Stratego and Poker

[kentinator]

I recently read where a mathematics graduate turned down a $100,000 per year salary to play poker full time on the internet! Apparently she uses her skill with numbers to calculate the odds, and stands to earn over 1/2 a million in 2004! Not a bad job if you can get it!

This brings me to a question...
I wonder if the bluffing skills we develop playing this great game of Stratego can be used to good profit playing poker? Specifically, are there any Stratego players out there who do well playing poker on the internet??

[googoomuck]

What bluffing skill is there to online Stratego? All you see is the board & the chatroom. A face to face game there's more skill involved. I've never played Poker online but if a large sum of cash is involved it may be easier to bluff playing Poker online that Stratego.
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[esquire]

Online poker--It is very hard to bluff. Even if you do, unless you are at a high stakes table, people will call you most of the time, even with a draw. I do alright at poker. Take it for what it is worth, but I do see some similiarity between the strategy of the two.

[-deleted316]

The first step is to learn how to bluff, Kent :7
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the hun

[kentinator]

Ok atilla - for that comment you have to PLAY me next time instead of DUCKING me!

Actually, googoomuck's comments got me to thinking about the differences in playing over the board and online. Obviously there are a great many more opportunities for bluffing over the board - and I can only imagine the coughs, wide-eyed looks, gags etc. that go on at tournaments. I would love to hear someone's story about such a bluff that worked well - does anyone have any good stories?

However, don't think for a moment that you can't bluff online! Not only in the movements of unknown pieces, but also in the chat box. I have recently taken to playing certain people who are skillful at this (hello Darth!) with the game board maximized so I cannot see the chat box at all! It is amazing what you could give away by either what you say or even what you don't say to a comment from your opponent. So if they know you can't see what they say, they can't glean any info from what happens afterwards! Way back in the old WSC days I got into quite an argument with Stratego after he made a comment that I thought was unsporting - he tricked me into making a bad move. Very clever of him and it is quite funny now - at the time however I was very annoyed at being outsmarted!

As for my new career in playing online poker - perhaps I better not quit my day job.

[-deleted129]

[-deleted103]

I think there is much more bluffing in Stratego, even online, than in poker in general (unless huge pots are involved). I always win in poker, I think, because I'm good at math and can "see" odds in all types of poker games more quickly than most---similar to that math graduate kent spoke of. I'm only moderately skilled at bluffing which is why I'm only moderately successful at Stratego. If all pieces were shown face up in the beginning I believe I'd rarely lose.
Darth and Kent are great Stratego bluffers----after getting beat by me in our first game(s), they each realized what influences my tendencies and figured ways to bluff me out of pieces. At the same time, my tendency to think in terms of odds ("no way will he have a spy on the edge guarded only by a scout, no way would he put a marsh and gen on the same side in the beginning, no way would he stack three bombs in a row") fails me when dealing with what a human might do to stop my attacks. Stratego-Master is also great at this--he actually used a bluff to mathematically improve his odds. In one game I played carefully and was in a great position to beat him (up a couple mid-level pieces late in the game). He realized this and put my marsh in a position where I would either take his unknown general and win easily(guarded by a useless scout masquerading as a spy) or run away into more unknown. When I decided to stay still he put his spy next to my marsh on the other side guarded by another useless piece masquerading as a spy. Thinking he wouldn't be silly enough to just give away the game I frantically brought out a scout to check out which fake spy was real and lost my marsh next turn and later the game. The bluff had changed his odds to 50% -- either he'd get destroyed by me instead of getting beat slowly, or have a small winning advantage.
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