Career Choice: Should I play Poker professionally? (Part 1)

What started as pure recreation in 2004, and became a substantial focus in 2009, is now my chief source of income and where most of my productive time is spent.  To some extent, I chose this, and to some extent circumstances pushed me into it.  As the Buddhists say 'and now this'.  Here I am, what should I do.

Despite the fact that I am 51 and have achieved a great deal in other spheres, have several college degrees, have had several different white (starched white) collar careers, there is an old nagging question: is this what I ought to be doing with my life?

My credentials for writing this?  One of the things I’ve done with my life is to earn a degree in Organizational Psychology, and one aspect of that field is ‘career choice’.  Another thing is to qualify and earn my living as a career/ life coach for some of the highest paid people in the world.  And I play Poker professionally now – so my comments come from ‘inside’ the profession (so to speak).

The reasons I ask this question of myself, and you should ask it of yourself are two-fold.

If you don’t think you ‘ought’ to be doing this, then there will be limits to your happiness.  You may achieve a lot, but if the voice in your head (sometimes called the ‘itty bitty shitty committee’) feels you ought to be doing something else, the ‘bracelet’ moment will be quickly followed by more existential malaise.  This is not theory.  I returned from a massive series where I’d won two tournaments and narrowly missed ‘player of the series’.  I’ve been somewhat depressed since and this ‘ought I to be doing this’ is part of that depression.  (In a later article series, I'm going to discuss poker, addiction and mental health.)

If you don’t think you ought to be doing it, you will not devote yourself passionately, whole-heartedly to being the best you can be.  You may be talented, but you will not spend the countless hours away from the tables improving.  You may not take ancillary factors seriously enough: diet, sleep, exercise.  You may distract yourself with other, more ‘legit’ pursuits.

So we, I, need to settle this question.  You need to settle this question.

Let us first deal with ‘ought’.  In ethics, ‘ought’ has some moral force.  In Freudian psychology, ‘ought’ is the superego (parental and societal influences) talking.  Always, the ‘ought’ in poker comes out against it.  It doesn’t count as a legit occupation in the eyes of society – despite the fact, as I’ve argued elsewhere, that poker is precisely the same set of intellectual activities as trading on Wall Street.  Few parents, and especially not mine, find tears of pride when they discuss ‘my son the poker player’.

However passionately we may feel about the game, those are substantial psychic forces – greater in some individuals than in others – will act as a counterweight to our passion: a ‘but’ that will always be there.  That can be hard to live with.  In this century, in the West, we are unlikely to get invited to the snootiest of country clubs.

It is ok to care about this (negative) influence; it is ok to not care about it.  What is less ok from a psychological point of view is to pretend not to care (who gives a s^&t) when actually part of you does.  Intellectual honesty is required, and in my case, with my parentage, and the cultural influences in my life, the ‘my son the poker bum’ will be hard to avoid.  It is one of the realities I have to live with.

When you do decide ‘I can live with this’, it is wise to be aware that it may limit opportunities elsewhere.  The nice girl you now want to marry, may decide as tying the knot comes closer, that the ‘oughts’ in her life are too strongly against marrying a poker player.

Samurai warriors used to visualize their fear out in front of them, at their sword tip, so they could 'look it in the eye'.  That is what, if you are serious, you need to do with the 'oughts' in your Pokerlife.  They are always there - the choice is how to accept them fully, and deal with them honestly and squarely.

In part 2, I will look at a model of career values, and provide you with a ‘values questionnaire’ to help you decide whether poker aligns with your values.

In part 3, I will look at a three-part career model (from career counseling), which asks whether the three key career choice factors are there:  passion, skills/ aptitude, and lifestyle fit.

Paul Gibbons has been an investment banker, a consultant, a top executive coach, and a successful serial entrepreneur.  In 2011, he founded Healthy Poker LLC.  He has $500k in live and online cashes during the last eighteen months. He has degrees in Biochemistry, Philosophy and Psychology.

Epistemology, Poker and Health

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge.  What do we mean when we say we 'know' something?  When Carl Jung said 'I do not believe in God, I know...', did he mean the same thing as I do when I say 'I know that 3 plus 4 are seven', or 'I know that object is blue'.

There are two interesting tracks in Epistemology relevant to Poker.  I will cover just one now (and very briefly).  The second is skepticism which I will get to another day.

It has to do with two different 'kinds of knowledge' - conceptual knowledge (know about), and practical knowledge (know how).

Lets quickly take losing weight.  We all (conceptually) know about losing weight - fewer calories and more exercise (broadly).  Some of the fattest people could probably reel off the calorie count of half the items in the supermarket.  It does no good.

'Know how' is the ability to do that which we 'know about.'  What becomes interesting is someone who says, 'I know HOW to exercise, I just don't'.  We should treat this skeptically - KNOWING HOW to exercise is more than just knowing what to do at the gym, it is KNOWING HOW to get your body to the gym.

Take a Poker parallel.  I may 'know' that I can check-raise bluff this river profitably - villain never has more than a pair.  But, if in the moment, I freeze, 'wait for a better spot' or otherwise chicken out, do we really know HOW TO check raise bluff rivers?  If we can't overcome the anxiety (of putting in a lot of money with no hand), or the habit (of sitting on the couch rather than going to the gym 3-4x per week), can we accurately say we KNOW HOW rather than KNOW ABOUT?

The second point is that conceptual knowledge can be the enemy of personal change.  This is important, because you could say that CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE is  the bedrock or foundation of practical knowledge.  In fact, it can be the enemy of PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE.  How many times do we wave off advice, ignore criticism, or opportunities to learn and change thinking 'I KNOW THAT'.  I see this in my programs on personal effectiveness (time management) - people 'know about' time management (because it is pretty simple), but they suck at it.  They let the fact that the CONCEPTS are simple get in the way of the hard work of applying them.

When it comes to personal change, improving, learning, growing, KNOWING ABOUT is the booby prize.

What this blog will be about

Once upon a time, I had a blog that contain all my writing from everything that interests me.  One aspect of that was consulting to Fortune 100 corporations, and my left-wing politics, poker travels and troubles, and generally diasporic lifestyle create an impression they don't value.


So, because I love writing, and want to keep friends updated with thinking, travels, winnings and losings, great ideas, etc

So here is a list of subjects:

Poker travelogue
PAULGIBBO poker updates
Great (philosophical) quotations
Poker and Philosophy
Healthy Poker
Politics