Thursday, November 17, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Bad Beat Jackpot
"You can keep playing," said the dealer, "but there won't be any Bad Beat Jackpot."
"What's the point?" said the guy to my left.
At Greektown hitting the Bad Beat Jackpot requires losing with four-of-a-kind to a better four-of-a-kind or a straight flush. I played over a million hands of poker online last year, all of which are recorded in a database. When I did a search for hands that would have satisfied the Bat Beat, I found a grand total of zero. I do seem to remember once losing with quads versus quads though, so maybe I messed up one of the filters. In any case, when you're talking about live poker where you play 30 hands an hour, there's not much difference between zero in a million or one in a million. It's not going to happen.
Plus, it's not that much money. The Bad Beat is currently a little over $100,000. If I remember right, the loser gets half of that, the winner gets a quarter, and the rest is split up between the rest of the table. Don't get me wrong, it'd be nice, but we're not talking about set-you-up-for-life money.
Psychologically though the Bad Beat is brilliant. It takes one of the worst outcomes in poker (you make a really great hand but end up losing a huge pot) and makes it into one of the best. On an emotional level, to someone who doesn't understand the odds, this makes the whole idea of playing poker more appealing. Of course, the Jackpot is funded by money taken out of pots, not all of which gets paid back, so ultimately it's a losing proposition just like every other bet you make with the casino.
So okay, it's a cute promotion, a clever marketing idea, not that big of a deal, right? Nope. It's the single most discussed topic at the poker table and the primary driver of many players' decisions. If the table breaks down to less than five players, the cutoff for awarding the Jackpot, the majority of players will refuse to play for that reason. And many players assign too much value to starting hands, pocket pairs and suited connectors, that are capable of hitting the Bad Beat.
"What's the point?" said the guy to my left.
At Greektown hitting the Bad Beat Jackpot requires losing with four-of-a-kind to a better four-of-a-kind or a straight flush. I played over a million hands of poker online last year, all of which are recorded in a database. When I did a search for hands that would have satisfied the Bat Beat, I found a grand total of zero. I do seem to remember once losing with quads versus quads though, so maybe I messed up one of the filters. In any case, when you're talking about live poker where you play 30 hands an hour, there's not much difference between zero in a million or one in a million. It's not going to happen.
Plus, it's not that much money. The Bad Beat is currently a little over $100,000. If I remember right, the loser gets half of that, the winner gets a quarter, and the rest is split up between the rest of the table. Don't get me wrong, it'd be nice, but we're not talking about set-you-up-for-life money.
Psychologically though the Bad Beat is brilliant. It takes one of the worst outcomes in poker (you make a really great hand but end up losing a huge pot) and makes it into one of the best. On an emotional level, to someone who doesn't understand the odds, this makes the whole idea of playing poker more appealing. Of course, the Jackpot is funded by money taken out of pots, not all of which gets paid back, so ultimately it's a losing proposition just like every other bet you make with the casino.
So okay, it's a cute promotion, a clever marketing idea, not that big of a deal, right? Nope. It's the single most discussed topic at the poker table and the primary driver of many players' decisions. If the table breaks down to less than five players, the cutoff for awarding the Jackpot, the majority of players will refuse to play for that reason. And many players assign too much value to starting hands, pocket pairs and suited connectors, that are capable of hitting the Bad Beat.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Suck Out
1-2 No Limit game, Greektown Casino. I open to 15 under the gun with aces, next guy to act raises to 35, everyone else folds. He has about 450, I have him covered. I raise it up to 110 and he calls quickly but not very happily. Flop is Kxx, he lunges forward with his whole body and shoves about 100 in chips into the pot, out of turn. After being warned by the dealer he sheepishly takes his chips back. I check and he makes the same bet. I feel pretty strongly that he has exactly KK. It makes so much sense. But can't he have AK? Maybe even KQ suited? Could even be QQ or JJ played very badly, or a weird bluff. He just called a big river bet against me with ace-high, so he thinks I'm full of shit. Can I really fold aces with a 1.5 pot-sized bet left on the flop? I can't. I go all-in. He calls.
"You have kings?"
"Yeah."
We both flip our cards. The turn is a seven. I don't really see the river, I just hear the table go nuts. He stands up, stares blankly at the table for a few seconds, and walks away. I rake in a $900 pot.
1. Sometimes the biggest pots are the least interesting. There are points where both of us could have played differently, but all the money was going in regardless. Poker is a forest. You learn which plants are good to eat and which are poisonous, how to hunt certain animals and avoid others, but sometimes while you're walking through the forest you get struck by lightning. There's not much you can do about it.
2. I'm told that, according to quantum physics, there exist many alternate realities*. In most of them I don't win that pot. I watch my good session go sour. I take a walk outside and try to figure out if I'm in the right state of mind to keep playing. Maybe I quit or maybe I keep playing. Maybe I go into a tailspin and lose all the cash I brought that day, or maybe I rebound and get back ahead. But today I don't have to deal with that. Today I get to be Nate who won a $900 pot. It's pretty fun.
*As far as I can tell, the work of quantum physicists has mostly to do with balancing complex equations, but the effect of quantum physics on the rest of us is to give quasi-scientific justification to vague, spiritual and/or metaphorical statements, e.g., "Everything is energy." That and the atomic bomb I guess.
"You have kings?"
"Yeah."
We both flip our cards. The turn is a seven. I don't really see the river, I just hear the table go nuts. He stands up, stares blankly at the table for a few seconds, and walks away. I rake in a $900 pot.
1. Sometimes the biggest pots are the least interesting. There are points where both of us could have played differently, but all the money was going in regardless. Poker is a forest. You learn which plants are good to eat and which are poisonous, how to hunt certain animals and avoid others, but sometimes while you're walking through the forest you get struck by lightning. There's not much you can do about it.
2. I'm told that, according to quantum physics, there exist many alternate realities*. In most of them I don't win that pot. I watch my good session go sour. I take a walk outside and try to figure out if I'm in the right state of mind to keep playing. Maybe I quit or maybe I keep playing. Maybe I go into a tailspin and lose all the cash I brought that day, or maybe I rebound and get back ahead. But today I don't have to deal with that. Today I get to be Nate who won a $900 pot. It's pretty fun.
*As far as I can tell, the work of quantum physicists has mostly to do with balancing complex equations, but the effect of quantum physics on the rest of us is to give quasi-scientific justification to vague, spiritual and/or metaphorical statements, e.g., "Everything is energy." That and the atomic bomb I guess.
Friday, August 26, 2011
The D
Years ago, in Vegas -- not for poker, but for an ultimate frisbee tournament, in the hotel elevator...
Woman (seemingly drunk, head tilted slightly upwards): So, you like the D?
Nate: What?
W (sd, htsu): You like the D?
N: What?
W: You like the D?
N (realizes he is wearing a Detroit Tigers cap): Oh. Yeah.
Elevator stops. N exits awkwardly.
I'm not sure why this stuck with me. Something about how she said "the D" I think, the repetition of those meaningless (then) syllables working hypnotically, like a watch swinging back and forth. "You like the D?" A koan.
Yesterday I moved my bed into my new place in Detroit, a fifth-floor loft across the street from Greektown Casino and directly above Niki's Lounge, "the place to find all the beautiful people in the city." I've assured my mom, who is afraid I'll be stuck up for my poker roll, that I'll either be in my apartment, in the casino, or sprinting across the street.
After a few months of lounging around, it seems like time to get serious about something, and for now that something is live poker. Unfortunately, it's a big pay cut from online poker. No matter how bad the players are, there's no way to overcome going from 1000 hands/hour to 30 hands/hour. With that in mind, commuting 45 minutes each way from Ann Arbor to the Detroit casinos wasn't going to work, so I bit the bullet and got a place in the city.
So, you like the D? I'm not sure if it's the kind of place you can like. From some angles, it looks like a city; from most, a ghost town. The young transplants are unbearably hip, the outlook almost unbearably bleak. The people who are trying are trying very hard indeed. They have some good BBQ. Well, I'm just getting to know it.
Woman (seemingly drunk, head tilted slightly upwards): So, you like the D?
Nate: What?
W (sd, htsu): You like the D?
N: What?
W: You like the D?
N (realizes he is wearing a Detroit Tigers cap): Oh. Yeah.
Elevator stops. N exits awkwardly.
I'm not sure why this stuck with me. Something about how she said "the D" I think, the repetition of those meaningless (then) syllables working hypnotically, like a watch swinging back and forth. "You like the D?" A koan.
Yesterday I moved my bed into my new place in Detroit, a fifth-floor loft across the street from Greektown Casino and directly above Niki's Lounge, "the place to find all the beautiful people in the city." I've assured my mom, who is afraid I'll be stuck up for my poker roll, that I'll either be in my apartment, in the casino, or sprinting across the street.
After a few months of lounging around, it seems like time to get serious about something, and for now that something is live poker. Unfortunately, it's a big pay cut from online poker. No matter how bad the players are, there's no way to overcome going from 1000 hands/hour to 30 hands/hour. With that in mind, commuting 45 minutes each way from Ann Arbor to the Detroit casinos wasn't going to work, so I bit the bullet and got a place in the city.
So, you like the D? I'm not sure if it's the kind of place you can like. From some angles, it looks like a city; from most, a ghost town. The young transplants are unbearably hip, the outlook almost unbearably bleak. The people who are trying are trying very hard indeed. They have some good BBQ. Well, I'm just getting to know it.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Messages from the Brink
On February 11, 1963 Sylvia Plath was found dead in her kitchen. She had put her head in the oven with the gas on. Ariel, her collection of poetry, was published posthumously in 1965. The poems, many written shortly before her suicide, dealt with depression and death with an intensity and authority owing both to her brilliance as a writer and the circumstances surrounding her death. She wrote, it seemed, from the brink of death, and knew and expressed things that no living person could.
Amy Winehouse died on Saturday. Her 2006 album "Back to Black" explored drug addiction and abuse, most famously in the single "Rehab." The causes of her death haven't yet been announced, but no one has much doubt they are drug related. For Winehouse's friends, family, and fans her death is very sad. At the same time, it lends a degree of credibility to her music that is almost unheard-of for a pop artist these days.
In 2011 everything is bullshit, but especially pop music. Everything we hear has been Auto-Tuned, packaged, market-tested, honed down to a smooth cog in a machine designed to extract money from us as efficiently as possible. While some of this music is enjoyable, none of it feels very true. There's just so much between the artist and the listener. Beyonce came out with "Single Ladies" years after Jay-Z put a ring on it. A stellar song, it nonetheless screams "target demographic" from the first line ("All the single ladies! All the single ladies!"). I'm not saying, of course, that every song needs to be biographically accurate. Just that you can often feel a certain amount of calculation and bean-counting going on. But after Winehouse wrote "Rehab," she really went to rehab. Someone who willfully hurts herself, the thinking goes, need not be suspected of bullshitting us to help herself.
But this is starting to sound like a whole lot more bullshit. Self-destruction can be as manipulative as anything else (suicide attempts as cries for help, etc.). And if the only way to declare your authenticity is to hurt yourself, that doesn't leave a lot of range for self-expression, does it?
Amy Winehouse died on Saturday. Her 2006 album "Back to Black" explored drug addiction and abuse, most famously in the single "Rehab." The causes of her death haven't yet been announced, but no one has much doubt they are drug related. For Winehouse's friends, family, and fans her death is very sad. At the same time, it lends a degree of credibility to her music that is almost unheard-of for a pop artist these days.
In 2011 everything is bullshit, but especially pop music. Everything we hear has been Auto-Tuned, packaged, market-tested, honed down to a smooth cog in a machine designed to extract money from us as efficiently as possible. While some of this music is enjoyable, none of it feels very true. There's just so much between the artist and the listener. Beyonce came out with "Single Ladies" years after Jay-Z put a ring on it. A stellar song, it nonetheless screams "target demographic" from the first line ("All the single ladies! All the single ladies!"). I'm not saying, of course, that every song needs to be biographically accurate. Just that you can often feel a certain amount of calculation and bean-counting going on. But after Winehouse wrote "Rehab," she really went to rehab. Someone who willfully hurts herself, the thinking goes, need not be suspected of bullshitting us to help herself.
But this is starting to sound like a whole lot more bullshit. Self-destruction can be as manipulative as anything else (suicide attempts as cries for help, etc.). And if the only way to declare your authenticity is to hurt yourself, that doesn't leave a lot of range for self-expression, does it?
Friday, July 8, 2011
Title Blog
Bad Teacher opened this week. I don't know if it's any good, but I do know what it's about: a bad teacher.
It's just the most recent case in a spate of bluntly named movies. The trend seemed to start with genre-mashup-parodies like Scary Movie and, more depressingly, Date Movie and Epic Movie. Their titles served to indicate their membership in the genre-mashup-parody genre, as well as suggesting some kind of archetypal status, maybe as a curative for their soul-crushing banality.
More recently the convention has spread to movies of all genres. Bad Teacher, Friends with Benefits, Prom, and Babies are just a few examples of successful recent movies with whack-you-over-the-head titles. I assume the convention has to do with selling the movies and more specifically an anxiety that people won't see a movie if they can't figure out exactly what it's about within four milliseconds. The idea that the unknown can be more alluring than the known has apparently been rejected.
Meanwhile the book industry has taken naming in a different direction, but with a similar motivation. Rather than the shotgun blast of ____ Movie, books have embraced catchy titles girded with pedantic subtitles that spell out exactly what the book is about. Like movies they banish any trace of mystery, they're just not into the whole brevity thing.
It's just the most recent case in a spate of bluntly named movies. The trend seemed to start with genre-mashup-parodies like Scary Movie and, more depressingly, Date Movie and Epic Movie. Their titles served to indicate their membership in the genre-mashup-parody genre, as well as suggesting some kind of archetypal status, maybe as a curative for their soul-crushing banality.
More recently the convention has spread to movies of all genres. Bad Teacher, Friends with Benefits, Prom, and Babies are just a few examples of successful recent movies with whack-you-over-the-head titles. I assume the convention has to do with selling the movies and more specifically an anxiety that people won't see a movie if they can't figure out exactly what it's about within four milliseconds. The idea that the unknown can be more alluring than the known has apparently been rejected.
Meanwhile the book industry has taken naming in a different direction, but with a similar motivation. Rather than the shotgun blast of ____ Movie, books have embraced catchy titles girded with pedantic subtitles that spell out exactly what the book is about. Like movies they banish any trace of mystery, they're just not into the whole brevity thing.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Busto
I busted out of my first (and it's looking like only, for this year at least), World Series event last night. It was the 1k No Limit Hold'em event. I had some butterflies before it started, but once the cards were shuffled up I quickly got comfortable. I got my starting stack of 3k chips all the way up to 30k, mostly playing solid poker and getting dealt some good hands. I ran one big (but high percentage, I think) bluff that worked and profited from opponents spazzing out in some weird spots.
In the hand I busted out, I took an aggressive line that I'm confident would win chips on average, but was probably too risky for that stage of the tournament. I ended up getting all-in with 88 against AQ pre-flop, about a 55-45 favorite, but I lost the hand and was out. If I had won I would have had a big stack and been in a great position to go deep into the tournament. I definitely made some mistakes, but overall I was pretty happy with how I played. I thought I might play too timidly because I don't have a lot of experience in big tournaments, but if anything I was over-aggressive. I could have picked my spots a little better.
Going in I didn't really expect much -- only 10% of the field cashes, and of those only the top few make a lot of money. Still, it started well and I was starting to think maybe things would really go my way. I woke up at 7:30 the next morning not knowing where I was. Then I remembered and was disappointed again. Then I went back to sleep until noon.
In the hand I busted out, I took an aggressive line that I'm confident would win chips on average, but was probably too risky for that stage of the tournament. I ended up getting all-in with 88 against AQ pre-flop, about a 55-45 favorite, but I lost the hand and was out. If I had won I would have had a big stack and been in a great position to go deep into the tournament. I definitely made some mistakes, but overall I was pretty happy with how I played. I thought I might play too timidly because I don't have a lot of experience in big tournaments, but if anything I was over-aggressive. I could have picked my spots a little better.
Going in I didn't really expect much -- only 10% of the field cashes, and of those only the top few make a lot of money. Still, it started well and I was starting to think maybe things would really go my way. I woke up at 7:30 the next morning not knowing where I was. Then I remembered and was disappointed again. Then I went back to sleep until noon.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Oh the Humanity
This probably isn't interesting if you don't play poker, but I have to relay a hand I saw played today. It was three players to the flop and all three flopped a set on an innocuous board. The action from there:
Flop: checks through
Turn: bet, call, call
River: checks through
No one else at the table seemed very surprised.
Flop: checks through
Turn: bet, call, call
River: checks through
No one else at the table seemed very surprised.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Delroy Lindo
Delroy Lindo is best known for his role in Spike Lee's Malcolm X. Also, for not losing his stack when he gets dealt kings against my aces. He just calls my raise preflop, then makes the minimum raise over my continuation bet on a paired board. Since he's played passively so far, I consider trips a definite possibility and just call. The turn checks through. Now I think he was either bluffing on the flop, in which case he won't bluff the river, or else he has a weak pair, so I make a small bet of about a quarter of the pot, hoping to get called. He quickly calls and turns over kings. GODDAMNIT!!!!!!!!!
There are few sure things in poker, but one is that when you get dealt kings against aces you're supposed to lose your whole stack. The way he played the hand was bad, ridiculous really, but in this case it worked perfectly. You got me, Delroy.
Actually I've never heard of Delroy Lindo, but Steven, the mid-30s online poker pro/yoga instructor sitting to my left, has informed me that that's who it is. He recognized him right away but couldn't remember his name, so he surreptitiously took a picture with his phone and sent it to his brother. Neither of us have told Delroy Lindo that he is Delroy Lindo, because we're respecting his privacy.
Meanwhile, I'm having one of the best sessions of my life. All my bluffs are working and when I make a big hand I'm getting paid off. I have total command of the table. In a couple hours playing 1-2 I'm up over a thousand. No one at the table knows how to deal with my aggression.
That changes when a beautiful 20-something blonde sits down to my right. She's wearing a sleek dress and carrying what looks like a very expensive bag. She's definitely out of place in Bally's lackluster poker room, a few tables of tourists and senior citizens. She orders a beer and sets about crushing the table. She's playing almost every hand and winning most of them. In less than an hour she's up over 500.
To my left, Steven says he has her pegged for an off-work dealer. I disagree. I've noticed that her bet sizing and her read on the other players seem very strong. While she's clearly playing a lot of sub-par hands, she's playing them perfectly. I think she's probably a slumming high stakes pro.
With the blonde at the table I have less opportunities to play pots. Often by the time the action gets to me she's already put in a big raise. Nonetheless I pick my spots and my stack continues to grow. When she raises in early position I come over the top with a big raise with king seven suited. She calls, but folds to my continuation bet on the flop. I'd like to believe she knows I'm the only player at the table who can keep up with her and she doesn't want to fuck with me, but it's probably wishful thinking.
The rest of the table is as intrigued as I am and is peppering her with questions. Where's she from? What does she do? How'd she learn to play? My suspicions are confirmed: she's a live poker pro living in Vegas. She says her dad taught her the game. The table wants to know who her dad is. She doesn't want to say, but after a lot of pestering gives up that he's Oklahoma Johnny. I don't know Oklahoma Johnny any more than I know Delroy Lindo, but some of the other players seem to recognize the name.
My eyes start to droop. Still on Michigan time, I woke up at 8 a.m. It's now past 3 a.m. in the night. As tired as I am, I'm still having fun. For the first time I see what Vegas is all about. I have a mountain of chips in front of me and I'm playing with a movie star and a glamorous high roller. I wonder what it would be like if this was my reality every night. I imagine playing all night and into the next day, taking shots at higher stakes, going out to expensive bars. I imagine never leaving Vegas.
Then I think about going back to Michigan. I have to be back by the first of the month to move all my stuff out of my room. The inspectors are coming by and the attic is not technically a legal living space. I have to teach a week-long chess camp. I have to think about moving somewhere online poker is legal, or getting a real job. I have $1500 sitting in front of me. That's real money to me. I don't even like bars.
Meanwhile I recognize the table has gotten worse. Steven, the tight but competent online pro is still to my left. A jolly but sly Swede has joined the table and has been making some cunning moves. The dangerous blonde has accumulated a stack almost as big as mine and at some point I'll have to play a big pot against her. The biggest fish have long since perished in these dangerous waters. Those who remain have watched their stacks dwindle, their eyes darting around the table in fear and bewilderment. Regretfully I get three racks and pack up my chips.
Delroy left a little while before me. When he stood up, Steven couldn't contain himself any longer and said, "Tell me this. Did you really have that number?"
It was Lindo's big line from Malcolm X. Lindo looked confused.
"Tell me this," Steven repeated, "Did you really have that number?"
"You know," said Lindo, "a lot of people confuse me for Delroy Lindo. My name's Jackson."
It's a mirage, but it's a beautiful mirage.
There are few sure things in poker, but one is that when you get dealt kings against aces you're supposed to lose your whole stack. The way he played the hand was bad, ridiculous really, but in this case it worked perfectly. You got me, Delroy.
Actually I've never heard of Delroy Lindo, but Steven, the mid-30s online poker pro/yoga instructor sitting to my left, has informed me that that's who it is. He recognized him right away but couldn't remember his name, so he surreptitiously took a picture with his phone and sent it to his brother. Neither of us have told Delroy Lindo that he is Delroy Lindo, because we're respecting his privacy.
Meanwhile, I'm having one of the best sessions of my life. All my bluffs are working and when I make a big hand I'm getting paid off. I have total command of the table. In a couple hours playing 1-2 I'm up over a thousand. No one at the table knows how to deal with my aggression.
That changes when a beautiful 20-something blonde sits down to my right. She's wearing a sleek dress and carrying what looks like a very expensive bag. She's definitely out of place in Bally's lackluster poker room, a few tables of tourists and senior citizens. She orders a beer and sets about crushing the table. She's playing almost every hand and winning most of them. In less than an hour she's up over 500.
To my left, Steven says he has her pegged for an off-work dealer. I disagree. I've noticed that her bet sizing and her read on the other players seem very strong. While she's clearly playing a lot of sub-par hands, she's playing them perfectly. I think she's probably a slumming high stakes pro.
With the blonde at the table I have less opportunities to play pots. Often by the time the action gets to me she's already put in a big raise. Nonetheless I pick my spots and my stack continues to grow. When she raises in early position I come over the top with a big raise with king seven suited. She calls, but folds to my continuation bet on the flop. I'd like to believe she knows I'm the only player at the table who can keep up with her and she doesn't want to fuck with me, but it's probably wishful thinking.
The rest of the table is as intrigued as I am and is peppering her with questions. Where's she from? What does she do? How'd she learn to play? My suspicions are confirmed: she's a live poker pro living in Vegas. She says her dad taught her the game. The table wants to know who her dad is. She doesn't want to say, but after a lot of pestering gives up that he's Oklahoma Johnny. I don't know Oklahoma Johnny any more than I know Delroy Lindo, but some of the other players seem to recognize the name.
My eyes start to droop. Still on Michigan time, I woke up at 8 a.m. It's now past 3 a.m. in the night. As tired as I am, I'm still having fun. For the first time I see what Vegas is all about. I have a mountain of chips in front of me and I'm playing with a movie star and a glamorous high roller. I wonder what it would be like if this was my reality every night. I imagine playing all night and into the next day, taking shots at higher stakes, going out to expensive bars. I imagine never leaving Vegas.
Then I think about going back to Michigan. I have to be back by the first of the month to move all my stuff out of my room. The inspectors are coming by and the attic is not technically a legal living space. I have to teach a week-long chess camp. I have to think about moving somewhere online poker is legal, or getting a real job. I have $1500 sitting in front of me. That's real money to me. I don't even like bars.
Meanwhile I recognize the table has gotten worse. Steven, the tight but competent online pro is still to my left. A jolly but sly Swede has joined the table and has been making some cunning moves. The dangerous blonde has accumulated a stack almost as big as mine and at some point I'll have to play a big pot against her. The biggest fish have long since perished in these dangerous waters. Those who remain have watched their stacks dwindle, their eyes darting around the table in fear and bewilderment. Regretfully I get three racks and pack up my chips.
Delroy left a little while before me. When he stood up, Steven couldn't contain himself any longer and said, "Tell me this. Did you really have that number?"
It was Lindo's big line from Malcolm X. Lindo looked confused.
"Tell me this," Steven repeated, "Did you really have that number?"
"You know," said Lindo, "a lot of people confuse me for Delroy Lindo. My name's Jackson."
It's a mirage, but it's a beautiful mirage.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Stuff Old People Say
"I understand the math, I'm just tired of it."
(While re-raising) "I read about this on the internet."
(Referring to the jaw-droppingly huge poker room in the Rio) "What they need is bathrooms!"
(While re-raising) "I read about this on the internet."
(Referring to the jaw-droppingly huge poker room in the Rio) "What they need is bathrooms!"
Monday, June 20, 2011
Poker Room
If your experience of Vegas is through movies, you might think poker is where it's at. Suave high-rollers, beautiful women, James Bond, etc. But in terms of floor space, poker is usually a small part of what casinos do. Mostly they are endless expanses of old carpeting, slot machines, and very depressing people. Marc Maron, podcasting from Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, put it memorably:
"Who the fuck comes to these places, where do these people come from, do cracks in the Earth open and release these people, these troll-like, obese people, these people dragging oxygen tanks behind them...I can't even explain the people who are up here, but they all seem to have something in common. That is, they seem to have given up on themselves."
I'd make the case that poker is a little less depressing, because A. it involves human interaction and B. if you're good you can be a favorite to win money, which of course is impossible when you play against the house.
In any case, the poker room is typically a small area tucked away in the corner of the casino. Thus the poker room that the Rio set up for the WSOP is both unusual and impressive. They've filled a room the size of an airport hangar with poker tables. Many are for the tournaments that run constantly, but a lot are for cash games as well. The room is filled with the tinkling of chips being shuffled.
It reminds me of my middle school years, when I used to go to huge national chess tournaments. Everything set up, an eerie calm, the magnetic field of thousands of brains working very hard.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
What Happens in Vegas Something Something
After getting settled in the hotel I decided to dip my foot into the shallow end of Bally's modest poker room, playing some 1-2 No Limit. In about 2 hours I ran $200 up to about $850, basically winning every time I put money in the pot. It was nice to start with a good session, but I wished I had it at 2-5.
There are a lot of differences between online and live poker, but I'm starting to feel like the biggest is that live players are far more honest. If you ask me, poker is a game of deception. It's all about misleading your opponents as to what cards you really have. Most online players would agree with me. But most live players cheerfully tell you exactly what they have with their bets. Strong hand? Bet a lot. Medium hand? Bet a little. Weak hand? Check and fold. I guess they don't see poker as a strategy game so much as a casino game where the cards fall however they fall and whoever has the best hand gets the money. There may also be a moral grounding behind the honest approach. When Michael showed a bluff in the Motor City game, a large woman of color opined, "He plays that bullshit poker."
After my session I met up with Michael and Blinder for dinner at American Fish in ARIA where I had one of the finest (and most expensive) meals of my life: Kobe beef and abalone shabu shabu, various shellfish, and cornmeal-crusted rainbow trout. We then smoked some cigars outside, another new one for me. Finally I tagged along as they tried their luck at the craps table.
Even though table games generally don't do it for me, craps is definitely one of the better ones. It's actually a brilliantly designed game. Even though, as with all table games, you get the short end of the odds, there are enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. The best part is that the table plays together, as a team, which creates a nice community experience.
There are a lot of differences between online and live poker, but I'm starting to feel like the biggest is that live players are far more honest. If you ask me, poker is a game of deception. It's all about misleading your opponents as to what cards you really have. Most online players would agree with me. But most live players cheerfully tell you exactly what they have with their bets. Strong hand? Bet a lot. Medium hand? Bet a little. Weak hand? Check and fold. I guess they don't see poker as a strategy game so much as a casino game where the cards fall however they fall and whoever has the best hand gets the money. There may also be a moral grounding behind the honest approach. When Michael showed a bluff in the Motor City game, a large woman of color opined, "He plays that bullshit poker."
After my session I met up with Michael and Blinder for dinner at American Fish in ARIA where I had one of the finest (and most expensive) meals of my life: Kobe beef and abalone shabu shabu, various shellfish, and cornmeal-crusted rainbow trout. We then smoked some cigars outside, another new one for me. Finally I tagged along as they tried their luck at the craps table.
Even though table games generally don't do it for me, craps is definitely one of the better ones. It's actually a brilliantly designed game. Even though, as with all table games, you get the short end of the odds, there are enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. The best part is that the table plays together, as a team, which creates a nice community experience.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Vegas
A minute before the plane is about to touch down, I realize I haven't seen a single person on the ground. I start scanning sidewalks and parking lots, to no avail. Plenty of cars, but no people. Just before we land I spot two figures on a baseball mound engaging in a lonely conference; there's no one else on the diamond.
While waiting for the hotel shuttle in XXX 92 degrees, I strike up a conversation with a 60-ish woman from New Zealand. We chat in the shade from a pillar while her husband stands stoically in the sun, arms crossed. They're on a five-city tour of the United States: Los Angelos, Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco. I suggest that starting with LA and Vegas is a sort of trial by fire approach to exploring the US and their later destinations ought to be more relaxed. "That'll be nice," she says.
I step into my big, 19th-floor, air-conditioned room and wonder what I'm doing here. Seeing some friends, gathering experiences to write about should I manage to sell a book, playing some poker. I figure it's about time I take a real shot at live poker and see how it suits me.
Bally's, it turns out, charges $13.99/day for in-room internet access, so I'm writing this from Cafe Madeleine at next-door Paris. Going from Bally's to Paris whisks one, Midnight in Paris-like, to the City of Lights, if the City of Lights were contained entirely in a mid-priced hotel.
Off to the tables. Game on.
While waiting for the hotel shuttle in XXX 92 degrees, I strike up a conversation with a 60-ish woman from New Zealand. We chat in the shade from a pillar while her husband stands stoically in the sun, arms crossed. They're on a five-city tour of the United States: Los Angelos, Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San Francisco. I suggest that starting with LA and Vegas is a sort of trial by fire approach to exploring the US and their later destinations ought to be more relaxed. "That'll be nice," she says.
I step into my big, 19th-floor, air-conditioned room and wonder what I'm doing here. Seeing some friends, gathering experiences to write about should I manage to sell a book, playing some poker. I figure it's about time I take a real shot at live poker and see how it suits me.
Bally's, it turns out, charges $13.99/day for in-room internet access, so I'm writing this from Cafe Madeleine at next-door Paris. Going from Bally's to Paris whisks one, Midnight in Paris-like, to the City of Lights, if the City of Lights were contained entirely in a mid-priced hotel.
Off to the tables. Game on.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The King Reflects
When time ran out on the Miami Heat, Lebron James didn't collapse in tears like his teammate, Chris Bosh. Nor did he stay on the court to congratulate the Dallas Mavericks, like Dwayne Wade. He left the court swiftly and without incident. As he made his way toward the locker room, he didn't kick over chairs or shove away reporters. While he walked he calmly removed a wrap from his wrist.
James lost the same way he does just about everything: impassively, professionally. As usual, he gave away nothing. But for a moment I thought I saw a look of bewilderment in his eyes. Bewilderment that his plans could be derailed by something as trivial as basketball.
James came into the league as a teenager with more hype than any other player in the history of basketball and immediately set about fulfilling it. His game has no flaws: he excels as a passer, a scorer, a rebounder, and a defender. Unlike many other rising stars who entered the game young he stayed out of trouble. He's more likely to get press for an exquisitely tailored suit than for an ill-considered remark. Though not without struggle (he was shackled to a moribund franchise and hopeless teammates in Cleveland) his ascent to the top of basketball has been remarkably smooth.
Along the way he's built a formidable business empire. In 2005 he said, "In the next 15 or 20 years, I hope I'll be the richest man in the world. That's one of my goals." He has endorsement contracts with Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and many others. The website celebritynetworth.com says he's currently worth $90 million -- nowhere near the world's richest man, but not exactly sweating it either. He has deals in the works to own part of a European football club and grow his brand in China. For all James' accomplishments, he'll never achieve his goals if he can't win a championship.
Last year I played more than a million hands of poker. That's enough time to see some crazy stuff. When two perfect cards fall, a 1-in-a-thousand shot, there's no shock, no joy for the winner, no anger for the loser, at least not right away. In the moment all you feel is a slowing down of time. Just after, a sense that what you saw was both impossible and inevitable. I think Lebron James experienced something like that when the Heat lost. He built a mansion only to see a basketball, of all things, crash through the window. Not even the King can control everything.
Or maybe I only imagined it. James gives away nothing.
James lost the same way he does just about everything: impassively, professionally. As usual, he gave away nothing. But for a moment I thought I saw a look of bewilderment in his eyes. Bewilderment that his plans could be derailed by something as trivial as basketball.
James came into the league as a teenager with more hype than any other player in the history of basketball and immediately set about fulfilling it. His game has no flaws: he excels as a passer, a scorer, a rebounder, and a defender. Unlike many other rising stars who entered the game young he stayed out of trouble. He's more likely to get press for an exquisitely tailored suit than for an ill-considered remark. Though not without struggle (he was shackled to a moribund franchise and hopeless teammates in Cleveland) his ascent to the top of basketball has been remarkably smooth.
Along the way he's built a formidable business empire. In 2005 he said, "In the next 15 or 20 years, I hope I'll be the richest man in the world. That's one of my goals." He has endorsement contracts with Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and many others. The website celebritynetworth.com says he's currently worth $90 million -- nowhere near the world's richest man, but not exactly sweating it either. He has deals in the works to own part of a European football club and grow his brand in China. For all James' accomplishments, he'll never achieve his goals if he can't win a championship.
Last year I played more than a million hands of poker. That's enough time to see some crazy stuff. When two perfect cards fall, a 1-in-a-thousand shot, there's no shock, no joy for the winner, no anger for the loser, at least not right away. In the moment all you feel is a slowing down of time. Just after, a sense that what you saw was both impossible and inevitable. I think Lebron James experienced something like that when the Heat lost. He built a mansion only to see a basketball, of all things, crash through the window. Not even the King can control everything.
Or maybe I only imagined it. James gives away nothing.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Midnight in Paris
I just got back from seeing the new Woody Allen comedy Midnight in Paris, with mixed feelings. The bad news was that the movie does one of my least favorite things a movie can do. The good news was that I still enjoyed it pretty much.
Let's start with the good news. One of the fun parts of the movie is getting to see famous people pretend to be other famous people, in particular Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali. The movie is probably better the more you know about Paris in the 1920s, which in my case is not much. I got the feeling I was missing out on a lot of in jokes. Nonetheless, scenes with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein were a lot of fun.
Getting back to the bad news. The movie is set up as a conflict between romanticism and pragmatism, with Owen Wilson's screenwriter-turned-novelist representing romanticism and his fiance, Rachel McAdams, representing pragmatism. But that's putting it charitably; really, Allen writes McAdams' character as a shrew with no redeeming qualities. Right from the very first scene we see her crapping all over Wilson and his dreams, which seems to me to be a big mistake from a storytelling perspective. If they started out happy and in love, there would be a real conflict. Instead we spend the whole movie waiting for him to dump her. It's too bad because I really like Rachel McAdams. It says something that her role in Mean Girls as "evil takes a human form in Regina George" was far more sympathetic than her character in Midnight. The thing the movie does that I really don't like is that it sets up an argument, but represents one side in such a bad light that there's really no argument at all. There's something to be said for romanticism and something to be said for pragmatism, but not as embodied by McAdams in this movie.
Let's start with the good news. One of the fun parts of the movie is getting to see famous people pretend to be other famous people, in particular Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali. The movie is probably better the more you know about Paris in the 1920s, which in my case is not much. I got the feeling I was missing out on a lot of in jokes. Nonetheless, scenes with the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein were a lot of fun.
Getting back to the bad news. The movie is set up as a conflict between romanticism and pragmatism, with Owen Wilson's screenwriter-turned-novelist representing romanticism and his fiance, Rachel McAdams, representing pragmatism. But that's putting it charitably; really, Allen writes McAdams' character as a shrew with no redeeming qualities. Right from the very first scene we see her crapping all over Wilson and his dreams, which seems to me to be a big mistake from a storytelling perspective. If they started out happy and in love, there would be a real conflict. Instead we spend the whole movie waiting for him to dump her. It's too bad because I really like Rachel McAdams. It says something that her role in Mean Girls as "evil takes a human form in Regina George" was far more sympathetic than her character in Midnight. The thing the movie does that I really don't like is that it sets up an argument, but represents one side in such a bad light that there's really no argument at all. There's something to be said for romanticism and something to be said for pragmatism, but not as embodied by McAdams in this movie.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Tangles are Bullshit
I put my iPod chord in my backpack. When I take it out a few minutes later, it's an elaborate maze of knots, twists, overpasses, and loop-the-loops. I'm pretty sure God is fucking with me.
By which I mean, the speed and intricacy of this tangling seems a bit implausible. I bet if I installed a camera inside my backpack and kept an eye on things that chord would come out as lithe and unencumbered as a leopard's tail.
Related: You think you are on the eighth floor of a hotel and decide to take the stairs to the lobby. The floors are unmarked. Actually you're on a higher floor. How many flights do you descend before you suspect something is up?
By which I mean, the speed and intricacy of this tangling seems a bit implausible. I bet if I installed a camera inside my backpack and kept an eye on things that chord would come out as lithe and unencumbered as a leopard's tail.
Related: You think you are on the eighth floor of a hotel and decide to take the stairs to the lobby. The floors are unmarked. Actually you're on a higher floor. How many flights do you descend before you suspect something is up?
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
How much should a teacher know?
As much as possible, right? I don't think so. I've noticed that the best chess players rarely make the best teachers.
Consider the bishop and knight. According to the point value system taught to beginners, the bishop and the knight are the only two pieces with the same value: three points each, with a pawn being worth one. This point system isn't written into the rules of chess, it's just a simple guideline to beginners to know if a trade is good or bad. The easiest thing, then, would be to tell the student that the bishop and knight are equally valuable.
Only, they're not. Certain kinds of positions favor bishops, other kinds favor knights. Most grandmasters would probably tell you that bishops are a little better than knights in general. In a database survey one of the programmers for Rybka, a chess computer program, found that the advantage of the bishop pair (having both bishops) is worth about half a pawn, but otherwise bishops and knights are roughly equal. Masters have known for a long time that having the bishop pair is good, but no one really knows why. It could be that the two bishops coordinate particularly well, or it could be that the bishop's move is inherently more powerful than the knight's, but it's counterbalanced by a single bishop only being able to go to half the squares on the board (a bishop that starts on a light square can never travel to a dark square). In any case, the bishop pair is one of the hardest concepts to explain (and use), and it's hard to know what to say when the student inevitably asks why it's an advantage.
And that's just the beginning. How much should you divulge in the first class? How quickly should you add new information? If you simplify too much, the information you give will be inaccurate and misleading. If you give away too much right away, all the information will blur together and the student won't come away with anything at all.
Beginners will often trade a bishop for a knight at random without any particular reason -- usually a mistake. Michigan's only homegrown grandmaster, Ben Finegold, used to tell his students, "Never trade." A ridiculous rule on the face of it, but surprisingly canny. Beginners in general are often too willing to trade. They trade because they can, because they don't know what else to do, or because they want to simplify the position, even if the simplification does not favor them objectively. The "never trade" rule is partly a corrective for this tendency. In practice, it plays out as, "Never trade unless you have a good reason to," but sounds stronger and more memorable.
It seems for many strong players their knowledge is a handicap when it comes to teaching. For everyone, concepts that they've long been familiar with seem obvious and hardly worth explaining. It's easy to forget that for beginners these concepts are the ones that require the most attention. Really strong players tend to introduce too much information too quickly, in too much detail.
The best teachers are masters of simplification -- either experts who have learned how to prune their knowledge on the fly, or not-so-experts who have embraced a simplified version of the facts that proves easy to grasp and helpful, at least as a stepping stone.
Consider the bishop and knight. According to the point value system taught to beginners, the bishop and the knight are the only two pieces with the same value: three points each, with a pawn being worth one. This point system isn't written into the rules of chess, it's just a simple guideline to beginners to know if a trade is good or bad. The easiest thing, then, would be to tell the student that the bishop and knight are equally valuable.
Only, they're not. Certain kinds of positions favor bishops, other kinds favor knights. Most grandmasters would probably tell you that bishops are a little better than knights in general. In a database survey one of the programmers for Rybka, a chess computer program, found that the advantage of the bishop pair (having both bishops) is worth about half a pawn, but otherwise bishops and knights are roughly equal. Masters have known for a long time that having the bishop pair is good, but no one really knows why. It could be that the two bishops coordinate particularly well, or it could be that the bishop's move is inherently more powerful than the knight's, but it's counterbalanced by a single bishop only being able to go to half the squares on the board (a bishop that starts on a light square can never travel to a dark square). In any case, the bishop pair is one of the hardest concepts to explain (and use), and it's hard to know what to say when the student inevitably asks why it's an advantage.
And that's just the beginning. How much should you divulge in the first class? How quickly should you add new information? If you simplify too much, the information you give will be inaccurate and misleading. If you give away too much right away, all the information will blur together and the student won't come away with anything at all.
Beginners will often trade a bishop for a knight at random without any particular reason -- usually a mistake. Michigan's only homegrown grandmaster, Ben Finegold, used to tell his students, "Never trade." A ridiculous rule on the face of it, but surprisingly canny. Beginners in general are often too willing to trade. They trade because they can, because they don't know what else to do, or because they want to simplify the position, even if the simplification does not favor them objectively. The "never trade" rule is partly a corrective for this tendency. In practice, it plays out as, "Never trade unless you have a good reason to," but sounds stronger and more memorable.
It seems for many strong players their knowledge is a handicap when it comes to teaching. For everyone, concepts that they've long been familiar with seem obvious and hardly worth explaining. It's easy to forget that for beginners these concepts are the ones that require the most attention. Really strong players tend to introduce too much information too quickly, in too much detail.
The best teachers are masters of simplification -- either experts who have learned how to prune their knowledge on the fly, or not-so-experts who have embraced a simplified version of the facts that proves easy to grasp and helpful, at least as a stepping stone.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Running Bad, Running Good
The government shut down my livelihood and now I don't have a job. That was the bad news. The good news was, I got all my money. Pokerstars (which, by the way, has the best customer service I've ever encountered, except for maybe my old employer Zingerman's) called me the day after the news broke to assure me my money was safe. A little over a week later, the money showed up in my bank account.
Players at Full Tilt, one of the other sites shut down, weren't so lucky. They still haven't gotten their money and about a week ago FT released a statement saying they're "raising capital to ensure that the US players are paid out in full as quickly as possible."
Yowza. Whatever else that might mean, it seems to mean they don't have the money. And Full Tilt players are still better off that people who trusted their money with Absolute Poker, the third site shut down. Although reports that they had declared bankruptcy, reproduced widely online, proved to be false, Absolute Poker has done little to reassure US players that they will get their money -- ever. At least Full Tilt says they're trying to pay the money back.
This is one thing I think about when considering whether or not to put money on some of the poker sites still operating in the US. Before the crackdown, in terms of size, credibility, and trust, Pokerstars was number one, Full Tilt a pretty close second, and Absolute a distant third. Those rankings turned out to be all too accurate when the shit hit the fan. So I have some reservations about committing money to other sites far more obscure than Absolute. Then again, sometimes it's worth it to take a risk, especially if it's the only way to get in business.
Players at Full Tilt, one of the other sites shut down, weren't so lucky. They still haven't gotten their money and about a week ago FT released a statement saying they're "raising capital to ensure that the US players are paid out in full as quickly as possible."
Yowza. Whatever else that might mean, it seems to mean they don't have the money. And Full Tilt players are still better off that people who trusted their money with Absolute Poker, the third site shut down. Although reports that they had declared bankruptcy, reproduced widely online, proved to be false, Absolute Poker has done little to reassure US players that they will get their money -- ever. At least Full Tilt says they're trying to pay the money back.
This is one thing I think about when considering whether or not to put money on some of the poker sites still operating in the US. Before the crackdown, in terms of size, credibility, and trust, Pokerstars was number one, Full Tilt a pretty close second, and Absolute a distant third. Those rankings turned out to be all too accurate when the shit hit the fan. So I have some reservations about committing money to other sites far more obscure than Absolute. Then again, sometimes it's worth it to take a risk, especially if it's the only way to get in business.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Chore -> Ritual
I used to make my coffee with a cheap coffee machine I got from the mall. I would buy pre-ground beans whenever I was shopping for food and happened to think of it. The result had a coffee-like appearance, but didn't taste like much.
Then I started upgrading. I got a one cup ceramic coffee filter and some filter papers, a coffee grinder, and a kettle with a narrow spout. I started buying my coffee beans whole from Comet in Ann Arbor, which has the best coffee I've tasted anywhere. In my new routine I boil some water, grind enough coffee for one cup, and pour the water over the coffee grounds by hand. I've been working on my pouring technique -- they say it's best to dampen the grounds with a light pour first, then pour in the rest of the hot water in a circular motion around the outside of the filter. I don't really know how much these finesses matter, but they give me something to think about and my coffee has certainly improved. I probably spend two or three minutes more making coffee than I used to, but for me it's definitely worth it.
I started to think I could do something similar with other parts of my life -- turn chores into rituals. The idea is that with enough care tasks that were once repetitive and boring become engaging and rewarding. I was going to do it with shaving (straight razor, badger brush, etc.), but then I just stopped shaving. Now I'm thinking about getting really good at ironing clothes.
Then I started upgrading. I got a one cup ceramic coffee filter and some filter papers, a coffee grinder, and a kettle with a narrow spout. I started buying my coffee beans whole from Comet in Ann Arbor, which has the best coffee I've tasted anywhere. In my new routine I boil some water, grind enough coffee for one cup, and pour the water over the coffee grounds by hand. I've been working on my pouring technique -- they say it's best to dampen the grounds with a light pour first, then pour in the rest of the hot water in a circular motion around the outside of the filter. I don't really know how much these finesses matter, but they give me something to think about and my coffee has certainly improved. I probably spend two or three minutes more making coffee than I used to, but for me it's definitely worth it.
I started to think I could do something similar with other parts of my life -- turn chores into rituals. The idea is that with enough care tasks that were once repetitive and boring become engaging and rewarding. I was going to do it with shaving (straight razor, badger brush, etc.), but then I just stopped shaving. Now I'm thinking about getting really good at ironing clothes.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Nit-rolled
With online poker out of the picture I've been trying my hand at live poker. I don't see myself pursuing it as a full-time job, but there are worse ways to make some money on the side. It is, of course, very different.
I was playing in a 1-2 game at the Heidelberg, a bar in Ann Arbor. I opened to $10 under the gun with queens and got two callers. Then one of the blinds 3bet to 25. The raiser was a kid in his early twenties, wearing a hat and listening to headphones, so he had probably watched some poker on TV and thought he knew what he was doing. The size of his raise, though, is ridiculous -- with 40 already in the pot raising only 15 more gives me the correct odds to call with pretty much any two cards. Since the whole idea of poker is to get your opponents to make mistakes -- fold when they should call, or call when they don't have the right odds -- giving someone a price like that rarely makes sense. I had about $150 on the table. Against a competent, aggressive opponent it would be the easiest all-in in the world. I have the third-best starting hand in hold'em. But live players are typically very passive and I had a suspicion he might be the kind of player who would 3bet only with exactly kings or aces. Nonetheless given the strength of my hand, my stack size, and the amount of money already in the pot I couldn't talk myself into any other than a shove. The two callers quickly folded and the raiser started to think. I mentally pumped the fist. Obviously if he had aces or kings he would instantly snap it off and those are the only two hands that beat me. So now either he folds and I get the money in the pot or he calls and I get my whole stack in ahead. After awhile he decides to call. The flop comes ace-high all clubs. Immediately he slumps in his chair and says, "I'm pretty sure I'm dead now." I figure he has something like tens with no club. I even have the queen of clubs, which would mean he's drawing to only one out in the deck. The turn is another ace and the river is a brick. I flip my queens and get ready to scoop the pot. He flips over two kings.
From the other side of the table, one of the good players at the table yells, "You got nit-rolled, bro!" This is a combination of two pieces of poker terminology. A nit is a derogatory term for a risk-averse player. Slow-rolling is when you delay calling or revealing your cards, typically to annoy or embarrass your opponent. For example, if your opponent went all-in and you had the nuts (the best possible hand) and you pretended to think for a long time before calling that would be a slow-roll. Hence nit-roll: the kid had a slam dunk call, but was such a nit that he thought for a long time, making me think I must have the best hand.
I was playing in a 1-2 game at the Heidelberg, a bar in Ann Arbor. I opened to $10 under the gun with queens and got two callers. Then one of the blinds 3bet to 25. The raiser was a kid in his early twenties, wearing a hat and listening to headphones, so he had probably watched some poker on TV and thought he knew what he was doing. The size of his raise, though, is ridiculous -- with 40 already in the pot raising only 15 more gives me the correct odds to call with pretty much any two cards. Since the whole idea of poker is to get your opponents to make mistakes -- fold when they should call, or call when they don't have the right odds -- giving someone a price like that rarely makes sense. I had about $150 on the table. Against a competent, aggressive opponent it would be the easiest all-in in the world. I have the third-best starting hand in hold'em. But live players are typically very passive and I had a suspicion he might be the kind of player who would 3bet only with exactly kings or aces. Nonetheless given the strength of my hand, my stack size, and the amount of money already in the pot I couldn't talk myself into any other than a shove. The two callers quickly folded and the raiser started to think. I mentally pumped the fist. Obviously if he had aces or kings he would instantly snap it off and those are the only two hands that beat me. So now either he folds and I get the money in the pot or he calls and I get my whole stack in ahead. After awhile he decides to call. The flop comes ace-high all clubs. Immediately he slumps in his chair and says, "I'm pretty sure I'm dead now." I figure he has something like tens with no club. I even have the queen of clubs, which would mean he's drawing to only one out in the deck. The turn is another ace and the river is a brick. I flip my queens and get ready to scoop the pot. He flips over two kings.
From the other side of the table, one of the good players at the table yells, "You got nit-rolled, bro!" This is a combination of two pieces of poker terminology. A nit is a derogatory term for a risk-averse player. Slow-rolling is when you delay calling or revealing your cards, typically to annoy or embarrass your opponent. For example, if your opponent went all-in and you had the nuts (the best possible hand) and you pretended to think for a long time before calling that would be a slow-roll. Hence nit-roll: the kid had a slam dunk call, but was such a nit that he thought for a long time, making me think I must have the best hand.
Friday, June 3, 2011
At Such a Price
In a picture of a barber shop from 1935, I saw a slogan for Fatima cigarettes: "There is no other cigarette of such quality at such a price."
The statement is long, measured, modest, and possibly even true. In other words, the opposite of modern advertising. That type of literalism is long gone, replaced by insinuations of grandeur. Not only would a modern advertisement never qualify its claims with a phrase like "at such a price," being the finest cigarette at any price would not be enough unless it also allowed you to leap over buildings and fuck whoever you want.
As BS Fest 2012 approaches, I was thinking that maybe the price we pay for unprecedented affluence and being able to say pretty much whatever we want without being shot or imprisoned is the creeping of advertising into every part of our lives, politics very much so. Capitalism is the best system, at such a price.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
A Polarizing Situation
There is nothing worse than a line for tip amount on your credit card receipt at the yogurt shop. No one would think any less of you for not tipping on yogurt, but a question once asked cannot be unasked. Now you have two choices: tip or don't tip. But the choice you don't have is to do nothing, to never think of it at all. They've taken that choice from you.
Why not just leave the tip line blank? Because diabolical yogurt agents could fill in that line with anything they damn well please.
There's no avoiding it. You have to choose. If you choose not to tip, you can either write in the zeros, or draw a slash through the line. The slash is particularly dismissive. I don't have the time to write a few zeros, which, by the way, is what you'll be getting from me: nothing. But the zeros are hardly better. Either way it's obvious you thought about it and chose to give nothing. You came. You saw. You stiffed.
If you tip, not only are you out the money, you look like a sap. Tipping for yogurt! You could split the difference and tip a smaller fraction, but that just raises more problems. They'll assume you're a cheapskate, that 7% is your standard tip. Or is it 7% What will you choose to give once unmoored from the convention of 15%-20%? That question alone could occupy your whole afternoon.
Tipping something is too generous, tipping nothing is nasty. I don't want to be an asshole, but I don't want to be that nice either.
Why not just leave the tip line blank? Because diabolical yogurt agents could fill in that line with anything they damn well please.
There's no avoiding it. You have to choose. If you choose not to tip, you can either write in the zeros, or draw a slash through the line. The slash is particularly dismissive. I don't have the time to write a few zeros, which, by the way, is what you'll be getting from me: nothing. But the zeros are hardly better. Either way it's obvious you thought about it and chose to give nothing. You came. You saw. You stiffed.
If you tip, not only are you out the money, you look like a sap. Tipping for yogurt! You could split the difference and tip a smaller fraction, but that just raises more problems. They'll assume you're a cheapskate, that 7% is your standard tip. Or is it 7% What will you choose to give once unmoored from the convention of 15%-20%? That question alone could occupy your whole afternoon.
Tipping something is too generous, tipping nothing is nasty. I don't want to be an asshole, but I don't want to be that nice either.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Intuition
Hand 1: A player calls a raise out of position with seven-deuce offsuit. He flops a full house and cracks his opponent's aces, winning his whole stack. After the hand he says, "You gotta play when you're feeling it."
Hand 2: The player bets twice the pot on the river. After a long think, his opponent folds. "I knew he didn't have it," he says.
Was either of these plays justified? Both? Neither?
Since most situations in poker cannot be analyzed conclusively, it is both necessary and important to make some decisions intuitively. Equally important is knowing when intuition is valuable and when it is not.
My answer would be that the play in Hand 1 was unequivocally bad, while the play in the second hand may (or may not) have been justified. As usual, thinking in terms of ranges of hands clarifies the issue. 7-2 is the worst hand in poker, so when you call with it, what you're really saying is that you would call with any two cards. It's very, very rare for the game conditions to indicate a call with any two. As far as "feeling" that you would hit the flop, unless you're cheating, you don't have access to any information about what the next card will be, so it's hard to see how you could feel it.
Hand 2 is less clear. While you don't have any information about what the next card will be, you have a lot of information about what your opponent might do when you bet: his previous actions in this hand; how he's played past hands in this session; age, attire, posture...and much more. Any piece of information might be the key to the puzzle, or it might not be. This is where experience becomes incredibly valuable. Without experience, you won't pick up on most of the clues, or know how to interpret those you do see. But if you have a lot of experience, you may be able to synthesize all the information available to you to come to a better decision.
Hand 1 and Hand 2 are completely different situations, but people seem to confuse the two. When someone is able to make a good intuitive decision in a situation like Hand 2, all they see is the result, not the previous work that went into it. They conclude that analysis is unnecessary or even counterproductive, that the way to make good decisions is with your "gut." But intuition isn't a replacement for hard analytical work, it's a reward for having done a lot of it.
Hand 2: The player bets twice the pot on the river. After a long think, his opponent folds. "I knew he didn't have it," he says.
Was either of these plays justified? Both? Neither?
Since most situations in poker cannot be analyzed conclusively, it is both necessary and important to make some decisions intuitively. Equally important is knowing when intuition is valuable and when it is not.
My answer would be that the play in Hand 1 was unequivocally bad, while the play in the second hand may (or may not) have been justified. As usual, thinking in terms of ranges of hands clarifies the issue. 7-2 is the worst hand in poker, so when you call with it, what you're really saying is that you would call with any two cards. It's very, very rare for the game conditions to indicate a call with any two. As far as "feeling" that you would hit the flop, unless you're cheating, you don't have access to any information about what the next card will be, so it's hard to see how you could feel it.
Hand 2 is less clear. While you don't have any information about what the next card will be, you have a lot of information about what your opponent might do when you bet: his previous actions in this hand; how he's played past hands in this session; age, attire, posture...and much more. Any piece of information might be the key to the puzzle, or it might not be. This is where experience becomes incredibly valuable. Without experience, you won't pick up on most of the clues, or know how to interpret those you do see. But if you have a lot of experience, you may be able to synthesize all the information available to you to come to a better decision.
Hand 1 and Hand 2 are completely different situations, but people seem to confuse the two. When someone is able to make a good intuitive decision in a situation like Hand 2, all they see is the result, not the previous work that went into it. They conclude that analysis is unnecessary or even counterproductive, that the way to make good decisions is with your "gut." But intuition isn't a replacement for hard analytical work, it's a reward for having done a lot of it.
Monday, May 30, 2011
The Q Words
Alone on the rack, the Q stared at me. All his brothers had leapt to the board and in the process built for me a solid lead, but the Q would betray me. He would take 10 of my points and give them to someone else. I looked over the board again. There was nowhere to put it. The Q was going to make me lose. I resolved to look up all the Q words when I got home.
Here is the list of words in the Scrabble dictionary that have a Q but no U:
QI
QAT
QIS
QADI
QAID
QATS
QOPH
FAQIR
QADIS
QAIDS
QANAT
QOPHS
TRANQ
FAQIRS
QABALA
QANATS
QINDAR
QINTAR
QIVIUT
QWERTY
SHEQEL
TRANQS
QABALAH
QABALAS
QINDARS
QINTARS
QIVIUTS
QWERTYS
QABALAHS
MBAQANGA
QINDARKA
SHEQALIM
MBAQANGAS
I haven't memorized them yet. When I saw the list I began to have second thoughts, not because of the tedium of memorizing it, but because of what it would do to the game. The joy of Scrabble, at least for a novice, is in the way it combines culture and competition. It's an opportunity to dust off long-forgotten stores of knowledge, deploy them in a new context, and to show off.
That part of the game dies when you start playing mbaqanga, because despite what the Scrabble Dictionary says, mbaqanga is not a real word. You would never know it if you hadn't learned it specifically for Scrabble. It doesn't signify anything, it's just a token in a game. I was afraid the mbaqanga attitude would infect my whole experience of the game.
The problem is not unique to Scrabble. I've found that becoming expert often impoverishes games from a meaning standpoint. For most, chess is a ruminative pastime, a meeting of the minds between two white-haired men smoking pipes. But what happens when you realize both of them are making blunders, practically throwing the game away on nearly every move?
Scientists have the same problem. As their research becomes more and more specialized, they struggle to make it understandable and relevant to non-scientists. To master something means appreciating the smallest minutia, but finding meaning is all about abstraction.
#
Here is the list of words in the Scrabble dictionary that have a Q but no U:
QI
QAT
QIS
QADI
QAID
QATS
QOPH
FAQIR
QADIS
QAIDS
QANAT
QOPHS
TRANQ
FAQIRS
QABALA
QANATS
QINDAR
QINTAR
QIVIUT
QWERTY
SHEQEL
TRANQS
QABALAH
QABALAS
QINDARS
QINTARS
QIVIUTS
QWERTYS
QABALAHS
MBAQANGA
QINDARKA
SHEQALIM
MBAQANGAS
I haven't memorized them yet. When I saw the list I began to have second thoughts, not because of the tedium of memorizing it, but because of what it would do to the game. The joy of Scrabble, at least for a novice, is in the way it combines culture and competition. It's an opportunity to dust off long-forgotten stores of knowledge, deploy them in a new context, and to show off.
That part of the game dies when you start playing mbaqanga, because despite what the Scrabble Dictionary says, mbaqanga is not a real word. You would never know it if you hadn't learned it specifically for Scrabble. It doesn't signify anything, it's just a token in a game. I was afraid the mbaqanga attitude would infect my whole experience of the game.
The problem is not unique to Scrabble. I've found that becoming expert often impoverishes games from a meaning standpoint. For most, chess is a ruminative pastime, a meeting of the minds between two white-haired men smoking pipes. But what happens when you realize both of them are making blunders, practically throwing the game away on nearly every move?
Scientists have the same problem. As their research becomes more and more specialized, they struggle to make it understandable and relevant to non-scientists. To master something means appreciating the smallest minutia, but finding meaning is all about abstraction.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Levitt on luck vs. skill in poker
Steven Levitt, the well-known author of Freakonomics, just came out with a paper about the role of skill versus luck in poker. He looks at the performance of skilled players and unskilled players in the World Series of Poker and concludes that the role of skill and luck in poker is comparable to that of professional baseball.
As an unemployed poker player hoping online poker eventually gets legalized, I appreciate the plug from a source as celebrated as Levitt. As he observes, "the single most important factor in determining the legality of poker is whether poker is a game of skill or a game of luck." But as someone who's grappled extensively with the questions he examines in the paper, I don't find many original insights in his approach.
In short, Levitt compiles a list of "skilled" players based on rankings from some poker magazines and past tournament finishes. Then he compares the performance of those players to that of other, presumably "unskilled" players and finds "a substantial role for skill in poker over the time horizon examined."
While this methodology is adequate to establish the presence of at least some skill in poker (as any reasonable approach would be), it has obvious problems. Magazine rankings and past finishes are far from perfect indicators of skill. For example, an unskilled player who rode a streak of good luck to a recent tournament victory could be identified as "skilled," but a highly skilled online professional who rarely plays live could be identified as unskilled.
The comparison to Major League Baseball doesn't say much about the rewards for skill inherent in poker and baseball, because the levels of competition are so different. While the WSOP features the best against the rest, MLB is more a case of the best against the best. You have to be one of the very best baseball players on the planet to play in the Major Leagues at all. A closer baseball analog to the WSOP would be to pit the New York Yankees against your intramural softball team.
While Levitt refers to previous academic research, he never mentions the work of poker players themselves. This is odd because while baseball players, for example, are not typically experts on the statistics of baseball, skilled poker players are experts on the statistics of poker. Understanding statistics and probability is a poker player's bread and butter. So when Levitt says his data set allows him "to compute ROIs for individual players, allowing us to measure poker skill more directly than in previous research," while this may be true of the academic research, he's way behind the game in the poker community (ROI stands for "return on investment," essentially the amount a player expects to profit when he enters a tournament). Professionals track their ROI obsessively over thousands of tournaments. A search for posts titled "ROI" on the poker internet forum 2+2 returns 250 threads. Sites such as sharkscope track the tournament results of online players and display average ROI as a basic statistic for each player. In short, Levitt's paper is a perfunctory stab at something poker players have been mapping extensively for years.
But maybe this is all beside the point. While the paper is a head-scratcher from a statistical perspective, it makes perfect sense as PR. The examples seem selected less for statistical relevance than cultural resonance. Hence the WSOP (poker's most visible event) and MLB (America's pastime). Overall the paper seems designed to demonstrate a non-trivial element of skill in poker to total outsiders, using the most familiar possible reference points, and it does a pretty good job of this.
What then about the original question: is poker a game of luck or a game of skill? Well, it's not at all clear what this means. Implicit in the question is the assumption that a game is made up of some combination of luck and skill, and if you add some of one you must subtract some of the other. This turns out not to be the case.
As the game designer Richard Garfield points out,
It is obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with poker that it contains a great deal of both skill and luck. Identifying the best play is far from easy, but in any given hand luck is likely to overshadow skill.
When measuring skill against luck, a better question than "How much?" is "How long?" Meaning, how many times would you have to play for the better player to be confident of coming out ahead? Clearly this is a matter of degree - how confident is confident? But it does allow us to get a sense for how games compare to one another. In chess, if one player is significantly more skilled than the other one game would be adequate. For poker it becomes more confusing, because it's not clear what our unit should be. A single hand isn't a self-contained unit like a chess game is -- it's more like a possession in basketball. But larger units like a session or a match don't have a fixed duration. In general, online poker players consider 100,000 hands to give a reasonable idea of your expected win rate in a particular game. For reference that would take almost 140 days playing round-the-clock without breaks in a brick and mortar casino. But the 100,000 number applies to tough games where you have at most a small advantage over your opponents. Against weaker players, a few thousand hands might be enough.
As an unemployed poker player hoping online poker eventually gets legalized, I appreciate the plug from a source as celebrated as Levitt. As he observes, "the single most important factor in determining the legality of poker is whether poker is a game of skill or a game of luck." But as someone who's grappled extensively with the questions he examines in the paper, I don't find many original insights in his approach.
In short, Levitt compiles a list of "skilled" players based on rankings from some poker magazines and past tournament finishes. Then he compares the performance of those players to that of other, presumably "unskilled" players and finds "a substantial role for skill in poker over the time horizon examined."
While this methodology is adequate to establish the presence of at least some skill in poker (as any reasonable approach would be), it has obvious problems. Magazine rankings and past finishes are far from perfect indicators of skill. For example, an unskilled player who rode a streak of good luck to a recent tournament victory could be identified as "skilled," but a highly skilled online professional who rarely plays live could be identified as unskilled.
The comparison to Major League Baseball doesn't say much about the rewards for skill inherent in poker and baseball, because the levels of competition are so different. While the WSOP features the best against the rest, MLB is more a case of the best against the best. You have to be one of the very best baseball players on the planet to play in the Major Leagues at all. A closer baseball analog to the WSOP would be to pit the New York Yankees against your intramural softball team.
While Levitt refers to previous academic research, he never mentions the work of poker players themselves. This is odd because while baseball players, for example, are not typically experts on the statistics of baseball, skilled poker players are experts on the statistics of poker. Understanding statistics and probability is a poker player's bread and butter. So when Levitt says his data set allows him "to compute ROIs for individual players, allowing us to measure poker skill more directly than in previous research," while this may be true of the academic research, he's way behind the game in the poker community (ROI stands for "return on investment," essentially the amount a player expects to profit when he enters a tournament). Professionals track their ROI obsessively over thousands of tournaments. A search for posts titled "ROI" on the poker internet forum 2+2 returns 250 threads. Sites such as sharkscope track the tournament results of online players and display average ROI as a basic statistic for each player. In short, Levitt's paper is a perfunctory stab at something poker players have been mapping extensively for years.
But maybe this is all beside the point. While the paper is a head-scratcher from a statistical perspective, it makes perfect sense as PR. The examples seem selected less for statistical relevance than cultural resonance. Hence the WSOP (poker's most visible event) and MLB (America's pastime). Overall the paper seems designed to demonstrate a non-trivial element of skill in poker to total outsiders, using the most familiar possible reference points, and it does a pretty good job of this.
What then about the original question: is poker a game of luck or a game of skill? Well, it's not at all clear what this means. Implicit in the question is the assumption that a game is made up of some combination of luck and skill, and if you add some of one you must subtract some of the other. This turns out not to be the case.
As the game designer Richard Garfield points out,
"The reward for skill depends on how much luck there is in a game, but a game that is mostly determined by luck can have an enormous amount of skill.
A couple of examples will demonstrate this. The first is rando-chess, which is played as standard chess, but after each turn you roll two dice. Roll 12 and you win! This game has as much skill as chess, but also a lot more luck and much less reward for skill. The second example is pikanumber, in which each player holds out a number of fingers; whoever holds out more wins. There isn't any luck in this game and not much skill, but there is a very high reward for what little skill there is—you never lose. Skillful players will always draw (unless one has more fingers than the other)."
It is obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with poker that it contains a great deal of both skill and luck. Identifying the best play is far from easy, but in any given hand luck is likely to overshadow skill.
When measuring skill against luck, a better question than "How much?" is "How long?" Meaning, how many times would you have to play for the better player to be confident of coming out ahead? Clearly this is a matter of degree - how confident is confident? But it does allow us to get a sense for how games compare to one another. In chess, if one player is significantly more skilled than the other one game would be adequate. For poker it becomes more confusing, because it's not clear what our unit should be. A single hand isn't a self-contained unit like a chess game is -- it's more like a possession in basketball. But larger units like a session or a match don't have a fixed duration. In general, online poker players consider 100,000 hands to give a reasonable idea of your expected win rate in a particular game. For reference that would take almost 140 days playing round-the-clock without breaks in a brick and mortar casino. But the 100,000 number applies to tough games where you have at most a small advantage over your opponents. Against weaker players, a few thousand hands might be enough.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Andriy Slyusarchuk's Wikipedia Page
You probably haven't heard of Andriy Slyusarchuk -- he's not yet widely known outside of his home country. But he's become a sensation in the Ukrainian media for astonishing displays of mental prowess: memorizing 30 million digits of pi, 20,000 books, and defeating Rybka (one of the strongest chess-playing computer programs) in a blindfold match.
Let's dispense with the obvious. He's a phony, of course. Reciting 30 million digits of pi at the rate of one per second without breaks would take about a year. If you're interested in the history of computer chess (and why Slyusarchuk's claims are implausible), grandmaster and commentator Sergey Shipov has written a pretty good summary.
What's more interesting is Slyusarchuk's reception. Why would anyone believe his claims? He seems to be taken quite seriously in Ukraine, where he even secured a meeting with the President.
In general, his audience can be divided into skeptics and believers. The conflict between the two sides makes for a schizophrenic wikipedia page. Multiple authors are evident in the tone, which alternates between fawning and scathing:
But more interesting still is the "talk page" documenting conflicts about what should appear in the Wikipedia entry. It seems that the original, overwhelmingly credulous article is the work of a user called NazarK, who turns out to come from the same town as Slyusarchuk. There seems to be some hometown sentiment at work. When one commenter suggested, "Only some nationalist Ukrainians can believe in that circus," NazarK fired back, "The above unsigned comment seems to come from some nationalist Russians (check IP location) who just hate to accept any human achievement if it comes from Ukraine."
So maybe some people in Ukraine are desperate for a national hero. At the same time, claims about mental achievements may be easier to swallow for many than other kinds of claims. If someone claimed to run a 30-second mile, no one would believe him. But if someone claims to remember 30 million digits of pi, sure, why not? The accepted world record, 67890 digits, is already unbelievably big (although more than 40 times smaller than Slyusarchuk's claim). Likewise, if you don't know much about the history of chess, his claim to beat Rybka in a match seems plausible enough. By making claims at the edge of the average person's range of knowledge -- about things that they are passingly familiar with, but not expert in -- Slyusarchuk manages to seem both plausible and extraordinary.
Let's dispense with the obvious. He's a phony, of course. Reciting 30 million digits of pi at the rate of one per second without breaks would take about a year. If you're interested in the history of computer chess (and why Slyusarchuk's claims are implausible), grandmaster and commentator Sergey Shipov has written a pretty good summary.
What's more interesting is Slyusarchuk's reception. Why would anyone believe his claims? He seems to be taken quite seriously in Ukraine, where he even secured a meeting with the President.
In general, his audience can be divided into skeptics and believers. The conflict between the two sides makes for a schizophrenic wikipedia page. Multiple authors are evident in the tone, which alternates between fawning and scathing:
Novy Channel (Новий Канал—one of the major TV channels in Ukraine) has hosted a few TV events in which Andrity Slyusarchuk demonstrated many of his extraordinary abilities...
When he tried to fake Chess position memory on TV, his scam was revealed by chess experts.
But more interesting still is the "talk page" documenting conflicts about what should appear in the Wikipedia entry. It seems that the original, overwhelmingly credulous article is the work of a user called NazarK, who turns out to come from the same town as Slyusarchuk. There seems to be some hometown sentiment at work. When one commenter suggested, "Only some nationalist Ukrainians can believe in that circus," NazarK fired back, "The above unsigned comment seems to come from some nationalist Russians (check IP location) who just hate to accept any human achievement if it comes from Ukraine."
So maybe some people in Ukraine are desperate for a national hero. At the same time, claims about mental achievements may be easier to swallow for many than other kinds of claims. If someone claimed to run a 30-second mile, no one would believe him. But if someone claims to remember 30 million digits of pi, sure, why not? The accepted world record, 67890 digits, is already unbelievably big (although more than 40 times smaller than Slyusarchuk's claim). Likewise, if you don't know much about the history of chess, his claim to beat Rybka in a match seems plausible enough. By making claims at the edge of the average person's range of knowledge -- about things that they are passingly familiar with, but not expert in -- Slyusarchuk manages to seem both plausible and extraordinary.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Obama's Poker Face
On Sunday American forces stormed a compound in Afghanistan and killed Osama Bin Laden. Barack Obama gave a comedy speech at the White House Correspondents' on Saturday night. Which is to say, he knew. He had to do a comedy routine having given the order for the world's most notorious terrorist to be killed the following day in a risky, complicated operation, the outcome of which would have a great effect both on world politics and his personal legacy.
That to me seems hard. If I fear I've offended someone in an email, I lie down for an hour. I don't think I could have done the comedy speech.
The President has an obligation to oversee weighty decisions, but he also has no end of commitments to trivial fluff. Maybe it is that part of the job -- putting on a placid, confident face -- not the actual decision-making that is hardest. Or at least hardest to fathom.
That to me seems hard. If I fear I've offended someone in an email, I lie down for an hour. I don't think I could have done the comedy speech.
The President has an obligation to oversee weighty decisions, but he also has no end of commitments to trivial fluff. Maybe it is that part of the job -- putting on a placid, confident face -- not the actual decision-making that is hardest. Or at least hardest to fathom.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
How not to Give a Gift
I fancy myself a pretty good gift giver. I look forward to picking out gifts and I think people are usually pretty satisfied with what I give them. But I've noticed that for many gift giving is a source of anxiety, even dread.
It's easier to say what a good gift is not than what it is. With that in mind, here are three common pitfalls.
1. The overly generic gift
I'm talking here about gifts for people you're actually close to, so if it's for a random co-worker or something, sure, get them the Barnes and Noble gift certificate, who cares. But gifts should be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate how well you know someone. Grandparent exemption: if you've already made peace with the fact that you can never understand your grandkids with their videogames and Pokemon, cash is an acceptable backup plan.
2. The gift that is actually for you (the giver, not the giftee)
As usual, The Simpsons provides the classic example. Homer gives Marge a bowling ball already engraved with his name (she's never bowled). That's an obvious example, but it's possible to fall into the same trap in subtler ways, say by getting something associated with a shared activity that you actually enjoy a lot more than the giftee.
3. The gift designed to impose change
The gym membership for someone fat, the kite for someone who spends all their time indoors, the knife for an axe murderer. These are the opposite of gifts. A true gift says, "I appreciate and love you for who you are." These kind of gifts say, "Who you are is unacceptable to me, so I must change you." Yet it's a fine line that separates these non-gifts from the very best gifts. The best gifts are things they would not get for themselves -- things they didn't know they'd love, but would, or things they secretly want, but would never actually buy. The best gifts stretch, but do not change.
It's easier to say what a good gift is not than what it is. With that in mind, here are three common pitfalls.
1. The overly generic gift
I'm talking here about gifts for people you're actually close to, so if it's for a random co-worker or something, sure, get them the Barnes and Noble gift certificate, who cares. But gifts should be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate how well you know someone. Grandparent exemption: if you've already made peace with the fact that you can never understand your grandkids with their videogames and Pokemon, cash is an acceptable backup plan.
2. The gift that is actually for you (the giver, not the giftee)
As usual, The Simpsons provides the classic example. Homer gives Marge a bowling ball already engraved with his name (she's never bowled). That's an obvious example, but it's possible to fall into the same trap in subtler ways, say by getting something associated with a shared activity that you actually enjoy a lot more than the giftee.
3. The gift designed to impose change
The gym membership for someone fat, the kite for someone who spends all their time indoors, the knife for an axe murderer. These are the opposite of gifts. A true gift says, "I appreciate and love you for who you are." These kind of gifts say, "Who you are is unacceptable to me, so I must change you." Yet it's a fine line that separates these non-gifts from the very best gifts. The best gifts are things they would not get for themselves -- things they didn't know they'd love, but would, or things they secretly want, but would never actually buy. The best gifts stretch, but do not change.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Excessive Free Time Death Spiral
Day 1: Brainstorming options. Many notebook pages filled.
Day 2-4: Spending a lot of time in Starbucks. Podcast consumption multiplied threefold.
Day 5+: 24/7 Magic: The Gathering Online
Day 2-4: Spending a lot of time in Starbucks. Podcast consumption multiplied threefold.
Day 5+: 24/7 Magic: The Gathering Online
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The End
Friday afternoon - I sipped my coffee, donned my Snuggie, and settled in for my second session of the day. When I tried to sit in at a table, the client informed me that cash games were not available in my area. Thinking it was a glitch, I tried again, but got the same message. I did a few Google searches to figure out what was going on. In the early afternoon only one of the major news services had an article up, but it told me everything I needed to know. Earlier in the days the Feds released a list of charges and rounded up executives from the major US poker sites. Put simply, online poker was over.
Since laws were passed in 2006 restricting the legality of online gambling, the major online sites have maintained an uneasy status quo with law enforcement, working around the laws in ways the government now alleges were illegal. For its part the government chased the money and sometimes shut down third party payment processors, but didn't take sweeping action against the poker sites, until now.
Now there's no going back. There will be a contentious legal battle -- both sides have substantial resources, and neither will feel they can afford to lose. However it turns out, it's hard to imagine the sites ever operating in the US again. If online poker ever returns (which seems likely, given the demand and the incentive to tax it) it will be on different sites, and probably years down the road.
Casual online players have to find a new hobby. Professionals need to turn their lives upside down. In order to keep playing, it will probably be necessary to move out of the country -- not a simple thing to do. There's also the option of switching to brick and mortar casinos, but that involves a big pay cut and lifestyle change. And then, of course, there's getting a real job.
I have mixed feelings. I've been feeling the grind the last few months, so being forced to explore opportunities outside of poker isn't entirely unwelcome. Then again, there's nothing I can do in the short term that will come anywhere close to my hourly wage playing poker.
Anybody hiring?
Since laws were passed in 2006 restricting the legality of online gambling, the major online sites have maintained an uneasy status quo with law enforcement, working around the laws in ways the government now alleges were illegal. For its part the government chased the money and sometimes shut down third party payment processors, but didn't take sweeping action against the poker sites, until now.
Now there's no going back. There will be a contentious legal battle -- both sides have substantial resources, and neither will feel they can afford to lose. However it turns out, it's hard to imagine the sites ever operating in the US again. If online poker ever returns (which seems likely, given the demand and the incentive to tax it) it will be on different sites, and probably years down the road.
Casual online players have to find a new hobby. Professionals need to turn their lives upside down. In order to keep playing, it will probably be necessary to move out of the country -- not a simple thing to do. There's also the option of switching to brick and mortar casinos, but that involves a big pay cut and lifestyle change. And then, of course, there's getting a real job.
I have mixed feelings. I've been feeling the grind the last few months, so being forced to explore opportunities outside of poker isn't entirely unwelcome. Then again, there's nothing I can do in the short term that will come anywhere close to my hourly wage playing poker.
Anybody hiring?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Bratwurst 3 ways
1. Put bratwurst on grill. Cook until gas runs out, about one and a half minutes.
2. Move bratwurst to oven. Set broiler to highest setting and cook until bored and hungry.
3. Bite into bratwurst and note raw center. Brush off mustard (optional) and put in microwave. Cook until shriveled and dry.
2. Move bratwurst to oven. Set broiler to highest setting and cook until bored and hungry.
3. Bite into bratwurst and note raw center. Brush off mustard (optional) and put in microwave. Cook until shriveled and dry.
Monday, February 28, 2011
The Forest or the Streets: Either Way You're in Trouble
"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2 + 2 = 5 and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."
-Mikhail Tal, World Chess Champion 1960-1961
Chess books say his nickname was "The Magician from Riga," but he was also called "The Claw" because he had only three fingers on his right hand. To call them fingers is misleading: there was the thumb and then two hooks forked like a lobster's tail. He used this alien appendage to play speed chess, smoke a cigarette, and gesticulate all at once.
Tal favored a wild, attacking style, often sacrificing multiple pieces for an attack. Sometimes his moves were shown to be unsound after the fact, but that was scant consolation to opponents who had already been blasted off the board. The Dutch Grandmaster J.H. Donner said he could feel waves of aggression emanating from Tal when they played.
He held the world championship for only a year. After being blindsided by Tal's aggression in their first match, Mikhail Botvinnik, an electrical engineer known for his scientific approach to the game, dissected Tal's style and formed a game plan for the return match. He steered the games into more staid positions and won comfortably. Tal would never regain the championship, but he was no flash in the pan: he remained one of the game's top players for decades.
If there are two fields best known to outsiders as the realm of cold logic, they are chess and computer science. But if anything the rise of strong chess-playing computer programs has upset players' notions of what makes sense on the board. The rules of strategy have been replaced by the simple mandate of Whatever Works. (When in a post-game analysis session an opponent suggested a better defensive move and asked, "But what is your reply to this?" Tal responded, "Who won?") In fact unexpected, seemingly nonsensical moves are now referred to as "computer moves," whether played by silicon or flesh.
The point is not to play moves entirely at random - that wouldn't work. Rather, sometimes the best move is the one that is most useful in this exact position, not the one that conforms to the usual strategic precepts. Computers taught us that some moves and strategies we believed to be logical were merely facile and pretty.
While his uncompromising aggression made Tal an exception in the chess world, such a strategy is the stock in trade of many of the best poker players. In a post on the poker forum 2 + 2, heads-up specialist MagicNinja described a hyper-aggressive strategy as Street Poker:
"Street Poker is all about game flow dynamics. It's impossible to analyse the amount of future winnings you can make after you bluff someone in a spot they would call 80% of the time, or when you call them in a spot you're only good 15% of the time when they shove pot. I'm not supporting these plays, i'm just saying that when you analyse them on a case by case basis, they are bad; i know they're bad; but it is impossible to really quantify their true effects against players who play in many different ways."
The hyper-aggressive approach seems to be all about swashbuckling flair, but its real value lies in an underlying pragmatism. You force your opponent into unfamiliar territory. If you have to make a mistake to get there, that's okay because the mistakes he'll make more than compensate. But only if on the Street (or in the Forest, or whatever) you know what you're doing.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Marshawn Lynch is a video game
Marshawn Lynch's run from the first round of the playoffs reminded me of Christian Okoye in Tecmo Superbowl. Each player in the game had a set of statistics, one of which determined how hard he was to tackle. Okoye's was off the charts. Against the anemic Colts defense, so long as you avoided diving tackles, he was actually invincible:
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Gil Thorp
The overall experience of reading Gil Thorp is something like tripping acid in the College Football Hall of Fame. Despite being created "for and about teenagers," the characters do not look or speak like teenagers. The strip mixes references to current TV shows like "Glee" and "Project Runway" with anachronistic elements like milkshake parlors. The artistic rendering of many characters changes drastically not just from year to year, but sometimes week to week. The current villain, improbably named Lini Verde, appears to be popular, gay, and a nerd -- a combination rare in life but rarer still in fiction. The eponymous Gil Thorp helms not only the basketball team, but also the baseball and football squads, so he can be forgiven for not grasping the nuances of each sport. Indeed, Thorp's coaching, at least what we see of it, consists mostly of flinging cliches at his players.
This last point is particularly interesting. A lot of sportswriting is, of course, overrun with cliches, but I always imagined that most sportswriters knew the score: while facile analysis may sell papers (although even that is now very much in doubt), to actually succeed as a coach requires expertise extending well beyond common knowledge. This does not seem to be the view of Mr. Rubin. In his imagined world, Coach Thorp instructs his players with the exact same cliches that the sportswriter deploys in his columns.
Mr. Rubin begins his critique of Rodriguez with a prediction that Michigan will win its bowl game (in the event they were blown out) and piles on with a string of lies, half-truths, and pure gibberish. It wouldn't be worth it to debunk the column paragraph by paragraph, but a simple Google search is enough to overturn nearly every assertion in it.
Maybe in the world of sportswriting there simply is no difference between cliche and truth: if people say something enough it is true, and if something is true it is often said.
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