Welcome to the Sports Poker Blog! I am a recently retired math professor, reborn as a game inventor, poker theorist, and game philosopher. This is my new full time gig! I hope to engage my readers here with enjoyable and interesting discussions on sports, poker, Sports Poker, games in general, and other topics that interest me.
- Sports Poker has many varieties, but they all share the same basic rules. The rules are simple, but skillful play is comparable to traditional poker. Everyone that reads this blog will come to understand the game as well as I do! I expect some of you will quickly become better at Sports Poker than me! (I’m no better at Sports Poker than I am at Texas Hold’em, and I’m not very good at Texas Hold’em!) But I do understand the how Sports Poker works, and why the rules are the way they are. So, I will talk about Sports Poker in the abstract. But I will also talk about specific versions of the game, like Football Poker, Baseball Poker, Draft Poker, and Bracket Poker. I will talk about interesting situations that can arise in real games, and various strategies to try when they come up. I expect that my ideas of good strategy will turn out to be wrong or simplistic, but it’s a start! Maybe one of you will write the first book on Sports Poker, or become the first famous player.
- The most popular sport in the world is soccer (the real football!). Right now, there is no “official” version of Sports Poker for soccer. That must change! It turns out it’s a little harder to design a Sports Poker variety for soccer than for (say) American football or baseball. The reason is that the action is continuous in soccer – there is nothing analogous to a football drive or baseball inning that breaks the game into small pieces. So, a different design is needed for Soccer Poker. Fortunately, we have some ideas already! The construction and “perfection” of a Soccer Poker version of Sports Poker will be documented as it happens on this blog - and other new varieties too. Readers' suggestions and criticisms are always welcome!
- All Sports Poker games are “vying” games. (Look it up!) So are all varieties of traditional poker (Texas Hold’em, Stud Poker, Draw Poker, etc.) and some older games like As Nas and Primero. So Sports Poker and traditional poker are “cousins”. But they are not siblings! Sports Poker has slightly different rules for rounds of betting. And consider this: In some varieties of Sports Poker players can choose their own hands: “Fantasy Hands”. Imagine what would happen if players could choose their own hands in traditional poker! Fantasy Hands work without a hitch in Sports Poker. How? This is an example of what I mean by “poker theory”. Lots to talk about here!
- I have all sorts of suggestions for improving the rules of the sports we love - and they need a lot of help! As any easy example, what is the deal with intentional fouls in basketball? Intentional foul should be an oxymoron! Something is drastically wrong with the rules of a game when an foul is a strategic play. Does anybody like it when a game ends with a bunch of intentional fouls? We can fix that! And together we will make the fixes a reality! There are all sorts of ways to make the rules better in every sport that you maybe never even thought about. Lots to talk about there!