Poker and Chess

Four of a kind

How many of you guys play a little chess as well as poker? If I remember correctly a year of two ago her on boards there was a tournament advertised which had a chess tournament as a side event, along with a poker side event. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that....just came into my head there.
I think Lederer was nearly at grandmaster status in Chess in New York before he stumbled on poker. And Swartz(however its "spelled" at last years WSOP main event final table also is fairly handy at moving the pieces.
How many other pro's are playing/played chess? Hansen is a cu nt at backgammon as well as chess.

keane2097

Yeah Lederer moved to New York to play chess iirc and fell into poker while there.

Dan Harrington was also a fairly nifty chess player iirc...

the whole year inn

Chris Ferguson was very good at chess before poker.Also throwing cards threw bananas.

Tight Ted

I dunno if any of you ever heard of him, but there's a guy called Greg Shahade who's a chess player first and also a pro poker player, he's a top chess guy and has founded leagues and stuff despite the fact he's 30.

I think it's logical enough that a lot of good chess players make good poker players, when you consider that top attributes for each are logic and intelligence. A lot of good gamesmen make good poker players, be they backgammon players or even Starcraft or Quake 4 players.

Grafter

I asked the same question when I started playing poker and was told that there isn't much relevance because chess is a game of complete information while poker is a game of incomplete information.

I still think a chess background helps, but I have been persuaded by the argument that a backgammon background is better.

Tight Ted

Grafter wrote: »

I asked the same question when I started playing poker and was told that there isn't much relevance because chess is a game of complete information while poker is a game of incomplete information.

I still think a chess background helps, but I have been persuaded by the argument that a backgammon background is better.

I don't particularly think having the background helps, I think it's more of case that if you're good at chess/backgammon, there's more of a chance that you might be good at poker with a bit of learning/practice.

Dave147

I play chess, at a decent-ish level, still make mistakes but can definitely hold my own.. When I'm really concentrating at it I'd be pretty good. Friend of mine is a high stakes Omaha player, he's also got a rating of 2367 in chess, which makes him an FM or Fide Master, not quite Grand Master but not too far away either. I think there is a fuzzy correlation between the two.. The reason I think boils down to intelligence, you're not going to find an idiot who's an expert at chess, they wouldn't have the brains to learn all the openings and sequences. So when a good chess player plays poker he puts the same effort in, bingo!

Grafter

Tight Ted wrote: »

I don't particularly think having the background helps, I think it's more of case that if you're good at chess/backgammon, there's more of a chance that you might be good at poker with a bit of learning/practice.

Agreed, background probably wasn't a good choice of word.

My intention was to suggest that being good at chess may be somewhat helpful in poker, but that being good at backgammon which involves luck/chance and an understanding of probability is potentially more helpful.

Sparks43

yep i play chess poker and backgammon with some draughts monopaly and even ludo as well

on the active side i play pool darts and snooker also enjoy fishing

im 31 male with a gsoh, smoker ,who can give or take


chit thought this was the contacts forum:p:D;)

robinblinds

Grafter wrote: »

I asked the same question when I started playing poker and was told that there isn't much relevance because chess is a game of complete information while poker is a game of incomplete information.

I still think a chess background helps, but I have been persuaded by the argument that a backgammon background is better.

100% agree. I had a chat with a very accomplished chess and poker player regarding this recently and the above is exactly what he said.

Slash/ED

I routinely crush my friends at monopoly, and have won the Jackpot 20 euro tournament, I'm not saying anything but read into that what you will...

RoundTower

Four of a kind wrote: »

How many of you guys play a little chess as well as poker? If I remember correctly a year of two ago her on boards there was a tournament advertised which had a chess tournament as a side event, along with a poker side event. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that....just came into my head there.
I think Lederer was nearly at grandmaster status in Chess in New York before he stumbled on poker. And Swartz(however its "spelled" at last years WSOP main event final table also is fairly handy at moving the pieces.
How many other pro's are playing/played chess? Hansen is a cu nt at backgammon as well as chess.

Playing games of any sort seriously makes it easier to start taking another game seriously. I think the correlation between chess strength and poker strength is extremely weak though -- out of all the hundreds of semi-famous poker players there are only 2 or 3 examples of strong chess players. Howard Lederer being close to Grandmaster strength is probably just a fiction made up by ESPN.

I think Magic: the Gathering is probably the game which correlates the most with poker.

busted flush

RoundTower wrote: »

I think Magic: the Gathering is probably the game which correlates the most with poker.

This is a point i completely agree with.

karpov33

The guy that finished 2nd in san remo was a chess master with a rarting over 2300

TommyGunne

If you're good enough at a game like chess, its likely you have attributes that will put you ahead of the pack in terms of poker, ie logic, some maths, quick thinking, work ethic, probably leaning towards obsession towards improving at the game you play etc. Its just Bayesian that you will naturally be better at poker than a randomer.

That being said, as has been mentioned, MTG, bridge and backgammon may have slightly more common ground in strengths required (I know very little of MTG but apparently its quite a good indicator.) Its apparently ridiculous the amount of poker pros that have developed from both the top quality bridge and backgammon scenes though. I couldn't give you many examples, but just what I've heard, and logic confirms that its possible.

RoundTower wrote:

I think the correlation between chess strength and poker strength is extremely weak though -- out of all the hundreds of semi-famous poker players there are only 2 or 3 examples of strong chess players.

Not sure if you typed what you meantt to say here, but this is really bad logic. I'm sure you meant something else though.

Slash/ED wrote: »

I routinely crush my friends at monopoly, and have won the Jackpot 20 euro tournament, I'm not saying anything but read into that what you will...

Now I know....

RoundTower

TommyGunne wrote: »

Not sure if you typed what you meantt to say here, but this is really bad logic. I'm sure you meant something else though.

No I think I meant this. Let's say there are 500 poker celebs, some obviously more famous than others. Dan Harrington and Ylon Schwartz are the only 2 of those 500 who are master-level chess players. If there was really a strong correlation you'd expect to see more than that. There must be 20 who were serious MTG players.

edit: obviously 2/500 is really high compared to a sample of the general population, but I'm saying that if there was a real correlation it would be much higher still.

Irish_Nomad

RoundTower wrote: »

Howard Lederer being close to Grandmaster strength is probably just a fiction made up by ESPN.

There is a Howard Lederer of NY listed here with a rating of 1951 who hasn't been active since 1986. That might be him.

Dave147 wrote: »

Friend of mine is a high stakes Omaha player, he's also got a rating of 2367 in chess, which makes him an FM or Fide Master, not quite Grand Master but not too far away either.

From what I recall a rough guideline of your strength is :
2200+ FIDE Master
2300+ International Master
2400+ Grandmaster
2600+ World Class GM

karpov33

a lot of poker players claim to be good chess players but are not

karpov33

Brian townsend claimed to make money at chess in college .You dont make money at chess.he was just bull sh en

Irish_Nomad

RoundTower wrote: »

No I think I meant this. Let's say there are 500 poker celebs, some obviously more famous than others. Dan Harrington and Ylon Schwartz are the only 2 of those 500 who are master-level chess players. If there was really a strong correlation you'd expect to see more than that. There must be 20 who were serious MTG players.

edit: obviously 2/500 is really high compared to a sample of the general population, but I'm saying that if there was a real correlation it would be much higher still.

I don't know anything about MTG so I'm severely handicapped in debating this. Maybe you can give some info for comparison :
There are currently 174 IMs/GMs in the USA, how many serious MTG players are there ?
Reaching the standard of GM would require a minimum of 10-15 years dedicated effort even for the most talented prodigy. What kind of effort is needed to reach the MTG standard you are comparing it with ?

RoundTower

Irish_Nomad wrote: »

Reaching the standard of GM would require a minimum of 10-15 years dedicated effort even for the most talented prodigy.

I know nothing about MTG either, but I can tell you that there are quite a few people who have been Grandmasters before the age of 15, and at least one at the age of 12.

RoundTower

Irish_Nomad wrote: »

There is a Howard Lederer of NY listed here with a rating of 1951 who hasn't been active since 1986. That might be him.

probably is him. It's easy to see how ESPN could have decided to run with a story of "could have been a chess Grandmaster" but it's a bit like saying someone who plays five-a-side twice a week could be starting for Man Utd. Your guesses at what the ratings mean aren't too far off as a rough guide.

TommyGunne

RoundTower wrote: »

edit: obviously 2/500 is really high compared to a sample of the general population.

Ye this is kinda what I meant. I don't know how many chess players try poker, nevermind how many top notch chess players play poker. I would be pretty definite that there was a significant correlation, but as you say not as strong as MTG. There also seems to be a much greater ethos of MTG players trying poker, which can skew perceptions. Also, I would imagine it is more likely that a top class MTG player would be more likely to try poker than a top class chess player.

Saying that out of 500 famous chess players only two have been known to be good at chess means literally nothing. Its looking at things in completely the wrong way.

RoundTower

TommyGunne wrote: »

Saying that out of 500 famous chess players only two have been known to be good at chess means literally nothing. Its looking at things in completely the wrong way.

looking at it from the other direction -- probably 90% of chess grandmaster have at least tried their hand at poker. For some of them it stuck and there are quite a few playing poker professionally/semi professionally. There are still some who are big fish too though.

I'd say if you took 500 GMs and 500 accounting graduates and told them all to play poker for a year or two, both groups would do better than the general population but the GMs wouldn't do significantly better than the accountants.

TommyGunne

RoundTower wrote: »

looking at it from the other direction -- probably 90% of chess grandmaster have at least tried their hand at poker. For some of them it stuck and there are quite a few playing poker professionally/semi professionally. There are still some who are big fish too though.

I'd say if you took 500 GMs and 500 accounting graduates and told them all to play poker for a year or two, both groups would do better than the general population but the GMs wouldn't do significantly better than the accountants.

Thats a very dodgy assumption. I know a good few accounting graduates, and I wouldn't bet that they would ever understand anything that has any sort of probability attached to it .

I know that you know more about the chess scene than I do, so I can't really argue with the first paragraph. It just seems pretty logical that they would on average be winners at 2/4. I have no doubt that GMs would have a mean result significantly better than mine for example, and that I would have significantly better results than an average accounting graduate. You have a lot more information than me though, so you can probably make better estimate, just seems that some of your thoughts there weren't fleshed out very well/lacked reasoning.

TommyGunne

Also, can someone explain to me what Magic the Gathering is?

Irish_Nomad

RoundTower wrote: »

I know nothing about MTG either, but I can tell you that there are quite a few people who have been Grandmasters before the age of 15, and at least one at the age of 12.

According to Wikipedia there are 15 people in this category so ok maybe I overstated the minimum and it can be done in 7 years. I don't think that significantly affects what I was saying. If you don't know anything about MTG then you're comparing apples with something that may or may not be apples. I don't get the point.

RoundTower wrote: »

looking at it from the other direction -- probably 90% of chess grandmaster have at least tried their hand at poker.

I would be amazed this is true. The only thing I am confident is true of 90% of GMs is that they are male. No doubt poker is widely popular in the USA but that country only accounts for 6% of GMs. what makes you think that virtually all Chinese, Ukrainian, and Spanish GMs have tried poker ?

There are just over 1000 GMs at present. I think it's reasonable to assume that most of those will never try to make a career outside chess (90% ? ). Those that do leave will do so for a whole variety of reasons - want to go into politics (e.g. Kasparov), have a business idea they want to pursue, just can't take chess anymore, etc. The number that decide they want to play poker instead has to be so few that they are bound to be a scarce commodity at all levels of poker and any extrapolations would be suspect.

Personally I think if they were going to take up cards they are likely to find bridge more appealing than poker. I can't speak of other countries but I know a couple of Irish chess champions that stopped playing altogether and took up bridge seriously instead. Are there similar examples in Ireland of people switching from chess to poker ?

cardshark202

TommyGunne wrote: »

Also, can someone explain to me what Magic the Gathering is?

I know nothing about it but I think its like top trumps for nerds

RoundTower

Irish_Nomad wrote: »

I would be amazed this is true. The only thing I am confident is true of 90% of GMs is that they are male. No doubt poker is widely popular in the USA but that country only accounts for 6% of GMs. what makes you think that virtually all Chinese, Ukrainian, and Spanish GMs have tried poker ?

because to be a GM you have to play in international tournaments and there is often poker. Maybe 90% is too high and it should be 75% or something. Poker is wildly popular in Spain and the Ukraine too, didn't you know?

Saying 90% of GMs will never try to make a career outside of chess is laughable, I'd guess it's more like 50%. And I don't see why they would take up bridge ahead of poker, there is obviously way more money in poker. There aren't any Irish-born professional chess players so asking if anyone has "switched" from chess to poker is a bit meaningless, pretty much all strong Irish chess players have at least tried their hand at it and there are a few who play seriously/try to make a living.

Irish_Nomad

RoundTower wrote: »

because to be a GM you have to play in international tournaments and there is often poker. Maybe 90% is too high and it should be 75% or something. Poker is wildly popular in Spain and the Ukraine too, didn't you know?

Sometimes poker is played at chess tournaments therefore most GMs play poker ? I don't buy that argument. When I played tournaments in Ireland (quite a while ago I admit) there were often poker games going as well but it was almost always the same 8-10 people playing and I didn't see signs of a broad appeal.

Hendonmob lists less than 100 Ukrainians which isn't a lot from a population of 45m so what tells you poker is wildly popular there ?

RoundTower wrote: »

Saying 90% of GMs will never try to make a career outside of chess is laughable

Good thing I put a smiley face after it. I was making fun of your 90% play poker claim.

Out of the 1000 GMs how many do you think are likely to switch to poker ?