"The Pen:" Live NLHE Chat Thread

my favorite is most of the world actually believe medieval combat was literally just thousands of people running around as individuals swinging swords at whomever in battle with no formations

The Lone Survivor flick is not one of those situations. By most accounts (including Taliban footage taken at the time) it was over very quickly, if not as quickly as a well-executed ambush with belt-fed machine guns v men moving in the open should've been. Luttrell survived because he literally fell off the mountain, on the correct side of the ridge, and basically tumbled down to Gulab's front doorstep (the Pashtun who aided him).

A better Afghanistan story to read about---it's not been filmed by Hollywood, though various drone footage like this exists---for a one man fight many against incredible odds, is the story of Master Sergeant John Chapman.

Anyway, acronyms. QRF = Quick Reaction Force. Reinforcements able to assist another, usually smaller group asking for help.
USMC = Marine Corps. It was a Marine operation that required additional helicopters during planning, and the only group with helicopters to spare was JSOC, who insisted their personnel also take part along with the helicopters.
JSOC = Joint Special Operations Command. United States umbrella organization to ensure that all of the other armed services' special operations personnel (for example, Delta Force, now CAG, the Navy's Sea Air And Land "operators", the Air Force's Joint Tactical Air Controllers, like John Chapman, etc...) talk to each other under a unified chain of command.
Cf = A legal abbreviation that escapes me at the moment, but basically means, "Look at this thing, which isn't an exact example of what I mean, or evidence directly supporting it, but is still useful for understanding." Jessica Lynch's unit in Iraq got lost several tens of miles behind Iraqi lines, was attacked, destroyed, and she was taken prisoner. Initially, and after she was later rescued, a narrative was started that she fought to the last magazine, killed a bunch of Iraqis, got bonked on the head, and became a prisoner of war. To her credit, she disclaimed all of that heroic storytelling. The wiki about Ms. Lynch discusses it in more detail.
Her fellow soldiers, Donald Walters and Patrick Miller who did fight bravely, are mostly forgotten. This newspaper account goes into more detail about Walters. He fought until he ran out of ammunition, was captured, then executed.

I've never seen any other style depicted in a movie.

Seems believable when you also read/watch things like the british 2-rank formation. Which seems pretty stupid in a projectile fight.

God’s team the Sydney Roosters won the second game

You only get 6 plays to score on each possession before the opposition gets the ball back. So generally you kick for field position or to attack the opposition’s line on the 6th play

And we played extremely well. Was an awesome start to the season

Ah, got it. There were several tries in the second half, the announcers were legit excited for how high-scoring the game was.

One of my regrets is, on one of my stays in Sydney, I didn't go out to the rugby game (or maybe it was Aussie rules).

I was staying in Darling Harbour. Looked at the ferry/train/bus trip to the stadium, and decided I'd be too likely to get lost. Wish now that I'd went, and got a cab back if I got lost, I bet it would've been a ton of fun.

The only game I understand less than rugby is cricket.

tl:dr trench warfare was extremely common back then here's a picture from the civil war of a trench system

the reason why you never hear about these trenches is nobody in their right mind is ever assaulting that, so while they were incredibly common during the musket era, they were so effective that the presence of a trench would guarantee no battle, the opposing side would instead go around the trenches, or if the trenches were protecting the specific objective, they'd settle into a siege to starve them out instead

so all musket era combat had a basic precondition that no trenches were on the field, so it was usually one army scrambling for an objective and the opposing army leaving behind the trenches they were in covering the original planned route and quickly getting into position to block the other army along the new path - this is basically how gettysburg began, lee found the union army rapidly moving in to block his path to dc and seeing that they were not yet fully entrenched and still arriving figured this was his best shot - with each passing year the union army grew stronger and his confederate army got weaker so he needed to make a big push now or just lose by attrition - without that dynamic he likely would have not attacked and instead tried another route to washington - in poker terms, he was in a tourney with less than 10bb and got dealt a weak ace in the cutoff position and it folded around to him

but long winded rant coming up:

medieval combat was fought in the same exact rank/file system

opposing blobs was how combat commenced and extended contact between the two was incredibly uncommon - usually one side retreated quite quickly

imagine if you and your coworkers are all handed spears, asked to form two lines and oppose a similarly drafted setup from a rival company - and then your ceo asks you guys to move forward and kill the others - just how many people do you think will actually die in this situation, very few, if any as most people are going to value their lives over victory over the rival company and won't be willing to take any risks, most will flee at the first sign of danger, you see your coworkers flee and the other side is still there then even if you were initially willing to fight, now that it's you against the world you too will run as well

- now imagine instead that you're all farmers, it's a war and you've been trained for a week or two leading up to this, it's going to very much the same thing

ancient and medieval warfare was much less about physical combat and instead about posturing and making the other side throw down their weapons to run away before your own side did

for this reason, casualties rarely exceeded 10%, and when they did it was usually because the side which threw down their weapons to run found themselves boxed in by a river or something a half mile away and the enemy cavalry just picked off the unarmed people who had no outlet for escape if they didn't know how to swim

combat for the most part was done remotely, you had missile units such as crossbowman firing from afar and infantry units to protect them from cavalry charges, likewise, cavalry were not charging directly into infantry formations (that's a one way trip) but rather would feint at doing that and wheel away at the last second hoping that the oncoming charge would terrify the men into running away, at which point they could hack away at their backs as they fled in loose formation

it was so uncommon for infantry formations to actually engage fully that it had a special term for it, people would say "it came to the push of the pike" because most conflicts were settled before that point, the opposing armies would take positions, there'd be some exchanges of missile fire and some feinted cavalry charges and one side would lose their nerve and flees and that would be it

furthermore, in the event that one side didn't begin retreating almost immediately once the opposing infantry formations clashed but both sides actually stood their ground and fought, that too had its own unique word to designate how rare and uncommon it was and it would be call a "bad war"

so swap out those crossbows with rifles, make them reloadable fast enough and develop rotational volley fire tactics which ensured constant firing pressure and now it's basically suicide for infantry/cavalry to approach them in most situations so now armies are overwhelmingly musketmen with a small cadre of cavalry to scout, raid supply lines, hack down fleeing enemies, and be used in outlier situations in actual combat

so we have two sides of 5k

one side forms into a tight formation out in the open field

the other side adopts guerilla tactics, spreads out and takes cover

if those guerillas have picked a location providing maximum cover and are hiding in the trees then the main army ignores them, they aren't there to conquer a forest, they either go around the forest and take their objective or they surround the forest and starve them out

let's say those guerillas are in a realistic situation now, not hiding in a forest to attain zero objectives because no army would be stupid enough to follow them in there, but instead there's an army marching down the valley of farmland on their way to take the capital

suddenly there aren't any good locations to densely pack an army, at best you can have a few dozen soldiers here or there, spread out thinly in well covered spots in the valley

in a video game - the spread out side efficiently takes down the big formation walking in the open as each soldier can always take out 1-2 guys before he himself is overwhelmed

in real life - someone sees him and 8 other guys hiding behind the first row of hedges, they see 5k guys coming and do the quick mental math there's no situation here whatsoever in which they come out of this alive, they run, maybe they take a shot or two first, but they still run - the next set of 8 guys in the next set of cover see those guys running and they too do the same math and run themselves, soon everyone is running

let's say the first squad are the kind of zealous kamikazes who sacrifice their lives for the greater good, well then the next group back sees them all die, knows they are next, and does the math and run

importantly, when people run like this they are not retreating as a group to form up again in the next town, they are only concerned with survival and will go out in all kinds of directions and throw away anything heavy that prevents them from running away quickly - many will take this opportunity to nope out and head home, even those who stay and try to reform with their unit may be unable to do so because the oncoming enemy army forces them to continually flee with no time to form up and get resupplied with fresh guns and ammo - despite that nobody died, the army no longer exists for all intents and purposes and they will need to raise and form a fresh army

this is why they formed up in large formations, because people like living and nobody cares about having good cover to take out a few more guys before they die

basically, because of liberties done by film and video games, we just assume warfare to be perpetrated by a bunch of yolo idiots

the truth is, it's always been done by guys like garrick

Rugby Union, which was what I played is very complicated.

Rugby league, which is what I mainly watch and which was played in Vegas last night, is easy enough to understand even for Americans. In effect, 6 plays to score and if you don’t, the opposition gets the ball and gets 6 plays. After each play the defending side has to retreat 10m from where the tackle was made.

4 points for a try (td) although you actually have to ground the ball over the line. 2 points for a kick.

Everyone plays Offense and defense. No pads and no helmets

The first game was high scoring. Second game with my boys was lower.

You should have gone. Aussie Rules is difficult to understand if you haven’t grown up with it but it’s one of those games that’s better live.

my sweet summer child.

Big brown boy runs with the ball

Bigger brown boy hits him

The crowd cheers

See the big men run!

I thought we were talking about medieval combat? I've heard about trench warfare. I thought it was more common during times closer to the world wars. But I didn't think it was happening during the Dark Ages.

Eta: nvm, i see you address this further along in your response.

Basically everything rick said, though before large units of pikes became common, cavalry riding down the infantry was sometimes successful.

It doesn't take many simulations before you realize that wide-open melee combat is not a recipe for individual survival. The dark ages version of a "ride or die" friend was "shield-wall companion." You covered his flank and he covered yours.

And 10% casualties was considered horrible. It's actually what the word decimate literally means.

turtle, trench warfare was also common in ancient history as well, if you read about the works of julius caesar he mostly writes about digging trenches and how he responded to trenches the enemy themselves dug

it just didn't enter the cultural zeitgeist until wwi were modern economies allowed us to field armies so large that we could literally entrench and defend the entire front instead of important sections that armies could move around and avoid - wwi was trench warfare because the trenches went from coast to coast and thus you couldn't go around them

I enjoy the movie Fury warts and all

as much as i hate the ending, i still watched it like 3-4 times, up until then it's pretty great imo (having said that, i've read from some people who understand tank warfare pretty well that the tank combat itself was pretty stupid)

I never knew that. ossum. and ossum discussion.

I wonder how Lapi is getting on.

he hasn't been heard of since Covid times I think? Garick...do you know how to check his last post?

I do hope he didn't come a cropper

but who we really need for this warfare discussion is mpethy

feels, i played on the rugby team my senior year of college - it was a club team so no real infrastructure, 100% funded by alumni, but we did play other colleges, including air force academy who would absolutely crush us by like 80 points each time (i think we played their C squad as well of only freshmen)

i honestly still have no idea what the rules are or what the higher meta of strategy is

was a lot of fun, but was much more a social club with an activity prior to drinking and aside from a few foreigners on the team who grew up playing, none of us had much of a clue over how to play other than "pass backwards, hit low, if you get hit then release the ball immediately"

i knew what my specific role in the scrum would be, but had no idea what was actually going on in the middle nor why we were forming a scrum, i would just see them forming one and knew which teammate's taint it was my duty to squeeze and push

during set pieces myself and other teammates would need to be put into place immediatley prior by one of the few teammates who actually knew what they were doing

So you were the ‘Poker’s cool. But does a straight beat a flush?’ guy

100%

Thank you, Rick and Garick, for the thorough responses. Really interesting stuff. I did not know about Caesar and trench warfare. Also, I did not know about the origin of the word decimate. Nice that it shows up as the historical definition when I googled it.