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The Magic Poker Equation: Difference between revisions
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[
** She also mentions learning the game from another old witch with a '[[Non-Linear Character|detached retina in her Second Sight]]'. She learned fast.
* Somewhat [[Justified Trope|justified]] in Robert Asprin's ''[[Myth Adventures|Little Myth Marker]]'', where hero Skeeve finds himself in a flashy high stakes poker challenge; he puts the entire stakes on the first hand without even looking at his cards. The twist being, as he explains to his opponent, he does so because he knows he ''doesn't'' have any outstanding skill at the game—but essentially reducing the game to a coin flip makes the skill gap irrelevant. {{spoiler|But of course, he wins with a big flashy hand anyhow.}}
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* In Joe Queenan's ''America'', Queenan describes an occasion when he went to Atlantic City and sat in on a table with experienced poker players. Not really knowing anything about the game, he just bet when he felt lucky, and started winning—and got a lot of derision from the experienced players for screwing up the 'system'. After one of them took him aside and explained it to him, he started betting by the system—and promptly lost all his winnings and more besides. Not entirely surprisingly, he concluded that the system blows.
** ''[[Truth in Television]]'' at work here, combined with one of Murphy's Rules of Warfare: professionals are predictable, but the world is full of amateurs. Just watch the WSOP when there's a large number of amateurs playing. They don't know when or how to bet, so the unspoken rules of the game are completely out of the window, which in turn throws off the professionals. But, being professionals, the old-timers simply wait out and figure out how each amateur plays. Or pulls them aside to throw them off their game.
** all you need to do to see why this is reality is ask yourself when the last time a professional has won the WSOP. Without checking myself,{{verify}} I am pretty sure it was pre-Chris Moneymaker since his victory encouraged thousands of amateurs to play to the point where the law of averages
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
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