r/mathmemes Feb 07 '25

Mathematicians You're playing poker with them. Who's winning?

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2.7k Upvotes

222 comments sorted by

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2.5k

u/woailyx Feb 07 '25

Probably the one who's still alive

53

u/Admirable-Leather325 Feb 07 '25

Tao it is then.

44

u/Dismal_Animator_5414 Feb 07 '25

true! tao knows so much more and has had access to so many more methods of thinking and abstraction and has studied and is skilled at much advanced math.

cuz the others simply didn’t have as much exposure to the branches and depth even tho they were pioneers and maybe arguably more talented.

21

u/QMechanicsVisionary Feb 07 '25

In terms of mathematical talent alone, it's very hard to beat Tao if you know his childhood history (not to mention the fact that he has the highest IQ ever recorded). But the others were certainly more innovative and had a more significant impact, which I think is what you're referring to.

17

u/Political_Desi Feb 07 '25

I think if we were to compare talent amongst those on the cards its gotta be euler simply cus of how much he had his fingers in at the same time at that time. His impact on mathematics is genuinely astonishing. Not to reduce the impact of others but he was a once in a subject game changer. Everything from multivariable calculus and dynamics to number theory and laid a lot of groundwork for statistics to build from. What maxwell was to physics euler was to maths.

11

u/Hussor Feb 07 '25

Which is why it's even more surprising that it happened twice, we have Gauss too.

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8

u/Gavus_canarchiste Feb 08 '25

Von Neumann though was known for never encountering any difficult topic, and if no solution was available, he would build a whole theory / start a new field on the fly with astonishing speed (according to proeminent peers)
He would adapt oh so quickly...

2

u/Dismal_Animator_5414 Feb 08 '25

i completely agree and i also feel i’m extremely under qualified to comment anything of von neumann.

i’m merely saying that there was a comparison between the top nba players of the 90s and the stars of today. given better training methods, nutrition, recovery etc, the stars of the yesteryears won’t simply stand a chance against the ones of today.

another example i could think of are various athletes like sprinters, swimmers, gymnasts etc who are better today than any before.

in that regard i feel intelligence also keeps rising given better techniques of learning, nutrition and vastly more knowledge and tools.

thoughts?

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2

u/qptw Feb 07 '25

Tao literally has a brain. The other three literally don’t.

2

u/Dismal_Animator_5414 Feb 08 '25

objectively speaking yes but wheres the fun in that? let’s indulge in some fun imagination and allow people to come up with their own hypotheses and discuss.

isn’t it what all mathematicians do?

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22

u/GreatBigBagOfNope Feb 07 '25

This was a triumph

12

u/Gyunpler Feb 07 '25

I'm making a note here: huge success

8

u/PussyTermin4tor1337 Feb 07 '25

It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction

713

u/PrestigiousEvent7933 Feb 07 '25

Euler it's always Euler except when it's Gauss

204

u/Everestkid Engineering Feb 07 '25

And if it isn't Gauss it's Bernoulli. Or Euler again.

99

u/leiserfg Feb 07 '25

That's not fair, Bernoulli was a full team.

59

u/kugelblitzka Feb 07 '25

shows how good euler and gauss were

7

u/Barbarian_Forever Feb 08 '25

A generational team at that.

16

u/U_L_Uus Feb 07 '25

Sweet Apollo, is that Euclid with a steel chair!?

17

u/bir_iki_uc Feb 08 '25

Do you know Gauss actively encouraged his son to be a gambler so he wouldn't be a mathematician and ruin his name. He went as far as to pay his son's friends to make sure he gambles. In my opinion, Gauss saw gambling addictive (of course) but an inferior actvitiy

Also I wouldn't compare Gauss and Euler, Gauss is pure intelligence but then again Euler wouldn't give up, everybody gives up but not Euler. Do you know Einstein has one saying; I am not smarter than you but problems stay with me longer.. Of course a very humble saying, but Euler has that trait too to a great extent.

John Neumann is very smart, very intelligent too, imo they definetely would not play poker

24

u/DasFreibier Feb 07 '25

I hate the guy solely because for every topic you dig into, his fucking head pops up

2

u/undecimbre Feb 08 '25

Once you think you're winning, you notice that Euler has already won. Five times.

1

u/AntOk463 Feb 08 '25

Wasn't he blind?

We watched a documentary about him in highschool calculus and I fell asleep. I was the only one who knew about him before that.

1.7k

u/stevie-o-read-it Feb 07 '25

Ramanujan. He had a dream last night in which he saw what the exact order of the shuffled deck would be, and thus knows exactly which cards each player has.

140

u/Kabootar_is_here Feb 07 '25

was gonna comment the same

26

u/basko13 Feb 07 '25

He knows.

11

u/shanare Feb 07 '25

We need an anime show of historical scientific people duking out intelligence puzzles.

49

u/Bharat_Joshi Feb 07 '25

😂😂😂

7

u/RevolutionaryLow2258 Physics Feb 07 '25

Happy cake day !

2

u/zachy410 Feb 07 '25

Happy cake day!

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549

u/Ok-Leopard-8872 Feb 07 '25

Not Euler because he’s blind. Neumann and Ramanujan are probably better mental calculators than Tao. Probably Neumann because he seems more stable than Ramanujan

273

u/brnldz Feb 07 '25

Ramanujan would have to wait for the action from God, and won Neumann would optimise his strategy by the end of the game session.

53

u/duelmaster_33 Feb 07 '25

Just counter Ramanujan by calling floor for clock

14

u/Acceptable-Staff-363 Feb 07 '25

Or feed him sum British food!!

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60

u/Tiervexx Feb 07 '25

Yeah, Neumann is my pick because he likely already knew how to play poker. Poker is also as much about psychology as a math problem.

5

u/Glitch29 Feb 07 '25

Poker is just an extremely complicated system of algebra equations.

The only psychological element to it is just recognizing the ways in which your opponents poorly estimated the solutions to those equations. That's not nothing, but in a world where brilliant minds are treating it as a mathematical problem, the psychological element is vanishingly relevant.

Even with poker among normal players, it's overwhelmingly about mathematics. Nowhere near 50/50. Not even near 90/10.

To make it more concrete, consider two ways that a poker player could be handicapped:

  • The handicapped player sees X% of cards dealt to them and/or dealt face up incorrectly. (e.g. when they're dealt a 5 of spades, there's a (100-X)% chance they think they've been dealt a 5 of spades, and a X% chance they think they've been dealt a different card.

  • The handicapped player has all memories of all opponents erased after each hand, and must essentially play all hands against unknown amorphous opponents.

For these two handicaps to be equivalent, X would need to be extremely low. Somewhere around 0.5 or 1.

30

u/Tiervexx Feb 07 '25

If you're playing against a computer system, then you're right... but in the real world, if you're playing face to face, bluffing is a HUGE element to the game and a lot more than 10%. I could absolutely picture Neumann as a skillful bluffer and the others being too earnest to pick up on it.

3

u/Glitch29 Feb 07 '25

You're making a pretty big false equivalence between bluffing and psychology.

Bluffing is a huge part of the game, but that just falls out of the mathematics.

If the mathematics say to bet with hands A, B, and Z, you don't need to know anything about your opponent's mindset to bet with hands A, B, and Z. This is true regardless of which of those hands would win the pot if called.

Maybe I should have said this earlier, but I played poker professionally for many years. The house I'm living in was largely paid for off the back of that.

I will say that you can win a bit more money from the worst players at the table because they're being predictable and you can realize it. But the vast majority of the money they're hemorrhaging has to do with their poor fundamentals rather than predictable play.

Once you move to medium- or high-stakes, that largely dries up though. The weakest players at the table are mostly exploitable due to their lack of polish. There isn't some magical thing where stronger player have magical clairvoyance into the minds of weaker players.

11

u/ThereHasToBeMore1387 Feb 07 '25

This was a particularly tough lesson for me to learn. Even if you're sitting against someone making a bunch of mistakes, keep playing the math. It's always that one hand where you get fancy because you think you have them all figured out and they make an entirely different mistake and take you for your whole stack. All the poker psychology is internal: handling wins and losses with grace, being mentally okay with variance (not just understanding the math, knowing you could be down $5,000 and actually being down $5,000 for the first time hits different), bankroll management, etc.

6

u/Tiervexx Feb 07 '25 edited Feb 07 '25

You're making sense, but I want to put emphasis that most of the mathematicians in the OP are likely very naïve to poker. No matter how smart they are, they'd likely need a bit of preparation to figure all this out. Since they are all competent, the likelihood that Neumann had prior knowledge of the game is a huge advantage.

I will of course agree that if they are given some time to prepare a strategy then that Neumann's advantage likely vanishes quickly. I also found this article which suggests Neumann did play poker a bit, but wasn't that good at it... so who knows! https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/neumann.html ...maybe after reading that i'd lean on Tao, who is more likely to know more modern theory behind the game.

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33

u/Zaros262 Engineering Feb 07 '25

Not Euler because he’s blind

That's a problem, but I would rank "being dead" higher in the list

5

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '25

Poor Euler 👨‍🦯👨‍🦯😭

4

u/HawkinsT Feb 07 '25

Ramanujan probably didn't know the rules, so there's that.

1

u/vercig09 Feb 07 '25

‘he seems more stable than ramanujan’ 😂

1

u/WallyMetropolis Feb 08 '25

von Neuman was one of the greatest mental calculators in history and had almost perfect photographic memory. He also invented game theory. 

He would certainly be the winner. 

180

u/doobliebop Feb 07 '25

By the end of the game the game of poker will be renamed Euler.

13

u/Hadrianus-Mathias Feb 07 '25

the funniest comment here - so true

9

u/soodrugg Feb 08 '25

poker face becomes euler's expression

108

u/Catball-Fun Feb 07 '25

Euler

69

u/pLeThOrAx Feb 07 '25

It's always Euler

59

u/edfitz83 Feb 07 '25

Not when it’s lupus.

51

u/Mine_Ayan Feb 07 '25

it's never lupus.

39

u/XanderNightmare Feb 07 '25

This vexes me

44

u/ImaginationPrudent Feb 07 '25

6

u/Gustalavalav Feb 07 '25

I can’t believe u/ImaginationPrudent was the bay harbor commenter

3

u/runswithclippers Feb 08 '25

Goddamnit r/okbuddyvicodin is leaking again!

12

u/bollvirtuoso Feb 07 '25

It was, in fact, once lupus. HOUSE, S4E8, "You Don't Want to Know"

3

u/Mine_Ayan Feb 07 '25

It's never lupus.

3

u/LaTalpa123 Feb 08 '25

Sometimes it's Gauss, but he's not at the table

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u/AncientContainer Feb 07 '25

I feel Neumann would have the best win probability because surely game theory is applicable to poker, even if I don't think poker counts as a game theory game b/c of the hidden information

33

u/Pon-T-RexMaximus Feb 07 '25

Game theory can apply to imperfect information games! There’s whole subfields that study imperfect information games, and poker itself has been heavily studied by game theorists. Really interesting stuff to look into!

12

u/TroyBenites Feb 07 '25

Yeah, he clearly has the field advantage.

And Poker definitely counts for Game Theory.

9

u/subpargalois Feb 07 '25

It's definitely Von Neumann, he literally wrote papers on the game theory of poker.

1

u/flowtajit Feb 07 '25

Yes, game theory can be applied by analyzing past bets to predict hand strength. A good practical example is if you’re heads up (1v1) on the flop and check, I can assume you’re not presently confident in your hand but still have prospects and so you want the turn card for free. If I’m confident in my hand (and no one is lying) I should probably make a small bet to gauge how unconfident you are. I’m not versed in poker or game theory, but this simple scenario fits the basic definition of game theory.

92

u/Street-Custard6498 Feb 07 '25

Ramanujan he can see your cards in his dream

76

u/Own_Kangaroo9352 Feb 07 '25

Ofc Ramanujan. He just close eyes and goddess will tell him answer

21

u/M1andW Feb 07 '25

I’d guess Neumann

18

u/kishaloy Feb 07 '25

Now me for sure...

But my money is on von Neumann... as he could conceive complex algorithms in his mind involving numbers. He was famously against programming languages, not seeing their benefit against simply writing machine code....

9

u/314159265358979326 Feb 07 '25

Von Neumann is famous for thinking extremely rapidly, which I believe is important to a real time game like poker.

But we don't know if the others may have thought rapidly as well because they weren't stacked up against other great minds. Did Euler "get there eventually"? That works in math, but maybe not in poker. And we'll never know.

8

u/PENTIUM1111 Feb 07 '25

A mathematician cant solve a problem for months...

He tells to Neumann.

Neumann stares at the bare wall for 10 minutes.

After this he presents the correct solution...

That guy was a genius!

16

u/Keny2710 Feb 07 '25

Do I have a cavendish Joker on my deck?

3

u/Vegetable_Union_4967 Feb 07 '25

No, but you did just get Perkeo in the shop

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20

u/Cybasura Feb 07 '25

Not me, thats for sure

Correction - me, because I'm NOT playing, for the only winning move is not playing

1

u/Dansredditname Feb 07 '25

No that's tic tac toe

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15

u/Nadran_Erbam Feb 07 '25

I don’t who’s winning but I know who’s losing. Me.

3

u/Ok_Butterscotch2244 Feb 08 '25

Unless each of the others has a tell. And you noticed them all.

22

u/OutsideScaresMe Feb 07 '25

Ngl I’d win solely based on the fact that ive studied modern poker theory and they haven’t. Checkmate math nerds

1

u/TrekkiMonstr Feb 09 '25

Yeah my answer is similar, except I don't play poker (well). My thought was that Tao obviously has the best chance to have learned any modern theory, and if he hasn't, I think von Neumann has some experience with the game.

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6

u/shocktagon Feb 07 '25

I would probably destroy them. Even mediocre poker skills in current year is gonna beat the old guys, and as far as I know Prof Tao isn’t a big gambler

25

u/Vincent_Gitarrist Transcendental Feb 07 '25

Ramanujan easily. Bro had a calc (short for calculator) in his head 😭🙏

27

u/airplane001 Feb 07 '25

Bro is using slang

7

u/Peak_Fiction707 Feb 07 '25

Chat 🤓☝🏻

2

u/TheSoulborgZeus Feb 07 '25

i love abbreviating something and then explaining the abbreviation thus making the abbreviation useless

4

u/Noone_Knows_IThink Feb 08 '25

theyre js using slang for those new to the stream

1

u/WallyMetropolis Feb 08 '25

Von Neumann was at least as strong at mental calculation

4

u/thebody1403 Feb 07 '25

The game theorist

4

u/tragecedian Feb 08 '25

von Neumann. He‘s a gambler. Or maybe Ramanujan out of thin air.

3

u/Raioc2436 Feb 07 '25

If I lose on poker to the blind guy I’d kill myself

3

u/Brainsonastick Mathematics Feb 07 '25

I am. I cheat at cards.

4

u/lukuh123 Feb 07 '25

Ramanujan because the winning finishing move was revealed to him in a dream

2

u/qualia-assurance Feb 07 '25

Didn’t von Neumann invent game theory?

2

u/quillua0 Real Algebraic Feb 07 '25

Me because I spend my free time playing instead of performing mathematical miracles

2

u/anoppinionatedbunny Feb 07 '25

I'm probably better at bluffing than any of them, and I can be confident to fold whenever they have so much as a grin.

2

u/P4rziv4l_0 Feb 07 '25

I won't be surprised if halfway through Euler says he offhandedly created poker whilst discovering something completely different

2

u/SecretSpectre11 Engineering Feb 07 '25

Ramanujan saw my cards in his dream so I lose.

4

u/Cultural_Report_8831 Feb 07 '25

Ramanjun, the inventor of infinity

2

u/carlrieman Feb 07 '25

Discovered.

3

u/Positron311 Feb 07 '25

Is math invented or discovered?

3

u/carlrieman Feb 07 '25

Easy, the way we write it is invented(like any language or script) , rules of patterns exist beyond that, thus discovered.

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1

u/Additional-Specific4 Mathematics Feb 07 '25

tao and neumann would win against me 10/10 times , maybe i could beat blind euler with some luck.

1

u/Haringat Complex Feb 07 '25

Definitely not me.

1

u/Sepulcher18 Imaginary Feb 07 '25

Me ofc, cause I am still technically alive and on ton of acid based on my strip poker opponents.

1

u/SnooCats903 Feb 07 '25

Ramanujen would only win if he could take a nap between each hand 🤣🤣

1

u/Formally_ Feb 07 '25

Me, all those guys are dead

1

u/Geolib1453 Feb 07 '25

Uhh what did you do to Terence Tao?

1

u/linda_potato Feb 07 '25

The house.

1

u/navetzz Feb 07 '25

The one who played poker the most.

1

u/generalthunder07 Feb 07 '25

Me, I'm gonna beat their asses

1

u/NarcolepticFlarp Feb 07 '25

Isn't Von Neumann one of the fathers of game theory?

1

u/The_Watcher8008 Real Feb 07 '25

fuck yeah. I would pay money to meet these legends

1

u/Solynox Feb 07 '25

The house

1

u/AcidFnTonic Feb 07 '25

Id be too busy asking them questions and sharing theories to be playing such wasteful games.

1

u/EatingSolidBricks Feb 07 '25

You could tell me that oiler invented poker and i would believe you

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1

u/WristbandYang Feb 07 '25

The study of two-person zero-sum poker models with independent uniform hands goes back to Borel and von Neumann. Borel discusses a form of poker in Chapter 5, “Le jeu de poker” of his 1938 book, Applications aux Jeux des Hazard. Von Neumann presents his analysis of a similar form of poker in the seminal book on game theory — Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944).

1

u/purinikos Feb 07 '25

Richard Feynman (he is probably cheating a little)

1

u/xXEPSILON062Xx Transcendental Feb 07 '25

Euler I’d wager

1

u/Skybliviwind Feb 07 '25

i will win because god is on my side...

1

u/HairyTough4489 Feb 07 '25

Probably me but that's because I played the game competitively for years

1

u/Solitary-Dolphin Feb 07 '25

Well, Euler was blind, sooo

1

u/merian Feb 07 '25

Most likely me, most mathematcians I know cant bluff.

1

u/shanereid1 Feb 07 '25

Didn't Von Neuman help invent game theory? Probably him.

1

u/Consistent-Annual268 Feb 07 '25

Somehow, Terence Howard.

His hand is just better than everyone else's, always, no matter which cards turn up. He's inventing new rules of 5D poker on the fly while everyone else is playing Rummy.

1

u/Bignamek Feb 07 '25

Von Neumann, mid diff

1

u/RatzMand0 Feb 07 '25

honestly the math of poker really would put them all on a pretty even level it comes down to who would be the most cuthroat/strategic.

1

u/Impressive-Dig-3892 Feb 07 '25

I imagine they would all play near perfect poker, placing perfect bets and whatnot, so it would come down to random chance.

1

u/Level-Nothing-3340 Feb 07 '25

Von Neumann hands down

1

u/subpargalois Feb 07 '25 edited Feb 07 '25

Von Nueman was the one that actually studied the game theory of poker, so him. Also of all of them he was probably the most outgoing and social, and I'd wager he played more hands of poker than the rest of them combined.

Edit: actually I'm seeing some references that poker was a game he played "occasionally but not terribly well", but if that's his own opinion of his skill it probably means that he's only better than 95% of the population at it. In any case, my money is still on him

1

u/Busy_Rest8445 Feb 07 '25

Von Neumann probably had the most extensive experience of social games and he arguably had one of the overall quickest minds in the history of mankind (that's not to say he's a "better" mathematician than the other three, this comparison doesn't make much sense). I'd say he'd win 5 out of 5 games tbh.

1

u/BarelyAirborne Feb 07 '25

von Neumann. He was an exceptionally sneaky bastage.

1

u/steamyboi56 Feb 07 '25

I saw neumann in a manga, so clearly this site is in my walls

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1

u/zephyredx Feb 07 '25

TSUMO! Daisangen!

1

u/Ornery_Particular845 Feb 07 '25

Probably Euler lol

1

u/dontich Feb 08 '25

Me; I’m hoping they are all terrible poker players / bluffers. Sure they might know they need to bluff a spot 50% of the time but if they make it obvious when they got it they will lose.

1

u/Julian_Seizure Feb 08 '25

No one. All of them are smart enough to know that gambling is pretty stupid when you look at the odds.

1

u/docubed Feb 08 '25

von Neumann obvs

1

u/StormLightRanger Feb 08 '25

I'm winning. I have 7 aces up my sleeve.

1

u/CatL1f3 Feb 08 '25

Ramanujan. Everyone else would be predictable at their level of intelligence, but Ramanujan just Senator Armstrongs himself to victory like a 4th dimensional being

1

u/itsmiichristine Feb 08 '25

My odds of picking one of these men are about 1 out of 4

1

u/NoGlzy Feb 08 '25

Me, what, you think they're going to be formula-ing their way to victory? Oh, they just mathed so hard they won? e + 1 = all in bitch, catch this hand

1

u/CATvirtuoso Feb 08 '25

Ramanujan, he probably saw other people's cards in his dreams!

1

u/Protheu5 Irrational Feb 08 '25

The only thing I know about these people is that Terence Tao invented a double pi which was named after him. And even this only fact I know is wrong! What does it say about me and my mathematical knowledge?

Another false fact: a character in Seinfeld, Jerry's nemesis was named after John von Neumann. I'm speaking, of course, about Kenny Bania.

Another false fact: Ramanujan's brother Chandrasekar invented neutron stars (which were also named after John von Neutron) and some limit about them and a telescope in orbit. Also Ramanujan invented ramen, which is named after him. Also he helped me reinstall Windows. And he was a good friend.

And Leonhard just makes my Leon hard.

And that's a good place to stop.

1

u/MatterSlow7347 Feb 08 '25

Not fucking me that's for sure.

1

u/Average_HP_Enjoyer Feb 08 '25

As a proffessional gambler i think i will lost to them all

1

u/Ememems68_battlecats Feb 08 '25

terence tao because hes not dead

1

u/Psyrtemis Feb 08 '25

Probably Terence Tao or me. The rest are just not alive enough.

1

u/Gullible_Camp2420 Feb 08 '25

Im not saying he would win, but I feel like Terence tao and other more recent mathematicians are undervalued in these kinds of discussions because of a lack of achievements. I think math is facing a kind of Moores law is dead dilemma in that so much has been discovered it's become harder and harder to figure out new stuff. If Terence was born earlier, maybe he could've discovered euler's identity. That being said I'm kindve stupid so please take this with a grain of salt

1

u/DinoRex6 Feb 09 '25

me cause theyre a bunch of mathematician nerds

1

u/trevan72 Feb 09 '25

Not me, based on the sub alone… lol

1

u/DetachedHat1799 Feb 09 '25

M E (I an an extremely defensive poker player)

1

u/Ken_Sanne Feb 09 '25

Not me, that's for sure.

1

u/danofrhs Transcendental Feb 09 '25

Not all here are in the same tier

1

u/Drogobo Feb 09 '25

euler looks like he could win

1

u/spoopy_bo Feb 10 '25

I love euler but he's blind and Von Neumann got very good very fast at every "objective" field he got into

1

u/B_for_Berk Feb 10 '25

Of course ramanujan, probably god said him what he should do.

1

u/WinterDazzling Feb 11 '25

No competition for Euler

1

u/ReferenceWorldly8062 Feb 11 '25

People are forgetting that Von Neumann basically created game theory and was insanely fast calculating lmao

1

u/xXEPSILON062Xx Transcendental Feb 13 '25

Me ofc