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Rants
This is not a blog, I don't post pictures of my lunch. Forgive my typos, I don't use a spell-checker.
The older rants are semi-regularly moved off this page. You can always read the old rants here (or here ) if you're a masochist. If Google sent you here, it's wrong. You can see some of my photos at Yahoo .
Folded to you on the button. Only the blinds remain. You have C chips (in units of big blinds) and the blinds cover you (effective stacks all C). If you can only push or fold, should you push?
The correct way to do this is to guess some push range for you. Then assume the blinds know your push range and compute the correct call range for them. Then iteratively trying changing your push range, so that you find your push range that maximizes your EV over the whole range. (in each case assume the blinds know your range and make the perfect decision).
To see if you should push a hole H, you see if H is in the optimal range for you.
Okay, so as far as I know that's just review. In order to compute this you have to iterate many times over all holes for each person because you try a range for yourself, then try all calling ranges for both blinds to compute their optimal actions, then tweak your range & repeat until it stabilizes.
Here's an idea I had for a simple approximation :
It's folded to you on the button and you look down and see hand H. Assume your push range is all hands >= H. Now compute what the blinds should do given that range for you. Now consider pushing the actual hand H against the blinds' calling ranges. If it's +EV, then push, if not, don't.
Now, obviously this is an approximation and it doesn't get the actual EV right at all, but does it get the range right? I think it's very close and it's hard for me to see how/where it could fail.
Say for example in a given situation the correct push range is hands >= AQo. Folds to you and you have AQo, you'll make the right decision of course. What if you have AJo ? This should show up as -EV to push because if it was +EV it would've been added to the correct range, so we should get this right. What if you have QQ? We'll assume your range is only QQ+ so the blinds will fold much more, but it still should show up as a +EV push and tell you the right answer.
Anyone have an idea how this approximate procedure could yield a different result than the correct procedure?
BTW this is different than the Sklansky-Chubukov numbers because I'm assuming the blinds know your exact push range and make the perfect decision, but they don't know your actual hole cards.
Oh yeah, we got approved on the Mission apartment; woo hoo, sort of. It's small for two people, we're going to have to get along well! I'm not sure if my bed (Queen) is going to even fit in the bedroom.
Bicycle Film Festival in SF in September. Woot.
Your post sucks because: [ ] It is in the wrong forum [ ] It's a donkament beat - lol [ ] No one cares you can only SIIHP w/ your sister [X] You forgot to turn your sarcasm meter on [ ] You folded KK pf [ ] You just fell off the turnip truck [ ] Should have used roflcopter not lollerskates
One is an apartment layout tool (you could use it for houses & offices and anything else too). First, you roughly draft the floor plan of the place; it tells you square feet, so you can rough sketch it with a few measurements and tweak to get it close. Then you draw some simple shapes for your furniture. Then you can drag them around and rotate them to try different layouts. Obviously you could just use something like Maya (any modeler) to do this, but those are very difficult for the average person (like me). I want to just be able to draw the outline of the space then drag some walls, etc.
Addendum : Scott pointed me at this which is not bad. I wish I could free draw my layout, and just draw the furniture, not select from Ikea pieces, but meh, it's not bad.
The other is a traffic layout and simulation tool. Going over the Bay Bridge the traffic is awful, but oddly the traffic on the bridge itself is not bad at all, it's just leading up to the bridge that it's bad, because of some badly designed merges. Perhaps some small changes could be made which would cost very little but improve the flow of those merges? The idea is to have a tool that's sort of like a fluid-pipe flow analysis tool. You have these incoming pipes (roads) and outgoing pipes. At each edge, you can set the flux : the rate of cars going through (# per minute) & the average speed. You lay out the road in between with some simple splining tool, then the system simulates the car flow, using perhaps a particle system, or something that reasonably well approximates actual traffic interaction. You can then visually see the flow, see where it's clogging and slowing down. Then you can try little things, like adding an extra lane for a merge area, things like that.
There are two big problems with playing high variance :
1. It makes it harder to self-adjust. Poker is all about constantly adjusting, finding your leaks and fixing them. With a high variance style it's much much harder to really know when you're making mistakes or not because you will be going up & down all the time. This makes it harder to fix your game or make the right adjustments, which can lead you into bad play patterns.
2. It's much harder psychologically to stay in top form at all times. Because you'll be winning big and losing big all the time, when you lose big it will be hard to stay mentally fresh (avoid tilt). Even if you have the self control to just stop playing after some brutal beats, that means you're not playing when you could be, which is -EV.
The result is that even if embracing a bit more variance could be more +EV, often in practice you're better off giving up some value to keep your variance lower and have better control of your game.
note : this is a totally different issue than Risk/Reward in investing. That principle applies to poker as well, but is a totally different thing. In that case you're trying to balance risk just because you want to avoid ruin ("busto"), and because you might need to get that money for other things.
I'm finding myself more and more just anti-Israel. It's hard for me to feel sympathy for them and understand why they act that way. I used to see it more like Northern Ireland, where it's a hard problem and you can't really make everyone happy. Now I just feel more like Israel are the invaders who are smashing the poor locals with their iron fist; for every small attack they respond a hundred fold, even when their soldiers are attacked they don't respond by attacking military targets, they simply destroy civilian homes and infrastructure. They believe they have the right to visciously retaliate to any offense, but their opponents are "murderers" or "terrorists" if they retaliate in the slightest. I have the same problem with many American Jews' position on Israel. The New York Times spoke out against Israel's current offensive - not because of the killing and damage to innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, that wasn't mentioned at all - their objection was solely that the offensive would create more terrorists in the long term which would wind up reducing Israel's security. This moral relativism - the idea that any killing by you is justified, but any killing by them is an atrocity - destroys any righteousness. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the opposition's side is any better, they intentionally put their fighters in civilian neighborhoods, and no one is more blind to ambiguity than a Jihadi, etc. etc. I'm just saying it's hard for me to sympathize with either side these days.
One is at 21st at Guerrerro in the Mission District, close to the Park and Valencia St, but in a nice/safe part of that area. It's a pretty swank location, but the apartment itself is a bit shitty and small.
The other is at at Taylor St at Green St in North Beach (sort of up Russian Hill - I guess it's called "Amber Hill"). It's a slightly bigger apartment and it's in an old building with cool character. The location is convenient to cool Chinatown asian markets and North Beach seems kinda cool, but it's a much more touristy area and not as many real good restaurants/cafes/etc.
So, I think the 21st St. is our first choice and the Amber Hill is a fallback.
The landlords here also are ridiculously uninformed about their own properties. Nobody know square feet, and nobody has a floor plan. WTF!? You have to have those things for taxes / surveying, etc. how can you own a place and not have that information !? We asked one lady and she cocked her head and said totally dead pan "I don't have a tape measure".
We wound up doing "Rental Resumes" on recommendation from Jen; we did this one . That was cool for the people who were just individuals renting places, but most of the places are run by a property management company, and they won't take them, nor are they impressed, they just want you to fill out their own form. I also printed out our own free copies of our credit reports. That didn't help at all, nobody even wanted to look at them. They all just pay $20 to some service to check your credit. WTF do they think I'm going to forge this 10 page credit history thing !?
One thing that really disturbs me is the amount of information you have to give out. I usually don't worry too much about identify theft, since it's usually pretty isolated - eg. someone might use your credit card, okay you can stop those charges and cancel the card. These forms, however, contain all your ID numbers, your address history, info on all your credit cards - once thye get your credit report they have everything about you. It's enough information to do almost anything - get new credit cards in your name for example, apply for unemployment, get into your bank accounts, etc. I'm a little worried and if I don't get lazy I think I'm going to change all my account numbers on my credit cards & banks.
I think an electric stove might be a no-go for me.
I realized that I really like Woody Allen as an actor even more than I like him as a director. He's the past master of the neurotic hypochondriac self-obsessed liberal Jewish shtick.
I checked my credit report so I could bring it to rental applications. I found there's a "bad credit" dealie on there that just showed up last month for a bill I supposedly didn't pay back in 2001 in Austin. First of all, I wasn't in Austin in 2001 (I don't think), I was in Seattle, so it must be from even before then. Second of all, WTF, a late bill from 2001 gets posted on my credit report in June of 2006 !? There must be some statute of limitations for debt collection, no !?
Nice places in the city to live (for me that means not too expensive, not too gentrified, cool people & some street life, but not crazy dense noisy city) seem to be in an almost continuous strip from like Richmond, down through Haight and Hayes/Castro to the west side of the Mission and Noe Valley. I guess another nice patch is around Russian Hill - Telegraph Hill but I think that might be out of my price range except in the shittier parts in the middle.
In the East Bay, the trick is to find the nicer areas that aren't totally yuppied out. I'd like to live near one of the little hipster shopping strips so I can walk to cafes/groceries/etc. So, Berkely seems okay, but I don't know much about living there. There are decent parts of Oakland around Lake Merrit towards Piedmont, but I don't really know that area at all.
Scholz had an interesting idea of living up in the Redwoods on the peninsula, in Felton or something like that. Plus : it's lovely up there and cheaper than the cities, Minus : long drive to work/city and little things like shopping are a pain, also the people who live up there are mostly yuppies or white trash.
The funny thing I realized is that in bubble markets, like the current housing market (especially in CA), and the internet stock boom, is almost nobody is actually smart & rational about it. You have the "irrationally exhuberant" people who think it's just going to keep going up. They might recognize it's a bubble, but they think it won't pop badly, maybe it will just plateau. They rationalize all sorts of ridiculous reasons why the valuations should really be so high. On the other hand you have the people who see that it is indeed a bubble, but irrationally think that that's a good reason to stay out of the market. Not so, bubbles are a great time to ride the market and take a huge profit. Very few people actually identify the bubble and try to ride it smartly.
Looks like stuff in my price range is around 500 square feet. My computer desk is almost 500 square feet!
I've gotta get rid of a bunch of stuff that won't fit in a tiny apartment. If anybody wants a surf board, a rowing machine, a punching bag, or two cats, let me know.
So, I guess I'll move to the bay area. The really shitty thing is I have to find a place and move in 30 days which is going to be tough. My landlord is a fucking bastard for not letting me know sooner, he must've been thinking about this for a while. Unfortunately there's not really anything I can do, it's his house, he gave me 30 days which is all the law requires.
This type of nonsense is why some people hate artists.
The "contig" program from SysInternals seems to work, but it only works on one file. I guess I could just recurse all files and run that.
1832 x 1200 < 1920 x 1172
by about 51k pixels
Addendum : turns out it's just cuz I was using the "Desktop menu" thing, which seems to muck up the tastkbar functionality. Take that out and it resizes fine.
Anyhoo, I took a bad crash, which is idiotic because it's just a dirt road, not tricky at all, I'm a moron. I cut my knee on my pedal, it sliced it down to the bone of the knee cap and I had to go to the ER. It was tough riding down after the injury because your body gets all stiff and shaky.
I found a cool medical web site that's intended for doctors and thus actually has real information. They describe Laceration treatment . I'm thinking I might remove my stitched myself. You just snip them and pull them out, right? I don't need to go wait in a doctor's office for that.
Now, obviously you're not actually exposing your cards when you push. You get AA and obviously push - they're going to call sometimes. When they do, they are making a mistake (in the true Fundamental Theorem of Poker sense - they're making a different play than they would if they could see your cards), and you get extra value. So, if you push only when Sklansky-Chubukov says you should, any time they make the play they *should* make (if they could see your cards) - you're still profitable, and often they will make other plays, and those just give you extra value.
The nice thing about this push is that it cannot possibly be wrong. It's gauranteed +EV. However, it may not be even close to the most +EV thing you can do. With a given hand where pushing is +EV by this measure, all that tells you is that you shouldn't fold it. You could push, but limping or making a smaller raise might be much more +EV.
Furthermore, there may be hands you can push that are not +EV by Sklansky-Chubukov, but are +EV in practice. For example, with a 20 BB stack, pushing AQo in this way is -EV because you are called by AK and any pair. In reality, it's much better, because your opponents can't see your exact cards. They will fold the baby pairs, which is good for you (more folds), and they might call with AJ.
In reality if you have some push range {PR} and they have some call range {CR}, you can optimize against each other, eg. you pick your pushes to be the most +EV things to push against their call range, and they pick what to call with based on your push range. The only thing we can say for sure is your push range is >= the Sklansky-Chubukov pushes.
Hero is SB with Th Tc PreFlop UTG folds, CO Calls, Button folds Hero RAISES ($4.5), BB folds, CO Calls (2 players) FLOP: 8s 7h 5s ( Pot Size: $11.00 ) Hero BETS ($8), CO Calls (2 players) TURN: 7d ( Pot Size: $27.00 ) Hero BETS ($18), CO Calls (2 players) RIVER: Ts ( Pot Size: $63.00 ) Hero BETS ($21), ...
(I intentionally bet abnormally small on the river here; something like $40 would be a normal value bet). Villain here has one of two things : something like 99 or A8 where he'll only call a small bet on the river. Or, he has a flush. Often when Villain has one of two hands you can't really maximize against both, you just have to pick the one that will pay you off better and try to maximize against that. But this river is perfect to maximize against both. If he had the flush draw, he just made it, and I made a house. I can make a small "fake blocking bet", and if he has the flush he'll think I'm scared of it and raise. (in fact, if he's aggressive he might even raise without it to represent the flush).
Here's another interesting one that's sort of backwards from the first :
Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is BB with 5c 4s 3 folds, Button limps, SB folds, Hero checks. Flop: 3c Qc 6h ($2.50, 2 players) Hero checks, Button bets $2, Hero raises to $7, Button calls ($5). Turn: 2d ($16.50, 2 players) Hero bets $14, Button calls. River: Qd ($44.50, 2 players) Hero checks ...
Again Villain has one of two hands : either he has Qx , something like KQ, and just made trips, or he has a flush draw, two clubs, and he just missed his flush draw. I have a straight and can maximize against both by checking. If I just bet here, he probably calls with Qx, or maybe raises, and he just folds his missed flush draw. If I check, he might be his flush draw, he also certainly bets his Qx. I then check-raise all in. He of course folds his missed flush draws, but I already got a bet out of them, and he probably calls the check-raise with a good Qx like KQ or AQ, which gets more out of them since they might just call if I lead the river.
Where would this money come from? The general tax fund of course. Similarly, there's this talk of adding an extra tax on "windfall" profits from oil companies, and complaints about executive pay. That's sort of ridiculous and unnecessary. Instead you should just have a very steep progressive tax on corporate profits and salaries. If some executive wants to give himself a $100M salary, okay, that's fine, but the income above $10M should be taxed at 50% or something. Similarly, corporate profits over $1B or so could be taxed at a very high rate.
Now, the idea that this would be restrict the economy is ridiculous. In recent years the Bush tax cuts have gotten some credit for stimulating economic growth. That's absolutely preposterous. If the tax cuts did have any stimulating power at all (which is dubious), it's over a longer period as markets and companies adjust. 99% of the short term growth and liquidity has come from the Fed - the Fed interest rate is a much more powerful and immediate tool for economic stimulus. Low interest rates and a booming housing market and defecit spending have created a glut of capital.
If you really want to stimulate the economy you should eliminate all the little ridiculous taxes. Sales tax should go completely. All taxes on small transaction like that should go. Import & Export taxes should go, though that's more complicated and you may have to add "taxes" to compensate for certain costs (as I'm about to describe). Similarly, to make a capitalist system run properly, certain costs should be attached to the goods that create those costs. For example, a gasoline "fee" should be added which covers the estimated cost of removing the CO2 and pollution caused by that gallon of gas (as well as health care costs).
So, the trick to transfering money between neteller accounts is to use a poker site. Persons A & B both have poker accounts. Neteller <-> poker transactions are free, and poker <-> poker transactions are free. (actually neteller charges a fee for neteller <-> poker transactions, but the site covers it).
Warming goes faster and faster as I described previously, but over a longer period (thousands of years) another factor kicks in : so much polar ice melts that a layer of fresh water forms on top of the northern oceans. This screws up all kinds of ocean current flow which is complicated and I won't fully go into. Among other things it actually causes the Gulf stream to reverse (!!). Warm water no longer flows north and the caps actually become cooler again. So, even though the Earth overall has warmed, the caps cool again and you have a very extreme state with heat trapped around the equator and cold caps. The ice caps reform and a cooling cycle begins. Now, cooling is also self-accelerating due to various factors, one of which is that ice is very reflective and reduces the amount of solar energy absorbed. A big factor here is that ocean mixing and ocean current changes is a very slow process (it takes thousands of years), while these other factors are much quicker (hundreds of years). The ocean response is a stabilizing counteracting force but it takes much longer to kick in, it's like a weight on a very loose spring - you shoot one way and it takes a long time to repond, then it way overshoots, then it swings way back the other way. Once the earth kicks into a cooling cycle, that's a much more stable state and the earth can stay in an ice age for a long time. The temperate/warming states are very unstable and the temperature can rapidly oscillate until it kicks back into an icy state.
Aside from our contribution to global warming, etc. at some point we'll have to think about the Earth's own natural temperature variations, and if we don't want to live in a drastically different environment, we'll have to do something very major to try to control the climate and keep the Earth in the unstable temperate state we like.
1. Difficult decisions do not affect your EV 2. Min raises give you excellent pot odds for a bluff; if they work 50% of the time 3. Check-raising the river is good when he can either have a missed draw or a very good hand 4. There's a different type of "pot odds" involving stack sizes; eg. you must consider what they have behind, not just their bet. When you consider calling on the flop, you almost care more about these "stack odds" than just "pot odds". 5. Trying to call down with hands with reverse implied odds is very very bad. eg. hands like TPWK or middle pair. You want to have either dominating hands or hands that can improve. 6. If he's either on a good hand or a draw - you must fold. SA/WB 7. The more stable player always wins. A TAG against a LAG who are equal in skill, eg. 0 EV - the TAG will win if they have finite bankrolls, because eventually the LAG will have a big swing and go bust.
The next step down in coolness would be a Subaru WRX Wagon with a rally offroad kit.
1. Pollution from burning fossil fuels is not only adding CO2 and such to the atmosphere, which contributes to Global Warming via the greenhouse effect, they also add a huge amount of particulate pollution, which has greatly increased the cloud cover of the Earth in the last 50 years. The cloud cover has lowered the temperature. What that means is if not for the particles, the warming would be much greater. What's worse, we can remove and control the particles much more easily than the CO2; the particle-cloud-formation effect is relatively short term, but the CO2/green house effect sticks around. If we were to stop using fossil fuels right now, the earth would very quickly get *much warmer* as the particulate pollution settles out. (this is called "Global Dimming")
2. Warming is a self-accelerating effect (positive feedback). The more we warm the earth, the more it warms itself. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this. One is glacier sliding - as they melt, they develop a layer of water under the glacier which makes it slide faster into the sea. As it gets warmer still, arctic glaciers will start to break apart. Melting ice and permafrost releases large amounts of trapped carbon. Also supposedly once we get up another 5 degrees or so there's this catastrophic thing that happens where hydrocarbons at the bottom of the sea come out and we get a big acceleration of the process.
The self-accelerating nature of the warming seems to be a natural thing that has happened many times in the history of the Earth. Most of the time has been spent in an ice age. For some reason after 200,000 years or so of ice age, the Earth kicks itself into a warming phase, and it rapidly warms over a few thousand year period up to our current temperature, then rapidly gets warmer and warmer, and once it gets a bit warmer than where we are now, it kicks itself back to an ice age.
From some quick web browsing I can't actually find why the earth oscillates between these warming and cooling snaps. One thing is clear - once it's warming or cool it tends to self-perpetuate, and it's a very delicate system, it can easily be kicked into warming or colling from outside forces. It's suspected that in the past warming & cooling phases have been kicked off by variation in the sun's output, by major volcanic eruptions (from the particles blocking the sun), etc. Another factor seems to be small variations of the Earth's orbit caused by gravitational interactions with the other planets. The more I read about it the more complicated I see it is.
UCSD has an okay site and The Wikipedia article is good as ever. It's hip to trash wikipedia these days, but only morons do it; if the wiki's wrong, you can fix it!
Similarly, I think there may be a good sports bet against Brazil in the World Cup. Brazil are rightly the favorite, but I suspect they may be over-favored. I watched the UEFA Champion's League final with Arsenal vs. Real Madrid, and in it Ronaldinho really stunk it up. It seemed like he was trying too hard to do something amazing - all his passes were one-time-touches, he was all flair and no control. He got several free kicks and blew them all, shooting crazy curving looping balls that were off target, rather than just straight well aimed controlled kicks. Now, obviously Brazil still has the most talent (there are players who are perhaps more significant than ROnaldinho, like the aging Roberto Carlos), but maybe they'll be over-favored.
Most end users expect smooth transition effects. It's not natural for information to just pop right in your face. Television does a great job of using fades and slides to give a context of where the new information is going to appear. Computers haven't yet been able to incorporate these effects into the UI very effectively. Just think what a difference there is between the existing UI and the cool UI you constantly see in the movies. Layered windows give the product designers a lot of power to bring "cool" UI closer to reality.
Dear god, no wonder their GUI's are so unusable, they idolize the interfaces in movies like Jurrasic Park where you put on a VR head set and fly around the "file system". It's the Lorne Lanning / George Lucas school of visual effects - what we need are more fancy transition effects!
Anyhoo, I'm drawing overlays using WS_EX_LAYERED windows, and it seems to be a huge performance dog. I've tested the code and made sure I only call UpdateLayeredWindow() once in a while for changes, it's simply having the layered window around at all which seems to be bad. I'm using WS_EX_TRANSPARENT which means that it's not hit-testing mouse clicks against the alpha channel, so that's not it, so far as I can tell it's just the compositor itself that's slow. I guess the Windows GUI doesn't use hardware acceleration so it's doing CPU alpha blending. Also pretty much all my alpha is boolean, transparent or opaque, but they don't have a fast special case for that, so they're probably doing the full multiply per pixel.
Calling Station beats Bluffer
Bluffer beats Nit
Nit beats Calling Station
Wild Fennel grows like crazy around here. It's this really airy ferny stuff. It grows along the highways, and when the county crews mow over it, it explodes with this liqourice smell. It's totally edible, but it doesn't have the nice root bulb like cultivated fennel. The leaves are edible raw in salads, the stalks need to be cooked well.
The other factor I'm aware of is when your draw can make second best hands that will pay you off. Any time you're drawing to a straight where an A makes the straight, that's pretty cool. For example if you have KQ and there's a JT on the board, the A makes you and a hand like AJ will pay you off bigtime. Another is if there's a 234 on the board you have a 6. If a 5 hits, anyone with an ace has a wheel, but you have the higher straight. Another good one is if a card will make a straight on the board but give you the nuts, like if you have 89 and the board is 3456, if a 7 hits there will be a straight on the board and people will go crazy, and you can win a big pot.
Last week we went and hung out with the family that runs the Rinconada Dairy out near Pozo. (read the article there). They're still pretty small scale, but losing money with about 80 sheep now; soon they'll have a bit more sheep and will make a small profit. They have a Mexican family that lives in a trailer on their property that does most of the hard labor, but they work a pretty full day themselves. I'm sure it's cost millions to get the property and the operation set up, and they'll never make enough to pay that back, though that's not the idea, it's just a nice way to retire basically. They plan on hosting farm stay guests and weddings and things like that, which will actually bring in more money than the cheese making. It's just crazy how unprofitable agriculture is.
There are a lot of day traders, too, who play while sitting at their computer watching their stocks. I feel good about taking their money too, since they're leeches just like poker players - contributing nothing to society, just playing a game for money better than other people do.
As usual, a lot of the problem is that our system is not capitalist, the government actually subsidizes wasteful products by providing cheap waste sites and not charging waste companies or natural resource harvesters a fair fee. Disposable products should have a tax applied which charges for their disposal. The disposal charge would include a large surcharge for the long term destruction of land via land fills.
Use sign up bonus code "CBPARTY" to make sure you're tracked and get your 20% to $100 bonus.
Most of your EV on every hand you play just comes from taking down the pot with little pressure. Why not just play every hand? Well, for one you need to play tight just so people will see you as tight and give you credit and fold. Also, if you just fold every time someone plays back, you'll be folding too much, you need to be able to defend your hand part of the time. To do that, you need to have hit something part of the time. Better hole cards help there, though they aren't crucial, since junk cards can hit two pairs and trips and such too.
Think about it this way - you get 88. Don't think, oo I have a pair of 8's. Think, okay, I have two cards, I'll make a raise and put pressure on the pot. Now, if you get put to the test, you have some nice insurance where you don't just have to fold, depending on the board maybe you can try to get to a cheap showdown with just your 8's, or if you have a set you can try to play for a whole stack.
I'm trying to move back up to 200 NL. I went down to 100 and crushed it, so I'm trying to move up again. I'm finding it a lot harder to beat. When I hit a set, I don't stack a guy, and people are much more aggressive about bluffing and testing you. Generally you have to play back at bluffs a lot more, and you have to be more tricky with made hands in order to stack people. Down at 100 people generally let you know when they have a hand, and you can either stack them or fold depending on whether you have a big hand or not.
If you have a pre-plan, one of the bad things you do is sort of bet weakly or fail to value bet with a marginal hand. In some cases you should just fold that hand, but in some cases you should bet hard with it. I want to be able to stop on a dime, like going bet-bet-bet, and then just fold when I know my hand is no good any more.
Sort of a classic example of this is when a draw makes. Say you have something like AA and the flop is K72 with two spades. You bet the flop and turn. The river is a spade. A lot of people want to check here so they can call and see a showdown. What you should do is go ahead and bet as much as you think Kx will call. Now if you're raised, even min-raised, you just fold. You bet like your hand is the nuts until you know it's no good, and then you just fold.
Say you have a pair and you know your opponent is on a flush draw. It's the turn and he checks to you. You can bet here to charge his draw, and he'll call. Your return on that bet is around 80%. On the other hand, if you check behind him and the river blanks, he might bluff at the river, or check-call with a weaker hand. In that case the money you're putting in on the river has a return of 100%.
Now, if you could get both returns that would be even better, but usually they are exclusive, you can either get the 80% or the 100%, and you should take the 100%.
Pete or someone like that limps in for $0.50. I raise to $4 in the Hijack spot with [ Tc 8c ]. Most of the table is on scared money and I can take the pot, plus nice implied odds. Dustin calls out of the big blind. Dustin has been playing a lot trying to get in the action. I think Pete called too. Flop :
[ Kc Td 8h ] , pot $12.50
All check to me, I bet $9.
Dustin calls, Pete folds. Hmm.. now, I rule out a set because I have the bottom two locked up, and KK he would have reraised preflop. I was thinking QJ or 9J are his most likely hands, or even something like KQ or AK. KT is also possible. The turn is :
[ 6s ] , pot $30.50
That looks pretty safe. Dustin bets $12. Odd. That's kind of a small bet, but Dustin likes to bet his draws, and he could also be probing with one king. I call. The river is :
[ Jd ] , pot $54.50
Dustin bets $20. Again kind of a small bet, looks like he wants to get called. AQ and Q9 just made straights, and I can't rule out Q9 because Dustin will draw to gutshots. On the other hand, some of the hands I put him on like QJ just made a pair and he might be betting just a J. Anyway, I call $20 and he shows :
[ 7h 9h ]
For the turned nut straight.
I could've bet a little more on the flop, but I don't think I can really get away from the hand. I think Dustin's preflop call is pretty sick for a few reasons (1. it's 8 BB, the implied odds can't even make up for such a big call, 2. he's out of position, 3. I'm likely just on a steal so won't pay off even if he hits), but other than that he played it well. I probably would have called a bigger bet on the turn, but I'm sure he didn't think I was so strong. As it turned out he hit just about the only board where he can win a pot from me, the miracle 68T board. I of course wanted the miracle 679 board.
The live game's pretty frustrating, with people not paying attention and taking forever. I think I maybe got 50-100 hands in over about 5 hours. Online I would've had about 1500 hands in that time span. I don't play the live game for the money, I like to just mess around and hang out (though I still like to play a +EV game overall, I'll make some silly -EV moves once in a while just for fun), but it's not so much fun when it's just so slow.
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Consider for example : he bets $4 on the flop, you call, he bets $8 on the turn, you call. If you hit, that's nice, but he might actually just be bluffing here or also have a draw.
For the same amount of money : he bets $4 on the flop, you raise to $12, he calls. He checks turn, you check.
You put in the same amount of money for your draw, but in the second case he'll fold the pure junk, so if you hit your draw, he has some kind of hand and is much more likely to pay you off, so your implied odds are way better. Of course this only works in position.
Mahatma has an awesome ability to get paid off when he hits a hand. Presumably this is because he bluffs so much.
1. Playing big pairs : the standard line is that you must reraise solid preflop to get heads up, and to charge them to outflop you. The problem is this makes you hand very obvious and means they'll only play with you if you're beat. For example :
Blind $1. UTG raises to $4. You're in UTG+1 with KK. You make it $12. All fold to UTG who calls the $8.
Flop is [ 3 7 8 ] with two spades.
UTG checks to you.
You continuation bet $18
This is all well and good, but you only get action from a set here, or possible from like 9T of spades. You really want action from hands like 99 or TT but you've told them they're beat and you won't get action.
2. Playing sets on dry boards. Common wisdom is to continuation bet just like you always would. The problem is on dry boards they likely have nothing and just fold.
Say for example someone pushes preflop you know they push with only AA or 22. Eg. they have the nuts or are bluffing. You have JJ, do you call? The answer is it basically doesn't matter. You might fold and they show 22 and you feel awful, or you call and they show AA and you feel awful, but it really didn't matter. More realistically this happens a lot when you put your opponent on a range and the optimal play against various parts of his range are slightly different. Like if you have a set on the river and you read that he either has a busted flush (you should check to induce a bluff) or a weak pair (you should bet small to get a crying call). If he has one or the other, just pick one and it's not a big deal which one you picked.
All of these "hard" decisions have a very tiny affect on your long term results (though they tend to be the hands that have a huge affect on your short term results). So, don't agonize over them, and worry about your actual important big mistakes. Eliminate the hands where you look back and go "omg, what was I thinking? that's just awful!?"
The first hundred hands - nothing much happened for me. I did a lot of folding. I made little steals and folded to reraises or when I missed the flop. I got KK once and raised it and got no action. I stole a few blinds and took down some flops. I folded good hands like 55 and QJs to heat. All the while I was watching and developing reads.
I got KQs, raised it, flopped a Q and doubled up vs. a nutter calling me down.
Another nutter pushed all-in preflop with A5o and I called with AQo and doubled up. (he had just pushed the last hand with T7o)
I got 77 and raised, all folded. I got KK and reraised an opener, he folded. I was playing real tight, so getting lots of folds. I opened with A8 and got two calls. I flopped middle pair and bet continuation and all folded. I opened with A9s and a guy pushed and I folded. I raised TT in the CO and the blinds folded. So with all this I managed to be about an average stack for the tournament and the field was whittling down. I was developing careful reads on everyone so I knew when to go with a big hand or not. Then this wierd hand came up :
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t1200 (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
BB (t14338)
Hero (t24551)
UTG+1 (t26308)
UTG+2 (t10204)
MP1 (t10425)
MP2 (t9006)
MP3 (t40335)
CO (t28693)
Button (t3601)
SB (t9488)
Preflop: Hero is UTG with Ks, Ad.
UTGA raises to t3000, UTG+1 raises to t4800, 8 folds, Hero calls t1800.
(yikes, he min raises me, and he has me covered, I'm worried he has JJ+ in which case I'm in dead trouble)
Flop: (t9600) 5c, Tc, 7s (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets t1200, Hero calls t1200.
(I'd basically given up on the hand here, I figured he had a pair and I need to hit an A or K to win)
Turn: (t12000) 7d (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 checks.
River: (t12000) 6c (2 players)
(interesting, clubs made it, I can represent the flush :)
Hero bets t4000, UTG+1 folds.
Final Pot: t16000
He must've been doing something really weird in this hand, but it wound up being a pretty big pot.
I now have a solid stack. I open on the button and fold to a push. I open in MP with 98o and all fold. A super-short-stack pushes and I call with T9o in the big blind, he wins with AQ. I open AQ on the button, all fold. Now it's the bubble and I want to attack the shorties who are trying to creep into the money. Then this awful hand happens :
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t1600 (10 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
MP3 (t18638)
Hero (t27550)
Button (t16337)
SB (t10373)
BB (t17450)
UTG (t15957)
UTG+1 (t34335)
UTG+2 (t52645)
MP1 (t3506)
MP2 (t5938)
Preflop: Hero is CO with 6s, 6d.
5 folds,
MP3 raises to t3200,
Hero raises to t8002, (I wanted to get all in with MP3, but wanted to see what happened behind me)
Button raises all in (t16337), (button was a bit of a nut)
3 folds,
Hero calls t8285. (I'm getting like 4:1 , I have to call even if he has an overpair)
Flop: (t19487) Jc, Qd, 8c (2 players)
Turn: (t19487) 9s (2 players)
River: (t19487) Th (2 players)
Final Pot: t19487
Button had KJo !!! Ugh. He can't bluff me there, his stack is too short for me to fold, there's a raise and reraise in from of him, and I have him well covered so he can't threaten me with the bubble. Such an unbelievable bad play, I was sick at the time, I thought I played the hand perfectly and was being punished by the poker gods.
Now I'm a little below average. I get KK and open and all fold. Next hand I get AQ and open, and the big stack pushes. I'm a bit short now and the bubble is passed, I call. He has KK, but I spike an ace to double up. Now I'm back to average. I get KK again; a guy just open-pushes in front of me and I call. He has QJs and had way too many chips to be open-pushing that hand.
A few more hands with little nothing happeneing, then a super-aggressive guy who's been raising a ton raises in the CO. I'm on the button with KQo and I push over the top. He calls with 44, but I win the race and knock him out. The very next hand I fold AJo preflop when a very tight guy opens (he had AK). Then I get 64s and try a resteal, but he pushes over the top and I fold. Then this hand:
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t3000 (7 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
MP1 (t101298)
Hero (t46655)
CO (t100005)
Button (t24793)
SB (t44261)
BB (t42884)
UTG (t72054)
Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 5c, 5d.
2 folds, Hero raises to t8000,
1 fold, Button calls t8000, 1 fold, BB calls t5000.
Flop: (t21000) Tc, 6s, 6d (3 players)
BB pushes all in
- here I was thinking of calling BB because he was an aggro nut-job. The problem is Button was still live behind me and he was very tight, so -
Hero folds
Button calls
BB had 44, Button had QQ, and my read is spot on. Okay, lost a few chips, but nice to know I'm reading and making the right moves. Soon after this hand came up :
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t3000 (7 handed) Hand History Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)
SB (t90098)
Hero (t38430)
UTG (t99780)
MP1 (t59311)
MP2 (t42536)
CO (t16441)
Button (t85354)
Preflop: Hero is BB with Jd, Td.
4 folds, Button raises to t10000, SB calls t8000,
Okay - Button was a very aggressive player, he's likely stealing, SB probably has something weak, this is a perfect spot for a steal, and I have a hand that does well in case someone calls with like 77 or Ax
Hero pushes all in (t38430)
Button calls t28330, SB folds.
Button called with J9s and MHIG (my hand is good). Wow. Now I'm chip leader for the table and can tangle with anyone and not go out. I get 88, call a raise and turn a set, but don't get paid off. I open 94s on the button and fold to a push. A lot of people at my table are nutty and over-aggressive, so I have to sit back a bit, I can't go crazy like I want. Also the guys to my immediate left and right are both rather loose and crazy so I can't steal from them.
I raise A3o on the button, but fold the flop when a blind leads into me. My stack is dwindling as none of my steals are working out. Then I get AQs , a loose guy pushes in front of me and I call. He has 77 and I win the race.
A few more steals and no action hands. I open with 77 on the button, A shorty in the BB pushes and I call. He has AT and spikes an Ace.
I open JT and flop trips and the one caller folds. I open J3 and flop air and the one caller pushes, (I fold). I open 88 and all fold. I defend my blind with 64s and flop two pair, but the super-aggressive guy for some reason doesn't attack this hand. Ugh.
I get AK and just call a raise from the blinds (trapping and wanting to see the flop). I flop an ace and check-raise all in over a continuation bet, he folds. I'm back to #2 stack at the table. We're now at the final table !!
I get AA in the SB but all fold to me. I open for a min raise and he folds the BB to a min raise! Arg!
I get A8s and steal the blinds. I get K8 in the blinds. All fold to the SB who limps. I flop an 8 and win one bet. I get K3 in the SB. All fold to me and I open push to win the big blind. I now have the big stack, but just barely. I'm the chip leader! I open TJo and all fold. I get A5o in the BB. The SB limps and I raise, he folds. Some nuts knock each other out and I just sit back, it's now 4 handed !! Another nut knocks himself out, and it's now 3 handed, and we make a deal.
It's funny going back over it, there aren't many hands where anything much happened to me. I kept chopping away with lots of little steals, but never got the nice double ups with my big hands. I won a few races I needed to win, but never won as a big dog (like running a pair into an over pair). I was all-in very few times, maybe just twice !? I just kind of stayed around average chips the whole way, and avoided going bust with decent hands against tight players. It all sounds so easy when it works out.
Another thing that I think really worked out was just a simple basic principle - stay out of pots with good players, get in pots with bad players. You can play worse hands in the pots with bad players and fold lots of hands vs. good players, and things just work out. The bad players will throw away their chips in crazy situations that just make no sense.
Anyhoo, I really saw the appeal of being something like a Producer. You don't personally do anything, but since you aren't doing anything you have the time to see what everyone else is doing.
Pride is IMHO the best fighting program (better than UFC, and boxing is just boring and gay), but a lot of the fights still get boring with people in the guard doing nothing. I think allowing groin work would fix that. Being in the guard is a pretty bad disadvantage if groin work is allowed, because the guy on top can just work the balls and the fight is over. I don't really see why not, it's not really dangerous more so than other things they do. The way the stupid rules are now in fights, you should always go for a head-butt or an elbow or a rabbit punch if you're boxing, and in MMA fights you should knee to the groin. At worst you might get a warning or a point off, and your opponent gets brutalized and you have a huge advantage in the fight. It's quite frequent in boxing to see some villain headbutting and punching the back of the neck, the hero gets all fucked up from it, the villain just gets a warning, but the hero is cut and bloody and dazed and the villain winds up knocking him out.
Some examples of basic software principles : any time your software is going to do a time-consuming operation, it should give the user any necessary prompts right away up front. Don't run for 15 minutes, then toss up a prompt, then run another 15. Also, you must check for possible failures up front and let the user know about them before you go into your big work. For example, if you're going to do some file IO after a lot of computation, you should open those file handles in advance to make sure you get them and they remain legit. It's intolerable to run a computation for 30 minutes and then fail because the path is no good to save the results or something like that.
I got my tires rotated & oil changed. I wonder how often they take your car into the shop, just don't do anything to it at all, and give it back and charge you $50. Next time I'll put chalk marks on my tires before I go in so I can catch those bastards.
Frontline seems to dwell on the fact that so much critical infrastructure was put in places that could flood. Well, look you morons, most of New Orleans can flood. If you put crucial things in flood-free areas you're basically establishing a heirarchy where valuables go on high ground and poor go on low ground. The big problem goes back to putting a huge city in an incredible flood-prone delta with little protection.
Funny tidbit I didn't know - Andrew Card actually headed the disaster response to Hurricane Andrew under "Bush 41". He was at the time Secretary of Transportation and was appointed because the FEMA director was an incompetent buffoon. Andrew was the biggest hurricane preceding Katrina (eg. there was no bigger hurricane between Andrew and Katrina). It's a shame he wasn't appointed again, or didn't step up and ask to take it over or something.
Movies about movie-making are pretty uniformly horrifically bad. Movies about indie-movie making in America are one step worse.
First one I was in the small blind with AJs. Blinds were 800/1600 and I had about 15k chips. Jim opened for 5k in middle position (UTG+1 with 6 players). I thought about moving all in, but for some reason I had a pretty strong read on Jim that he was strong. He thought a long time about the raise and then sat way back. On the other hand it's totally possible he has a pair below J or AT. I folded, maybe I should've pushed, especially considering the Gigabet Principle where I want to take a slightly -EV gamble at that point to try to get a big stack.
Second one was also against Jim. I raised in the CO (cutoff) with KQs. Jim in the small blind pushed all in. Blinds were about the same, I raised to about 5k and had about 15k behind, so getting slightly worse than 2:1. Again I folded. Again, he could've easily had something like Ax or a pair below Q's and I should've called for the odds, but there's a lot of hands that have me in trouble there.
Obviously there are a lot of factors involved in this - taking the lead in the hand, building the pot for when you hit, etc. etc. One factor that I don't see mentioned much in general is just the statistical factor of getting in pots with bad players.
Say you have 67s in MP. The table has half good players at about 20% vpip (and tighter to a raise) and half terrible players at 50% vpip (who call raises with junk). If you limp in, it's likely you will play a pot with good players, possible with good players in position on you. If you come in for a raise, it's very likely all the good players will fold behind you, if there are any callers it's far more likely to be the bad players. In a limped pot the chance of an opponent being bad is around 5:2 because of their higher vpip, in a raised pot it's perhaps 4:1 because the good players adjust much tighter to a raise.
Now, regardless of the cards, being in pots with bad players is much more +EV than with good players. This is different than isolating on a bad player, where a bad player enters the pot and then you raise to get heads up with him, I'm talking about when you're opening, or perhaps putting in a button raise after a bunch of limpers - by raising you make it much more likely that you're facing bad opponents.
I'm not talking about the normal reasons to raise or not, cbetting etc. I'm talking about one specific factor which I suspect may be important in why raising certain hands is profitable at SSNL.
For example, if everyone at the table plays the same this factor does not exist; eg. if they're all bad or all good, you may still want to raise certain hands for various reasons, but not for this reason. If the good and bad players at the table don't vary their hands selection based on whether you raise or not this factor doesn't exist.
To be concrete, if a bad player plays 50% of limped pots, and 40% of raised pot, but a good player plays 20% of limped pots and 10% of raised pot, by raising you increase your chance of being against a bad opponent from 5:2 to 4:1.
Also, say there are 4 players behind you. Half are good, half are bad. If you limp, the chance that both good players fold is .8*.8 = 64%, so there's a 36% a good player comes in behind. If you raise, the chance that both good players fold is .9*.9 = 81%, so there's a 19% a good player is in the pot.
I realize it's sort of analogous to lots of things in my life.
The show kinda made we want to try meth. I've always been turned off by it because it makes the users so gross, but I didn't know meth just stimulates the release of Dopamine in your brain. Dopamine is just your body's own natural pleasure chemical, the same thing that makes it feel nice to eat chocolate or have sex. Meth is like an explosion of happiness far greater than anything you could ever feel naturally. How cool is that? (yeah, yeah, I still don't actually want to do meth, there are better things)
The interviews with the pharmaceutical guys are just unreal too. Those guys surely deserve to be brutally tortured and killed. They're pure evil and they cloak it in the political holier-than-thou stance which makes it even worse. 75% of Pseudoephedrine and Ephedrine are sold to methamphetamine producers, and they know it, and they don't want to stop it because it accounts for billion of dollars of profit for them. They'd much rather have a massive drug problem than give up a tiny bit of profit.
This is also a clear breakdown of the myth that corporations left to themselves with competition will wind up doing what's best for the populace (eg. they'll provide what the populace wants, maximize utility, whatever). In this case, pharma doesn't have to pay for the prisons, rehab, DEA, and all the other costs their product incurrs, but they get to keep the profit.
Well, it's easy to find the Salvia Divinorum FAQ . It is just a type of Sage. Apparently it's a hallucinogen similar to LSD, but doesn't last long and has no known permanent effects on the brain, which makes it very safe. It's also legal to own, grow and use. It's easy to grow yourself (just like any sage). The great Las Pilitas nursery (near Santa Margarita) has a big page on native California Sage .
It also made me think of an ideal terrorist cell structure. The binary tree described in "Battle of Algiers" is ridiculous. Basically they claim the FLM had a tree structure where each node (a person) knows only his parent and two children. This gives you a minimum knowledge of other people in the structure, so if you are taken out or caught, you spoil a minimum of direct neighbors. That's true, but it also means huge branches of the tree can be easily cut off, if you capture anyone near the top, it severs a big fraction of the tree. It's sort of tricky to improve this and seems like a fun CS problem. The idea is that if someone gets caught, you want to cut him and everyone he can identify out of the tree. Then you want to be able to re-link the tree and keep as much of it intact as possible. The direct neighbors of the caught node can communicate their knowledge to help relink the tree before they themselves are cut.
One idea is just the circularly linked list. Instead of a tree everyone is just in a circular list. There's still a leader, but he just passes his message to each side, and they keep passing it along anonymously. Even if the leader is cut out of the tree it only removes his direct neighbors. When a cut is made, you now just have a linear list. This can be easily fixed by broadcasting a message like "if you only know one neighbor, go to meeting spot X", then two people will go there and establish a link. This seems ideal. If you want the structure to be robust to possibly having 2 simultaneous cuts, you need more links. Probably best is to give each node 3 links - two to direct neighbors in the circular list, and 1 to the opposite on the circle, or perhaps just to a random other node. Now when someone is caught you have to remove 4 nodes, but you easily have enough links to recreate the circle. Obviously in the modern era with computers you don't actually need any direct links at all. Each of your operatives can just be a PGP key. Operatives who are available for missions just broadcast their public key. Commanders issuing orders can broadcast the instructions encrypted. The two can communicate thus without any direct knowledge of each other and won't be able to give the other up if captured.
It also reminded me how strange the image of the French is in this country. Our politicians for some reason paint this picture of the pacifist wussy French who don't stand up to aggressors and are generally weak and limp. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The French have been probably the second most aggressive nation in the world after WW2 (outside their own borders), after only the U.S. (the USSR maybe falls in there too depending on how you define its borders). They've personally fought major wars in WW1, WW2, Algeria, Indochina (long before we got involved). Since then they've been one of the most active western powers (again, after only the US) at sending Special Forces and arms to foment war all over the world, including such places as Rwanda, Uganda, Iraq & Iran. I'm sure there's a lot more I don't know about. It got me wondering about the French mind set after WW2. Perhaps their pride was injured by their humiliating poor performance defending their country, and they wanted to prove their toughness, and so tried to hold onto Indochina and Algeria, so that they could hold something over the Brittish and Americans by being the last colonial power.
Looking at this behavior from the outside, I find it inexcusable. And yet, I was guilty of the same thing at Oddworld. In my youth I refused to work in the system, and in the last few years I started to go with it more. Okay, I'll make little lies to my team if that's the best way to break the news. I'll agree to things that I don't agree with if that's less work than disagreeing, etc. Results-oriented optimization, choosing actions based on EV not morality. I thought perhaps to not be expedient was childish. Not so. I think the attack on stubbornness is part of the attack on "head in the clouds moral liberals". It's a way that conservatives/expedients make it seem wrong to go against them.
I also planted my first set of tomatos. It's been getting down to 41 degrees at night recently, but I think we're past our last threat of frost. I'll be planting two plants each week for the next few weeks so that I get some spread out production.
I'd love to have some Tarragon in my garden, and I think it would do very well here, but I've never seen it in a nursery around here. I know I can get seeds, but starting things from seed is a pain in the buttocks.
The reality of both parties is that they're pro-big-government, pro-pork, pander to special interests, don't actually simplify regulation, pander to specific industries and regions to win votes (like Florida hurrican relief for those with no damage and the tarrifs to protect the steel belt recently). They funnel money to their croneys in private businesses that they're related to. The dems and reps each have their own industries that they tend to coddle more (and it seems to me the recent administration has been particularly awful, but it's nothing new). Neither party really has any kind of coherent foreign policy; they both either mess around in world affairs or not depending on their perception of US interests and how the wind is blowing at home.
Still, I strongly reject the idea that because they're both bad you shouldn't vote for either. There's nothing wrong with picking the lesser of two evils - it's the better choice. Not voting because they're all bad is equivalent to the morons who boycott elections in protest or who resign their posts because they disagree with their superiors - you're just making it easier for them to win and accomplishing nothing with your high and mighty stance.
At the moment I don't see any really obvious industries to jump on. As I've written before I think the U.S. is headed for the shitter sometime soon, but that's hard to profit from, it's more of a thing where you can avoid a loss by getting out. (finance is like poker - you have to take your profit when possible, but sometimes the best you can do is minimize your losses; acheiving minimum loss is part of overall +EV play, even though it's still a losing play).
Alternative energy might still be a good sector to get into. If we get some democrats in power any time soon they might drop a ton of money on alternative energy projects which would send those small businesses through the roof.
Real Estate development in New Orleans is clearly a good opportunity. My dad suggested that construction companies in the gulf region might be a good way to capitalize on that. (it's hard to tap into the real estate directly because it's all private equity, though there might be a REIT focused down there that would be +EV).
The other continuing good investment is China. As China moves away from cheap manufacturing into better industries it provides lots of opportunities. High tech services in China should boom, telecom, power & other utilities, gas/oil providers, higher end retail & consumer businesses, real estate, etc. Basically we're going to see the boom of the Chinese middle class which will create a huge number of consumers for all the things Americans already own. Sholz sent me the cool China Stock Blog but I don't really know where to start. I hate jumping into stocks I know nothing about.
Outside my house, the deers are eating grass
Inside my house, I'm wiping my ass
Little humming birds, are drinking from the flowers
I'm sitting 'round, tryin' to pass the hours (ow-ers)
Playing guitar hurts my little fingers
watching Barry Bonds tryin' to hit some dingers
Failure to act in Darfur.
Increased animosity with Iran. Partly due to invasion of Iraq, failure to act on Palestine, failure to aid the moderate Khatami.
Failure to make action on peace in Palestine. As with North Korea, Iran, etc. the Bush administration took the non-productive hard line stance of refusing to work with Arafat, which prevented any progress. Continued unconditional support of Israel undermines our credibility in the entire region.
Massive subsidies & support for oil companies, no action for real energy independence or alternative fuels.
Condoning torture & failure to punish anyone for prisoner abuse. Continued use of rendition & holding people without accusation. Deportation and imprisonment of how many unknown civilians.
Massive & continued mis-spending in Iraq reconstruction, Katrina, post-9/11 domenstic security, etc.
Massive tax cuts for the very rich that do little for most of the population. Huge budget deficits. Failure to fund education, etc.
Intentional and repeated lies to make the case for war in Iraq, such as connecting Saddam and Osama, stories of WMD's, promises the war would make us safer, we'd be greeted as a liberator, etc. Distortion of the intelligence apparatus. Failure to listen to the generals, and black-listing or firing of any who dissented.
Misuse of the office for political attacks and misinformation. Smearing of Valerie Plame (Ambassador Joseph Wilson), Paul O'Neil, Richard Clarke, and anyone else who tried to break the veil of silence. Government created fake news stories and video segments on various topics (there were many more than Armstrong Williams and Jeff Gannon, such as fake news bits created by the dept. of Interior about environmental laws, etc.).
Failure to put troops in Afghanistan to secure that country vs. warlord and Taliban control. Failure to secure the tribelands of Pakistan where Al Qaeda really thrives.
Failure to negotiate with North Korea or engage Pakistan about it's nuclear proliferation and near military dictatorship. Continued support of Israel and Saudi Arabia show we don't really care about addressing terrorism, just controling regional interests.
Cutting funds for international health agencies because they distribute condoms, pandering to the religious right. No significant action on international disease & poverty.
Cutting animal slaughter precautions in the age of mad cow and avian flu, at the request of the industrial food industry.
"Clear Skies" & "Healthy Forests" ; great reduction of environmental protection for the benefit of industry. Opening up huge tracts of national land to development and mining and logging. Rescinded the roadless rule, allowed sale of public lands.
Multiple assaults on the Constitution - separation of church & state, right to privacy (search & seizure), separation of powers (generally seizing power from Congress and refusing Congress' constitutional requests for information and oversight).
First of all, they have their own set of fiber optic lines that run directly from the major phone and network data switches to the NSA headquarters in Maryland. There are two major phone switches - one on the Pacific side and one on the Atlantic side which tap into the underwater cables. NSA routes copies of all the packets onto their lines and ships them back to Maryland. There are also apparently just two top level network switches that they tap for inside-the-US internet traffic. It seems to me this has got to miss a ton of network data, since network data gets locally routed on subnets when possible and copies of the packets don't go up the chain. That would mean that the NSA only gets internet packets that go through the top level routers, which means only packets that travel far across the net, eg. cross-country or way across the US in terms of network topology.
The other funny thing was how they tap into satellite communications. Rather than tap into the phone switch after it's received, they have their own set of dishes. Apparently again there's a major satellite array on each coast, and the NSA has their own satellite array a few miles away from the commercial array. They point their dishes at the same satellites and just take their own copy of the received stream and put it on their own line back to Maryland.
Seems to me they could just hook themselves into the internet and send themselves normal internet packets (encrypted of course). They can just tap a "copier" into any spot on any network. The copier just grabs all the packets, encrypts them, and drops them back on the net with the To: changed to NSA Maryland.
Amazon constantly recommends CDs to me that I already own, that I've marked in Amazon's DB that I own. You dumb fuck. Oh, and where's the thing to mark my rating and that I own it? Hmm... somewhere on the listing of that CD, let me scroll all around the page and search for it, .. oh there it is at the bottom hidden in a pile of crap. I'd like to preview some songs, but unfortunately they're encoded at like 1 bit per hour, so they all just sound like ASS and I can't possibly ever buy anything based on that listen.
The Wynn is really beautiful. It doesn't really have a theme and feels a bit random, but all the elements of decor are really nice and you sort of forget that it has no style just because each bit of what you see is so nice. You must go sit at the little patio bar on the "Lake of Dreams". It's best after sunset when they shine lights on the water-wall which change color slowly over time.
We had dinner at Daniel Bouloud's place in the Wynn. I was a bit disappointed. The food was proficiently executed, but not very imaginative. The service was superb, but there's also something annoying about having hundreds of waiters dashing around all the time; they did their best to be unobtrusive (good waiters are sort of like Ninjas - you set down your wine glass, have a bite of bread, then pick up your wine glass and notice it's been filled without you ever seeing the waiter do it) - but when you have as many waiters as patrons they can't really hide. The decor and ambience were pretty rotten, very hotel-restaurant stuffy, the way the nouveau-riche decorate their dining room - shiny wood and overstuffed chairs - what people with no taste thing is really high class.
It made me realize I'm sort of bored of French food (which is shocking for me to say). French cuisine in the last 20 years has been working on that last 1% of the optimization curve. You know in software optimization, the first 90% is pretty easy, and usually you stop there. The next 5% towards perfect is really tough, and it gets tougher and tougher (it's like some sort of exponential thing, where each 1% is twice as hard as the last). The stuff I make at home is maybe around 90% now, and yeah the stuff I get out is better, but it's really not that much better, and the difference is so small that other non-food factors can make a much bigger effect on the overall experience (like the quality of the wine and the correctness of its pairing, for example). BTW I think I've said this before, but if you do not drink wine, you cannot eat French food. It's like listening to rock & roll but muting the drums, it's a crucial note in the food "chord" and to remove it completely imbalances the meal.
I also just found out my nasturtiums are edible! Apparently everyone knows that, but I just planted them for looks and now it turns out I can eat them too. The leaves and stems taste a lot like Arugula, though slightly different, less of that pure pepper heat, and more of a sharp weedy bite (kind of like "sour grass", actually a lot like wasabe, it goes up stings up your nose). Seems like they'll be nice mixed in salads.
My solution is pretty simple. First of all health care is divided into three parts :
Urgent care. Urgent care is provided by the government 100% free of charge. This covers emergency room visits due to trauma, heart attack, things like that. Also short-term continuing care related to these problems. This also covers preventive surgeries for things like tumor removal, etc. when an approved doctor has ruled that such a procedure is warranted. Doctors and hospitals that provide urgent care would not be paid based on the amount of services provided, rather they would be paid a flat annual rate, which would have to be competetive and generous to attract good doctors. There are a lot of tricky aspects here, like figuring out how to pay enough to get good doctors but not pay too much, also how to decide what therapies are necessary and which are optional, etc. but the current Medicare system actually does a decent job of all that.
Necessary care. Necessary care is also provided by the government, but with a small deductible. The deductible is simply to discourage people from using visits frivolously. This covers 1 checkup per year, problems like flu or bacterial infections, etc. This would include care for severe mental problems like schizophrenia, as well as chronic "lifestyle" problems that could cause severe health problems, like diabetes, etc.
Optional care. Optional care includes most lifestyle problems, as well as long-term care for things like pain, scoliosis, repetetive stress, etc. etc. As many things as possible will be classified under "Optional". Basically anything that won't kill you or make you a danger to society (or lead to future disease or problems which would be Urgent and very expensive) go into Optional. Optional care would be paid out of your pocket, but of course you could buy Optional Care Insurance, which is what most people would do. There could be a wide range of insurance plans that cover more or less services, it would be entirely private business. (presumably states would also provide some small amount of optional coverage for the poor, perhaps something like $500/year if you're below the poverty line)
Another key component is cost limitation in the government part of the plan. I think the simplest and fairest way to do this is simply to limit health care spending per person to something like $1 million per person. Once you reach that cap, you no longer are covered for Urgent or Necessary care by the government plan. You can either pay for those services yourself, or you can die.
Another element that I think could be very reasonable would be change the patent duration to something far shorter, something like 5 or 10 years. This would drastically reduce profiteering in pharma and the invention of problems that people need the new cure for.
Obviously there a lot of other issues and some of them I've written about before. The big piece for me is this idea of separating coverage into basic care which is free and covered for everyone, and optional care which is completely privately insured. The idea is to keep the average cost per person in the government plan quite low, perhaps $500/year per person or less. (current total spending per capita is around $4000/person). Another crucial aspect is that as new problems and treatments are found, they are not generally covered in the government plan, but you could still get them as optional care. Thus costs do not continue to balloon as technology advances.
BTW part of the goal here is also to *improve* care!! By cutting the very expensive care for the very few, we can provide a lot of cheap necessary care for many more people.
this report is full of good figures.
On a related note - I think car insurance is pretty clearly -EV. The car insurance companies just skim a huge profit, and furthermore they don't really provide a service the way catastrophic insurance does, since if the "worst" happens and you car is wrecked, that's not so horrific. They're not really amortizing anything for you.
That is, say the bad thing happens, it costs you -C. The chance of it happening is P, so the expected cost is P*C. A zero-profit insurer would charge you about P*C. Now, if C is very large and P is small, you should be willing to pay a premium, because if C happens you're screwed and have no recourse. This happens for like farmers and other disaster coverage, where if the bad P event happens their business is destroyed, they can't pay C, so it's worth it to pay a premium. On the other hand, if you can easily cover the cost C, then paying any premium for the insurance is ridiculous, the insurer is basically providing you no service.
Of course in the real world unfortunately car insurance is needed because of punative damages and all that nonsense, people suing you if you happen to injure them.
It seems like the only requirement to be an affiliate is that you have to sign someone new up once every 90 days. So, that's 4 people a year if you space them out. I think I can probably handle that, and the benefits are grande.
Well, that took about two seconds, so here's your link :
Use sign up bonus code "CBPARTY" to make sure you're tracked and get your 20% to $100 bonus.
If you're a serious poker playing friend of mine, email me for details.
Homer : Marge, where's that ... metal deely ... you use to ... dig ... food...
Marge : You mean, a spoon?
Homer : Yeah, yeah!
There are some mild differences in play between 100 and 200. There are more good players are 200, sometimes a whole table is full of semi-pros and I just leave that table. It's a bit harder to find tables full of donks, but they still exist. Overall, everyone is much more aggressive, even the donks. Actually the strategy of waiting for big hands and pushing them still works because people are aggro and will make big calls. If you were weak/tight you would get destroyed, because you'll be pushed off hands too often. There aren't many weak/tights at 200 and they mostly just lose money quickly.
The most annoying thing at 200 is there are a lot more shorties, and most of the really bad players tend to be shorties. It's such a dumb ridiculous move, these guys who take their $100 and buy in at a $200 table instead of a $100 table. It just means the blinds are bigger for them and their stack will get eating up faster. Often when I hunt down a mega-fish at the 200 level, he's on a tiny stack ($50 or so), which is annoying because it makes it hardly worth chasing.
One thing I really miss about 100 NL is it's the only level where $1 = 1 Big Blind. (god damn I hate that I can't write BB since BB often means "Big Bet"). When you have to compute odds or the 5/10 rule or something you can just look at the bet amount and that's BB's. At 200 I have to go, ok, he raised me $22, so that's 11 blinds, okay, I fold. It's another mental step which is bad. A major part of poker for me is cutting out mental operations to make it more mechanical.
0.75 = P * 1 + (1-P) * 0.5
0.75 = 0.5 * P + 0.5
0.25/0.5 = P
P = 0.5
So, you should take any race where you're >= 50% to win. If you take any worse race, you're giving up EV. Actually, this is not really interesting, it's built into the ICM model. The ICM model assumes that you're running your chips against each other at a 50% win rate. It's an open question how accurate the ICM model is; there are some good data mining projects which suggest ICM is not quite right.
Now, that only applies to calling an all in. If you're putting him all in you have the bonus of fold equity, and if you have to take a race as a dog it's balanced by all the times he folds. For example, say you push something like Q9 or K2. If called, it's probably a 60/40 race with him in the lead. If the blinds are tiny, pushing is a bad idea. What size do the blinds need to be for pushing to be right?
His stack is 1, yours is 3, and he's in the big blind of size B, you're in the small blind. You push. He calls with the top 20% of hands (roughly any ace, any pair, better kings and queens). 80% of the time you win +B and the stacks become {3+B,1-B}, so your chance of winning becomes (3+B)/4. 20% of the time he calls and you race as a 60/40 dog, in which case your chance of winning is 0.4 * 1 + 0.6 * 0.5 = 0.7
0.75 = 0.8 * (3+B)/4 + 0.2 * 0.7
0.75 = 0.6 + 0.2 * B + 0.14
0.01 = 0.2 * B
B = 0.01/0.2 = 0.05
So any time the big blind is >= 5% of his stack, this push is goot. (that's M = 13.33 for him). This is actually sooner than I thought from intiution. I don't usually start making this push until his stack is more like 8 big blinds or less, which means I'm actually waiting too long. Good Sit-N-Go pros know all this and are super-aggressive pushbots once they have a chip lead.
So, basically this function is just pure unsafe unreliable garbage and you never should have even provided it in the SDK, right? And why the hell don't you provide me with a safe GUID for windows? All you have to do is give me a handle (which is recycled) plus a recycler refcount, very simple & makes this not a P.O.S.
If A() is too tight/weak, it will only bet with very good hands, and check or fold a lot. If you then use the same A() for your opponents, then you assume they are only betting with very good hands, which makes you even more scared!!
Similarly, if A() is too loose/aggressive, it bluffs way too much and plays a lot of junk cards, then you will assume that your opponents also are betting a lot of junk. This will make you want to bluff them even more, because you give them no respect for having hands, you'll try to bluff their bets & call their raises with really marginal stuff.
If you had an accurate opponent model, these flaws in A() would still be flaws, but by using the same A() for the opponent model it amplifies the problem, which is a horrible feedback loop.
Of course bad human players make the same mistake - they assume that the opponent plays the same way they do.
In fact, online, I feel like I can see play trends evolving all the time. Certain moves come into vogue, everyone starts doing them, and then people start countering them, expecting them all the time, then other moves come into favor. One move I've seen recently pop up a lot is people leading into the preflop raiser as bluffs on the flop. That is, someone raises in late position (usually me), a blind calls. The blind misses his hand, but he leads out pot size. You rarely saw this move a few months ago, now it's quite common, because a lot of late position stealers would fold the flop to this lead.
When you know what you need to do, two full workers are perhaps only 150% as efficient as one. On the other hand, there's this magic network thing that happens. If you have 10 people each working on their own thing, they're 100% efficient each on their own. Now, if you just let them talk to each other a few minutes each day, their productivity goes up massively! A few words from someone else can help you avoid going down long dead ends or send you on paths you never thought of
I think it's since I moved up levels I've been feeling like I need to step my game up to the next level, and I'm trying too hard to make good plays. I need to go back to just playing the way I was, basic solid poker, and then move on from there.
In other investment news, I'm starting to feel more and more like the U.S. is headed for the crapper in the next 10 years, so I'm thinking of getting my money out of dollars. I like to do that by buying foreign stock. The obvious places to invest are India and China, perhaps there are some other good options.
BTW, why do I think the US is headed for disaster? 1) massive foreign accounts defecit, somewhat propped up by just printing more dollars, 2) massive government budget deficit, 3) continued loss of real jobs & real earning rate in productivity sectors (eg. if you take finance and real estate and natural resources out of the equation and just look at the "skill" sector of our economy, it looks really bad), partially due to the growth of foreign countries' skill base and outsourcing, 4) large amount of personal debt and leveraging, which may destroy consumer spending power if - 5) the housing bubble may pop or even just slow, which will crush consumer leveraging, which is a major force in our economy.
Basically the US economy is currently propped up by - massive oil profits (and other natural resource wealth), which is not only temporary but also destabilizing, massive consumer leveraging in the form of credit cards & home loans, and massive government deficits.
So, I got this TTH simulator working, and the good news is it completely destroys the TTH bots. At a table full of random TTH opponents, the simulator beats them for 12 PTBB/100. That's just an insane ridiculous win rate at limit hold'em, the best players in the world win at 3 PTBB/100. The very best TTH bots at the same table win at around 5 PTBB/100. Even that is high and it's because many of the TTH bots are so weak. Heads up against the very best TTH bots, my simulator bot wins at a rate of 30 PTBB/100.
The TTH bots are pretty bad, and my simulator quickly finds their flaws. For example, if the hand checks to the river, the TTH bots will often stab at the river with no hand. The simulator will then raise them with any two cards, because the TTH bots will fold to the raise. The TTH bots generally make very predictable stabs at the pot and also fold easily to aggression, so you can trap them and bluff them. I saw another cute example :
Board is [9 T Q] and my simulator has Q7 and TTH has A4. TTH checks to me and I check behind (!!). Yes, it looks drawy, but I get more value because : Turn is a [3] and TTH bets out with air. The simulator raises (!!) and TTH calls. The river blanks and it goes check-check. The simulator estimates that it gains +1.5 big bets from this line rather than just betting the flop, because TTH will just fold the flop to most bets, but here we trapped in 2 more big bets. The rare cases where we get beat are outweighed by all the times he has junk and we win those extra bets.
Basically the simulator is able to play 100% perfectly against the TTH bots. Of course it can't see their cards, and the TTH bots do have a tiny bit of randomization, so my simulator can still make "mistakes" in the silly Sklansky Theory of Poker sense of a "mistake" (eg. if I could actually see its cards, I might do something else). However, the simulator plays 100% perfect poker in the sense that it's the best you can possibly play against them - I put them on the best possible hand range, and in each case I can predict what they would do in response to my actions, since I just run their brain to find out.
Unfortunately, this Simulator is not very useful as a general purpose AI. The weaknesses of TTH are so predictable and unrealistic, that it makes the simulator play strangely. That is, the Simulator is perfect against TTH but it's very very far off a game theory optimal AI, it's sort of at the opposite end of the spectrum, it's tuned itself to be perfect against TTH which then makes it highly exploitable to other play styles. For example, the Simulator against a Poki AI is a losing player.
So, this turned out to be a purely theoretical excercise. Perhaps I need to read some more game theory papers. I suspect there may be some way to prevent the Simulator from becoming so exploitable to other strategies. For example, maybe if I just added some chance that instead of doing the TTH action, the opponent does something completely random at each decision point? That would certainly keep me from zeroing in too much on the TTH opponent, but not sure if it's good or not.
In other words, if you have an AI A1, and you construct the optimal strategy that beats it, A2 = Sim(A1), then you can construct the optimal strategy that beats it, A3 = Sim(A2), etc.. in theory this is a sequence that converges to a fixed strategy AN which is the game theoretic optimal strategy, that is AN+1 = AN (as N -> infinity), the best strategy against AN is just AN. I'm not even sure if this simulator approach will ever converge, or if it will just oscillate wildly, but certainly I've seen that for the first few steps in the sequence, it can swing wildly. Presumably if I made a simulator than ran my simulator, it too would have very strange exploitable flaws.
1. Add a joker. I don't really like this option because it adds a big technical aspect involving theory of the joker, and it makes the game feel cheap, like some wacky home game. Also, I'm not sure this stimulates action, since you have to sit around and wait to get a joker in the hole a lot.
2. Get rid of low cards. If you reduce the deck to only cards >= 7 or so, it makes it far more likely for people to connect with the board, etc.
3. Various dealing manipulation algorithms. This is very easy and effective online, but can't be done with real cards. That's a negative. Also, it would make all the moron fishies think the game was fixed in some way. There are lots of possibilities here, like only dealing flops that hit people holes, or probably the best is simply never dealing anyone junk in the hole. Simply do a random deal, and if someone gets pure junk in the hole, throw it out and try again, repeat until everyone has something.
4. Add another street, the "Ocean", after the river, so there are 8 cards to make your hand from instead of 7. This greatly increases the chance of straights, flushes, and other big hands.
First of all, recall that you should be playing Bayesian Poker (see previous articles, etc.). Bayesian Poker at each decision point assigns your opponent a probability for every possible hole, P[H], and also an opponent model of what he'll do if you do certain actions, P(A|H,S). For this to be complete, these probabilities must include the chance that he's playing really weird this hand, that he's being tricky, that he mis-read his hole cards or the board, that he's just not paying attention, that he mis-clicked a button online, etc. etc. In practice, we don't actually think of all that when we do "hand reading". What we do in practice is just to think of their primary play style and figure out what hand they would play that way. eg. based on the play so far and the board, I put him on hand X, or perhaps hand Y. I'm not actually thinking of a full range of probabilities and all these other possibilities, because it's just too much to go through.
Now, this type of "deterministic" opponent model is pretty good, it's right 90% of the time, and if you make decisions just based on "putting him on a hand", you will most of the time make the right decision. The problem is those few times he's deviated from it, you might make the wrong decision. Now, those events are rare, so they're not a big deal, right? Well, in Limit Hold'em, that's true and we can just stop the discussion. In No Limit, however, the pot size can vary, so that a rare event can be disastrous.
Just as a quick example, let's say you decide you're never going to fold the second nuts. Most of the time that's a fine strategy and you'll win many pots that way. Once in a rare while, though, he'll have the true nuts. If you lose a huge pot in that case, it may be disastrous to your EV even though it's incredibly rare.
Pot Control is a way to hedge against these rare disasters. It means you only play big pots with good hands, which makes it even less likely that your opponent can have a good hand when you play a big pot (because the chance of you both having very good hands is very rare). If you will play a big pot with one pair, there might be 300 holes (out of 1200) that make better hands, but if you only play a big pot with a set or better, there are usually 50 or fewer holes that make better hands.
The board is B, you have a hand H1, your opponent has H2. You're trying to simulate all the draws from the deck {D} which has excluded the cards already on the board or in your hands. You can generate a hand rank which is R(B,H1). A draw card may or may not affect your hand ranks. The hand rank is a list of numbers, the first is the type of hand (no pair, one pair, etc.). The second is the rank of the card of the most important part of the hand (eg. the rank of the highest card in your flush, the rank of the paired card in your one pair, etc.), the next value is the second most important card.
For example, a house 88844 would have a rank {House,8,4}. Two pair JJ44A would have a rank {TwoPair,J,4,A}. One pair 44AQ2 has a rand {OnePair,4,A,Q,2}. Note that only "No Pair" actually has 5 significant ranks.
In some cases a draw card doesn't affect your ranks at all. If you draw card C, and R(B,H1) == R(B+C,H1) and R(B,H2) == R(B+C,H2) , then C was a total blank in terms of affecting your hands. However, you may still need to consider C because it may have been a scare card. We can approximate and ignore any changes to the hand rank beyond the first two. That is, for one pairs we consider cards that change the kicker, but not cards that change the second kicker.
We can define a "scare card" as a card which changes the hand rank of a likely holding, even though neither one of you may actually have that holding.
In the mean time, I'm still searching for a decent anti-snoop (anti-hook) app that doesn't gobble CPU or cost $50. I might have to just figure out how to write my own. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a Hook for the settings hooks ;(
(BTW, the whole idea of Microsoft making an anti-malicious-software tool is about as funny as the LAPD giving anti-brutality conferences, or the U.S. making "humanitarian intervention".)
I haven't played much in the last few days; I finally played some today and I could feel the rust. Human poker playing is about rhythm and feel, and you really need practice and need to feel in the groove. I usually have to blow some chips off before I get back into it. Today was pretty slow, and then a beautiful thing happened. A table busted up, people left, and it was just me and one guy left. I love playing heads up, I can push my edges much better, and wonder of wonders - this guy stayed at the table, and no one else came to join as often happens online. We played about 20 hands and I had his whole stack. He rebought and we played like 10 more hands and I had that stack. He rebought one more time for a half stack and I took that too. By that time some more people joined the table to spoil the fun, and he ran off.
My "roll" is now only a few dollars away from the threshold I set for moving up to the $200NL game, so the next time I play it'll be at the next level !!
void mysrand(int value)
{
Journal::IO(value);
value ++;
srand(value + value * 67 + value * 1031);
}
The first obvious thing is that if there are no flush draws, then the suits are irrelevant, so drawing a 3c or a 3s is the same. If there's one flush draw then you only have to consider if the flush suit comes or doesn't, so it's like there are 2 suits instead of 4. Then the other big group are all the blanks. There are a lot of blanks though that can change the "situation" even though it didn't affect the actual hands. For example an ace that comes out looks scary and will change behavior even if it didn't affect the hand values. Some blanks may make straights possible even if they didn't complete any actual straights.
It seems possible to me to cut it from like 45 draws to maybe 10 on average, which is a pretty nice speed up, but it's not at all trivial.
As an aside, if you wanted the "game theoretical" optimal solution, you simply assume that the opponent plays the same style as you, and set OpponentModel = IdealPlayer[OpponentModel], and you have a recursive equation which you can solve. Of course you can't actually solve it, or maybe you can but it's a hell of a bitch and no one has done it yet. (this could also have multiple solutions, some of which are false solutions)
In practice, you actually can run this IdealPlayer[] on modern machines with a simulator sort of like IBM's Deep Blue. The problem is finding a good OpponentModel which is accurate and fast. OpponentModel gets called around 1 million times per decision, and ideally you could call it even more. That's not bad, but if you try to use another IdealPlayer for OpponentModel, then you get 1M*1M and it's out of control. So, you have to use some sort of cheaper heuristic CrappyOpponentModel, and that leads to problems. It means that IdealPlayer plays perfectly against CrappyOpponentModel, but that may not actually be very good play.
For example, CrappyOpponentModel might fold too much if you just bet like crazy. That will give you an IdealPlayer that's just a maniac, betting all the time. In order to train an IdealPlayer to really play great poker, you need an OpponentModel that's on a pretty high level. In terms of the standard levels of thought thing, if OpponentModel is on level N thinking, then IdealPlayer is on level N+1. The problem is that to take each step of levels you need to run the previous level about 1M times. So to do level N thinking you're O( (1million)^N ).
One example that I run into a lot is thinking that someone is "setting me up". Here's an example from a few days ago :
I open raise in the CO with 87o. I have a very tight image, so I like to put in some raises to take down some pots. The button calls. The flop came something like QT3, a total whiff for me. I continuation bet like normal, and the button raised to 3X my bet. I folded, and the button showed K8o - pure garbage. Ok, so the button raised my cbet and showed it.
A few hands later I get 99. I open raise in early position, and the same player who was button in the previous hand calls. Flop comes all rags, like 367. I continuation bet again, about pot size. Aggressive Player raises to 3X my bet again. Now what? My hand is actually really weak, he can have a set, a straight, two pair, even against two overs I'm not that far ahead. Then I start thinking, he knows that he just showed me a bluff and I must think he's a bluffer - he wouldn't do this again on a pure bluff, he must've set me up and now he actually has the goods !? Then I realized I was being too tricky, I could tell from this guy's play that he was just really bad and I didn't think he was on that level of thinking. His level was more like "this guys is a tight/weaky, he folded before, I'll make him fold again!". So, on that level my hand is good. I pushed all in, and he called with just two overcards, and my hand held up.
I've been trying to find a 2d vertical scroller shootem-up for the PC that uses a game pad, and I can't find one (!?). You know, something like those sweet old arcade games, you power up with multi-shot, etc. I'd love to make one of these games, but making games for the PC that require a gamepad is not +EV.
Say you have A2s in the SB. CO limps, you complete the small blind, button checks. Pot is now 3 BB. You flop a flush draw. Now, you can either lead out for $2 , or you can check and you're sure someone will bet. So either way you are paying $2 to improve and see the turn.
The great thing about leading out here is that it reduces your opponent's hand range to hands that will pay you off more if you hit. If you check/call he might have complete rags, which don't pay you off if you hit. Any time you're on a draw, you really want to be up against good hands, because they give you implied odds. If you might be up against rags, it makes your draw much worse!!
If you limp for 1 BB , say you see a flop and the pot has 5 BB in it. No set, you lose -1BB. If you hit a set, half the time you bet and just take down the pot = +4BB. When you get paid, you make +49 BB. Net EV =
-1 + (1/7) * ( 0.5 * 5 + 0.5 * 50 ) = + 2.93
If you come in for a raise for 4BB, assume just 1 caller and the pot has about 13 BB in it. No set, you will continuation bet and take down the pot about 50% of the time, 50% you also lose your cbet. When you hit your set, 50% of the time you just get the 13 BB pot, and the other half you get 10*13 BB, but we'll cap that at 100 BB because that's the usual full stack (we use 104 below because you also get your 4 BB back). Assume your cbet is 9 BB, then Net EV =
-4 + (6/7)*(-9 + 0.5*(13+9)) + (1/7) * ( 0.5 * 13 + 0.5 * 104 ) = + 6.07
So, definitely better, but not 4X better. We can see the key benefit is that by building the pot early, it scales up the sizes of everything which allows us to win a much bigger pot when we hit. The cbet factor is actually not necessary for this to be profitable, but it does give us a nice extra bit of value.
The most absurd thing about it all is that many business analysts have said that this is a "great day for capitalism" because an inventor's intellectual property rights were preserved, and that if anything this shows that our patent laws need to be strengthened to defend innovators and research. Holy shit, you guys have no clue and are so bad for the universe.
I just added code to GoldBullion so you can play poker with a gamepad. It's pretty sweet, much more comfortable than a keyboard or mouse. Mutant Storm is still the best way to test a gamepad.
This Video of Spore is pretty awesome. WTF is up with the foliage, though? There are like 10 blades of grass in the world guys, get a proper decorator renderer. The procedural creature stuff is awesome. The world looks pretty boring, actually it reminds me of this ancient Amiga game "Drakken" (unrelated to the later Surreal game "Drakan"), which was this RPG with these giant, empty worlds scattered with random crap. I find these games cool in a purism sense, but they're missing a huge aspect of why I play games (when I do) - which is to see the cool art that someone has very specifically made to be rocking cool. Spore seems like a bunch of different games tacked together, which may or may not be cool. The question is whether tacking them together makes the whole better than the sum of the parts. In the worst case games like this often become as bad as the worst of its parts.
I read that the PS3 might cost $900 per unit to produce, and presumably they'll sell it for around $300, which is a ridiculous loss of $600 per unit !! I'm sure they justify this internally by saying it gives them the gateway to the home media system, which they can leverage to sales of lots of high margin products, like games and Blu-Ray DVD's. In practice, many people have tried this idea in the past (sell a big loss leader to get the user attached), and it's never ever worked. It was MS'es big mistake with the Xbox, which they seem to have corrected for the Xbox360. Sony got it right with the PS2 (making it reasonably cheap to make), and seem to have totally fucked up here. Supposedly the expensive piece is the blu-ray DVD reader, which is stupid.
The sum of EV components with an SC goes something like :
- cost of opening preflop - cost of drawing postflop + winning small pots when they have nothing and fold to a cbet - winning medium pots when they check-raise or trap your cbet + winning huge pots when you hit your drawIf they're on junky hands, all those components are there, but you won't win that huge pot. Another factor for raising suited connectors is that you drive out higher suited hands. 67s really doesn't want Q3s of the same suit in the hand because it can break you if you both hit your flush.
groupstat BigPair 474.37 groupstat Pair 137.79 groupstat SuitedBW 52.8 groupstat OffsuitBW 68.26 groupstat SuitedC -14.89 groupstat OffSuitC -12.48 groupstat SuitedA 27.13 groupstat SuitedK -2.76 groupstat SuitedTrash -2.39 groupstat Trash -9.63
This is all at 6-max. First of all, paying the blinds at 6-max costs -12.5 PTBB/100 , so if I just folded every hand my win rate for all of these would be -12.5 So, with "Trash" , I'm basically folding all of them and occasionally playing them and winning a tiny bit.
There are two big surprises here, though. One is that I'm doing better with Offsuit Broadway (things like KJo) than I am with Suited Broadway (same hands, but suited). That could just be an anomaly from variance, or it could mean I'm getting too stuck on suited broadway, or that I play them to a raise too often, something like that.
The big problem is the connectors. Suited Connectors and Offsuit Connectors are big losers for me, even worse than if I just folded them every time I got them!!! That's clearly wrong, I must be playing them wrong, so I need to look into that.
I also added a new feature to show in real time the list of holes that are currently beating you and the chance you have of improving to beat them. If there are lots of holes that
beat you it show a representative from each group. For example if your hole is
[ K T ]
and the board is
[ T 9 7 ]
the display shows something like :
[ T T ] Set 3.5%
[ T 9 ] 2Pair 17.6%
[ Q Q ] Pair 20.6%
While I was testing it I was playing on the play money tables and I had [ Q 6 ] and the flop was [ Q 6 6 ] and I found myself thinking woot, I flopped the nuts, and then I noticed it there in the display :
[ Q Q ] House 4.4%
In play news, I'm back on a brutal brutal dry spell. I'm finding the coding much more satisfying, because Visual Studio only gives me rotten bad beats once in a while. As a nice example of how bad I'm running, I got all-in with [ Kd Qd ] on a [ Jd Th 2d ] board against just top pair. I have 2 overs + a str8 draw + a flush draw = booya!! And ... I missed. When you're running really bad it becomes almost funny, every hand I'm just waiting for god to find a way to fuck me. One of god's favorite cruel jokes is for the board to pair when I have two pair, counterfeiting me against the donk I was going to bust who had just one pair.
It's not surprising that two pair being cracked seems to happen so often - it does happen a lot !! With two pair on the flop vs. an overpair, the overpair wins about 30% of the time, it's slightly better than a str8draw and not quite as good as a flush draw.
You can call with a flush draw on the flop when calling puts you all in. eg. if he bet pot, if your stack is <= pot, you call. Similarly you can call pot with a flush draw on the flop if your stack is >= 10X pot size on the flop. In the region between you must fold. See why?
Another common case is when you have something like two pair on the river, but the flush card has hit. He checks. You think he either has one pair or a flush. Should you try to get in a value bet here? The crucial factor here is actually whether he will raise with anything but the flush. If he will only raise with the flush, you can fold to a raise and you should value bet. Let's look at that. Let's say 75% of the time he has a pair and 25% of the time he has a flush. The pot is currently $100. You bet $20, which is the most he'll call with a pair. With a pair he'll call, with a flush he'll raise and you fold.
EV(check) = 0.75 * 100 = $75
EV(bet) = -20 + 0.75 * 140 = $85
Obviously. But now, what if he'll raise without the flush? What if P of the time he has just a pair he pushes for $100 more and he also does that with the flush? First of all, should you call that? The pot is $140 and you have to call $100 to win $340. You win (0.75*P)/(0.25 + 0.75*P), so
EV = -100 + (0.75*P)/(0.25 + 0.75*P) * 340
Let's say he chooses P so that it's neutral whether you call or fold (which is the correct game theory thing to do).
100/340 * (0.25 + 0.75*P) = (0.75*P) 100/340 * (1/3 + P) = P 100/3 = P * 240 10/(3*24) = P 5/36 = P = 13.889%
So, in the case that he pushes you just fold and it's zero ev. Assuming he still calls in the other cases you get :
EV(bet) = -20 + 0.75*(1-P)*140 = $70.4
That's worse than the EV of just checking, and that's still assuming that he calls your bet. If he just folded his one pairs it would be disastrous. Say for example he folds his one pair 50% of the time, then your EV is :
EV(bet) = -20 + 0.75*(1-P)*(0.5*140 + 0.5*120) = $64
Note that this is even worse than if they just always folded their one pair and always pushed their flush. Of course we could get some value back by betting more bluffs in addition to two pairs which would make it neutral for them to fold their one pairs, etc. etc.
In other news I feel like my game is back on, so I'm getting read to move up to $200NL again. My bankroll is currently at $3500 and when it hits $4000 I'll start playing $200. As long as I keep playing okay that should be this week.
Another good type of name to pick is to just make yourself look like a total douche. This type of name works on semi-pros who assume that everyone out there is a moron fish and just need an excuse to think you are. Names like "PhilIvyRulez" will have you pegged as a moron douche (note intentional mispelling of Ivey), or "luvHotchiX111", or "fittycent" or "mobenjaminz". Names with "fish" or "rock" or something in your name are a bad idea because they show that you know something about poker. On the other hand names like "str8flush" are fishy all the way.
None of that is too hard.
P(B) = (B < B_max) ? B : 0
The problem is you don't know B_max, but you can estimate it with some error. Let's say you know it's between L and H, with an even probability of being anywhere in there. What should you bet to maximize profit? Clearly it's somewhere in the range [L,H] , but where exactly?. Maybe I'll do the math and figure out where exactly.
Well, Sean beat me to the math and sent me this :
Is it clearly in the middle? Clearly we have the boundary cases,
let N be the bet amount:
N = L -> E = $N
N = H -> E = $0
So you might hope that it's a curve that grows as N increases,
and then starts decreasing again. But that might be overwon by
the person's tendency to fold. Now, if L is 0, and H is non-zero,
clearly there must be some > 0 value, though. So that sounds
good. But I think in practice it's not. (Also, this totally changes
for a gaussian instead of a uniform distributution).
For a bet of N, probability of folding is (N-L)/(H-L), so probabiliity
of calling is 1-(N-L)/(H-L).
E = N - N*(N-L)/(H-L)
E = N - (N*N-N*L)/(H-L)
H-L is constant, so computing the derivative ignores it:
dE/dN = 1 - (2N - L)/(H-L)
set that to 0:
1 = (2N-L)/(H-L)
(H-L) = (2N-L)
H = 2N
N = H/2
Weirdly, L canceled out, so I probably screwed up. But it could
be true, that that's always the peak of the quadratic, and therefore
the optimal result is:
L <= H/2: N = H/2
L >= H/2: N = L
This makes some intuitive sense. Let's ask whether it's a good
idea to bet (H+L)/2, versus betting L.
In other words, we have a sure thing of making $L, so let's factor
that out (I think this makes it more intuitive). Now we want to know
if we should increase that to $(H+L)/2.
If we increase, our increase versus $L is:
$(H-L)/2
and we have a 50/50 chance at it. If we increase and lose,
we lose the $L
-$L
so E = 0.5 * (H-L)/2 + 0.5 * -L
= 0.25*H - 0.25*L - 0.5*L
= 0.25*H - 0.75*L
So this says if H is less than _3 times_ L, it's a losing bet
to take the 50/50 gamble of raising to (H+L)/2. So it makes
sense; when L gets close to H, the rate of extra-money-beyond
L doesn't sufficiently offset the increased chance of losing L.
That all looks right to me, and is kind of interesting. If L is significant at all, you want to bet the maximum that you're *sure* they'll call, and trying to edge it a little higher is -EV because the risk of losing them is too great. Say for example L is $20 and H is $40, you must bet just $20 !! Even $21 is worse because it makes them fold 1/20th of the time so your EV is just (19/20)*21 = $19.95. However if L is zero, eg. they have something so weak they might not call any bet, the best bet is H/2.
In reality, they have more like a Gaussian distribution of call values, though I doubt that changes the answer too much. Also you have to look at multiple models, say there's a 75% they call based on a model like this, and a 25% chance they call any bet (but your stacks are not huge compared to the pot, so this isn't insane). In that case there's a bit more reward for edging your bet up, the risk of losing them if they have something weak is hedged a bit by the EV gain when they have something they call any bet with.
Right now I'm doing two different builds, like this :
#ifdef _CONSOLE
int main(int argc,char *argv[])
{
#else
int CALLBACK WinMain ( IN HINSTANCE hInstance, IN HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, IN LPSTR lpCmdLine, IN int nShowCmd )
{
int argc = __argc;
char ** argv = __argv;
#endif
and that's super lame.
I find this to be one of those things that's impossible to search for on google. Any kind of search for "WinMain _console" things like that just give you super-basic pages about how to make "Hello World" in Win32. I'm sure someone has done a nice solution for this before, but I've never seen it.
Hand 1 :
$100 NL, $1 BB Pre-flop: (5 players) Hero is Button with K K 2 folds, Hero raises to $4, SB calls $3.5, BB folds. Flop: T T A ($9, 2 players) SB checks, Hero ????
The normal line here is just to c-bet as if I had the ace. That's what you should do 90% of the time. But if you are against the kind of loose villain who will pay you off later with any pair, you should check. Why? If you bet here he will fold any hand you beat, and only call with better hands. However, if you check and the turn comes an 8 and he holds Q8, now he'll call a bet with a worse hand, and might even lead with it. If he had an ace all along you're losing your bet anyway, so why not wait for him to make a hand that you beat in some cases? Also there are no draws on this flop except a gutshot (and you hold a lot of the outs for it) so it's not too risky to give a free card - eg. almost any card that comes makes villain a hand that's still worse than yours. The interesting thing here is that it's a good spot to slow play (but only against this particular kind of donkey opponent), even though in the scheme of things my hand sucks, I can't beat a T or A, but I'm just ignoring those hands since I'm losing to them no matter what I do, I just want to maximize against all the other hands he might have.
Hand 2 :
Stack sizes: Hero: $100 CO: $59.95 Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is UTG with 9 9 Hero calls $1, UTG+1 raises to $2, CO raises to $7, 3 folds, Hero calls $6, UTG+1 folds. Flop: 3 A 6 ($17.5, 2 players) Hero checks, CO bets $13, Hero ???
The normal line here is for Hero to just fold. I called preflop trying to hit my set and missed. But wait - look how short CO's stack is, and look at the action preflop - he put in a solid *reraise*. Against most people this means he has AA-QQ. When an A hits on the flop, there are only 3 ways he can have AA and 12 ways he can have KK or QQ, which means it's 80% (12/15) likely that he has KK or QQ, and is now scared of the ace. The best move here is to push all in! Of course you can only do this if he can fold a QQ or KK here, but most people can fold to a check-raise push. Another line is just to lead at this flop and then push the turn. You have to be pretty sure that CO is only reraising QQ+ preflop, if he would also reraise AK then that hand is very likely and problematic. You have to have a pretty solid read for this move to work, villain needs to be pretty tight/weak, predictable enough to only have QQ+ preflop, and weak/smart enough to be able to fold his QQ on the flop. In that case preflop you're not only drawing to a set, you're also drawing to an Ace! This is sort of like when you draw to a straight with a flush draw on the board, you have some outs to make your hand and extra outs to a good bluff card.
On the other hand, even relatively good players can't see the same thing when the hand values are escalated. There are times when Two Pair is a monster, and times when a set or a flush are junk. Beginner fishes make the mistake of getting stuck on One Pair hands. Intermediate fishes make the mistake of getting stuck on "good" hands. The right thing to do is always adaptively evaluate your hand strength based on the situation.
A good example of this is when you have a hand like AA and he has JJ. Any decent player can get away from JJ, but when the flop comes 888, a lot of people get stuck on it. Their hand looks great now because they have a house, but of course their JJ is still beat by just the same things as before.
Andy Beal came back to play the Corporation again after all ($50k/$100k limit hold'em). He beat the original players (Jen Harman, Tedd Forrest, Todd Brunson) out of $6 million or so to make him up +$3. Then Phil Ivey sat in. (cue ominous music). Phil played Andy for about 3 days straight, long sessions, and Phil was in fast aggressive gear the whole time. Phil destroyed him for over $16 million. As I understand Phil was playing with the Corporation bankroll, not his own, so the profit gets split between all the pros who backed the Corporation. Too bad for Phil, the rest of them kind of stunk it up and he destroyed.
In online news, Party Poker has done some serious cracking down on cheaters. Two of the top online tournament players - ZeeJustin and JJProdigy - have had their party accounts closed and all the funds seized because they were found to have entered the same tournament with multiple accounts. Most of the top pros play multiple accounts, and most have admitted to having friends play their accounts, and then which ever one gets deepest in the tournament, the top pro takes over. This is the first time the poker sites have gotten serious about cracking down on these guys. Each one of them lost roughly $200k by getting their accounts frozen.
There are currently about 2 million registered online poker players, about about 200,000 play on any one day. The amount of money bet per month is perhaps somewhere around $400 M , though it's hard to get a good estimate of that. I don't have a good feeling for how much of that market I could penetrate. Certainly PokerTracker has sold a ton, but there's a ton of competitors, like PokerEdge, PokerOffice, etc. which I don't think have sold as much (and fight against my market share). The little helpers like MTH and PartyMine I don't think have actually sold much, but I have no idea. Perhaps the closest comparison to me is PokerAce HUD, I'm curious what his sales are.
The other potential big problem for me is if Party changes their software again in a big way which breaks my app. Obviously they are trying to fight helper apps somewhat to level the playing field, which I think is good in theory. I doubt they'll make another big change any time soon, since this last one caused them so much trouble. However, there are some small changes they could easily make which would cause me a lot of trouble, which I just have to pray they don't do.
It's kind of a dilemma. If I just use it and don't release it, it's an awesome +EV tool for me which improves my poker profit. If I do release it, it might hurt my poker profit, and help a lot of other people. I would make some money on sales, but hard to say how much. If it ever got real big, Party would crack down and do something about it, and then I'd be busto. It's a gamble.
There are more and more semi-pros these days, and most of them multi-table which effectively multiplies their presence. At almost any table at party there's at least one semi-pro and often 2-3. At a 6-max table this means there are usually only 2-3 bad players and a few other semi-pros. At the $2000 NL tablesd for example, it's hard to sit without running into lolo or Liquid_Farts. Those guys are cash sinks, basically you're going to lose a few $ an hour playing with them because they're better than you, and certainly with the rake it's not profitable to play them. Thus, the other guys at the table have to be enough of a cash source to make the table +EV. Obviously it would be awesome if no one was allowed to multi-table except me. I do think that the 10-tabling that some of the pros do is pretty sick. If you have a bunch of pros 10-tabling, it's hard to find any tables without several of them! I think a limit of 3 or 4 tables would be pretty reasonable.
In play news, my dry spell is officially over. I've had some negative variance recently and also made a lot of bad mistakes. Today I played great and got lucky and scored bigtime. I know this will sound trivial/stupid, but I really play better when I'm catching cards and getting lucky. I don't fuck around with marginal hands, and it also gives me a great image so I can terrorize people with preflop raises and steals. All that attacking that I do doesn't work if you can never show down a winner. When I'm running bad, I start getting impatient and trying to force things and trying to win hands that I can't, and find a profit somewhere.
1. Build a pot with your draw so that it's big if you hit. There are perhaps cases where this is true (like if you have a draw that's > 50% to hit), but it's almost always -EV.
2. Don't act in such a way that you'll have a hard decision later. eg. don't raise because if he reraises it will be a tough decision. Umm...no. Make the best decision at each point. An actual tough decision is actually not a bad thing, if a decision is very hard it means it's roughly EV neutral.
3. Don't chase a draw if you're going to fold when it hits. Or if you hit your hand and fold people will say "why did you play that in the first place?". Totally wrong. You were playing to make certain hands in certain situations. If your opponent tells you you're beat, you fold even though you hit the hand you wanted.
I'm working on another article which I think is much cooler about advanced concepts in stack sizes. I think there's some material there I've never seen discussed anywhere else (like "Pot Sticking Implied Odds"), so hopefully I'll actually finish it some day.
B < 10 , the crucial street is preflop. Your big moves are preflop - any pot you play is for your stack.
B in 10-30 , the crucial street is the flop. Your key move is on the flop. You have to be very careful with a continuation bet or a raise on the flop because
B in 30-80 , the crucial street is the turn. With this stack you can preflop raise and cbet or call on the flop with a lot more hands, because you will be making the key decision on the turn of whether to put in a lot of chips.
B > 80, the crucial street is the river.
Of course this varies and it's very rough. For example if there's heavy preflop action, that pushes the crucial street earlier because it swells the pot in relation to the stack sizes.
This comes up in lots of types of thinking. Say Player A is a superior postflop player vs. Player B. They play a match where Player A is forced to play every 2 cards he's dealt preflop. If the stacks are small, Player B will destroy player A, say B < 10. If the stacks are big, like B > 100, then Player A can destroy Player B despite a huge preflop disadvantage, since Player B can't press his advantage without risking his stack and moving a lot of chips postflop.
full ring : great because the mistakes that bad players make are worse in full ring. eg. really punishes them for being loose, especially in all the early positions. Lets you be really tight and not pay too much in blinds. If you sit to the left of a fish, you have more hands in position against them (8/10 instead of 4/6). Easier to multi-table because you can play very tight vanilla value poker (playing tight means fewer hands at a time and fewer tricky hands). Really favors tightness, even tight/weak and tight/passive players can make decent profit.
I'd like to hire a Mexican migrant worker to work my vegetable garden. It's about a 4' x 8' patch.
1. Broiled. You can broil frozen shrimp without thawing. The key is to place them on a rack over a pan or baking sheet, because as they thaw they'll give off a lot of water and you don't want them to sit in that. Simple cover in olive oil and season them as you normally would (something like herbs de provence or TJ's 21 are good), and broil until crispy.
2. Boiled. The key here is to place them in the water when the water is still cold. Heat up the water to boiling, and by the time the water gets to boiling the shrimp are thawed and then will cook just like they normally would. I like to do this and make a shrimp Ramen - just put the shrimp in the cold water, heat it up to boiling, cook them for 2 minutes & skim the foam off the top, then put the ramen in the same pot and cook the 3 minutes more for the noodles. Add napa cabbage and black mushrooms to the hot broth, as well as chili garlic sauce (Sambal Olek) or whatever you like. (a little Sherry is a good trick for giving it a false flavor of "royal broth"). (btw it's strange that so much Chinese cooking calls for Sherry, when Sherry comes from Europe; I wonder if it's just a convenient stand-in for some Chinese alcohol with a similar flavor).
Cash play certainly is much more profitable than tournament play for many reasons, and I'm still a cash newby, but tournament play really is more fun. That exhileration of getting knocked out, getting all in and risking your life, making a final table, winning a first place, there's nothing like that in the cash games. After a good day of cash play, I just feel like I put in my hours at the job, I made some good plays, some bad plays. After a tournament win, I feel like the king of the world, baby! (1st place today at a 20-person)
I'm ready to play. I'm ready to - be patient play each hand as well as possible stab at pots and then fold to aggression concentrate on the game lose the minimum as well as win the maximum don't try to win pots I can't win let them bluff and win pots from me, and don't let it bother me not worry if I'm winning or losing, just play each hand well be aggressive, raise with draws in good situations not attack obvious strength play solid, vanilla, don't do funny shite just fold marginal hands that sort of hit the flop not chase, not limp junk and not call postflop just fold when I'm beat take bad beats and just shrug them off use reads and stats to make small adjustments to basic solid play
On the flop - if I'm the preflop raiser I'll almost never check-raise. I'll usually continuation bet, and rarely check/call or check/fold. If I'm not the preflop raiser, and I hit some kind of medium hand, I'll usually just lead out or check/call or check/fold. Check-raising might be useful for trapping a continuation bet. My first thought is if I suspect he's whiffed but will still c-bet, I can check-raise to win his c-bet. The problem there is if I'm called, I'm out of position in a big pot with a mediocre hand. Check-raising with a draw sucks because if he calls and you miss, you're on the turn out of position and have to lead again or check, which shows weakness and invites an attack. A good time to check-raise is when you want to build a pot but are worried your opponent might just call. For example, you flop two pair or a set and the board has a flush and/or straight draw. If you're sure the preflop raiser will continuation bet, this is a good time to check-raise because if you just lead he can call with good odds to hit his draw and fold all other hands. This is especially good with hands like bottom two pair which are very vulnerable.
On the turn - I like check-raising a lot more here when I have a big hand. If I check/called the flop, he has the betting lead and will often bet again. If I put him on a draw, I won't check for fear he checks behind, but if I put him on like top pair and I have two pair or a set, a check-raise is perfect here. Also, if I was the preflop raiser and I bet the flop, against aggressive attacking opponents an check-raise is very powerful. You raised preflop, you bet the flop, now you check the turn, it shows weakness and many villains can't resist attacking. Of course you have to be pretty sure he's an aggressive attacking type of villain.
You have the top house, only beaten by quads (pair on board) :
You hold [ Q Q ] and the board is [ 5 5 7 9 Q ] (rainbow). Only [ 5 5 ] beats you. That's 1 hand.
You have the top house, only beaten by quads (trips on the board) :
You hold [ A A ] and the board is [ 5 5 5 7 9 ] (rainbow). Any [ 5 x ] beats you. That's 44 hands.
You have the king high flush (3 of suit on board) :
You hold [ Ks 7s ] and the board has 3 spades, no pairs, no str8flush possible. Any [ As xs ] beats you. That's 7 hands.
You have the king high flush (4 of suit on board) :
You hold [ Ks 7x ] and the board had 4 spades (no pairs, no str8flush possible). Any [ As x ] beats you. That's 44 hands.
You have the 2nd nut straight (3-straight on board) :
You hold [ 7 J ] and the board is [ 8 9 T 2 A ] (rainbow). [ Q J ] beats you. That's 12 hands.
(same count with a 4-straight on the board, but the number of tying hands goes way up in that case)
The one that really surprises me is the case with trips on board. It's actually pretty likely to see quads in that case, and certainly if you have something like [ T T ] and the board is [ 5 5 5 7 9 ] , that's not a very strong hand at all. Of course if you have a hand like [ A A ] on a board of [ 5 5 5 J J ] you don't even have the 2nd nuts, you have the 3rd nuts and a huge amount of hands beat you.
I limp in UTG+1 with 4d 6d . Several other limps and the blinds check. Dustin is just to my left and limped behind me.
Pot $12 , 6 players
Flop is 4h Td Jd
Bingo! I have a pair + flush draw, a monster hand, I want to get chips in the middle.
SB checks
BB (Jessica) bets $6
I raise to $24
Dustin calls (!!)
all fold
That's really funny, Dustin just cold-called a reraise. That means he has something really big. He limped in and now cold-called a reraise. He must have a flush draw, str8draw, maybe str8+flush draw, or possibly a set, something like 44. TT and JJ are pretty unlikely because he would've raised them preflop, but it's possible he got tricky with TT. Also TJ is possible but less likely.
Pot $66, 2 players
Turn is 3d
(Bingo???)
I bet $40
Dustin calls
Again very suspicious, Dustin just calls a big bet on the turn. If he just pushed all in here I'd definitely call, because it looks like he's protecting against the diamonds and maybe has the 44 or TJ.
Pot $146
River is 9h
Hero ????
I have only about $84 left, but I can't put him on anything but a higher flush! What do I do ? If I check, he'll check behind with any worse hand, so I'll miss some profit there. If he has the flush, he'll surely bet, probably all in. If I bet, he'll call with a wide range. He might be able to fold if he doesn't have the flush, but he might call with a set. I really really felt like he had the flush at the time, but I just couldn't imagine check-folding a flush, so I went ahead and pushed it and he called with the Ad5d.
It's easy to say "flush over flush is just bad luck", but I really put him on the flush on the river, and I think I could've check-folded. Of course if I check-folded and he showed me 44 I'd feel like a real moron. Anyhoo, I'm okay with the mistake of running a flush into a higher flush. At least I didn't show up with top pair or some nonsense.
You can read Dustin's version of some of the hands at The Chapel Perilous .
In positive news, I very quickly got GoldBullion working on the new GUI. They broke a few things - I can no longer read hand histories while the game is running. They used to log each line of the hand history as it happened, now they way for the hand to be over and then log the whole thing. Also, their buttons are all fucked up which is currently breaking the autoplay, hopefully they'll fix the buttons in general. Also, the GoldBullion data mining DOES still work. So, despite Party's efforts to break data mining, I still can. Nya Nya.
1) fix the rebuy exploits (being able to rebuy when all-in) 2) fix the way the buttons/blinds move when people get knocked out (the BB should move, not the button) 3) fix the way the blinds are when heads up at cash tables (eg. SB should be the button) 4) fix alert sounds - you don't get any action warning sounds at inactive tables (chip sounds and stuff should remain only at the active window) 5) add a time bank for the cash games, give me 40 seconds a day or something like that 6) fix the window activation & click bugs where sometimes you have to click many times on a button to get the action to go through 7) get rid of "hide me from search" ; I want to find my buddy listers!! 8) give me an option to auto-rebuy at cash tables when I bust out so I don't miss hands, better yet give me an option to stay at a full buy in any time I go under full. 9) let me move seats at a table without sitting out and rejoining the table 10) let me get up from my seat without leaving the table, eg. leave the table window open just with not me at it (this would make #9 unnecessary) 11) don't auto-minimize the lobby when I open a table; also don't auto-open the lobby when I close a table (let me control the lobby myself) 12) better buddy list, like "select all for search" 13) heads up sit-n-gos
Hot chick stumbles out of a club in an alley in some big grimy city. It's late at night, she yells goodbyes to her friends in club and stumbles down the alley obviously drunk. Lots of scary dark shadows, water dripping in puddles, a rusty gate swings in the wind, it should sort of feel like a horror movie where she's obviously unaware but the audience is thinking "oh no, don't walk down the alley!". Suddenly someone jumps out of the shadows, we can't really see them they're still in the dark. They press her up against the wall and say "take off your pants!", camera pans down to her pants, tight jeans that make her ass look great. She protests and the assailant puts a knife to her "take off your pants!" , she, sobbing, complies. The assailant pulls the knife away and grabs the pants, the girl collapses to the ground sobbing and covering her face, her legs akimbo hiding her panties. The assailant throws the jeans over her shoulder and we see the camera pans out as she walks away and we see assailant is another club-girl. Zoom in on the jeans pockets slung over her shoulder so we can see the logo.
If I were to commercialize there would be lots of annoying code things I'd have to do. Aside from the GUI issue, I'd have to make it work with all the other poker sites. Right now it only works with Party since that's all I play. I've never sold my own shareware apps so I'd have to learn how to do installers and lock apps with registration codes, etc. etc.
Flush draws really suck as calling drawing hands because they're so obvious and people are very scared of the flush card. Because of this I prefer to use flush draws as semi-bluffing hands. If possible I'd like to get all-in on the flop with a flush draw when it's reasonable. Of course this is moronic at low stakes unless you have a combo draw or have some good fold equity.
Straight draws are great draws to take off a card and try to spike it because the implied odds are good. Also, in Limit hold'em it's bad to draw to straights when the board has flush draws, but in No Limit the opposite is true. You can represent the flush draw, so you actually have outs like a str8 flush, since the flush outs are bluff outs for you.
With big combo draws on the flop I really want to get all in. Out of position I usually lead and hope they raise, rarely I'll check-raise. In position I'm thinking that I might start min-raising more. If they reraise, I can push. If they just call they probably check the turn to me and I bought myself a very cheap free card, I can check behind. I'll also min-raise with monsters and with air when I put them on a whiffed c-bet.
Now if their fold to cbet is down around 25% or less, the equation changes. You're getting much less value now from taking the pot, and need to have a hand that can win. You have to just bet for value, bet when you think you have the best hand (even if it's AK no pair).
On a related note, the one really bad thing about the poker lifestyle is that when I have a losing session or make a big mistake, it makes me really depressed for a short while, and I usually have to drink booze and eat chocolate, and it makes me pretty worthless for doing anything at that point. When you win your brain injects endorphins and you get this short term high, but when you lose or fuck up your brain punishes itself and injects some sort of massive downer chemicals and you can't get off the couch.
Anyhoo, in Low Limit this is all way too fancy. A practical thing that I've noticed for myself, is that when you play against these "solid" low limit TAG players, they will only raise big with their sets and very good draws. In that case, you can just fold top pair to them. Yes, you fold to the flush draw some times, but over all it's a good fold and you don't need to sweat it. They feel clever by sometimes semibluffing, but really they're not bluffing very much and you can correctly fold there without giving up value. Also, since they love to semibluff flushes but almost never semibluff gutshots, it's pretty easy to tell when they might be semibluffing.
EV = 0 = 0.7 * 1.5 + 0.3 * ( 0.5 * 5.5 + 0.5 * ( -11 + P * 22.5 ) ) = 0.225000 + 0.3 * 0.5 * P * 22.5 = 0.225000 + 3.375 * PYou don't have to win at all !? If you just check/fold every time they play back at you, you're +EV !!? This is because they're folding their BB too often, but more importantly they're folding the flop too often when you c-bet. That actually really surprises me, I thought P would have to be at least 25% or so to break even. If P is 25%, this is right around EV = +1 BB. Note that P will of course be < 50% here since they have chosen to only play their better hands, while you're on a big range, but I suspect it's probably actually > 25%.
One thing I find is that even when I feel like someone is running over me with c-bets, and I start playing back at them, I still fold about 50% of flops. Playing back more than that just feels like going maniac, which of course is what you have to do!! Similarly, when you're running over someone c-betting and they start attacking back, notice that it's actually still pretty rare, and you can just fold to their raises. They just won't have the balls to do it very often because they'll be afraid that you pick up on it and come back over the top. Also, you're getting them to commit a lot of chips with marginal hands, so when you do show up with the hand it's a big bonus.
Clearly giving up the pot to the preflop raiser 50% of the time is too much. Roughly 2/3 of the time you should not give up the pot so easily. Either lead into the preflop raiser, or check-call or check-raise. With big hands, mostly lead, and occasionally check-raise. With junk (whiffs), occasionally lead and occasionally check-raise. With mediocre hands, mostly lead and sometimes check-call (lead turn). With big draws mix all three choices.
Of course one way to deal with blind steals is not to try to defend too much, but simply to make sure you steal enough when it's your turn. There's an inherent disadvantage to being in the BB. There's an advantage to being on the Button. The Button is worth money, and you can't do anything about that. If you're in the BB, the Button is going to make money from you on average. That's fine, you just have to make the same amount when the situation is reversed.
Didn't play any poker this weekend, and I feel like I missed out. The weekend games are so juicy. The whole setup with Danielle working a regular job really sucks. I can't play poker at night or on the weekend, which are the best times to play. I play during the day which is much, much tougher. We can't just take off in the middle of the week and go skiing or camping. I'm spoiled and I really don't like doing those things on the weekend when there are bloody human beings around. Camping/hiking/skiing/the beach are all so nice during the week when it's quiet and deserted.
We ate at "Roy" in Santa Barbara which was disappointing; I've always thought it was a cool place, but the food is very ordinary. Came home today and I made much better food (poached salmon with dill and capers). A funny thing happened at Roy. I was sitting at the bar with Danielle while we waited for our table. Dan got up to go pee, and this Urban Cougar sat down next to me. We were chatting a bit and she was practically purring (I think she tried to rub her cougar musk glands on me). Anyway, Dan came back and I got to do the "oh, this is my hot young girlfriend. Get lost, cougar".
To wrap up again, I think there are a whole bunch of factors that come together to make this hand very special : 1. Villain has obvious "set miner" stats 2. The board is very separated, two pairs are unlikely 3. There's no raise preflop, so high pairs are unlikely 4. Villain is passive, so pushing a draw is unlikely 5. I have a respectable TAG image so he doesn't put me on junk 6. No one's on tilt, we have no history of playing back at each other 7. I have the bottom set 8. There's no high card on the flop so TPTK is impossible for his flop action (and he wouldn't push that on the turn anyway) 9. The Q on the turn also makes hands like JJ very unlikely to push there 10. I haven't made any big laydowns recently so I'm not perceived as weak So, if I'm ever in a hand again where all those factors come together, I think I just might fold the bottom set and be confident about it.
I thought about this because of the Prahlad post that Dustin mentioned. The other case where you can fold a set is when your opponent is very smart and can read you well and knows from your action that you must have a set, and yet is raising in a situation where he's unlikely to be bluffing or semi-bluffing.
Party Poker $100 No-Limit Hold'em, $1 BB (6 max, 6 handed)
UTG (Maniac) ($89.46)
Hero ($98.50)
Preflop: Hero is MP with As, Js. SB posts a blind of $0.50.
UTG (Maniac) raises to $5, Hero calls $5, 4 folds.
Flop: ($11.50) Jc, 7h, Th (2 players)
Maniac bets $11, Hero calls $11.
Turn: ($33.50) 8s (2 players)
Maniac bets $31, Hero calls $31.
River: ($95.50) Kd (2 players)
Maniac pushes all-in ($42.46)
Hero calls $42.46.
Final Pot: $137.96
Maniac was super-aggressive and bluffed a lot. I make top pair top kicker (TPTK) and call him down to trap him if he's bluffing. Sometimes he'll have a better hand, sometimes he'll have a worse hand. (actually this board is really bad, since KJ got there on the river, AQ got there, any 9 makes a str8, etc.). So, what's wrong with this hand? The thing I don't like is I'm allowing him to play perfectly. I'm not sure if he was just a crazy maniac or if he was a clever thinking maniac. I've made a mediocre hand and let him double up with his good hand. I didn't get any information to find out if he had a good hand or a bluff, which means he's getting to decide when the stack goes in. If he's clever he's only putting the stacks in when he's got it.
I don't like the idea of letting him decide when to play a big pot. He could stab early and then back off without a big hand. Certainly I know he's open-raising a lot of junk and often c-betting with it. He will usually fold to a raise on the flop if he was just c-betting with junk.
Let's look at some extreme cases. What if he open-raised a big range, and then would push the whole way with anything? In that case I should call behind preflop with any good cards, and call down with any pair. It would also be +EV to just call behind with pockets, and only call him down if I flop something super-good. That would reduce my variance but also reduce EV. What if he open-raised a big range, but then would only bet the whole way with a decent one pair or better? In that case I should call behind with lots of hands, and only call down if I flop two pair or better. If I don't flop two pair or better, I should raise some of those hands as a bluff, because he'll fold with no pair.
Lolo's strategy is to always open raise in late position, and always continuation bet. Then take it from there. In early position or behind a raise, lolo is actually very tight, but opening the pot late lolo can have literally any two cards. It would seem like this is easy to counter. Just call with decent hands, try to hit something. Even if you don't hit, lolo will usually have junk, so you can just check-raise and take his c-bet. That works great against bad LAG's, but not against lolo. Lolo will sometimes have a hand and reraise you all in. Lolo will sometimes reraise you all in on a bluff. Lolo will sometimes just call with a mediocre hand or draw. Lolo will sometimes just call with junk to see if you keep it up on the turn, then bomb the turn if you check.
Lolo's strategy is easy to counter, but no one wants to do it. The counter is to reraise big preflop with anything decent. It's not good enough to just reraise big with super-premium hands, you need to reraise with a lot of hands, down to things like K9 that most people just can't stand to reraise and possibly play for their whole stack. This is a lot like David Sklansky's "All in Hold'em" Casino game. The optimal way to play is to push huge bets with lots of hands, but no one is willing to risk that much variance in order to get an EV bonus. Against lolo, in a $1000 buy-in game you should be reraising preflop to $150 with a very wide range, which effectively puts you both on short stacks for post-flop play.
Prahlad's strategy is to bomb the pot when he has monsters and also when he has junk. The correct way to counter this is to call when Prahlad thinks you have junk. Let's say he can read you well and puts you on a correct hand range. If your hand range is all so good that he can expect you to call with anything in that range, then you should fold!!! Say for example he puts you on a range like { two pair, a set } and he then bombs it. You should fold!!! On the other hand, if he puts on a range that is mostly so weak that he expects a fold, then you should call with the upper end of that range. Say your range is { ace high, one pair, two pair }, and the board is scary with possible straights and flushes, then you should call with the two pair, because he expects you to fold most of your range but he's pushing anyway.
This comes up all the time in bad player's poker play. It seems like some donk is always hitting his draws on you. No, of course he's not, he's just folding when he misses so you only see it and remember it when he does spike it. It seems like this aggressive guy keeps taking pots from you. Maybe so, but not as often as you think, because you're not remembering all the hands he just checked down. If you're the fishy donk at the table, it feels like the pros are always picking on you. No, not really, you just didn't notice the vast majority of hands where they just folded preflop or folded on the flop, you're only remembering the few where they raised you big. Because of that you think they're raising all the time with junk, which of course they're not.
On a related note, I hate it when people use "good" as a synonym for "weak/tight". As in "when the board pairs, you can put in a big bluff and a good player might even fold a flush!". That's not good, that's easily bluffed and too tight.
Consider the case where you have a good but not great hand against a very aggressive, decent opponent. For example, you might have something like top pair top kicker (TPTK). Normally you want to play a small pot with this hand, but he won't let you. You have to decide whether to just fold, or go ahead and play a big pot with it. The reason is he will attack weakness. So you can either A) bet hard the whole way, leading at him and playing a big pot, or B) bet weak (or check), he'll probably attack, and you call trying to pick off his attack with a weaker hand, or C) try to make some probe bets and if he attacks big, you fold. Against this opponent option (A) is probably the worst. If you play a big pot, you'll win some and lose some, but the problem there is you're letting him decide whether to play a big pot with his hand. If you just take option (C) and fold to any big aggression from him, you will often be folding the best hand.
Now, I used to think that folding the best hand in this spot is an EV disaster. That's not true!!! Folding the best hand OOP is part of a normal winning game. Of course you also want to balance that by making other people fold the best hand when you have position.
I made a big score today, more than making up for my disaster yesterday. I was reminded again of how stupid I get when I'm losing. Big wins come from big hands (or other forms of good luck - such as the right scare card hitting for you to bluff, him missing his draw, etc.). When you're winning, poker is easy, and you realize that all those little hands like QJ with top pair J's, you don't have to fight over so hard, you can let those go and still take his stack when you have a big hand. When you're card dead and not making any big hands, you start thinking you have to fight over all those little pots, and you wind up pushing too much to win pots that you can't win and lose a lot more. I've written almost this exact same thing here before and it still doesn't sink in when I'm losing. When the cards let you win - win the maximum. When the cards make you lose - try to lose the minimum. Don't try to win when the cards won't let you, it just makes things worse.
The flop is a great place to push your good hands, because nut jobs will call with all kinds of draws and ideas of things they could do on future streets. The river is a great place to bluff, since no one will call with a draw, but of course that doesn't work unless your line the whole way is believable.
The turn is sort of a middle ground. People are much less likely to chase on the turn so it's a better spot to bluff. You also have your hand much more defined with only one card to come.
I like to try to figure out what led me to make a mistake. Just like in programming, when you code up a bug, it's not just a "mistake" that was sort of random, it happened because of certain conditions. Can we look at those conditions are perhaps change something such that we're less likely to make that mistake in the future? We're not looking at the particular bug, that in itself is sort of the random manifestation of some underlying factors which led to the bug. This is like the mushroom body underground, when the toadstools pop out they are not the real beast we want to address, they're randomly there because of the body underground.
So, what led to my poker mistakes today. I think the biggest factor was forcing things trying to stack terrible players. I saw them make just attrocious plays, and it threw off my game. I got into that "frustrated weak/tight player" mode, where you cling to hands that are good starting hands too much. This happens when the loose/bad player keeps sucking out on you, and you just get sick of folding postflop and starting calling or pushing with bad hands. This is a very very bad place to be. I need to look at the donks not as stacks that are going to come to me. I need to just play a good game. The presense of donks just makes the good game more profitable. I do not "go after them" or "take their stacks". I just play my good game and their stack flows to me. I don't have to bust every player. One flaw is when I sit down and identify a major donk, I want to bust them. I might bust them, but I might not. I shouldn't actively try to bust them, because it makes me play too "fast". I should just play, and whether they go bust or not is of no major concern to me. Just play good poker.
The other bad thing I was doing was playing from the stats too much. I have all these great stats on people and whenever I get to a decision that's not obvious, I look at the stats. Is this guy loose? a bluffer? I let that make my decision about whether to call or not. That's wrong. I need to just play the good game, and only when it's sort of a marginal tough decision that could go multiple ways, then I look at the stats, and they can nudge the decision one way or the other.
In terms of micro actions, almost all of my big mistakes are not folding enough. In particular, not folding *early*. I raise preflop, I c-bet. He raises me. Okay, now just fold. I need to fold on the flop when I'm probably not good. Even if I probably am ahead but am out of position and don't want to play a big pot, that's okay, just fold while the pot is still small.
I'm playing around 500 hands a day right now. I need to get that up to 1000 at least, and then go a lot higher. A lot of online pros play 5000 a day regularly.
I have some sort of decent hand on the button (like QJ or KT or A8). I open raise. Dustin calls in the BB with any decent hand. Now, the pot is very big compared to my short stack. I don't really have any moves. If I make any bet I'm pot stuck. I whiff the flop. Dustin checks to me. I bet whether I hit something or not. Most of the times I'll have missed. Dustin calls with any pair. This is great for him, because he's just risking that preflop call, and if he hits a pair, he gets my stack. It's terrible for me because I'm basically pushing my whole stack all the time, and if he doesn't hit a pair he can just fold the flop and I only win a small pot. Obviously on a short stack I'm way too predictable about pushing hard from the button no matter what comes on the flop. I need to check behind on the flop more often, with whiffs and also with good hands. I might also try some limping preflop when I'm on a medium stack, and perhaps also some more folding preflop.
This happens to me in that horrible region of M between 5 and 10. M below 5, you just push, okay. M above 10, you can still play poker. Between 5 and 10 I have a really hard time, and that's where I lost most of the matches with Dustin.
The numbers : if I have a 13 BB stack (M = 8.7), I open raise on the button to 3 BB. Dustin calls, the pot is now 6 BB and I have 10 BB behind. If I make a decent bet on the flop, like 4 BB, I'll only have 6 BB left and the pot would be 14 BB and I'm totally pot stuck. On the other hand, Dustin in the big blind only has to call 2 BB to see the flop, and if he flops something he can get my whole stack, +13 BB, which happens about 1/3 of the time, which is just hugely +EV.
He's risking 2 BB to get +13 from me, and I'm risking my 13 to get +3 from him. That's way out of whack and very bad for me.
One is the "asshole" who actually wants you to attack him. I don't know if it's intentional, but I think Sean Sheikan and Phil Helmuth have this, and sometimes Dustin gets this in the local game. Basically this guy acts like just a real ass at the table, mocking people, berating them, and really pisses people off so that they really want to bust the asshole just to get him off the table. This makes them go after the asshole. To counter, the asshole just plays super-tight. He needs to keep making little stabs, but if you come at him big, he can make huge laydowns, and you get frustrated and keep attacking with worse and worse hands, and then he calls you and you're busted. This really works best in live games where you can really get under someone's skin, though Drew used it successfully online.
Another is the "maniac" or gambler. Basically you create the image that you're a fish who wants to gamble it up, you want people to think you're bluffing all the time. This is the classic LAG strategy used by many top pros. You play a lot of small pots and make lots of little stabs. You also intentionally take gambles where you might be a slight dog (but not a big dog), you turn over some cards and show bluffs with junk. Now everyone thinks you're a nut and they want to call your bets with mediocre hands and play back at you with junk, so when you get cards you get a ton of action.
One that I use sometimes is to act like the "mouse". People who know my game aren't fooled by this, but I can use it in games I'm new to. The "mouse" is super tight/weak, and will fold to your bluffs and give up big pots. I create this image by just not bothering with small pots that I think you're bluffing, I let you have them. Then comes a pot where I build up the pot, then I check the river, and you bluff it big, and I call with a mediocre hand and pick off a huge bluff. This is a great way to exploit bullies who just can't resist attacking perceived weakness. It's sort of like a Judo approach, you sucker them into over-committing their weight, and suddenly you're on top of them and you've got the kimura.
addnedum : the match only lasted a few days and was rather a disappointment. They didn't play very long, and the little swing could've just been variance. Also it seems like Andy may have gotten tilted, which is lame. It would've been nice if they played a good long match and played solidly.
Health care costs have been rising way faster than inflation. Some of the rise in Medicare costs are because there are more and more old people. The solution to that is obvious - kill anyone over 70. Okay, I'm joking (mostly), but even if you normalize out that factor, the cost of health care for a middle aged person has gone up way faster than inflation. That's very strange. Naive people say it's because care has gotten so much better, so it must cost more, right? Nonsense. In almost every other discipline, gains in quality are roughly matched by gains in efficiency, so that costs stay similar.
Part of the problem is surely the insurance model, in which a very few people who receive super-costly care drives up costs for everyone. I have no idea to what extent this is actually happening, but it makes some sense. The same is true for things like car insurance - the majority of the costs come from the rare massive payouts. Perhaps less than 1% of the population incurs super-high health care costs.
addendum : Wes pointed out Boost format as an option. Just reading about it, it looks pretty darn cool. I think I'll try it out. It is 5X slower than printf (!!) and I imagine the compile time hit is not zero because it is a big boost template beast, but those are probably minor trade offs.
Of my 1G of RAM, Windows is often using over 700k for System Cache !!
Say you're on the the turn with a gutshot. You have 4 outs, so your chance of hitting is 8.7%. Say the pot is like $20 and your opponent bets $5 into it. That's a puny little bet and you're thinking that you might be able to call with implied odds. On immediate odds, you have to call $5 to win $30, so if you win no more the EV of immediate odds is : -$5 + $30 * 0.087 = -$2.39 , obviously a bad call. Can you make that up with implied odds? You have to win at least 2.39 over all, which means you have to win 2.39/0.087 when you hit!! That's $27.47 extra you have to win when you hit. That might be possible, but if you imagine that he'll fold to a big bet about 50% of the time on the river, it means you have to bet $55 into a $30 pot, which he's pretty unlikely to call even that 50% of the time.
I've tried the TweakUI thing where you say "Prevent apps from stealing focus" but it doesn't seem to stop Party Poker. I've now got my app doing activation of party windows, which is superior, but I haven't stopped party yet. I suppose I could probably install a hook somewhere and futz with it.
Well, it looks like LockSetForegroundWindow() works fine. For some reason I thought I'd tried it before and it didn't work, but it does. Hmm.. nope, I take that back, it doesn't seem to work reliably.
What's the general response to these guys? First of all, keep up your game. Keep raising preflop, and keep c-betting. When they float, you will generally have much better hands than them and generally be ahead. If you hit the flop, generally go ahead and c-bet. Then, sometimes bet the turn again, but sometimes check-raise on the turn. If you miss the flop, occasionally just don't c-bet. Try to guess when they might actually have a hand and just check/fold in that case. Other times when you miss, check-raise the flop! Other times when you miss, go ahead and c-bet. If you miss with a hand like AK, you can then check/call the turn & river for value! If you c-bet your miss and they call, often check/fold the turn, but sometimes go ahead and bet again on the turn, and rarely check/raise.
If they are frequently calling your second barrel on the turn, or your check-raises, then you have to just tighten up even more. At that point they're just becoming a "calling station" and your only option is to make a big hand. Just tighten up and value bet more.
Sometimes I will wuss out against these guys and tighten up too much and stop c-betting when I miss the flop. That's very wrong!! It lets them know when you have a hand and if they're any good they'll just fold. Usually they're pretty fishy so I can still make money that way, but I'd make much more with the above aggressive strategy.
I'm still making a lot of mistakes at NL$100, so I'm postponing my move up to NL$200. I'd like to play for a few days in a row with no huge mistakes. Overall the biggest flaw in my game all around continues to be trying too hard to win pots that I can't win. Some pots you just have to let go and cut your losses; I get ideas that I can call down and catch a bluff, or bluff myself and get them off their hand, etc.. These are important moves, I just need to use them less and let a few more pots go.
Say you're just bluffing and there's no draw. If you bet the pot, he has to be right 33% of the time to call and break even (-1 + 0.33*3). Now what if you're semi-bluffing, like on the flop you push, and you either have a flush draw or a great hand. If you have a great hand, he loses always, if you have the flush draw, you still win 33% of the time. Now how sure down he have to be that you're on the draw? -1 + P * 0.66 * 3 = 0 , so P = 50.5% . Instead of just being 33% sure he's ahead, he has to be 50% sure he's ahead to call, because when he's right his equity is reduced.
This means that even when it's sort of obvious you're in a semi-bluffing situation, it can make it hard for him to call with mediocre hands.
(answer) : Excel is a P.O.S. but you can easily make a split window pane and have the header bit in the top pane :
"Grab that little grey rectangle above the vertical scroll bar (on upper right hand side) and drag it down so that a new pane (for the headings) is created. Use the bottom (original) pane to to scroll through your shit"
Also : good stuff on Freeze Panes . Though I'm on Office 10 and a lot of this stuff seems to only be in Office 12. For example "Freeze Top Row" is exactly what I want and doesn't seem to exist. I have to manually make a 1-row pane and then freeze it.
Dustin limped the SB (Button). I checked in the BB with 23o. Flop was KJ5. I checked, my hand is junk, and Dustin bet 2 chips, 10k, into a 20k pot, and said "whoops I meant to bet 3". Suddenly alarm bells went off in my head. He's disturbed he didn't bet enough because he's bluffing and wants me to fold! So, I called the small bet. Turn was a 4. Now I have an open ender. The pot was now 40k, and Dustin only had like 80k left (I was a decent chip leader at the time), so it's hard for me to have any moves. If I check and he bets, he's pot-stuck himself and I can't raise enough to fold him. So, I just led all-in with my straight draw. Dustin called with J9, I think, and it held up.
Sort of bad luck for him to actually have a hand there, but also a bad donk move by me, it's not a believable line for me to bluff, and the call on the flop is just ridonculous. I have this major poker brain defect where if something weird happens in the hand it totally throws off my game and I do wacky things.
The key to this strategy is there's a major flaw in most low-limit NL player's game : they don't reraise with many hands, and they almost always reraise with high pockets, and furthermore they usually raise too small, because they want action.
1. Bluff the 4-flush. Any time there's 4 to a suit on the board and your opponent hasn't really shown interest in the hand, you bet the pot. You're risking X to win X, so you need to win >= 50% of the time here. It's very hard for your opponent to call without a flush, and he has a flush much less than 50% of the time. He has the flush about 36% of the time here, so your EV is -1 + 0.64*2 = 0.28 (in units of pots).
2. Bluff the split pot. Any time you think it's very likely you're splitting the pot, you should bluff. Say the board is something like 7744J and you have an ace kicker. You think you're both playing sevens and fours with an ace. You should bet the pot. Against a mediocre opponent, don't do this too much, because he'll just think "we're splitting, I call", so it's not so +EV, and you lose value when he does have something like 55. Against a thinking opponent who understands pot odds, it's very hard for them to call this if it's believable that you might have a better hand. The reason is if they call and split, they only win half the pot, so they're risking X to win X/2. That means they have to be right 66.6% of the time for their call just to be break even. Of course the correlary to this is you need to bet out when not splitting.
It's a funny truth that these statistics are far more reliably than their winnings. Obviously over a large # of hands, you can just look at someone's winnings and tell if they're giving away money or taking in money, but that number is incredibly variable. Players that I'm sure are good show big losses over 5k hands. Players I know are terrible show wins. The actual money won is incredibly affected by short term luck, which makes it a bad way to pick fishies. Someone's play style stats are also affected by short term cards, but much less so.
1. Don't try to avoid going losing with AA vs. sets and other well disguised hands. eg. don't try to fold. What you should do is pot control. When you have one pair (eg. AA) you play a small pot. When you have a set, you play a big pot. Now, you will win Set vs. AA just as often as you lose AA vs. Set, but the pot sizes are in your favor.
2. Don't try to get tricky and milk your big hands (mostly). You just bet your big hands. If you didn't get paid on your big hand, it's not because you didn't extract enough. It's because of all the *other* hands you've played - you didn't play them aggressively enough to create a loose/wild image.
3. You need to reraise AA and KK preflop. If you're worried that it gives away your hand and you won't get action, the problem there is not the reraise with AA and KK, the problem is that you're not reraising enough!! Reraise with more hands, that will get you action when you reraise AA and KK. (see also "Shania" and 23o).
I still think the Planar is sharper for black and white text, but the Dell looks just amazing with color photos. I got a bunch of 1920x1200 photos from interfacelist and they just blow me away. The default color settings on the Dell were really whack too. The "PC Standard" makes everything look super green. I've got it set at Red 44, Green 55, Blue 45, which seems about right, but I'm not happy about the fact that I just pulled those numbers out of my ass. I need Amish Nick to calibrate everything for me.
MP ($92.94)
CO ($165.10)
Button ($97)
SB ($267)
Hero ($152.75)
UTG (Donk) ($68.85)
Preflop: Hero is BB with Ad, Ah. SB posts a blind of $0.50.
UTG (Donk) calls $1, 3 folds, SB (poster) raises to $3.5, Hero raises to $13, UTG (Donk) calls $13, SB calls $10.
Flop: ($42) Kh, Td, Qs (3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $30, Donk calls $30, SB folds.
Turn: ($102) 5c (2 players)
Hero pushes all in, Donk calls ($23)
River: ($137.70) 9h (2 players)
Final Pot: $137.70
SB shows Js6s for a straight
(some of the other beats were actually worse, but this one definitely goes in the "WTF" category).
Anyhoo, that's just poker, the bad thing is I got tilted and blew off another $100 stack. I also had to leave these games which were very juicy, obviously. I have got to somehow fix this leak. If I could've stayed on my A game it's likely I would've gotten a lot of the money back from these guys.
The party graphics replacements at Poker Mods are cool. I like "Mirage", nice and clean.
I also busted a tough LAG in a big hand. It went something like this. I get JJ and raise to 4 BB. Tough LAG calls in the SB. Flop is 772. LAG checks, I bet pot, LAG calls. LAG now either has a 7,2, a pair, or some junk planning to bluff later. Turn is a 3. LAG checks, I bet pot, LAG min raises, I just call. LAG probably has a little something now. River is another 3. That's a bit of a bad card for me, as if the LAG happened to have a 3, he's now ahead. LAG pushed all in on the river. Most likely LAG has a 7 or 2, less likely she backed into a 3. There are two 7's and three 2's, so I'm 3:2 more likely to be ahead and the pot is giving me good odds. I call, LAG shows T2, and I skoop a big pot.
Anyway, the thing I got from this is I'm still actually too conservative about calling all-ins. I'm pretty aggressive about pushing, but when it comes to calling allins where I'm slightly behind, I just hate it. Next time I'll say "I'm behind, but I gladly call". Maybe this is also one of those hands where if I had better physical tell reading skills I could have picked up that he had the set.
Another question that came up - if two players are all-in and you have AK, and you've already called a small raise, you have to call. If you know you're against two lower pairs you're 36% to win, so you have a nice overlay (I actually thought it was better than that, more like 40%, but 36% is still good enough). If you might be against AA and KK, but also might be against AQ or AK, it's about the same still, 36%. Maybe if you have a tight read on them so you think AA and KK are more likely, then you could fold. It's a pretty huge +EV call, you can't fold that. It may not look all that +EV, you're only 36%, but say your stack was 10k to start and you've already put 1k in, you're calling 9k to win 30k, that's a +2k move, that's 20% of your stack! That's a huge edge to pass up.
I also couldn't find handy code to get an argc/argv in a windows app, so I wrote a super crappy version :
char ** GetWinArgs(int * pargc)
{
LPWSTR cli = GetCommandLineW();
int argc;
LPWSTR * argvw = CommandLineToArgvW(cli,&argc);
*pargc = argc;
char ** argv = (char **) malloc( sizeof(char *) * argc );
for(int i=0;i LESS argc;i++)
{
int len = wcslen(argvw[i]);
argv[i] = (char *)malloc( sizeof(char)*(len+1) );
for(int c=0;c LESS len;c++)
{
argv[i][c] = (char) argvw[i][c];
}
argv[i][len] = 0;
}
return argv;
}
Yes, I know it leaks, and I don't give a damn. Addendum : apparently MSVC provides these things __argc and __argv in stdlib.h which are valid even for windows apps, so that's even easier.
Windows-D : toggles desktop visible. Seems to be the same as Windows-M + Windows-Shift-M.
Windows-Break : opens system info/management panel (like right-clicking My Computer)
Sierra Summit was all right. The place kinda sucks, but it was completely empty. I don't think we ever waited in line for even a second. The snow was decent, and the views are fantastic.
Halogen headlights have got to go. Fuck all of you with halogens, you blind me at night when you're oncoming traffic. If I swerve and crash into you, it's your fault.
Modeline "1920x1200" 154.128 1920 1968 2000 2080 1200 1203 1209 1235 -hsync -vsync
Though the tech spec seems to suggest +hsync is more correct :
VESA, 1920 x 1200 74.0 kHz 60.0 Hz 154.0 +/-
Some links for anyone else who wants to go through this hell :
Omega Drivers
Laptop video tweaks guide
ATI's product specs
forum about the 2405
driver for the 2405
PowerStrip
Widescreen Gaming monitor tools
Mod Tool for ATI drivers (not needed)
Dell 2405 tech specs
Sean tipped me off that the auto-adjust works best if you have a 1x1 grid up. I just tried it and with very little testing, it does appear to be the case; the black on white text is crisper.
It was a major pain in the ass getting my laptop to drive it right. First of all, stupid Dell failed to put the monitor drivers on the CD, so you have to go find them at Dell tech support and force them to install. Next, the old ATI drivers on my laptop wouldn't drive the monitor over 1600x1200 (it needs 1920x1200), so I had to get the Omega drivers. That worked, fortunately (installing drivers on laptops is a crapshoot). I still couldn't get the right modes to register, so I had to use PowerStrip and force their standard Analog LCD 1920x1200 mode. That's all done and it seems to be coolness. Since the display settings were set up manually by powerstrip I have no idea if they're actually optimal for the 2405. It's hella hard to find decent info about anything on computers, my god. The best I could find was some Linux "modelines" which are a bunch of numbers that mean god knows what.
I think you can tell what you're excited about on your computer by what you try out on your hot new monitor. What did I try? Looked at some of my digital camera photos, read email & a web forum, and opened up Party Poker, of course baby! This thing shows 4 tables comfortably, and 6 with a bit of a squeeze.
There's another really annoying thing about the widescreen. When you maximize windows it fills this whole beast, and no window actually has that much in it, so all the goods go way off to the left, like five feet to the left. I think "maximize" on this beast should make the window 1600x1200 and centered, or something. Maybe I'll write an app to do this. ctrl-shift-1 : 1600x1200 center, ctrl-shift-2 = 960x1200 left, ctrl-shift-3 = 960x1200 right.
I'm kind of jealous of Danielle's setup now. I gave her my Planar PX191M, which is still one of the best LCD's I've ever seen; the contrast and sharpness of text is awesome. Plus it's on my desktop so she gets to run it with DVI which is the money.
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t100 (6 handed)
Hero (t4107)
MP (t1948)
Preflop: Hero is Button with 4d, Qc.
1 fold, MP raises to t200, 1 fold, Hero raises to t800, 2 folds,
MP pushes all in
Hero calls t1148.
MP shows Ad Kc
Sometimes I try too hard to make a good Gus-like move; by "Gus-like" I mean a move that makes people go "wtf, what a donkey", but it was actually a good +EV move. Last year's PCA, that Swedish dude suffered from that problem, making the call allin with 64o and shit like that. I've been playing really dumb in tournaments recently, I've wasted like $200. On the plus side, my mad cash skillz are more than making up for it.
Today I was waiting for a seat to open up at a really choice table, and I was watching it as I waited. There were 3 crazy fishes and 3 semipros at the table. Oddly enough, the fishies were winning huge pots and the pros kept losing their stacks and rebuying. I saw one pro lose his stack with AA against a set. I saw another lose his stack with AK top pair K's against a flush. In both cases the pros were fast to get their stacks in with weak hands (one pair is always a weak hand in no limit). Yes, they were right that those hands were likely best against fishies, but that doesn't mean you need to play for your whole stack with one pair. Pot control is always key. The pros got greedy and the fishies spanked 'em. I've made the same mistake many times and am only now getting my head straight.
I've been winning pretty consistently at a sick win rate at $100 NL ($1 BB). I think it's about time to move up to $200 ($2 BB).
For example, say you have 2000 chips, and are around M = 10. Average is 3000 chips, so you're a bit low. If you double up, you get to 4000 and can be in control. Should you tangle with a guy with 1000 chips? No. If you lose to him, you go down to 1000 and are now a desperate shorty in big trouble. If you win, you only go to 3000 and are just average. That's not a good gamble. Much better to take the risk when you have a chance to double up.
Similar ideas apply when you're a big stack. As a big stack you can be perfectly happy to take any gamble that doesn't risk putting you below average. So if average is 3000 and you have 6000, take any gamble of 2500 chips or less.
Once the pot gets big compared to my stack, I want it bad, even if the odds are not ideal. Say the pot is 1k, and I have 1k left, so if we get all-in and I win we'll got to 3k. If I fold I go to 1k. Presumably that's near an inflection point, in which case I definitely want to gamble for that pot. The only way I wouldn't would be if average was way over 3k and it was near the bubble, or if average was way below 1k, so I could fold and still have a big stack.
An example of this is when the board comes with a 4-flush or 4-straight. If the pot is around 1k and you have 1k in your stack, push all in. Push whether you have the hand or not.
The rock bench. On the ridge above Lizzie Street (behind the high school, the same ridge my house is on), if you walk down the top of the ridge to the south (to the north is the lookout tower), you'll find a bench made of stones. Some citizen hiked up many times and carved many stones and assembled an amazing bench set into the hillside. It's perfect fit stone construction, no mortar (like the Incas).
"Cannibal's Camp". This is up on the same ridge, but on the other side, you reach it from the Reservoir Canyon hike. At the end of the trail is this weird bunch of art works constructed from scrap metal. There's a metal teepee to shelter in, a mailbox where you can leave notes for the cannibals, etc.
The colored cave at Montana de Oro. I wrote about this before. This one is very hard & illegal to get to, but definitely worth it. If you're small you can get under the fence; I set up ropes and sort of rapelled.
The bridge behind the Monday Club. This is pretty trivial, but it's right in town & I like it. The Monday Club is a cool building too, designed by the architect who did the Heart Castle.
When you tell someone that you won at poker, they assume it's because you got lucky. When you tell someone you lost, they assume it's because you made a mistake.
It's unbelievable how often people hit two outers on me. In related news, it's unbelievable how often people call me down when they're nearly drawing dead (such as, umm, I don't know, two outs!).
1. Against fishies, implied odds trump immediate odds. Calling a pot size bet on the flop with a str8 or flush draw is really stupid by normal odds, but in a typical $100 NL pot, that pot size bet is maybe $5 , and you win $50 if you hit your draw. You would think it wouldn't be profitable to take these draws because they wouldn't pay you off, but my god, they do. It's important not to get carried away with this though, not everyone will let you draw cheap and pay off when you hit.
2. Pot control really is important. Even when you're really sure you're ahead with your one pair hand, it's still one pair, and you don't want to play a big pot. Try to size the pot based on the hand you have. Play big pots with big hands, small pots with weak hands. This just sounds way too simplistic, I should bet and suck in his chips when I'm ahead right? Over and over I find that pot control would've saved me a lot of chips.
Another nice one : Guy raises UTG to 4 BB. I call with 77 to hit the set. Flop 37T. He bets pot size, I raise to 3x pot size, he pushes all in, I call. He flips KK. Turn J, river K. I say "omg, unreal", he says "well, I had the best hand". These type of donks I hate the most, the guys who think they know how to play poker and that the "best hand" should win. -$100 on a two outer.
Ian led me to the fact that the USTA did propose using bigger balls to slow down the game. Of course the pros resisted, but why would any man decline bigger balls?
Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t300 (9 handed)
stacks :
Hero (t2975)
MP2 (t12214)
Preflop: Hero is BB with 3h, 8h.
3 folds, MP2 calls t300, 4 folds, Hero checks.
Flop: (t750) 3c, 2s, Js (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 checks.
Turn: (t750) 9h (2 players)
Hero bets t400, MP2 calls t400.
River: (t1550) 7h (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets t1100, Hero calls t1100.
Final Pot: t3750
What does he have? (he had exactly what I thought he had)
Yesterday I was just a bit too tight/weak, and today I was a bit too loose/aggressive. It's so hard to hit that perfect middle ground of controlled aggression, and willingness to gamble when it's +EV, but not spewing.
When I play tourneys now I use GoldBullion to datamine all the tables I'm not at. That way when I get moved to a new table, I already have stats, and it's not like I have to play with total unknowns.
M = 7-9 is the hardest region to play. Your stack is too big to just go pushing anything decent, but it's too short to really play a hand. If you make a 3x raise you're nearly pot stuck. I guess you can limp and still get away from a hand, but that's about it. This is usually the phase where I play tightest, just hoping for something good to push, partly because I just feel lost. Then when I get down to like M < 6 it becomes the wild push fest.
FUCK. I bubbled in both of them. How fucking gay. In one I was the actual bubble boy, I got 11th and 10 pay.
UTG limps, fold around, SB completes, I check in BB with K5. Flop is KK5 !! Jackpot! SB min bets, I just call, UTG calls. Turn is a 6. SB min bets, I raise to half pot, UTG reraises min. Double jackpot, he must have a king! SB calls his raise, I push all in, UTG calls, SB calls. SB shows a flush draw (that's why I pushed the turn, to make sure flush draws would stick around). UTG shows K6 !! He limped UTG with K6o , and spiked his 3-outer on the turn. DAMN!
For example, say I have a str8 draw on the flop. I have position heads up in the pot. Villain leads into me for about half pot. Say the pot is 10 and he bet 5.
If stacks are very deep, like 200, I just call. The pot is now 20. If he leads again on the turn, I might raise, because now that raise will be a strong size and force him to make a tough decision. Say he bets 10 on the turn, I raise to 50. Now he's looking at putting in a lot of his stack and it might go all in on the river.
If stacks are more like 30, I can just push on the flop. If the stacks are like 60, I can raise to 25 on the flop. If the stacks are around 100, it's the wrong area to make a pressure bet, and probably just folding is best. Say you raise to 25 with stacks of 100. He calls and now leads the turn for 30. He's clearly committed now, and you can't apply any more pressure, in fact he's been allowed to apply the pressure.
With 8 players left, I had 25k chips, a bit below average. Blinds were 1500/3000, so I was a bit desperate (M = 5.5). I got 66 and open raised to 2.5BB. All fold. Next hand I got AQ and open raised to 2.5BB. All fold. Next hand I got AQ. Fuck, I've just raised two hands in a row, now I have AQ again. My first instinct was to just fold it because I knew my raise would get no respect. But AQ is too good, I can't fold it. So, I open raised to 2.5BB again. All fold to the BB who reraises about half my stack (we have almost identical stacks now). Fuck, I hate this. I've just raised three in a row ane he's playing back at me. I pushed, he called and flipped JJ. He won the race and I'm out.
Everyone at the final table was pretty fishy in different ways, except "athletenc87" and "don_m" , both pretty solid aggressive players.
I dunno, maybe the AQ hand that did me in was a mistake. The guy in the BB was a pretty solid value player, he probably wasn't fucking around. Some of the other funny guys I could easily put on messing around, but this guy was a card value player. So I have to put him on AK or a pair. In that case, I think I can fold even with the chunk of chips I already have in the pot. Even if I'm racing, that's a disaster here because I have much more equity than that. When I went out I had $827 worth of equity, and only made $300 for 7th place, so that sucks.
Oh, a funny thing happened after this hand. I had like 1000 chips left because I had the guy barely covered, and I was on the button so I could survive an orbit. Everyone else had over 10k chips and was in no danger of going out. If they were thinking at all they should have just folded/stolen until I went out, but instead two donks got in with marginal hands and one of them was out before my blind came around, so I moved up a free spot to 7th instead of 8th.
Consider a specific case. He raised to N and you have 3N chips. You just call and push the flop for the rest of your stack, which is now a pot size bet. He has two overs. He hits a pair on the flop about 31% of the time. He'll call with a pair and fold without. If you just pushed preflop, he'd call and you'd be a 55/45 favorite. Either way you're getting all your chips in, so we'll just look at your expected stack in either case.
Just push : EV = 0.55 * 6N = 3.3N Stop n Go : if he hit a pair : you still win 8.8 % of the time : EV = 0.088 * 6N = 0.53N if he missed his pair, he folds and you win +N EV = 4N net EV = 0.31 * 0.53N + 0.69 * 4N = 2.92N
So, the Stop N Go is a -EV move. Also, in this form it's really irrelevant that you have a hand like 88, since really you're just purely bluffing.
I like the Stop N Go a lot better when you have AK, or AQ if you're desperate. In this case you put your opponent on a low pair. If you push, he'll call and you race as a dog. If you wait and see a flop, maybe you hit your overs, if not, you push anyway. If he has overs, he folds, and if he has a low pair, he still might fold if there are decent overcards, like QJ if you have AK, etc.
I used Doubleas' "pressure point" theory. Basically the idea is that when we have stacks of around 200k, if I bet around 50k I can apply maximum pressure without risking my stack. That bet says that he will have to get his whole stack in to show down the hand, and yet only risks part of my stack, and I could actually still fold if he pushes. If we both have marginal hands, if I bet say 10k, and he raises to 50k, I have to fold, but if it's the other way around, he has to fold.
Lots of interesting hands came up, it was a lot of fun. The first big hand went something like this. We both still had around 200, and blinds were small, maybe 1/2. Dustin raised to 6 on the button and I called in the BB with 89. Flop was 27T or something like that. I checked planning to raise, but Dustin checked behind. Turn was an 8. Now I had a pair + open ender. I led out for 8 into the 12 pot. Dustin raised to 24. I reraised to 75. Dustin folded and showed QJ for a gutshot.
I had the chip lead almost the whole rest of the match. Another key hand was similar. I think the blinds were 3/6 at this point. I raised on the button to 18 with 45s. Dustin called in the BB. Flop was K42, so I had middle pair. I thought I'd get max value by inducing a bluff. Flop went check check. Here it's important to know that on a previous hand, I'd done this exact thing with a K where I'd quickly checked on the button with top pair to trap him on the turn. Turn as a 3. I now had pair + str8draw. Dustin led at the pot for 30 (pot was 36). Dustin only had like 70 chips behind at this point, so I pushed all in. Dustin folded and showed A4. He actually had the better pair of 4's + a gutshot.
Another hand I don't remember quite right but was key. Dustin was pretty short stacked. I was on the button and I think I came in for a raise with J7 ? Flop was something like 7TK. Dustin didn't have much left, but the flop went check-check I think. Turn was a J. I now had two pair. Dustin pushed all-in. His bet was just a little over pot size, the pot was like 48 and he pushed for 60 or so. I called, and he showed 9T, so he had a pair + a double gutter. Of course his pair was no good, so he just had 8 outs. He hit the Q on the river and doubled up.
Yet another interesting hand. Again Dustin was very short, near all-in stack size. I think he had like 130 and the blinds were 5/10. I raised on the button to 30 with some junk, I think it was 79s. Dustin just called in the BB. This was very weird because he was so short, I thought for sure he was in fold or push mode. Flop was AJ8 with two hearts. Dustin checked. Normally I'd continuation bet here, but I was worried about his call preflop, I thought he probably had an ace or a pocket pair and wouldn't fold here. I checked behind. Turn was another jack. check-check. River was a 8 ! The board was AJJ88 and there's now a really good chance it's a split pot! Dustin pushed all in for 100 chips. The pot was 70 before he pushed. I thought there was a really good chance it was a split, but I have to call 100 to win 35, which sucks. The chance of a split pot against random cards there is 70%, so if I put him on random cards, it's a slightly -EV call. If I bias that towards a slight chance he was trapping, I have to fold there. So Dustin got the 70 and was back to 170. I think it's a good fold by me on the river even though it would have been a split. I love his push there. The crappy thing is if I would've just bet the flop I probably would've won the pot. Dustin afterward admitted he had K5 here. It's not really remarkable that he had no piece of it; he has to have no part of the board more than 75% of the time for me to call there. The surprising thing to me about that is that he just called in the BB preflop with that hand. This is definitely one of those cases where I think if I was better at extracting live information from tells and table talk I could have played the hand better.
Even after that I had a good chip lead and was chopping away at him. He'd gotten into all in mode and I hadn't caught him yet, every time he pushed I had junk and had to fold. Then this hand came up : Dustin limped on the button. Blinds were 6/12 I think. I raised 25 more from the BB with A8s. Dustin pushed all-in, about 60 more. The pot was like 74 and it was 60 more, so I have to call with almost any two, the fact that I have A8 is just a bonus. I called and he flipped TJo. I'm about 60/40 to win right here, but he spiked a J to double up again and take a 3:2 chip lead.
The last hand was sucky. Dustin now had the 3:2 chip lead, blinds were 6/12, so my M was only 9 and I'm close to all-in mode. I raised on the button with K8s to 36. Dustin just called in the BB. Flop was A42. Dustin checked. I figured any hand without an ace would fold here, so I pushed, for about 100 into the 72 pot. Dustin called and showed A9. I'd been worried about him pulling that trap move with the ace all day. Earlier when the ace flopped I didn't bet it and he took the split pot, and now when I did bet was the time he was trapping. If I had any more chips I could've played this hand better, but as it was I didn't have much room to maneuver.
On the plus side, there were lots of very interesting hands, and I thought I played really well almost the whole time, so that was fun. On the minus side, I lost every all-in where I was a nice favorite. I'd already gone -$300 this morning on rotten variance (set cracked by flush draw, shit like that). Some days you just can't win. You can read Dustin's version of some of the hands at The Chapel Perilous .
For example, pretend this was used on the Colts-Steelers game. Lots of people bet, and when you go to the action there's $1000 on the Colts and $500 on the Steelers. You bet $5 on the Steelers. Now the Steelers win, so they get the full $1505 pot. You get 5/505 of that = $14.9. Basically the odds are set by the amount bet on each side. This is an auto-equalizing system where if there is any imbalance, the bettors will fix it by betting on the more favorable option.
This is particularly nice in multiway action, for example betting on the team to win the superbowl. Rather than giving odds for each team, the bettor can simply put their money on the team they like to win. The odds are set automatically based on where the money goes.
One problem with this system is that it's susceptible to manipulation. Various things could be done to prevent that. The simplest would be to make the betting blind. You simply get to pick one side and don't get to see how much money is placed on each side.
Clearly betting N on one side should be no different than betting N/2 twice. One way to do this is for the odds of each bet to be set based on the final amount in each pot. If you put in a big bet at the last minute, it hurts your odds, so that's no exploit. Another interesting way is for bets to be added one dollar at a time, with each dollar going it at the odds for that dollar. So, when I bet $5 on the Steelers in the example above, really I'd get $1 at 1000:501 and $1 at 1000:502 and $1 at 1000:503 etc. This is actually more favorable for the bettor than getting just the final odds.
PartyPoker, Big Blind is t1500 (9 handed) [url=http://www.pregopoker.com/hhconv/convert]Converter on pregopoker.com[/url] UTG (t21622) UTG+1 (t19793) MP1 (t23560) MP2 (t4689) MP3 (t19194) CO (t12226) Button (t25357) SB (t25061) Hero (t15508) [b]Preflop:[/b] Hero is in BB with 3:diamond: J:diamond: [color:gray]UTG folds[/color], [color:gray]UTG+1 folds[/color], [color:gray]MP1 folds[/color], [color:gray]MP2 folds[/color], [color:gray]MP3 folds[/color], [color:gray]CO folds[/color], [color:gray]Button folds[/color], [color:red]SB raises to t3000[/color], Hero calls t1500 [b]Flop:[/b] (t6750) 5:club: 3:club: Q:diamond: (2 players) [color:red]SB bets t3500[/color], [color:red]Hero raises to t12508[/color], SB calls t9008 [b]Turn:[/b] (t31766) 5:club: 3:club: Q:diamond: 8:diamond: (2 players) [b]River:[/b] (t31766) 5:club: 3:club: Q:diamond: 8:diamond: 9:club: (2 players) Hero has a pair of 3's SB has a flush
I can't believe I pushed bottom pair. FUCK. It's a correct call by him, even though I am a nice favorite to win. I should've just folded preflop. Once again I probably could have made 10th just playing tight/solid, and instead I chose to get over-aggro and gamble and got busted (the good money starts at 10th). That club popping out on the river haunts me.
On the plus side I played really great up to this point. I got a big stack early by getting lucky (hit a set), and then I never played a race after that. I just chipped away with raises and reraises, got in a few times against short stacks as a big favorite, and grew my stack from 6k to 20k chips without ever taking a big risk. I took a few hard beats to get down to 15k which was when the horrible J3 hand happened.
On the minus side, as I've said before, multi-tables are way -EV unless you play well at the end. You can play great early and make the money frequently, and it's still hugely -EV because all the cash is in the top few. If you can't play well at the end to make that jump from 20th to 2nd place, you shouldn't play at all. It seems this is still the spot I'm in, unfortunately.
This was the hand :
PartyPoker, Big Blind is t1500 (9 handed) UTG (t11870) UTG+1 (t54178) MP1 (t27810) MP2 (t11239) MP3 (t17172) CO (t4920) Hero (t16672) SB (t17994) BB (t72873) Preflop: Hero is in Button with AQo UTG folds UTG+1 raises to t4500 folds to the button Hero (button) pushes all in blinds fold UTG+1 calls
My thinking at the time was that he could be open raising a lot of things that he'd fold to avoid a big confrontation, hands like low pairs. On the other hand he could have AK or QQ+ and I'd be fucked. This is a clear fold for me, I'm a donkey. I was anxious for a spot to make an aggressive push and build my stack, and this was not it.
The Ford GT - a pretty awesome car, but we couldn't find any category where it's number one, so we'll just say it's the most exciting. But you poor slobs can't afford one, so settle for a Mustang! Mustang : it kind of looks like a GT if they're painted the same and you squint. Ford : at least we're not GM.
The nutters certainly come out to play tournaments on Saturday. I've got my money in way the best against nutty nutty calls in two tournaments, and of course the nutters won. I won't bore you with the details of the bad beat stories, but my god, my god man, do these people even know how to spell poker?
Back on the rebuy question - consider two strategies. The tighter strategy you cash much more often, but looser way has a much higher chance of cashing well. Let's say the tight way you bust out 90% of the time, and cash 10% of the time. When you cash, you make 15 buyins on average, so your EV is 1.5 buyins. The looser way, you bust out 95% of the time and cash 5% of the time, but when you cash you make 30 buyins, so your EV is 1.5 buyins. But what if you can rebuy when you bust? We'll assume that you can rebuy infinitely - any time you bust you rebuy. Thus your EV when you bust is the same as an EV of buying in all over again. This is slightly wrong in various ways, but close enough. It sets up a recurrence relation for EV, like :
tighter : EV = -1 + 0.1 * 15 + 0.9 * EV 0.1 * EV = -1 + 0.1 * 15 EV = -1/0.1 + 15 = 5 looser : EV = -1 + 0.05 * 30 + 0.95 * EV 0.05 * EV = -1 + 0.05 * 30 EV = -1/0.05 + 30 = 10So clearly with rebuys the looser/gambling style is much better.
I started out playing super tight at the low blinds (you start with 125 BB's), just trying to hit something big so I could bust someone. I never hit a good hand, unfortunately, but tried a few unsuccesful bluffs.
The first was against Pete. Blinds were 200/400 , folded to Pete on the button who made it 1200, standard Button steal size. I called in the SB with A8s. This is a little loose, but I wanted to hit my suits or a two pair, if an ace hit I wouldn't want to play a big pot. Flop came 89J with two spades. Now I have bottom pair, and he was just on a button raise, so I thought I'd stab and see if he liked his hand. I bet about 2/3 pot, he went into a big think routine and eventually called. I thought he might have overs or a flush draw. Turn was another 9. I bet 2/3 pot. This time he went into a really big think. Now I was pretty sure he had a good hand and the think was a bunch of Hollywood. River was a Q, which is a horrible card for me in any case. The straight hit, and if he just had some overs like KQ they hit. I checked and he pushed all in. He said something funny like "you're just checking to trap me, aren't you? Oh well, all in". That cost me a chunk.
Another bluff went bad against Jesse, and I picked up some pots with aggression, then the next big hand came up against Dustin. Blinds were now 400/800 I think, and I was down below average. Folded to me on the button, and I looked down at 54s. I know Dustin likes to defend his blind, so I thought for a second about folding, but figured the implied odds were good if I could flop something. So I made a standard raise, 2400 to go, and Dustin just called in the BB. Flop was 358 I think, rainbow. A very nice flop for me, I hit a pair and it's all low, so high cards whiffed. Dustin checked and I bet 3000. Dustin quickly min raised to 6000. That looked to me like he wanted to see where I was at, I'm sure he put me just on button steal aggression. I didn't want to see any more cards and have to play a tricky situation, so I pushed all in and took the pot.
I was back to my starting stack. Blinds went up and we got into mostly raising and folding preflop. I pulled a resteal, and Eric pulled a resteal on me. Then came my disaster hand. I got AJs on the button, a very nice hand for the button. I open raised to 3x as usual. I think blinds were 600/1200 now, so it was 3500 to go. Eric reraised allin, about 20k. He had been very aggressive all night, and had just pulled a similar reraise on me recently, with I don't know what. I pretty quickly called, and he showed AKs, which held up. This was a huge mistake, calling with AJ. It's the worst hand I would've considered calling with, but obviously he was on a tighter range for that move than I thought. At best I was racing and I didn't need to race my stack at that point. That sent me down to desperate short stack land.
Short stack land wasn't bad. I think I actually played one of my best short stack games ever. I was very aggressive in good spots. I was just about breaking even then got lucky enough to get AA, and pushed just like I was pushing my steals. I then had enough chips to make some resteals, allin from the blinds against late position raisers. I made it back to almost 20k, then got TT and ran it into KK. Back to a short stack! I ran it up again with steals and resteals, and made it close to 20k again. The last hand I got Q9s and button raised, flopped top pair Q and got all in against QJ. Game over.
After the AJ hand I was in funk cuz I was disgusted with myself for calling there. The cards just didn't want to go my way, and the bluffs all went wrong.
addendum 1-14 : thinking about the Q9 hand after the fact, I don't think I did anything horrible in that hand, but I do think I could have made a much better play - just folding preflop. I had been stealing like crazy, and had just managed top build myself back to a reasonable stack. It would have been a great time to switch gears back to tight/solid mode and hope to get a big hand, which would probably pay off since I'd been stealing so much.
At the $400 table, everyone was very weak/tight. I knew that and was taking down more flops than they, but I was hardly "dominating". A very aggressive LAG style would have been ideal there. I played solid, but not amazing.
At the $50 table, everyone was very loose, and I felt like I couldn't control the table with preflop raises and continuation bets. On review, I saw I was actually playing a good solid game for that table texture. I got good hands and bet them, they paid to chase. There was a guy I thought was totally taking advantage of me being tight, but upon review I saw that was not the case at all, he was betting in reasonable spots and I was folding weak hands.
Actually, that's interesting - how many flops have no one card straight draws? 38K,27K. Is that it? Any flop with an ace has a straight draw. (this assuming no pair or trips on the flop, three different ranks)
There was only one big hand early. I open raised with 99 on the button. Dustin called in the BB. After this action we can both have a lot of things. The flop came AAx. Dustin checked. I figured I was likely best, but thought the best way to get action would be for him to bet into me. He might have an ace, but he also might bet with a good king high, or if he pairs some of the other junk on the board, he might bet that. So, I checked. Turn was another low rag (I think it was a 7), and Dustin bet about half the pot. I called, also figuring if I had the A I'd probably just call there. River was another blank and Dustin bet about half pot again. I called and Dustin showed KK to win the pot. This gave him about a 3:2 chip lead which he held the whole time.
The last hand Dustin had me stacked about 3:1 , so with one double up we'd be even again. The blinds were big and I'd been in all-in mode for a while. I'd been pushing in with any pair, any ace high, things like that. As of yet, we hadn't had a confrontation where we both had hands, and I'd been able to build my stack back a little bit by pushing more often. On the button I got KK and pushed all in like I was doing every other hand. Dustin called with A7 (a correct call given the stacks and how often I pushed), spiked an A to win.
I don't feel like there's much else I could have done in that match other than maybe try running a few big bluffs. So now I'm down 2-0 and have a big hole to climb out of.
The only good hand I've had was 55 which hit a set, but it was on a 5678 board. Turned out he had 67 for two pair, and I won about half his stack. It's correct to bet small here, not necessarilly because I'm afraid of the straight, but because he is; if I bet big I'd just scare him off. The only exception is in some cases if I just pushed with a ridiculous overbet, he might call with his two pair trying to pick off a bluff or bust an overpair.
My bankroll's been almost perfectly flat for a whole week now. I've taken a lot of rotten beats in that time, so I guess I should be happy it's just flat.
Steelers v. Colts (Vegas line is Colts by 9.5) : clearly the Colts are awesome, but they have a lot of question marks with their long layoff, and I still say their defense is susceptible to a strong rushing team, like the Steelers. The Steelers key to winning is just to run, run, run, even if they get behind they have to stick with it. Of course their defense has to be strong and keep the game close so that they can play a grind it out game. The Colts win if the score is high, I think the Steelers can win if they keep it a low scoring battle. I pick the Colts to win. I bet the Steelers against that spread! I'll always bet against a 9.5 spread, because if the Colts get up that far, they might take it easy.
Redskins v. Seahawks (Vegas line is Seahawks by 9) : the Skins defense is better, but the Hawks win this game easily. Of course pick the hawks to win. I kind of like the skins to beat that spread, but can't bet them with with the question marks from Portis and the moron who is Gibbs.
Panthers v. Bears (Vegas line is Bears by 3) : the suck-fest. This is a very even match up. I'm not sure who to pick to win, but with that spread I bet the Panthers.
Superbowl : Colts v. Seahawks, Colts win. Current Vegas odds for Colts to win the superbowl is 2:1 !! That's not very favorable for anyone betting the Colts.
What if you're not getting enough action on your good hands? (people always fold when you bet strong). This usually only happens when you're not getting many good hands so you're only rarely showing strength. In this case, open up a bit, starting raising more hands preflop and betting continuation to chop down little pots. Probably this will make people look you up more, so you can switch back to standard mode.
What if people start raising you too much? eg. they notice that you'll bet strong, but if they reraise you'll usually fold. Don't stop raising preflop and betting continuation, but make sure you aren't betting continuation too often with air. Now you'll have to go to felt with slightly weaker hands, like TPTK (top pair top kicker), and play back strong at these people. Hopefully they'll back down if you can bust them, then you go back to standard mode.
On the plus side, I made a set-over-set in the full ring, so that cancels the time I got over-setted a few days ago. Fortunately I didn't get cute and just win a small pot. It's a major disaster if you don't win a whole stack when you have the higher set in a set-over-set confrontation, which can happen if you try to "slow play" or "trap" or some other donk move.
I think maybe the last hand I should've folded. I was in the small blind with 33. A loose nutter limped in late position. That means he had ass. If figured if I pushed, the BB would probably fold (he was tight), and the loose guys might fold, but more likely call with overs. So I'm racing and getting the BB and my SB for free value, which is nice. But is it worth risking getting knocked out?
Let's do the tournament equity math. I had 6432 chips before I paid my SB, average was 17800, blinds were 500/1000, so my M was around 4. I'm in bad shape, but I still have $1100 in tournament equity at that point!! If I get knocked out, I get $226 (all places up to 10th pay the same).
If I just fold in the hand, my equity goes down to $1000, that's -$100 EV !. If I win the race my equity goes to $2379. Oo, that's nice actually. I was 52% to win, so the EV of racing is 0.52*2379 + 0.48*226 = $1345. So, actually the race was a good value. Racing instead of just folding is a +$345 value decision. Damn, it sure doesn't feel like I got $345!!
As a rule of thumb, I can see that racing here was beneficial because the payout structure up to 9th place was flat, so creeping up places is not worth anything, and most of the money is in the top two, so I really want to make a run at a high place. In this kind of structure real money value is pretty close to chip value, so a move that's +EV in chips is +EV in real money. It's possible I could have tight-assed my way up a bit more, but I'm happy to have raced for the chance of getting a stack and taking a high place.
The thing that really makes them Tight Stupid, however, is that when they do play a pot, they're over-attached to their hand and will make big mistakes. They think they play so few hands that when they get AA or KK they need to make money. They also assume that everyone else is playing junk all the time, because everyone else isn't "solid" like them. This means that if they raise or reraise preflop, you can call with any pair hoping to spike a set. They will eagerly give you their whole stack when you have a set and they have an overpair. Generally implied odds are very good against the Tight Stupid player. They will play aggressive at the wrong times (when they're beat) and weak at the wrong times (when you steal flops from them).
When I'm playing badly, this is me.
Blinds were 4000/8000. We were pretty close to even with about 200k chips each, so M = 17, I guess I had a small chip lead going into the hand. Dustin limped the button, which is pretty rare. I checked. Flop was K84, with two hearts. I held J4, so I had bottom pair, I figured I was probably ahead, but I didn't want to just lead the whole way. I checked it, and he bet 8000. That's a half pot, kind of small bet. Now I'm pretty sure I'm good, so I raised it to 30000. Dustin pretty quickly called. Turn was an A. Now, I'm not scared of the A or K, I think I'm likely good still, he probably has a flush draw or something like that. I check. Dustin bets 50k. Now the pot and bets are so big it's all in or nothing. I really think I'm ahead! The pot is 76k before Dustin bet, so if I win this pot I'm taking a huge chip lead and probably winning the whole thing. I really don't think he has an A or K since he just limped preflop (though I was aware he could haved limped something good to trap me). He might have an 8. More likely I think he has something like a flush draw. I thought for a really long time here and eventually folded. I think if I pushed quickly, or maybe just led the turn, he would have folded an 8, and I would have won the pot. In any case I don't like how I played the hand. At first I was thinking the fast that I have a 4 is irrelevant, that if I push it's basically a pure bluff, but that's not quite true. He could have something like two hearts in the 9-Q range which would be a very good hand and probably call the all in, and my 4s could actually hold up and be best then. (turns out he had 86 ; my guess of an 8 was right and I probably would have won the hand by pushing the turn, which was my gut feeling).
After sparring a bit more we wound up with nearly identical stacks and got all in with A7 against 55. I had the A7 and lost the race. I hate getting in my money like that, but what are you gonna do? Dustin leads 1-0.
The back bone of most poker software is Poker Tracker . Poker Tracker stores lots of stats in an SQL database, and people have lots of scripts and side apps that intreface with that. For example, there are heads up displays like Game Time Plus , and Poker Ace HUD . There are also data miners like PartyMine . There are graphics apps to draw data from your Poker Tracker database, like Poker Patterns . There are many article on how to use Poker Tracker, for example at Bet the Pot .
It's sort of scary to think of all the semipros online who are using this mass of sophisticated software to aid their play. The big news in this community is PartyPoker's upcoming new software, which is partly intended to give robots and data miners a tougher time. We'll see...
name hands plays % big pot % won total won per hand xxxx 324 87% 41% -2391.45 -7.38The dude loses over $7 per hand on average (!!). Almost 40% the pots he plays are "big" (more than 10 BB). A tight player has a big pot % around 5-10%. Any "plays %" over 80% basically means he plays any two cards. The few hands he doesn't play were probably raised before him, so he can fold 32o if it's raised before him.
Damn, I should've bet on Texas. I really know nothing about college football, but I did know that in the weeks leading up to the game, USC was getting ridiculous hype and Texas wasn't getting any. Any time you turned on a sports network they were talking about how great the USC team was. They were having thrilling debates like "Is Reggie Bush the best player ever in any sport? Or is Matt Leinart a better player?". "What if Reggie Bush could play Jai Alai against Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, with their equivalent skills from their own sports transfered to that sport?". Wow, you guys are hype-crazed morons. That's a clear sign to bet against USC. USC was a 7 point favorite on the spread. In hindsight, that's an easy bet against them. I've said before Reggie Bush is over rated, and I think you saw in the game tonight what a speedy defense can do against him (and the NFL defenses are much much faster). Vince Young looked pretty damn good, but of course in the NFL he might be another Michael Vick ( = over rated suck fest).
The last few days (before today) have been my most profitable three days ever, about +$1500. I've been on a total card rush. It really reminds me that poker is simple - you'll win with good hands and lose with bad hands. Just try to lose less with bad hands and win more with good hands. My bankroll almost reached $3000 before the small setback today. I think I'll take the rest of the day off and try to reset my brain state.
I hit a few sets, but only got paid on one of them, and that was cancelled by the one I lost. I made some in other pots, but lost a lot of small pots to an aggressive set miner who had position on me. It just sucks to sit with an attacking guy having position on you, if you check, he bets. If you bet, he might call just to see if you'll check the next street. I took some pots from donks, but also took a rotten bad beat.
In the endgame, one guy LONGFINGERS got a huge huge chip lead on everyone else and was running over the table. I had to avoid confrontation with him because there were some super short stacks at the table (I hate that situation). I managed to survive and got into the heads up. Starting the heads up, he had the chip lead on me, about 23000 to 7000. I totally punked him a few times, he was being stupidly over-aggressive and loose, and I got the chip lead, about 20000 to 10000. We traded steals and resteals a bit. A few hands later, this happened :
Seat 1: LONGFINGERS (12756) Seat 3: chukb (17244) LONGFINGERS posts small blind (400) chukb posts big blind (800) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ks, 4d ] LONGFINGERS raises (1200) to 1600 he min raises on the button, he does this with any two chukb calls (800) I certainly call with king high ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 2s, 8d, 4h ] chukb checks. Middle pair is a monster heads up with the blinds this big. I check planning to raise, he'll bet here 100% of the time. LONGFINGERS bets (2000) He bet continuation reliably. chukb raises (15644) to 15644 chukb is all-In. I've got him. LONGFINGERS calls (9156) LONGFINGERS is all-In. He calls with A5 !!! ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 7c ] ** Dealing River ** : [ 3s ] Creating Main Pot with $25512 with LONGFINGERS Creating Side Pot 1 with $4488 with chukb
He spiked his gutshot, omg. Of course his two overs were also good, but he had no way of knowing that. That pretty much did it. Anyway, 2nd place isn't bad, and that one profit is better than my hours of cash play today, in which I kept getting in with donks and they'd show up with crazy hands and beat me.
With my current crappy cash game skills, my tournament win rate is much better, plus the variance in these small tournaments is much lower.
Bet the Pot has lots of articles, but they're super elementary.
I'm starting to dread when a middle card pairs on the river. So often people are calling me down with middle pairs and that board pair destroys me.
! stop making blocking bets for now, just check-call or check-fold bad river cards ! stop c-betting the turn, also check the turn sometimes with pretty good hands ! watch out for "sponges" who will call or min-raise c-bets on the flop with any two - reraise them or call and lead ! try to get a read on how much they river bluff vs. value bet, if they don't bluff much just check it down ! play weak OOP, play strong in position - try to avoid being OOP ! don't be tight/weak , but also don't spew chips! ! avoid bad "reverse implied odds" situations - even if you probably have the best hand, don't make a big pot if it's not a hand that can play a big pot. AQ is not a good hand! ! don't stab at multiway pots, there's no need ! I have a big leak in that once I get about 30% of my stack in the pot I have trouble folding, that's bad!! ! (again) - don't make big bluffs for now, just make small bluffs when they look weak
Let's check it out. Blinds were 1000/2000. Dustin raised to 6000. Jim folded the SB. I was in the BB with A5. We all had nearly identical stacks, about 24k. The payout was $40 for second and $100 for first. Before the hand started each of our EV was about $46, but I'd lost a lot from being in the BB already. If I just folded my EV would be $43. If I push, I'll guess he folds about 50% of the time (worse aces, king-highs). In that case my EV goes to almost $57. If he calls I'm probably dominated either by a pair or higher ace. In that case I'm about 30% to win. If I win my EV goes to almost $81. So, what's the EV of a push?
0.5 * 57 + 0.5 * ( 0.3 * 81 ) = $40.6
Compare to $43 for just folding, clearly folding is correct, though pushing isn't horrible.
SAG is interesting, you almost don't even look at your hole cards or the flop until after you bet continuation. You raise preflop with any two, you bet continuation with any two. You only have to play if they don't fold to continuation. If they call or raise, then you look at your cards and the board and make a decision of what to do next. I'd like to work on trying to play SAG. SAG is easy to destroy - you just respond by playing super-tight. The SAG player is making a mistake by committing lots of chips to the pot with weak hands, and if you just play good hands then you'll get big pots with them.
$100 No Limit Hold'Em oneight posts small blind (0.50) Andy50 posts big blind (1) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 2h, 2d ] conman33333 calls (1) zongcap folds. favrerette folds. JONESED007 calls (1) SEIZEDDAY calls (1) chukb calls (1) with 22 I limp to try to hit a set oneight calls (0.50) Andy50 checks. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 8s, 2c, 5d ] bingo flop! I hit the set, and there's also no scary draws to bust me oneight checks. Andy50 checks. conman33333 bets (2) JONESED007 raises (7) to 7 interesting - JONESED likes his hand, maybe he has an overpair? SEIZEDDAY folds. chukb calls (7) I just call. I want to bust JONESED. There are no draws, so it's safe to let him catch a card, maybe he'll make two pair or something like that. oneight folds. Andy50 folds. conman33333 folds. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ Kc ] JONESED007 bets (7) chukb raises (24) to 24 Second club hits the board, and he bets small. Time to raise to build the pot. JONESED007 calls (17) ** Dealing River ** : [ 3c ] JONESED007 checks. chukb bets (45) Third club hits the board, and he checks. Looks like he had some sort of decent hand and now he wants to show it down cheap. He didn't backdoor the flush, did he? I need to bet for value. JONESED007 raises (147.60) to 147.60 JONESED007 is all-In. Fuck, he check-raised all-in on the river. He could have a higher set now, or the flush, or just two pair. chukb calls (34.85) I can't really fold for that little more can I ? He had the flush, with Ac8c. (top pair 8 on the flop)
I guess I should've pushed this sooner, and then just checked the river with the flush possible.
The fishes are out for Christmas. Today I've gotten allin with AA against 82o and J3o. Cracked both times. Fortunately I also cracked aces several times with sets and flushes.
Watched the Tournament of Champions. I thought Hoyt played great. There's some decent poker in it, but I'd say there's maybe 30 minutes of poker play in the 3 hour show, which is pretty pathetic and annoying.
To beat set miners : if they show any strength post flop, just fold, they have a monster (note that continuation bets are not showing strength). Raise and take their blinds, they won't defend them. When they limp into a pot, often raise behind, then if they check the flop to you, bet and take the pot. Remember sets are rare (1/7) so most of the time they will just fold the flop and let you take the pot. As long as you can avoid getting busted when they do have a set, you make money against them over time, slowly.
The meta set-miner game : I've been set mining, and notice other set-miners at the table. We generally know who each other is, and we'll make little stabs at each other. We both know that the other won't get involved in a big pot with less that a set, so we wind up betting the flop and raising on "bluffs" (usually we both have some pocket pair, but that's irrelevant because we're really just bluffing representing a set or overpair). A lot of set miners don't get involved in this nonsense, and you can exploit them to win some free little pots, but many set miners do get into this, and you have to watch out for it.
Twice today I pulled the dumb move which I often critique - semibluffing when you have no fold equity. This is just a ridiculous dumb thing to do. If they won't fold, don't semibluff, just call if you have pot odds for your draw, and if not, fold! I had two straight+flush draws, one with a pair also, and both missed, (how can that possibly miss!? there's like a bazillion cards that help me!) but it's my fault I overplayed them and pushed too hard.
There's a cool dynamic that happens when a wild LAG (LAG = loose aggressive guy) is dominating a table. Fish swarm around, thinking that this guy is even worse than them. The LAG is playing 100% of pots, raising most of them, but he plays them well. The fish generally give their whole stacks to the LAG. At the same time a few rocks (pros) clamp onto the table and just hang out waiting for big hands to bust the LAG. They generally pick up a bit of money from the LAG, but rarely take his stack if he's good. Basically they're skimming some of the fishes' money that the LAG took.
At the moment I'm still really bad at scalping LAGs. I'm trying to get better at it, but they seem to always put me on tilt and make me play bad against them. This is why they dominate the fish! I think there's very good money to be made by hunting LAGs if you're good at it, and there's also very good money to be made be being a LAG if you can just avoid pots with the good LAG-hunters and isolate on the fishes.
Say the flop is like 27T and you have 77 for a set. Your opponent might have JJ-KK and will probably get all-in with you if you push on the flop. If you slowplay and an ace hits, he'll get scared and you won't get any action. Similarly say the flop is all hearts and you have the flush. Someone with top pair or an overpair may get it in with you on the flop, but if a fourth heart comes, you won't get any action.
I solved the big problem with sending button clicks to Party. The problem was I sent them too fast. Apparently you need to wait about a second after the button comes up before Party will respond to the message. I think that other apps that do this (like "MTH" - Multi Table Helper) don't have this problem because they are brutally slow. MTH seems to be written in C# or something, and no offense, but it's ridiculously bloated and slow for the tiny amount of functionality it has.
I now have about 100M of hand histories that I've scraped already. Certainly any time I sit down with a regular, I have detailed stats on them. I've been "set-mining" the full ring tables recently, and it's very useful to know who the loose/wild casual players are and who the other set-miners are. If a set miner reraises you and you have just one pair, fold!
There were a lot of interesting hands. Very early in the first match I doubled up to basically win. It's very good to be known as an aggressive bluffer and catch good hands!! The trick is to bluff just enough so that you are known as a bluffer, so people will try to look you up, but then somehow manage to have the goods when you get "caught".
Seat 5: FikkiFikki ( $92.13) Seat 6: chukb ( $150.97) Ylijumala posts small blind (0.25) FikkiFikki posts big blind (0.50) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ah, Ks ] chukb raises (2) to 2 standard 4x raise with AK olalun9 folds. Ylijumala folds. FikkiFikki calls (1.50) his call in the BB means almost any two cards. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ Kd, 6d, 6h ] FikkiFikki checks. chukb bets (3) FikkiFikki raises (10) to 10 FikkiFikki: bluff me His raise doesn't mean much, he check-raise bluffs a lot. His chat is suspicious. chukb raises (32) to 35 FikkiFikki raises (80.13) to 90.13 FikkiFikki is all-In. chukb calls (55.13)
The chat is curious, it's sort of an obvious tell that he's got a monster. He's trying to get me to raise or call. On the other hand, what beats me? AA, or 6x only. He certainly can have 6x. What else would he reraise like this with? Perhaps not much, though maybe KQ, KJ, QQ, etc. The problem is I couldn't really tell how he was playing at this moment, he'd changed gears. I think a good rule is that when someone is playing strange and then severely changes gears, it's a good time to just leave the table.
Mmm.. well, apparently FikkiFikki stayed at the table for another few hours and dropped a grand. I guess it was a good play by me there with the AK, and I should've stayed at the table!!
I've never played this style. In tournaments I play something sort of like that but with more caution. I attack the blinds a lot, I want to make my profit by taking more than my share of the blinds. Then, after the flop I hope to just play well enough to break even. I need to handle your play-backs well enough to not lose money after the flop. In cash games I've never really done this, mainly because my opponents are just way too loose, and I have trouble firing several bullets when I know they'll call multiple streets with junk.
Dealt to chukb [ Tc, Td ] chukb raises (4) to 4 tpoker9 calls (4) Al4As folds. Big__Nuts folds. Spencer1968 folds. LSUMD06 calls (4) Dreds2c folds. Balogna folds. N373061P calls (3) ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 8d, 2h, 5d ] N373061P checks. chukb bets (10) tpoker9 calls (10) LSUMD06 folds. N373061P raises (102.22) to 102.22 N373061P is all-In. chukb ?
The pot is $92 more to call for a pot of $230. What can he have here? I was thinking he was in the BB with a lot of people preflop, so a lot of diamond hands are possible, as well as 67. I would be surprised to see a higher pair just call preflop, but maybe JJ would do that, and maybe AA would trap like that sometimes. KK and QQ would raise preflop to drive out naked aces, I would think. He could also have any set - 88, 22 or 55. There are 3 of each of the set hands. Let's say there are about 20 hands that are currently beating me on the flop. There are 16 hands that are 67, and maybe 10 suited hands, AK of diamonds down to maybe JTd. If we discount some of the 67's, say there are about 20 hands that are semibluffing on the draw. So, it's roughly equally likely that I'm already beat or against a draw. (99 and A8 are also possible, that would be a dream, but I'll just ignore those for now).
In my head I was thinking - it's roughly 50/50 that he's semibluffing on a draw, ok I call. That's wrong. Even if he's drawing he's still perhaps 40% to win, because with the flush draw he probably has overs to me as well. TT is not very strong because of the problem with overs. So, 50% of the time I'm badly dominated, and 50% I'm only 60% to win!! That's a disaster, overall I'm only 30% to win, and the pot is not nearly giving me those odds.
EV = 230*.3 - 92 = -23 , so should be an easy fold.
Part of the problem is that some of the code is semi-illegal if it interfaces with a poker host site. So that scares people about sharing it publicly.
Ugh. A few hours later, same thing. Playing solid for a while, built up a nice profit, make a huge donkey move and blew off my whole stack + profit into a bigger stack. Somebody people punch me in the face the next time I do this.
Seat 1: chukb ( $101.70) Seat 4: rdsxfn39 ( $64.85) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ 4s, Qs ] chukb calls (1) limp Q4s !? That's a pretty poor way to start. $0.9 mistake. rdsxfn39 raises (2.50) to 3 DollyBeGood folds. chukb calls (2) This call isn't horrible, I'm getting decent odds to see if the flop has spades. $0.1 mistake ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 4c, 7c, 2s ] rdsxfn39 bets (3) chukb raises (6) to 6 His bet could just be continuation with two high cards. I have a pair of 4s which could well be good. My first mistake is this min raise. That's too cute, I should have raised to 9 or more. $1 mistake rdsxfn39 raises (12) to 15 chukb calls (9) He reraises. This is the key error in the hand, every other decision is a small mistake, this is a big mistake. $8 mistake !! ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 5s ] rdsxfn39 bets (36) He's short-stacked, he's basically bet his whole stack here, he only has $10 more. I have a pair + flush draw. He has $46 in his stack and the pot is already $36. I think this is again a fold, because he might have a set, and if he has a set I only have the flush draw, not the pair+flush draw outs for two pair or trips. chukb raises to 46 I go ahead and put him in. Fold is correct, but this is actually a pretty small mistake. I need 35% odds to play, and I have 32%, so I'm losing 3%, about $1. Actually a better move is just to call, and then I can fold for the last $10 on the river if I don't improve. $11 mistake rdsxfn39 calls
Of course I was beat. I'm such a fucking donkey sometimes. I'll play tight/weak sometimes and fold when I'm in much better situations that this (like having a big draw on the flop, when pushing would be much better), and then my brain farts and I play a dumb pot like a loose maniac with no fold equity. Ugh. It's so frustrating. I play little edges all night to build a win, then blow it in a big stupid move.
Oh well, I may have been behind in the pot anyway. Today I tried to go fish hunting. I've got a bunch of really bad players in my buddy list, I'd search for them and go sit at their table, and play until they were busted. I made a hundred bucks doing this. It wasn't more because - A) they were usually already short stacked by the time I got into their table, and B) often other people would take their stack. I'd like to say I was avoiding pots with other people, but I didn't really do that. Anyway, I spotted one of the fish playing up at a NL $400 table. I don't usually play $400, but I decided to go up there to try to bust him. It was a tough table, lots of stealing preflop and I got into some nasty battles with people who would bluff & re-raise bluff. The fish got busted but I didn't get any piece of it, and by then I was down a hundred. Then I got the above mentioned horrible AA hand. After putting in a ton of chips I was thinking and suddenly my cards were in the muck. Well, that was about enough for me.
Seat 1: chukb ( $105.45) Seat 3: IhateFish10 ( $91.71) Seat 5: I1956 ( $20.55) jotto13 posts small blind (0.50) IhateFish10 posts big blind (1) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Ah, 5s ] galactical folds. I1956 calls (1) chukb raises (4) to 4 I raise with A5o , this is very loose, but the whole point of this hand is that I1956 is a super-loose nutjob. He limps any two, so A5 looks to be good. I'm mainly raising to isolate, I want the rest to fold, and he calls any raise. jotto13 folds. IhateFish10 calls (3) I1956 calls (3) Damn, the big blind called too. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 9h, 8c, 7d ] IhateFish10 checks. I1956 checks. chukb bets (6) Standard continuation bet on the flop. IhateFish10 calls (6) The big blind calls. I1956 raises (16.55) to 16.55 I1956 is all-In. I1956 is on a short stack and raises all-in. I knew that he just loved to check-raise flops when he had nothing. When he had something, he'd usually lead out on the flop. This is almost certainly no pair. Maybe he has a better ace high, but I'm well favored against him. chukb raises (21.10) to 27.10 My problem is IhateFish10 is still in the hand. He can easily have a draw and it's only $10 more to him, which is an automatic call. However, if I raise, it will look like we're both strong and he'll be gone. IhateFish10 folds. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ Th ] ** Dealing River ** : [ 4c ]
Turns out I was right, he had no pair. Unfortunately, he had a J so that T on the turn filled his gutshot. Also, IhateFish10 has a 7 on the flop, so he was ahead. A5 is a little weaker than I'd really like to have in this situation, I would've been much happier having a T as insurance, but sometimes you have to work with the situation you're given. I knew I1956 was going to donate the rest of his stack in the next few hands and I wanted to make sure it went to me.
I played 30+3 seriously for the first time today. There's a big difference from 20+2 to 30+3. The guys at the $22 level are still mostly nutty fishes, at $33 the majority of the field are tight. Not all of them are good, there are a lot of weak/tight rocks there, but it totally changes your steal and fold equity - suddenly a hand like KT raised preflop is a bluff/steal, not a value bet (!!). There's a lot more preflop folding, and the show downs are much better hands. I flopped a set against a guy with AK who hit his ace, and he didn't go broke to me, which is unheard of at the lower levels.
Blinds 15/30 Dealt to chukb [ Qc, As ] (folds to Pooh) PoohtheBear raises (90) to 90 standard 3x raise in late pos. He's pretty tight, so this is surely a pair or high cards, but could just be something like JTs chukb calls (90) (rest fold) ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 4d, 3s, 2c ] PoohtheBear bets (180) The pot is 225, so that's almost pot size. Either he has a PP or his high cards whiffed. chukb folds. 225 is about 1/3 of my remaining stack, so I can't just call. I have to fold or push.
I hate this whole line. Preflop, I'm most likely racing or ahead (I could also be dominated, but that's less likely).
name hands plays % won total won per hand xxxx 74 100% -268.73 -3.63(name hidden). Over 74 hands seen, this player has been in every single one of them !! An average return of -$3.6 dollars per hand played!
Poker Stove is pretty cool, but then you knew that, right? Hey Stove guy, you should add the thing to show the percentage chance of making various hands. I still like the console interface of my simulator, but his is blazing fast and it has some nice things, like taking ranges of hands, ala "AK-AT".
When you have a good run at the NL cash tables, it feels like your hourly rate could just be insanely high. You stop thinking in terms of "N big blinds per hour" and start thinking of "N buy-ins per hour" !! Of course that's not sustainable. It will be matched by the days when you get your money in with the best of it over and over and lose a fortune.
I found some good poker blogs : 21 outs and aprock . Both are high stakes online players. Reading these guys and doubleas is encouraging in a few ways - 1) They all still tilt and blow off tons of money playing badly, 2) they don't seem to be doing anything particularly amazing in their play, they struggle with the same situations I do (though they also play some hands with great sophistication) and 3) They make most of their money playing against really bad players. That's one of the amazing things, even at the $40/$80 levels, there are ridiculously poor players who will donate to your bankroll. At all levels, playing against the good players is a bad idea, you make your money from the donkeys.
One interesting thing I've noticed in my own stats is that I'm playing big pots far too often. A "big pot" in GoldBullion is any pot of 10 BB or more, or any pot you're all in. 10% of the pots I play are "big". Compare that to around 30% for the really LAG (loose aggressive) guys and around 1% for the really tight solid guys. I need to get that down below 5% ; basically it means I'm gambling too much with a lot of chips in marginal situations.
Total number of players : 8 Seat 1: chukb (1095) Seat 2: clevelandohd (485) Seat 4: flyersfan_75 (1530) Seat 5: DonaldW (1465) Seat 6: KCL96 (1760) Seat 7: markshark333 (820) Seat 9: urbeatagain (935) Seat 10: redtails (720) urbeatagain posts small blind (15) redtails posts big blind (30) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Kc, Kd ] chukb raises (90) to 90 KK utg, I raise it 3x clevelandohd calls (90) flyersfan_75 folds. DonaldW folds. KCL96 folds. markshark333 folds. urbeatagain calls (75) redtails calls (60) ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 5h, Ad, Qh ] Three callers and an ace on the flop, fuck! urbeatagain checks. redtails checks. chukb checks. clevelandohd checks. ** Dealing Turn ** : [ Ah ] urbeatagain bets (300) redtails folds. chukb calls (300) This is funny. He checked the flop, and now leads out pot size. That's funny. It seems to me if he had something great he wouldn't bet so big, does he want a fold? He also may just be defending against the heart draw, maybe he has an ace and wants to take it down. clevelandohd folds. ** Dealing River ** : [ Jh ] urbeatagain bets (545) urbeatagain is all-In. A fourth heart hits and he leads all-in !? Very strange. chukb folds.
I really think there was a good chance I was ahead on the turn. He could have something like KQ or QJ with a heart. He could even have something like TT. After the flop checked through, he may assume no one has an ace. When the fourth heart comes on the river and he leads all in, I have to think I'm behind. He wouldn't do that unless he has at least a flush, I don't think. He must have a flush or a house at that point, so I have to fold.
Maybe I should have bet the flop just to test if there was an ace out there. On the turn maybe I should just fold.
The only disadvantage of playing Pot Limit is that it removes a potential huge mistake from your opponents, which is the all in bluff. At the NL cash tables you see it pretty often that someone will push allin on the river, way over the pot size, on a pure bluff. That's a great +EV situation for good players, so by playing pot limit that's removed and that sucks.
In other poker news, I've decided I'm going to play the WSOP next year. At the moment I don't think I'll play the main event, more likely one of the $1000 NL events in the series. I don't like the idea of putting up $10k when it's almost certainly returning $0, and I also don't like the idea of spending a lot of time and money in satellites to win an entry, and then have that return $0. I'd like an event with 1000 people or less. In the mean time, I need to get a lot better. I'm still making a lot of mistakes. I think my theory is very strong and my basic game is good, but I make mistakes in the heat of the moment.
I've now run into my second super-agg player online. These guys raise any two cards preflop, but then play well after the flop. This strategy works because it makes people play badly with you after the flop. That is, you lose money playing this way preflop, it's a bad preflop style, but if people get thrown off by this and think you're a total donkey and then pay you off postflop, it can be very profitable. In particular, it gets you big action when you have a good hand. Drew and I try to do a small version of this, which is just always betting heavy continuation. Betting lots of continuation means you win some pots with bluffs, and it also means you get paid off well when you actually hit big hands. You just have to be careful not to pay off when you're beat.
This same principle applies in poker. When you hit a house and he hits a flush, you might win a huge pot - $1000 perhaps. But that wasn't really profit. That just goes into your bankroll escrow and waits for the time when you have the flush and he has the house. In fact, your profit comes when he hits the house - because you don't pay him off a full $1000. Maybe you get away only paying him $500 when you have the flush, now you just made a profit of $500.
I frequently ran into tough spots; I'd wait for a nice hand like an AQ or AK, he'd raise and I'd call or reraise. Often he'd just fold there if I reraised, sometimes he'd call with a hand like 97s. Then I'd totally whiff the flop. A hand like AK only hits a flop about 1/3 of the time, so 2/3 of the time you whiff. Now what? He's essentially on random cards, you have no idea if you hit the flop or not. If you check, he'll bet either way. If you bet, he may call with a pair or just a draw. You may have to bet big all three streets to get him out.
The next problem is that he's frequently playing flush draws and straight draws, but he'll also bluff flushes and straights, and he'll call big with the draws. Say you call his preflop raise with KQ, the flop comes with a K and two diamonds. You lead out over pot size. He calls. The turn comes another diamond. What do you do? Probably you're good, but he may have just hit the flush. It's also possible he could raise here bluffing the flushing, especially if you check or bet small in a way that looks scared.
What's the right way to play this guy? It's sort of like he's in the big-blind of a $4 blind game, since he's putting in those chips with almost any two. So, you need to play like that. Wait for good cards, and then reraise to $12 or $16. When you whiff the flop play just like you would - bet continuation in some cases, check or fold in some cases. Most of all, don't get caught up "slumming" with him, don't start getting attached to bottom pairs and things like that. He will play big pots with bottom pair - you won't.
Gazprom could be a very good long term energy investment. It's the Russian natural gas company, and has the largest energy reserves of any publicly traded company in the world. It also may not be so ridiculously highly valued as the major western energy companies. The big question mark of course is Russia's continued corruption and government interference. Will Putin and his cabal allow Gazprom to operate as an independent company, or will they seize assets and profits? Most stocks in Russia are traded with a risk discount, and if the government ever reforms they'll all go up. I think reform is inevitable, but it may take a while, since Putin's successor will certainly be one of cronies, and their power structure may last a while.
What about media and cable companies? Many changes are afoot, between DVR's, direct content download, and recent moves by cities to create free wireless networks. The short answer is that not very much will change. A few companies may gain or lose profitability, but there won't be a vast shake-up of the system. For one thing, replacing advertising with payment will never happen. Advertisers pay far more to be seen than people are willing to pay for programming. So, downloadable media or whatever will still be primarily supported by advertisers (without advertisers, you'd have to pay something around $1 per view of a half hour show). Also, there's some talk of the death of TV. That's nonsense. TV sets may head towards being more like general purpose "monitors" than simple TV's, but that's been happening for a long time. Will the middle man (cable companies, TV networks) disappear? Will users get content directly from content creators? Perhaps a bit, but really the role of the middle man will just change. It's true the middle man may get weaker. The role of the middle man will still be packaging and distributing content, and combining it with advertising. Each content creator won't want to do all that on their own. Now, perhaps the biggest threat to cable companies is the growing movement towards free broadband access in many urban areas. If that becomes widespread, it undermines the real strength of cable companies, which is owning the broadband pipe.
It occured to me that part of the problem with the CIA in this post-9/11 era is that the CIA has never really been very good at sniffing out and preventing attacks against Americans. The thing the CIA is really good at is meddling in foreign governments - backing candidates we like, subverting or assasinating those we don't, supporting or creating coups, things like that. It's a much more offensive weapon than a defensive shield.
When I was younger I dreamt of being a CIA agent, I think it would be very exciting and stimulating. The big drawback is that I think the CIA is one of the most evil groups of people in the world, responsible for creating chaos and horror in many countries, and I can't just do missions without thinking about why.
Seat 1: champoy888 (765) Seat 3: chukb (2620) Seat 6: CamaroMike89 (2660) Seat 8: RASHT222 (1955) chukb posts small blind (100) CamaroMike89 posts big blind (200) ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to chukb [ Jd, Ac ] RASHT222 folds. champoy888 folds. chukb raises (500) to 600 I make a standard 3x raise with AJ CamaroMike89 raises (2460) to 2660 CamaroMike89 is all-In. He goes allin ott.
What do I do? Let's ignore cases where I'm dominated or dominating, eg. ignore AQ, AK, and also AT, A9. We'll just assume that he's on a lower pair. He's 55/45 to win the hand with a lower pair. In terms of chip EV, it's a clear call, I'm getting great odds to race. Should I call? Absolutely not.
If I fold, my real money EV is still $26. If I call and win, my EV only goes to $42 - much less than double. I only win 45% of the time, so by calling my EV goes from $26 to $19 !! A huge minus EV move!!
I folded, correctly as it turns out. Of course, I wound up bubbling in 4th place when I got QQ and pushed and was called by A3 (!!??!!). On the plus side, I played this tournament almost perfectly. I took a horrible beat on the first hand (2 outer) and got short stacked, but fought back patiently and managed to get tied for big stack there near the end.
Oddly enough, QQ on the bubble is not even that great of a hand. If you knew you would be called by hands like A3, you could consider folding QQ. The only thing that makes it +EV is how often you're called by lower pairs. Generally in the Party Poker tournaments everyone is playing way too many big pots near the end, so you gain a lot of value by just sitting back and hoping others knock each other out.
checkmate555 posts small blind (10) whatswhat posts big blind (15) ** Dealing down cards ** (folds to late position) Deucey30 calls (15) bolddsp folds. chukb calls (15) Dealt to chukb [ 7s, Js ] I'm on the button, I'll limp J7s with tiny blinds checkmate555 calls (5) whatswhat checks. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ Kc, 7c, Kd ] checkmate555 checks. whatswhat checks. Deucey30 checks. chukb bets (45) I have the pair of 7s. There's two clubs on the board. checkmate555 folds. whatswhat folds. Deucey30 raises (90) to 90 Deucey checked and now min raises. That's funny. Flush draw? chukb calls (45) ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 8s ] Deucey30 bets (275) He leads out huge on the turn, over pot size. WTF does he have? chukb calls (275) I can't put him on a King - if I was on the flush draw, he let me have a free card on the flop basically, and now he's betting over pot size where I would fold, a king wouldn't do that, would it? ** Dealing River ** : [ 5h ] Deucey30 checks. chukb checks.
Of course you know he had a king. I just don't know how to read people when they're betting so weird. With a king, the check-raise on the flop is reasonable, but it needs to be a lot more to charge the flush draw, and then on the turn a bet of about half the pot would be reasonable, to charge the draw but try to get callers from the 7.
I ran into a similar thing earlier. The flop came with a 3-flush. We both checked. Turn was the same suit, so now 4 hearts on the board. I had the nut flush. We both checked again. The river paired the board. Now I no longer have the nuts, but for me to be beat it means he must have had two pair or a set and checked it with the flush draw so obvious !? Would someone with two pair or a set really give me free cards to hit my flush? Well, of course the answer is yes, he flopped a set and checked it and let me hit the flush.
Took a couple of 1st places on Party today. It felt good to finally get back on track winning. On the other hand, I did get pretty lucky, so I can't say my play is fixed.
There are two problem with this : 1) it's very slow, it's a big perf hit for sure, and 2) I think it fragments my drive pretty severely.
Now, fflush() is not a safe answer (though I saw just the other day, I think there is a function you can call to change it so that fflush actually does to a hard flush), but maybe there's some windows file IO thing that can ensure good writes without incurring such a bad perf & frag hit.
Blinds (15/30) ** Dealing down cards ** Ethomas33 folds. maddog7478 calls [30]. mattf74 folds. Babooyah calls [30]. Dealt to chukb [ 9s 9c ] chukb raises [150]. I make a solid 5x raise with 99, I want everyone out. BIGCAT1818 folds. ibetuiwin folds. socalalexz folds. maddog7478 calls [120]. Babooyah calls [120]. These guys limped and called. I don't have a real good read on them, but I have a feeling they'd do that with hands like 55 and A9. Probably they don't have anything really good because they've been open raising a lot with good hands. ** Dealing Flop ** [ 7h, Tc, 8h ] maddog7478 checks. Babooyah bets [200]. What in the world can he have? I think an overpair is almost impossible. And if he flopped like a set of 7's, wouldn't he check to me? I think a 9 is possible, as are hands like A8 or AT. KT seems unlikely. 9T and TJ are both possible, but it's a lot to call preflop with that. chukb raises [700]. I have a real good hand, a pair + flush draw. He could have a ten, then I'm in trouble. Otherwise, he has a lower pair, maybe even two overs. He might also have the heart draw with two overs. I want to charge those hands. This raise size is a bit lame, I'm pot committing myself, so I may as well just go allin. maddog7478 folds. Babooyah is all-In [815] chukb calls [315]. Well, I must be beat but now I have to call. If he just has a ten I'm 38% to win.
He had TJ, which is one of the worst hands I could see since it kills a 9 as an out and makes me only 28% to win. I don't know quite what went wrong here. I don't have a good read on Babooyah which certainly would have made it easier. I suppose when he bets he must have a pretty good hand since I raised big preflop, he must know I'm strong. In fact, his play with TJ is mighty bold, I represented a big pair the whole way, and I'd been playing tight (99 is the weakest hand I'd played big), he may have thought he was on a gutshot semibluff !? Though, if he had like a low pair or an A8 or A9 or something like that he could have played the same way. He may have put me on AK or some nonsense like that and thought any pair was good.
Seat 4: chukb (1780) Seat 5: BLUEEYEZ (335) BLUEEYEZ posts small blind (15) Barche posts big blind (30) ** Dealing down cards ** (folds to me on the button) Dealt to chukb [ 9h, Ts ] chukb calls (30) I limp 9T on the button. I would often steal here, but Barche is a nutty loose fish, so I just play value against him. I want to flop something big and bust him. BLUEEYEZ calls (15) BLUEEYEZ is a good semipro player, perhaps a bit predictable and passive. Barche checks. ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 4s, 8d, Jh ] BLUEEYEZ bets (30) BLUEEYEZ min bets the flop. That's a very weak bet, which I've seen him do in the past with hands like a 4 or 8 in this situation. He'll often fold it to a raise. In fact, he has QJ, which is a very good hand, and he's min betting because he's set that up as a trap and he wants to get raised. Barche folds. chukb raises (130) to 130 I have the open ended str8 draw and BLUEEYEZ has just min bet. This is an ideal semi-bluff spot for me. I don't automatically semibluff here, but his bet says to me he has a small piece of it and will fold. I also know he's on a short enough stack that I can't be pushed off my draw. In deep stack scenarios I might be more inclined to take the cheap card to hit my draw. Also, if Barche were in the hand I'd be more inclined to just call since he could bluff allin later when the straight card hits. BLUEEYEZ raises (275) to 305 BLUEEYEZ is all-In. He reraises allin. I know he must have the jack. chukb calls (175) I'm getting great pot odds for an 8-outer, so I call.
I'm attacking a pattern I've seen from him, and he's using the fact that I know he plays that way to set me up. Of course, maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but that's what I would have been doing in his spot.
The computer should be divided into three distinct regions : the OS, the apps, and the data. Contrary to MS's nonsense, this division is crucial to system stability and security, because it preserves the integrity of the OS and the user freedom to choose their apps.
The OS should be firewalled and untouchable by apps. The OS itself can then be upgraded or re-installed without affecting the apps at all. The OS should be configured by config files which are separate and in the protected user data space. The OS also facilitates the linkage of apps, eg. this app provides this service to this app (such as file extension plugs), and again that linkage is in a small separate data space. This is separate from critical system things like driver config, system config, and each app's own internal config.
Each app should be sandboxed. Eg. it installs all its own stuff in its own dir. Necessary linkage goes through the aforementioned file. Apps never get to install stuff into the OS space, but users can redirect OS functionality to apps as desired.
Charles Blooom [cb][at][cbloom][dot][com] Send Me Email
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