Aspies may be good at poker ...

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i have an almost savant skill with dominoes...funny since I am so functionally bad at math, I probably have dyscalculea. I find poker confusing...I can be fairly good at black jack.

Bluffing, according to a BBC Focus article on poker, is overrated. That's backed up from experience, because I don't try it and tend to win, whereas the others do try to bluff and fail. I'm hard to read, and find it hard to read people, so my game is strictly mathematical.

One of my favourite things to do is to fold before even starting if I don't have either a pair or 3 card run (I know, they aren't allowed, but they turn into 4 card runs which are). Whenever I do that, I never seem to lose money.

I like playing online.

I'm surprised someone who plays poker would make the claim that poker isn't gambling because it's not a bame of luck. There's more to poker than luck, true, but luck is still a definite part of it. And it's gambling because there are many unknowns. It's risking money to try to win money. Gambling.

A friend of mine who is really into Texas Hold’em, and good at it, told me once that being able to read people is one of the most important skills that you can bring to the game (assuming you’re not playing online), which isn’t very encouraging for an aspie like myself.

I was playing last week at a table of about 8 people, and I came away very distressed because I didn’t perform well at all. I’d space out when it was my turn, and play dumb hands because I got nervous; it was like my brain sort of “locked up”. Not much fun. Maybe I should try online poker; cutting out the distractions might allow me to play reasonably well, because I don’t think it’s the game itself that is so hard for me, just trying to use that part of my brain when it’s being bombarded by so much external stimulation.

Funny story though, that game indirectly lead to me finding this site; the day after, I was looking at the webcomic Dinosaur Comics, and came across one in which T-rex is joking about how he has “Appetite Asperger’s”, because he gauges how much he eats by observing those around him and coming up with a theory of what’s appropriate based on their behavior, the same way those with Asperger’s handle social interaction (I’d post a link, but I haven’t been a user long enough to have link posting privileges). This disturbed me deeply because I recognized this as being exactly what I was doing the other night at the poker table: trying to figure out what I should be doing by watching everyone else, all of whom seemed to know exactly what was going on. I then looked up the article for Asperger's on wikipedia, which links to wrongplanet, and now here I am, thanks to poker and talking dinosaurs!

Have you ever heard of Stu Unger? He participated in the World Series of Poker Main Event three times. You want to know how many times he won? All three. The odds of that are actually less than you'd expect because, after the first time, people wanted to take him down.

Poker is not a game of luck in the slightest if you have any idea what you're doing. Yes, in most cases, in a specific tournament, the winner has to get lucky at least once to achieve victory, but if you're depending on winning that one tournament, then you're doing it wrong.

In order of importance:

1. Reading people (this includes tells and betting habits, so autistics should actually be good at this, because these are patterns)
2. Mathematical ability (this is actually only mildly important, as most poker players know the odds of common situations quite well. Stud, razz, and stud8 are the games where this is actually very important)
3. Being able to read the board (I used to misread it, but I don't think I do anymore. Omaha makes this more important)
4. Luck (very little importance, especially in stud8 and other limit games)

And, as any mathematician will tell you: There's no such thing as luck, only variance.

Is attending college gambling? You're risking money there. What about repairing your own car? There are a lot of things that costs money for potential reward that aren't considered gambling. The primary thing to consider is the primary determiner of return, and, in the case of poker, it's skill.

Why would you be shocked that a poker player says this, anyway? Most poker players (at least the ones I know/of) say it.

Jmr, I understand your concerns.

I play both online and as part of a regular amateur poker league and tend to do better with the former than the latter. Online, I'm playing the cards and percentages. It's a very mechanistic process. But in person, it's tougher, as you need to take into account bluffing, psychology, tells, and so many other more subtle clues in the game, just the sort of things that people with Aspies might struggle with.

ON the bright side, however, so much as been written on Hold 'em that he could easily be played in a very mechanistic manner. YOu just have to know about position, odds, starting hands, and pre-flop and post-flop strategy. I imagine it is possible to take the people out of the game to some extent.

Nordic

Im not great at the strategies as such. But I have won at times because people sort of cant read my expressions and find me confusing. If I say I have a good hand they think I am lying, and then they find out I was telling the truth.

I don't think I'm very good yet I still manage to win against other noobs.

I don't even try to read other people. I just act like I don't have a clue what I'm doing so that everyone underestimates me. Even when I have a really good hand I pretend it's a tough decision not to fold. I know this strategy wouldn't work if I played regularly but it generally works the first time.

This is a reasonable strategy. Wait until you have a good idea that people may be catching on, then start bluffing.


Back to the OP: in my experience, the answer is yes. A few years ago, my neighbours had poker night every week in their appartment. My quasi-undiagnosed (was referred to a specialist by his psych, and refused to go) aspie roommate and I used to clean them out on a regular basis.

I have been thinking about reading up on poker strategy. It's probably the only way I’ll really get my head around the game, instead of learning just by playing like a normal person would.

In the particular situation I was speaking of in my last post, I was playing with people I didn’t know very well or had just met, so that, combined with the noisy atmosphere, most likely contributed to my feeling disoriented; I suppose I would have done better if I had been playing with people I knew and felt comfortable with.

Okay, call it variance or random chance or whatever. It's still a factor in poker. If someone gets a pair, and chooses to stay in the pot, and you don't have any pairs, you can't win that pot. Most folks would call that luck. If you want to call it something different, fine. You're playing silly language games, in my opinion.

First of all: That's because you didn't play very well. Ace high is not a hand. In any form of poker. If you're bluffing, you clearly bluffed against the wrong opponent or else you did it wrong. Most folks might call it luck, but that's just poor skill.

Secondly: You aren't clear on what variance is, are you? Over a course of ten thousand hands, you will get the same number of pairs in the same rank as I do. The same holds true with two pair, trips, straights, etc, etc, etc. They will also hold up the same number of times. That is variance

Luck is the scapegoat of the poor player.