Since poker has started

  

Since poker has started


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Garvin Gray    (2009-01-28)
Since poker has started


Since poker has started on here, it feels as a general rule that my chess opponents are taking longer to reply with their moves, suggesting that poker is taking over.

Has anyone else noticed this? If my hypothesis is correct, then this would be a real shame and could cause me to find another chess freestyle site.



Josef Riha    (2009-01-28 09:50:08)
Hello Garvin,

I agree with your feeling. Seems that I have the same problem.
And on the other hand it looks that chess tournaments need more time to start.


Thibault de Vassal    (2009-01-28 10:42:57)
Poker vs. Chess

I don't feel that poker playing time interfers so much with correspondence chess.

This (the time for chess waiting lists to fill) is quite usual before the start of a new championship... So, to be continued. I'll keep an eye on this.


Francisco Gramajo    (2009-01-29 03:42:30)
Poker insults Chess...

My friends: Years ago I was addicted to poker, losing a lot of money on line, also in real casinos. I was a chess player since 13, but dont like the openings, I was tired to play same thing... e1-aggg! same faces... and a lot of fake players on line. I discover this place by mistake, I was so happy because keep my fix with chess in peace. Playing with decent players. Not only doing regular openings... Then you install poker... how come poker? again... I am playing in my local casinos again, and afraid to tell about his site, because I don't want a lot of people playing here making this place full of poker players. The finest, the few, the chess... te best. I suggest you Thib, separate ficgs from poker, and create a really server to play poker in a table with many players a time. Play poker heads-up one to one, is bored, the winner is not always the best. The future of ficgs is compromised with poker, but not for bad... go ahead and crate... fipgs... Best Regards!!!!


Thibault de Vassal    (2009-01-29 12:33:51)
FICGS

Hi Francisco, these important points need to be discussed for sure.

1) As it has been said here on another point, I shouldn't try to protect players from themselves, but I've to protect players from other players (speaking of the quality of the games, general forfeits & so on - or the posts of Garvin & Josef in this thread). You can play poker all over the internet, it's up to you only. I'm not sure I should feel responsible of players addictions, the whole world (commercial issues) is about addictions that exist anyway. In my experience, I was not really addicted to poker as a gambling game, I never played it in casinos but I like competition and that's the way I introduced poker here, quite different from the casino games (by the way a few "pro" poker players here do not even understand it).

2) "Play poker heads-up one to one, is bored, the winner is not always the best", so chess, so Go... of course. I may be wrong on the poker games format (3 winning rounds / 100 chips), we'll see it in a few months as the rating list will evolve.

3) "Poker insults chess", I don't agree with this but I understand & respect this opinion (that could probably be "Poker insults" in some cases). Only 1 player cancelled his membership because of this at the moment. I'm sorry about this, I can't satisfy everyone when making updates but be sure I'm working for FICGS firstly as a chess place and thanks to poker (even with no money), we welcome more players & the prizes (for chess tournaments) will increase a lot in the next months. That's quite good for the site in my opinion. Anyway if I realize I'm wrong, no doubt I'll change it.

Anyway, that's an interesting & important discussion and I'll listen to all your points.


Garvin Gray    (2009-01-31 18:25:30)
2/3 or 3/5??

I recall seeing somewhere on here that someone was suggesting that poker be best 2 out of 3 instead of 3 out of 5. I would have to agree with that, judging from the length of the games I am involved in so far.


Thibault de Vassal    (2009-01-31 20:20:59)
3/5

2/3, 3/5, 4/7 or 5/9 .. well, the longer the games, the more significant are the games & ratings. Nothing more... So IMO 5/9 is even better :)


Normajean Yates    (2009-02-01 09:55:59)
poker is NOT interfering with chess..

Players that are *choosing* poker over chess (as posted by some as reason for delay on moving, delay in tournaments starting...) are either not *that* interested in chess anyway, OR it is a transient phenomenon - they are trying out poker as a novelty.

We are humans, not dedicated chess-playing machines.

If someone takes longer to move because of poker or anything else (whether the 'anything else' is related to this site or not, whether it is related to the internet or not); it gives me either more time to analyse, or effectively more vacation time, so I see no reason to complain.

If poker generates revenue for ficgs, it will help ficgs survive and so it will help ficgs chess (and go) survive.

The point is, whatever choices we make have to be made taking into account that we are embedded in a capitalist economy. We are not living in some anarchist utopia.




Don Groves    (2009-02-01 10:44:54)
3/5 or ?

Thibault: Its true that longer games are better for ratings but the question is how much better? If a game lasts 100 hands, there is about a 10% chance that the game was decided by luck rather than skill (one player getting significantly better hole cards than the other). If a game lasts 300 hands, that chance drops to about 3%. If a game lasts 500 hands, it drops to about 1.8% So you can see there is a diminishing return in having long games to make the ratings better. It would take 10,000 hands before the chance of luck winning instead of skill dropped to 1%.

I have some games now that are over 300 hands and nowhere near finished. Also some of my games ended after only 100 or fewer moves so those games could easily have been decided by luck. It just isn't realistic to think that games lasting several hundred moves are the answer to good ratings. You can never account for a run of good luck winning a game in only a few hands.

It would be interesting to know the average length of the games completed so far using best 3/5. It could very well be that best 2/3 would give very reasonable ratings and more games will be played in the same length of time.


Garvin Gray    (2009-02-01 14:19:04)
2/3 or 3/5??

2/3 also does allow for playing of more opponents, which will help in sorting out ratings by meeting more opponents quicker.


Thibault de Vassal    (2009-02-01 15:14:58)
The fact is...

... ratings should be in accordance (as much as possible) with ELO rating system : if player A is rated 1800 and player B is rated 2000, player B should win about 3 games out of 4. So the question isn't first to make ratings "accurate" (by the number of games), but to be "significant" .. eg. in a 1 round games system (30 hands max.), all players would be rated from 1600 to 1700, this has absolutely no interest.

Don's statistics are interesting and actually (imo) justify 3/5, it is probably possible to estimate the best average number of hands [btw the no-limit is not the best way, but more fun] but in my experience 2/3 is not enough. The longest game reached 1000 moves already (maybe about 400 hands), some games lasted about 35 moves only (of course the chancy factor is bigger there), it is hard to "calculate" anything one thing is sure, the longer the games, the more significant are ratings... then of course, the more games, the more accurate are ratings.


Francisco Gramajo    (2009-02-05 05:43:45)
Chess players playing poker...

Is interesting, like Henry Mitchel playing baketball.

See me... playing poker against Pichelin... My dream came true, playing against the champion!!!
Thank you, Mr. Thibault, honestly I am having a really good time here.

God Bless ficgs.com!!!

Only one question?
Is ficgs.com ready to receive a lot of poker players? How many playes is your server capacity?


Thibault de Vassal    (2009-02-05 10:26:51)
Server capacity

Hi again Francisco, well if one day the server capacity is not enough anymore, I'll change the server, that's so simple :) At the moment, we can welcome much more players IMO.


Garvin Gray    (2009-02-09 14:07:50)
blind increase.

Do the blinds increase as more hands are played? ie for every 50 hands played, the blinds go from 1 to 3 to 5 etc?


Thibault de Vassal    (2009-02-09 16:12:03)
Blinds

It's all in the tournament rules : "The small blind's value is doubled after the 50th hand, then after the 70th, 80th, 90th and 100th hand (the big blind then is 64 chips) of each round."


Nadia Kaif    (2009-03-20 05:14:31)
Poker should be separated

I joined this forum for chess not for poker