admin, Author at Paul Phua Poker

I wrote a few weeks ago about the differences between playing face to face and online. And how one of the big factors now in online poker is how computers are used. Software helps the players who have it work out what moves their opponents are likely to do next. It’s a big advantage. But I can’t believe the next development in the poker news world. Now a computer has beaten players without the help of a human being!!

First of all, in early January, a computer program developed by researchers in Canada and the Czech Republic beat several players. But that was just the starter to the main course.

Later in the month, there was a much bigger experiment. One that everyone in the poker world was waiting for. A computer program called Libratus played 120,000 hands over 20 days against four of the best poker players around. This would be a real test. And again, the same thing happened. The human poker players were beaten.

According to the Guardian newspaper, Dong Kim, Jason Les, Jimmy Chou and Daniel McAulay spent “11 hours each day stationed at computer screens in the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh battling a piece of software at no-limit Texas Holdem, a two-player unlimited form of poker. Libratus outmaneuvered them all, winning more than US$1.7m in chips. (Thankfully for the poker pros, they weren’t playing with real money)”

It is much more difficult for a computer to win at poker than it is at other games like chess. With chess, the computer and its human opponents have all the available information relating to the game. Everyone can see the whole board. There are no secrets. This is why computers were able to get good at chess several decades ago. I remember the games between the IBM computer Deep Blue and Gary Kasparov in the nineties. Kasparov won the first game. But Deep Blue won the second. It was the first time a computer had beaten a reigning world chess champion under tournament conditions.

However, with poker, it is much harder for the computer. There are lots of secrets. Players don’t get to see each other’s hands. So the computer doesn’t either. The computer has to cope with the fact that player A and player B will play the same cards differently. For this reason, it has taken much longer for them to learn how to play well at poker.

There are tens of thousands of different ways that a poker hand can develop – but a computer can deal with that complexity of information. However, if the computer wants to win, it has to do more. It has to learn the human characteristics of intuition. It even has to learn how to bluff. It has to learn how to second guess.

The amazing thing that this tournament in Pittsburgh shows is that computer programs CAN learn how to do that. They can learn how to play like humans – adding to their already huge advantages of data processing and speed of “thought”. As the Technology Review put it when talking about the Prague experiment, “perhaps most interestingly, the academics behind the work say their program overcame its human opponents by using an approximation approach that they compare to “gut feeling.”

Noam Brown, the Carnegie Mellon university student who built Libratus along with his professor of computer science Tuomas Sandholm, said “we didn’t tell Libratus how to play poker. We gave it the rules of poker and said ‘learn on your own’. The bot started playing randomly but over the course of playing trillions of hands was able to refine its approach and arrive at a winning strategy.”

One of the beaten poker players Jason Les said “Libratus turned out to be way better than we imagined. It’s slightly demoralizing. If you play a human and lose, you can stop, take a break. Here we have to show up to take a beating every day for 11 hours a day. It’s a real different emotional experience when you’re not used to losing that often”

I’m very interested in Mathematics. In probability. It’s one of the reasons I like poker so much. Computers have always been good at calculating that sort of thing. But I never thought they could learn how to do the other things in poker that you get face to face. Reading tells. Bluffing. Getting into your opponent’s head. Making them scared of your cards. Or more likely to make mistakes. Intuition. All that other stuff. It seems they can.

One advantage a computer also has is that it never gets tired. As long as it is plugged in. I’ll have to remember that if I ever play one!

Hi everyone. Paul here.
One of the great stories in sport is when an outsider wins the big prize. Boris Becker at Wimbledon back in 1985. Leicester City winning the English Premier League last year. Greece winning the European football championships in 2004. Everyone loves an underdog, and when the underdog goes on to win the big prize, it’s really special. It gives everyone hope they too can achieve their dreams. But these occasions are rare.
The improbable can happen in Texas Holdem poker, though, and that’s one of the reasons why I love it. Experience, bankroll, knowledge – yes, they count for a lot. But you also see lots of different players winning the main tournaments. Bad cards can send a great player to the rail. And an unknown player can take a true pro by surprise.
Last week you’ll have seen, if you followed me on Twitter (@paulphuapoker), that the impossible did indeed happen. A total unknown outsider won the big prize at a tournament in Australia.
The man of the moment is a guy called Shurane Vijayaram from Melbourne. And he became an overnight millionaire with an initial stake of just 130 Australian dollars. Yes not 130,000, or 13,000. Just 130. His story is worth telling in full because it’s so great.
He didn’t even get to enter directly into the main tournament. Like in golf or tennis, where they have qualifiers, here it was the same. Over a week before the final game, Shurane entered a feeder poker tournament at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, his home city, where the Main Event would also be held. He had to pay the A$130 (almost exactly US$100) to enter. The reason why this was attractive was that the winner of this tournament would go on to get an entry into the main Aussie Millions event. Professional players from around the world were turning up for this a few days later, hoping to win the million dollar plus prize. Luckily for Shurane he did win that feeder tournament. And that gave him the golden ticket worth A$10,600 (around US$8,150) into the Aussie Millions main event.
So he enters what we now know to be his first ever big time cash tournament. It’s being streamed online, with the coverage hosted by pro Jason Somerville. 30,000 people are watching.
And after eight full days of play, if you include the preliminary and main events, he beats 723 other opponents to win the A$1.6m pot (about US$1.23m). It was his first ever cash tournament so he had no experience of high stakes tournament play! Even more incredible. And he beat some top pros along the way. People who play month in month out in cash games for big prizes.
But it’s not just that which is so impressive. It’s the way the whole tournament ended too.
In the final hand Shurane ended up heads up against pro Ben Heath who went “all in” against him. Heath is a highly regarded up-and-coming pro poker player who had already won some big pots at some big tournaments. All Shurane had was a pair of fives. Not a great hand. But he went ahead and called Heath’s “all-in” anyway. And he was right to do so because his opponent was just holding a king and an eight.
Such a brave thing to do, especially for such an inexperienced player. And it won him a large amount of money. The commentator called Shurane’s play “unreal”. He’s right.
After his unlikely win, Shurane said “I’ve always just tried to play cards and relax, it’s only a game. I just try to play my best game and not think about people that are really good players. It doesn’t matter who you are, you just have to get the cards.”
Yes, Shurane, but you also have to know how to play them! And your call on the pair of fives shows us you can play even when you don’t have great cards.
I look forward to seeing you back at a tournament soon Shurane!

FINAL RESULTS
1 Shurane Vijayaram (Australia) – A$1.6 million and gold bracelet worth A$30,000
2 Ben Heath (United Kingdom) – A$1 million
3 Tobias Hausen (Germany) – A$620,000
4 Jeff Rossiter (Australia) – A$440,000
5 Fedor Holz (Germany) – A$335,000
6 David Olson (United States) – A$270,000
7 Luke Roberts (Australia) – A$210,000

I know that many of you will be celebrating Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, over the next week. It’s the end of the year of the Monkey and the start of the year of the Rooster. It’s an important time in the part of the world where I come from. Families reunite, work becomes less important.
Luck is a hugely important aspect to Chinese culture and this is true in the New Year especially. Washing hair, eating porridge, being near crying children are all things that some say are unlucky at this time of the year. There are also many people who think that you shouldn’t talk about money, or lend money too. Offices, businesses, shops all close.
However it’s clear that not everyone feels the same way. Chinese people don’t have many holidays. They work hard and the New Year is a big deal. Many people who work in cities on the eastern coast of China where many of the factories and jobs are will make their way home to their families, often travelling for days to travel inland. Chinese New Year sees some of the biggest traffic jams the world has ever seen – they can last for hundreds of kilometres. People arrive at train stations hours in advance just to make it home. Some people make huge efforts. It is the largest movement of people anywhere in the world every year. Almost 3 billion journeys are made over the holiday period.
So it’s only natural really that when people get home to see their family, they want to make the most of the holiday and celebrate well. If you are married you give money in red envelopes to younger unmarried people. But gambling is big. Sometimes for small amounts of money at home. It is important to stay up late the night before New Year to celebrate. Families play Texas Holdem, yes, but also a lot of other games too.
People also go out to the casino too, and look to win big (and spend big if they have to). Last year the casinos of Macau saw an increase in the number of people going there – up almost 5% compared to the month before. I will be playing cards for sure myself. But then that is something I do every day, so maybe the New Year card game is less special for me than it is for others!
Travel safely, and enjoy your rest.
Happy New Year.
Phua Wei Seng

I was asked the other day at a Texas Holdem poker tournament how I was able to become the poker player that I am now even though I started playing Texas Holdem at a pretty late age – only in my 40’s. It got me thinking. There are lots of things. Here’s a list of them in no specific order…

I was lucky in that I started play Texas Holdem with a bankroll. Most players start out with just a few dollars’ stake. If you are a beginner, you will pretty much always lose more than you win at the start. You have to get quite a lot of miles under your belt, played thousands of poker hands, made a few mistakes, and learned from them, before you can turn the tide. And if you don’t have much money and lose it can take a long time to get the confidence and game experience until you start winning as a habit. So, I accept that I was very lucky to have had a successful career as a businessman beforehand that gave me a bit of money. So that when I lost, as all beginners at Texas Holdem do, it wasn’t too much of a problem and I didn’t get too downhearted.
I am very calm under pressure, even when there is big money on the poker table. You can’t make good decisions if you aren’t calm. In business l learned how to deal with pressure. That’s useful for me at the poker table, particularly with some of the big hands I find myself in nowadays.
I am fit. Not as fit as I was though. The younger Phua Wei Seng Paul was very fit – swimming both before and after games! Physical and mental fitness are very important. Mental fitness has come naturally to me after so many years in business, particularly in the junket business. If a junket customer isn’t happy, you have to learn how to deal with it. You have to have an agile and patient mind.
Since I started when I was older, I had the benefit of life experience. As you grow older, you learn to deal with situations that are quite similar to those that have come before. You learn to recognise them. You get more patient when you are older too. That’s very useful in poker, particularly in cutting your losses when you are having a succession of bad beats.
I’m a humble person. I never tell myself “Phua Wei Seng Paul, you are a great player!” – pretending I’m better than I am. I am honest about my abilities. There are better players than me. There are worse players than me. I’m still learning the game. Even today, in my mid-50s, I still have so much to learn. If you have the time and the dedication you can use your humility and willingness to learn and move forward.
Learn from Texas Holdem poker players who are better, and from yourself. During big tournaments, after I have finished playing for the night I will go back to my room and have a beer before I go to sleep and think. I will write down the games where I don’t think I played at my best level, or I didn’t make the best decisions. So, the next day I will go and see some poker pros who are there playing with me and ask them, “what would you have done in this situation?” You improve a lot that way. It is human nature to think you did the best you could. It’s hard to admit weakness to yourself when you are around the card table or at the casino. But a neutral observer can evaluate you better. Not many players think this way, but I think more should.
If you want to play in big games, for big money, you have to make an effort. You have to learn, think differently, recognise that this is a serious business. That’s what I did. When I realised the sort of money that was needed to buy into these games, perhaps $200,000, I said to myself, “wow, this is no joke!” So I read books. I watched a lot of videos from the big tournaments, cash games. I spent hours and hours on YouTube.
I used to have a very good memory when I started. I trained it. Now I am older, it’s not so good. I have to learn to win using different methods. There are lots of ways to skin a cat luckily!

#phuaweisengpaul, #paulphua, #pokertips

One of the world’s best poker players, Tom Dwan, met up with Paul recently to play a few hands and talk about the game.

It’s part of our “In Conversation” series where Paul chats to some of the best Texas Holdem players in the world. In this video, Tom and Paul discuss the art of “trapping” in poker.

One of the things you hear discussed most in the poker world is bluffing. When to do it, how often, with how many chips, which player does it the most? All sorts of questions commonly asked on this site by players starting out in poker. But what about its opposite counterpart, trapping? You never really hear it discussed much at all.
With bluffing, you are trying to convince your opponent that you have good cards when in fact you don’t. The means — making big or emphatic bets to give the impression you are confident in your hand. The end game – to scare them away from the hand so you can take the pot for yourself. Trapping an opponent in Texas Holdem poker is the opposite. Here, the aim is to persuade your opponent that they aren’t in fact very good, that you are only barely staying on in the hand more out of hope than expectation. The reality, though, is you have a hand that is very strong. So the aim is to get as many opponents to stay in the poker hand so you can win money from a player who has a habit of betting aggressively. There are lots of ways to do it. Perhaps you might come across as uncertain, or you play slowly and cautiously, perhaps you only play with small bets at the beginning of the hand. Paul Phua doesn’t always recommend this though because keeping lots of players in the hand can sometimes blow up in your face after the flop when your opponents’ bad hands can turn into good ones.

Here Tom Dwan and Paul Phua talk about whether Trapping is a good idea for amateurs or not.

The American poker mega star Tom Dwan met up with Paul Phua in a casino in the Philippines recently to play at a tournament in aid of a cancer charity in the country.

They managed to find some time though to have a chat for the Paul Phua poker website. Watch their conversation on “trapping” here, where Tom Dwan poses the question about whether beginners trap enough, or too much. But in the second video in our “In Conversation” series, Paul and Tom talk about the role of players’ nationalities in Texas Holdem poker. Can you make generalisations about an opponent’s style of poker play based on the country they come from, or on other factors like age and profession? Does a player from Germany for example play in one way, and a player from China navigate their way around the poker table in another? Do old players bluff more or less than young ones? Does a banker have a specific tell? Although generalisations are never the whole truth, even so, Paul and Tom thought, yes, they are often accurate! Watch the video – it’s a lot of fun.

What language does the word poker originate from?

Finding out about the origins of poker is a bit like researching into genealogy. You have to work backwards, from the present (and the things we think we know) to the past (where the secrets really lie). We now think of Texas Holdem poker as an all American pastime. It’s where many of the best players and poker stars are, and where many of the big casinos are that poker is famous for being played at. And one of the country’s 50 states gives the name of its most popular variant of poker games – Texas Holdem. But the first records of a game called poker being played in what is now the United States is nowhere near Las Vegas, or one of the big casino cities we know today. In fact the first evidence we can find of a game like poker being played in the US is in New Orleans, in what was then the Territory of Louisiana. That’s the earliest evidence of poker being played, and the trail stops there. That doesn’t mean though that Poker is all-American. That’s because there was another game that was brought over to New Orleans by settlers from France, called poque. And that game was being played at the same time in the same place as the early hands of poker. Poque was similar to what we now know as poker – in how it is played, and also obviously in the name. It involves rounds of betting, community cards, and a show of cards at the end. So it seems that poker is, in fact, as American as Tarte Tatin, not apple pie!
The French, though, can’t claim all the credit with total certainty. There is no definitive link between modern poker games and poque. Just similarities. And to add to the mystery, there’s another country that has a pretty good claim to have had at least some influence. The German game of pochspeil, which at the time would have meant something like “bluff game”. The French game may even have derived from the German one, given how close the countries are to each other. So we can throw an Apple Strudel into the mix too!
We can never be a 100% certain where the name come from, but the French seem to have the best claim. Alongside the Statue of Liberty, and the federal constitution, poker is another American icon with a French origin.

The diamond suit in a pack of cards is thought to have evolved from another shape in use over 500 years ago in France.

Playing cards are a lot older than the game of poker, almost a thousand years older, and they originated in China. But because of trading routes like the silk road, cards made their way to the middle east and then to Europe by the middle of the last millennium, if not earlier than that. They came via Egypt. Swords, cups, coins and polo-sticks were the suits used in Egypt, and a lot of countries in Europe used some of those suits, and still do. But the French chose differently.
Traditional French playing cards still have these four suits – pike heads, hearts, clover, and paving tiles. And as you read these, you can see how close they are to the suits in the international deck of cards that is in use nowadays. Pike heads became spades in the British/American deck. Spades coming from the Spanish word spado meaning sword, so similar to pikes. Hearts remained hearts, so no explanation needed. The design of the clover has been kept for the suit we now know as clubs. But the name clubs refers to the suit bastoni or bastos still used in Spanish and Italian decks, which actually still depicts a club. So clubs is a hybrid of French and Italian/Spanish. The last of the four suits is the hardest to explain. Paving tiles were indeed rhombus shaped in those days, unlike nowadays when they tend to be square or rectangle. And nowadays, because of the playing card that came to be known as diamonds, we associate a diamond shape with a rhombus too. But we still don’t know why the card known as paving tile came to be known as a diamond. Because hundreds of years ago there wasn’t that association between the rhombus shape and the diamond precious stone. The stone was 3D, a hugely complex shape. A mystery. If you have an idea why – get in touch!

Paul Phua loves poker games, but the first card games he ever played were traditional Chinese ones at home with his family. One of the most popular card games in China is called Dou Di Zhu.

In China, card games exist in two parallel worlds. One world uses the Anglo-American deck of cards, and plays games known globally, such as the poker games we play in casinos. In the other world, though, you find decks of cards with different shapes, different characters, different numbers of cards, and different games to the ones played in homes and casinos across the West. There are also games that take something from both worlds. One of those games is called Dou Di Zhu, which translates literally as fighting, or fight the landlord. It has 54 cards, and can be played using a traditional Anglo-American deck (you’ll need the two jokers), but it doesn’t have to be – there are also special Dou Di Zhu decks. It’s one of the most popular card games in China, and one that Paul saw played at home when he was young.
A bit like learning how to play poker, it’s both easy to pick up, but can take a very long time before you get good at it – there are lots of permutations of winning hands, and they can be made up of different numbers of winning cards. Unlike Texas Holdem poker, you have to play it with a set number of players. The most common version is played with 3 people – two who take on the role of the peasant, and one who takes on the role of the landlord. The landlord, fittingly, has slightly more cards (20), than the two peasants (who both have 17).
Its name comes from a period in Chinese history where landlords were considered to be evil characters, profiteering at the expense of the poor peasants. That being said, players at the start of the game have to bid to have the privilege of playing the role of the landlord. If you aren’t successful in that, or don’t even try to bid, you have to take the role of the peasant.
Though it started off in just one province of Hubei, it’s now wildly popular. Millions of players play the game on social media. There are tournaments in the real world too, with the winners claiming large pots and fame. If you go to China, and want to learn something different to your normal Texas Holdem poker game, be sure to learn the game of Fight the Landlord before you go.
For more information on this game and how it plays, please read the Wikipedia article on Dou dizhu

Poker chips are now almost always plastic with ridges in them to allow them to be stacked easily on top of each other. However, that wasn’t always the most popular material.

In the 19^th century, poker games weren’t always played with chips. Stakes were raised often with material that had some intrinsic value like gold and so represented a certain amount of money. However, the need for standardisation in a game that was getting more and more popular was obvious. Hence the arrival of the commercially made poker chip whose value people could recognise from town to town.
The first poker chips used in Louisiana in the 19^th century though were made of various materials and they were made from a mixture of all sorts of different things – like ivory, bone, wood for example – and a clay that held it together. Later on in the 19^th century, those former materials were got rid of, leaving chips that were made purely from clay. That was the case until half way through the last century. From after the Second World War, you began to see other things mixed in with the clay to make the chips more durable. Nowadays you only see clay as part of a chip in casinos, and even then casinos often use a ceramic material for them. It is easier to print words and designs on a ceramic chip than it is on a clay one, so you can understand why they are popular. Clay composite chips are much more expensive and labour intensive to make than the plastic chips that are found everywhere else outside of casinos. This of course does not hold for people who play poker online! But for the purists and lovers of tradition – a clay chip is still the only way to go!