I don't play cards.
Without a doubt, I loved this story and description.<p>"Durrrr can be dumb. Sometimes he makes mistakes, he tilts, he makes clearly –EV calls and he sticks huge stacks in with rags against the nuts over and over again. Durrrr is often reckless, sometimes emotional, and even at times irrational. Durrrr is fallible. He is imperfect. And yet, somehow he wins. He outplays, he outmaneuvers, and outthinks. He reached the top. He beat everyone. He became the king. He symbolizes the human in all of us, and he bears testament that one does not need to be perfect, unphaseable, untiltable in order to become great"
Am I the only person who found that article so jargon rich to be almost unreadable? I wonder if people who hear me blathering on about IPsec Transport sessions and RFC 2893 tunnels have the same experience.
It sounded to me like he was baiting them, hustling like a pool shark. He'd make a win, then lose most of it to give the apparently superior player the taste of success and make them risk the big money then he took them for it. Rinse, repeat.<p>The bit where the writer said Isildur went "brb" and came back and won from then made me <i>think</i> he brought some other force into play, either a companion, a hack or a bot.
I was disappointed there wasn't a punchline about Isildur1 being a bot. Heads up poker is much easier for a computer to play than bigger games. Have the top poker players played against the top bots recently?
Because this story was linked-to from HN, I read the article expecting the punch line would be that Isildur1 is software (or maybe a human+software team). I know there's a group at the University of Alberta that's been working on poker-playing software for some time, and no doubt there are other such groups. I don't know enough about online poker to know if there are mechanisms to prevent the use of software. It seems to me it would be hard to tell.
Wow - that was really interesting, despite the jargon. After doing some searches for background information I'm even more impressed. Not to mention shocked by the fact that this top player who has just been knocked off his throne is only 23. I feel poor now :)
One possibility is that Isildur analyzed the current standard of top-level heads-up play and found out that the strategy was exploitable by, for example, playing more aggressively in a lot of cases. If that's the case, standard play will adapt.
I've never played poker online, but I've played some with friends. For me, the fun is in playing against people you can see because you can read their faces. Could anyone explain how online poker is fun without this talking/visual element?
New development: Isildur loses most of the money he won on the previous four weeks.<p><a href="http://www.highstakesdb.com/1343-isildur1-loses-over-3m-to-antonius-and-ivey.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.highstakesdb.com/1343-isildur1-loses-over-3m-to-a...</a><p>Edit: See also <a href="http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-search/isildur1" rel="nofollow">http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-search/isil...</a>
Are there any means of knowing if your opponent is cheating in online poker game?<p>How can you be sure if he is not supported by bot or if he hasn't some means of influencing what cards are dealt or knowing what cards have been dealt to you?<p>Is there some poker specific cryptographic tool for that or you must just assume that system you are using to play is completely secure?
"He has cemented his name in the annals of online poker as one of the strongest players of all time."<p>Really? After just one week of running good?<p>"Since the time I began writing this article, Isildur has lost 2.5M to Patrik Antonius in PLO, cutting his winnings on FTP in half."<p>What a surprise. Cemented, indeed.
Absolutely fascinating.<p>Tell me - when they casually mention being down 250K or up 1.5M .. is that actual money? Because if so, shit, I need to start playing poker ..
I play a bit of poker casually, for fun and profit (PokerStars). Mostly $6 SNGs. What software do I need to get? I had no idea add-ons & tracking were so prevalent ..