I just read the first part of this interview with an Irish poker player.

From just this one interview I can tell that he is a really smart player. One would be well advised to read this interview and take some nuggets of insight from it. There are a few lessons, in particular, that any poker player should never, but can easily forget.

First of all, don’t piddle away your chips on little calls and raises in the early bidding just because you want to see what comes up. Only call hands that are worth calling. How to determine that is a whole different story unfortunately. Obviously one can make moves with more than simply the premium hands but making those decisions are based on position and information that can be gleaned from the other players. Channing admits to having made the mistake of just letting his chips slowly bleed away in the early stages of the Irish open and it took a bad psychological toll on him.

Which leads to the next lesson to be taken from this interview; don’t succumb to frustration. If you’re not feeling like your “on” get up and stop playing for a while. There is a point in the Irish open when channing was feeling very uncomfortable with his play. Rather that start playing desperately, he got up, took a walk, and collected himself. After coming back he felt much more comfortable and his play only improved throughout the rest of the tournament.

After having done so, he illustrates another important thing to keep in mind. A good poker player logically thinks through what hands his opponent could possibly have based on their betting pattern. I know that sounds obvious but people don’t always do it. Channing got mixed up in a pot where he thought he could have the best hand against a conservative player. But after having looked at that player’s betting pattern in relation to his own, he deduced that the number of hands he was likely to be holding were far better than his pair of queens.

These have just been some quick tips that can be picked up from a pro. Hope they have been helpful. Check out the full interview.

So I wanted to talk with the author, Steve Lubet, a Law Professor and Director of the Bartlit Center on Trial Strategy at Northwestern.  Turns out he’s a bright, funny guy, and accomplished both in law and outside the field.  Not a guy I’d want on the other team in the courtroom!!  Not a first-time author… he’s previously written Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp, and his textbook Modern Trial Advocacy has been used at over 90 American law schools as wellas in Canada, Israel, and China.  Lubet has written humorous commentaries for NPR’s Morning Edition, and his opeds (both serious and humorous) have appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, as well as Slate and Salon.

PokerMoments:  What inspired you to write Lawyer’s Poker?  Was your goal to teach lawyers, or to show similarities between practicing law and playing poker?

Steve Lubet:  I became interested in the idea when I read Andey Bellin’s book, Poker Nation, which combined memoir with poker theory.  I’m always looking for new ways to teach lawyers, and it struck me that poker could provide some good analogies, so I bought a bunch of other poker books and began to research.  Almost immediately, I learned that the great advantage in poker is the constant repetition of a relatively limited number of situations.  In other words, the game is almost like a living social science experiment – high-stakes decision making based on incomplete information.  Lawyers do the same thing, so it made sense to look at common poker strategies and map them onto law practice.

PM:  I found the number of examples in Lawyer’s Poker amazing, and thought they were thought provoking.  How long did it take to think of all the correlations and then write the book?  Any new books in the works?

SL:  Having written a couple of books (and many articles) about trial advocacy, I already had a good idea of the skills that I wanted to discuss.  I read the poker books over the course of about a year – while doing other things (it wasn’t like researching a dissertation).  Then it took me exactly 60 days to actually write the manuscript, writing one “lesson” per day over the course of a summer.

I’ve just finished the manuscript for a new book called The Importance of Being Honest:  How Lying, Secrecy, Myth, Hypocrisy, and Misperception Collide with Truth in the Legal Professions.  It’ll be published in the spring of 2008.

PM:  Do you play no-limit Texas Hold’em?

SL:  No.

PM:  Do you use any of the poker lessons or stories from the book when you teach law?

SL:  Absolutely.  The great problem in teaching law practice (as opposed to legal doctrine or theory) is that it’s hard to know what really works.  That is, you can have a feeling about successes and failures, but every case is unique and there are thousands of discrete decisions in every case – so it’s impossible to isolate the variables.  Thus, we end up with a lot of “common wisdom” that might or might not actually be right.  Poker analogies are helpful precisely because they can be validated through repeated play.  The trick (or maybe the art) in teaching involves identifying the truly parallel situations.

PM:  How did you get interested in law?  in teaching?

SL:  I went to college in the 1960s, so law school was a natural choice for an activist.  I got into teaching by accident in 1975 – only my friends and family think the story is interesting – and I’ve somehow stayed with it for 30+ years.  I still do pro bono work.

PM:  I’m a doctor who gives depositions and goes into court for patients very occasionally.  This book opened my eyes to a whole new way of seeing what lawyers do.  Any suggestions for doctors who appear in court in support of patients?

SL:  The best advice is to read my book, Expert Testimony: A Guide for Expert Witnesses and the Lawyers Who Examine Them.  Expert testimony is an extremely important part of the trial process, yet many experts enter the courtroom relatively unprepared.  Many experts will say that they fear, or resent, cross examination, but in my experience they really have more trouble with direct examination:  their answers are too long, too discursive, too technical, and too hedged.  So here are two basic pieces of advice:

1.  Remember that law is a binary system in which questions need to be answered Yes or No; there’s no wait and see, and no re-evaluation based on further developments.  That environment is often uncomfortable for scientists, but there’s no alternative because lawsuits have to be resolved with some degree of finality.

2. When answering a question, give the conclusion first and then the explanation or the background.  That is contrary to the way most conversations proceed, but it’s essential to courtroom communication.

PM:  Do you have reservations about playing poker yourself?  about practicing law?  For example, being good at bluffing – is there a downside to “perfecting” that skill?

SL:  I don’t play poker because I’ve learned too much about it – I would lose for sure.  I have absolutely no reservations about law practice, which is the most noble of the professions (note: I’m not saying that lawyers are the most honorable professionals, but rather that the profession itself is the most noble).

PM:  What do you think about mediation?  Does that require a different skill set for a lawyer?

SL:  True mediation requires a very different set of skills, in which the parties attempt to accommodate each other’s needs, rather than simply prevail.  Much of what passes for mediation, however, is really just facilitated negotiation.

PM:  The issue of law versus justice… do you believe, in general, that the more skillful lawyer, who represents her client better, is the lawyer who serves justice better?  If so, why?  If not, is this a reason to doubt your view that the purpose of the practice of law is more admirable than the purpose of poker?

SL:  The practice of law is the most admirable and important of all professions because it’s essential to the maintenance of personal liberty and economic freedom.  Most people, including lawyers, don’t realize this because:  (1) the social benefits are diffuse and often invisible; and (2) many practitioners fall very far short of the ideal.

You’re probably skeptical, so let’s engage in a little thought experiment.  Which sort of society would you prefer to live in, one without medicine or one without law?  Before you answer too quickly, consider two contrasting examples.  The Golden Age of Muslim Spain – profound equality under law, but no truly effective medicine.  Nazi Germany – great medicine, rotten law.

Medicine has made outstanding achievements, but consider the achievements of law:  The First Amendment, the abolition of slavery, the equality of women (still in progress), the development of economic stability and the broad middle class.

PM:  Lawyer’s Poker clarified that, for me, medicine was a much better career choice than law.  I do believe both can be intellectually challenging, and draw on many different skills when practiced well.  But 2 differences I see between law and medicine:

First, medicine gives me a chance to help people everyday; the same could be said of law.  But I can help people in medicine without another side needing to lose.  Medicine isn’t competitive – it can have winners without losers.  In medicine, I’d say we battle against disease, but not one another.

SL:  Medicine is focused on helping identifiable individuals, which must be very rewarding on a daily basis, but it’s not quite correct to say that it’s not competitive.  Patients compete for your attention and for institutional resources; you decide who gets what.  The difference is that the losers have little or no recourse, and they often don’t even know that they’re losing.

PM:  And second, when I’m being a good doctor, it makes me a better person.  I listen to someone in their time of need.  I help heal them.  More comprehensive still are the life values I strive to practice – honesty, altruism, practicing peace and harmony.  These are hard enough to practice and learn, but I think practicing law would take me away from these ideals.  How do you cultivate these ideals, yet practice law?

SL:  Law definitely proceeds from a different value system – an ethic of autonomy as opposed to an ethic of benevolence – but that doesn’t mean that medical ideals are superior.  That is, the job of a lawyer is to enhance a client’s autonomy, allowing the client to make his or her own decisions (whether those decisions are good or bad).  Civilization prospers when people have substantial control (with legally defined limits) over their own choices, and that’s what lawyers ideally accomplish.

I don’t doubt that you’re honest and altruistic in your own practice, but that’s a highly idealized view of the profession in general.  Physicians routinely withhold information from patients, take shortcuts, perform unnecessary procedures for financial reasons, and engage in risky practices.  One of the greatest public health problems in history has been the over-prescription of antibiotics, almost exclusively due to physicians’ loose self-discipline.

Please don’t get me wrong – I think very highly of physicians (including my own internist, who is brilliant and good), and I agree that the typical doctor is far more altruistic than the typical lawyer.  But that’s actually the genius of our legal system – it doesn’t rely on altruism (which is usually in short supply) in order to benefit society as a whole.

PM:  Thanks to Steve Lubet for taking time from his many activities to talk with us.  I personally appreciated his insightful comments about law and medicine, and he’s given me some points to mull over - although I still don’t think I’ll trade in my MD for a JD anytime soon.  But I do believe that a new Golden Age of intellectual rigor and great book writing might just be blossoming in an office at Northwestern.

Any questions or comments for Steve… let us know in the comments.

In a few days, Sparky will be posting an interview with Steven Lubet.   It’s a great interview, packed with a lot of food for thought.  To prepare you for the interview, I thought I’d say a few things about the book.

As the title suggests, Lubet presents 52 poker lessons, lessons that lawyers can use in many different aspects of law practice to become better lawyers, and lessons that poker players can use to become better poker players.   Many of the lessons are basic and obvious ones, such as the lesson on paying attention, which advises you to pay attention to your opponents at the poker table in order to read them.

But Lubet doesn’t just state the obvious.  He fleshes out each lesson with interesting examples, stories and advice.   For example, in the lesson on paying attention, Lubet makes reference to Mike Caro’s advice about common tells that are unique to the flop, such as when a player who involuntarily stares at his chips indicates that he likes the flop.

In another lesson, Lubet discusses the concepts of expected value and pot odds.   You can find an explanation of these concepts in a million different places on the Web, but Lubet’s presentation of these concepts involves an explanation of how they’re useful to lawyers.  This sort of comparison between poker and law practice, which runs throughout the book, makes it much more enjoyable to read about such abstract concepts.  And more importantly, makes these concepts more easily understood. 

My only quibble with the book is Lubet’s comparison between poker and law.  He argues that poker is unproductive, while law practice “is essentially admirable” because it’s connected with justice and ”facilitates autonomy.”  I agree with Lubet that poker is unproductive.  I also agree with him that law is admirable.  But I’m not so sure I agree with him about how admirable the practice of law is.   The more skillful lawyer is the one who represents his client better.  But a lawyer who represents his client better does not always serve justice better.  Think OJ.  (In a different context Lubet says some interesting things about the OJ case, as well as the Oscar Wilde case, the Bill Clinton case, and many other famous cases). 

Quibble aside, Lawyer’s Poker is one of the best poker books I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.  Open and shut case!

Today’s treat is an interview with professional poker player Force O Will.  Who is Force O Will?  I’ll let you figure this one out.  Trust me, this player is the real deal.  His answers to my questions below are anything but uninformative, as he gives a lot of valuable poker information, and some of the best advice I’ve ever seen on how to become a professional poker player.  Enjoy!

Suber: Who is Force O Will?  Can you give us a little bio, including how and when you got into professional poker.

Force O Will: Well, I’ve always been competetive in different types of games like card games, board games, video/computer games, and often fantasy-based games. During college in the late 90s a friend of mine introduced me to Magic: The Gathering, a strategy card game closely related to Dungeons and Dragons.  I became involved with this game, eventually reaching higher levels of play and playing the international Pro-Tour circuit. It was during these Magic tournaments that I observed people playing Texas Hold’em for the first time – such as David Williams, Thomas Keller, Noah Boeken, Eric Froelich among others.

Then in 2003 I started playing at Foxwoods casino and achieving small wins at 3/6 and 5/10 limit holdem games.  I opened accounts on UltimateBet and Paradise Poker and spent some late nights in online poker games.  After the first six months of playing online, I may have been down a few thousand dollars, but was determined to be a winner, and perhaps even professional.  After another year and a half of playing, things turned around and I semi-retired myself from a job in computer programming and focussed solely on poker.  Despite some rough patches, I haven’t looked back to this day.

Suber: What is your favorite type of poker?  And why? 

Force O Will: My favorite type of poker is the NL cash game, preferably 10-handed.  I’ve always excelled in this type of poker more than other games.  I like that the game is somewhat slow, so I can have many online windows open at once.  I believe I’ve done well at it because the nature of this game fits my playing style.  I also enjoy NL tournaments, short-handed NL, Omaha Hi/Low, and to a lesser extent, Stud Hi/Low, and Pot-limit Omaha. 

Suber: How would you characterize your game?  Is it like anyone else’s game?

Force O Will: I would characterize my game as being able to adapt to many styles of players (loose/passive, weak/tight, semi-loose/aggressive) including beginners and experts alike, and also being able to adapt to many types of games.  Online NL games can be tough and knowing your opponent is usually key.  I feel I can never track my opponents closely enough, but when I get to know them, I try to get inside their minds so I can exploit their weaknesses.  If I had to pick a name pro who has a similar style, I’d say Phil Ivey.

Suber: What are some of your poker strengths and weaknesses?

Force O Will: My other strengths include being able to put players on a very narrow range of hands or an exact hand, as well as being able to make correct value bets, laydowns, or all-in plays at the right situations.  I can make rough odds estimates by feel and generally can stay off tilt through bad streaks. 

My weaknesses are perhaps playing it too safe in tournaments, and not paying enough attention to individual hands during a game.  These faults probably keep me from doing well in larger buy-in events, but I’m working on improving them.

Suber: I understand that you enjoy online poker.  Where do you like to play?  If so, what stakes?  Do you play more than one table at a time?

Force O Will: Lately I’ve been playing about 6 games of 5/10 NL, and often one tournament on the side.  For tournaments, I prefer PokerStars and for ring games, I like Full Tilt.  Last year PartyPoker games were crazy, and I was playing up to 8-10 games of 10/20 NL or 4-5 games of 25/50 NL.  Things have settled down since then, so I’m concentrating mostly on 5/10 NL until the legislation changes.

Suber:  If you’re in a cash game or playing online, how long will you normally play?  Do you set goals for how much you want to win?  Or do you play until you get bored or lose a certain amount?  How much can you feel comfortable losing?

Force O Will:  I often do set goals, but I don’t believe it’s correct to do. Generally, it’s more profitable to keep playing when you’re winning and to quit when you’re having a hard time.  Despite that, I often stop either when I feel I’ve made enough progress for the day or when I’ve lost a few buy-ins and am extremely frustrated.  I also tend to play for a few hours, quit for a few hours, play for a few hours, etc.  I seldom play super-long sessions lately.

Suber: Do you think playing against women is different than playing against men? If so, who do you prefer to play against?

Force O Will: For me there is a slight difference which I think lies not in how you perceive them, but more in their perception of how you perceive them.  For instance, a woman at the table who plays well may think you are trying to bluff her because she believes you think she’s weak.  Other than that I usually treat the genders equally.

Suber:  Who do you think the really good poker players are?  And what differentiates these folks from just the good players?

Force O Will: The truly good players are extremely intelligent, tricky, and most importantly have no regard for money – it is just pure game.  These are some of the online players that consistently compete at the highest levels of play (ex. “sbrugby”, “David Benyamine”, “Grimstarr”, and “durrrr”), and the young crop of poker players who have yet to enter a casino.  I have more respect for their gameplay than many live-poker professionals since online games are much tougher and many live professionals have been blessed with enough luck to win a million-dollar event.  Regardless, in many ways you have to respect Barry Greenstein, Chip Reese, Phil Ivey, and a handful of other cash-game players who have amazing poker skills.

Suber:  Any advice on how to become a professional poker player?

Force O Will: Professional poker is a struggle, just like any other serious endeavor.  It’s been said that only 1 in 10 who try actually succeed because of the risk and the challenge involved.  Before you start, you need to figure out what you want from poker.

If you’re the type who prefers a leisurely and flexible day-to-day schedule, start by focussing on small to medium-sized online games in your spare time for one year.  If your game develops and has proven to be profitable, perhaps you could become a professional.

If you wish to travel and have an adventurous and social lifestyle, then the tournament circuit is probably right for you.   Study tournament concepts, discuss tournament strategy with good players, and plan to live near a casino for a while (or play many online tournaments) before making it onto the professional circuit.

If your only aspiration is to make it big time as fast as possble without going bust, I’d recommend holding onto your job, buying in for a small amount, then moving up in gradual steps (once you’ve mastered a limit, move up).  Use your financial leverage to challenge the higher games and bigger tournaments as you improve.

Realize that no matter how good you are, how big your starting bankroll is, or how much you currently enjoy playing, professional poker is a serious time and energy commitment.  Not only is there a risk of going broke, but you often have to give up some other enjoyable things in life.  Regardless, once you’ve achieved such a feat, it’s great knowing that your efforts have been rewarded.

Suber: How do you give other players the impression that you have a hand stronger than you actually have?

Force O Will: If against a weak player, fire a bigger bet than normal, unless they are a calling station.  Against a very tight player, you may be able to bluff on the river more often than usual.  Some very good players may fold to a smallish bet because your bet may look like a value-bet to them.

Suber: Any advice about bluffing, both online and in general?

Force O Will: Online you often can’t bluff a calling station, so be sure to know your players well.  Know who is going to call you and who might make a laydown.  In a live game, try to bluff the people who you often play with – they will be the least likely to think you’re bluffing them, and they’ll start paying you off more often when you make hands.  Don’t talk too much during a hand or they may be suspicious, but if you needle them enough they may decide to start calling you down.

Suber: Are you good at reading people’s tells?  Any stories you’d like to share about tells you’ve figured out?

Force O Will: At most levels, players tend to act strong when they are bluffing.  I don’t think the big-name pros have many tells;  poker is like second nature to them, so they’ll usually act relaxed during hands.  To me, betting patterns are much better tells than physical cues.  Suspicious bet sizes often raise a red flag, or if they check in spots where you know they’d normally fire a bet.

Suber: Do you recommend any poker books, either strategy or stories?

Force O Will:  I’ve only read a few of the poker stories, but for cash game strategy books (mostly limit holdem), Super System (by Doyle Brunson) and The Theory of Poker (David Sklansky) are good starting points.  For NL cash game strategy I’m disappointed with the books available – I recommend to just read and absorb online articles about NL.  For NL tournament play, I like Harrington on Holdem volumes I and II, and especially World Poker Tour: Making the Final Table (Erick Lindgren).  Lastly, Zen and the Art of Poker is a great resource to strengthen the mental game.

Suber: Any poker story about yourself that you’d like to share?

Force O Will: I’ve got tons of bad beat stories, but nobody wants to hear them.

Suber:  Anything else you’d like people to know about you that’s poker-related, or even non-poker related?

Force O Will:  Nothing specific, but I’m glad I could provide some advice- say hello if you see me in a tournament, I’m generally pretty friendly and can always use the support.

(Thanks for a great interview, Force! – Suber)

Yesterday I wrote a post about the upcoming Texas Hold’em match (July 23 and 24) between Polaris, the  poker-playing computer programmed by the computer science team at University of Alberta, and two humans, Phil Laak and Ali Eslami.  The post received a question from Sparky about where the name ’Polaris’ comes from.  I couldn’t find an answer to this question by searching on the Web, so I decided to go straight to Jonathan Schaeffer and ask him for the answer.  

Professor Jonathan Schaeffer holds the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence and is the team leader of the Polaris program.  He was kind enough to give me an answer to Sparky’s question.  He writes,

There is nothing special in the name, other than it reflects that we are the “northern star” in the computer poker world.  It is a subtle hint that we are Canadian

Of course, I couldn’t help myself and just ask one question.  I explained to Professor Schaeffer that I am interested in the concept of luck as it applies to Texas Hold’em, and I asked him whether his Polaris experiment would eliminate all luck as a factor.  And if it didn’t, then in what way did he think that luck would still play a factor in the match?  Here’s his answer.  

It will eliminate most of the luck factor, but not all of it. That is why there is a rule in place for a drawn match. If one side wins by less than 25 small bets (500 hand match) then the match is declared a draw because the result is statistically insignificant.

(Thanks for your answers, Jonathan, and I look forward to seeing your silicon Bot kick some carbon butt! – Suber)