For some reason, I often think of little puzzles in the shower - probably because showering itself isn't terribly exciting. Here's two of them (they're not particularly difficult but they were good for the length of a shower):
1) I have a digital clock that expresses time in 24-hours. Just for fun, let's say you have no colon or spaces in between the digits, so midnight is 000, 9:15am is 915, 12 noon is 1200, 3:35pm is 1535, etc. How many times during a 24-hour day would the number look exactly the same in a mirror as it does on the face? So, for example, 12 midnight (000) would be the first. The answer turned out to be more than I thought as an initial guesstimate.
2) For whatever reason, I have two dice and I want to pick a random month of the year. What's the best way to do it?
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Two other things
1) Germans have almost no sense of humor, particularly sarcasm. They have no concept of when you're joking around, and as a result you must be serious with them at all times. It can get a little tiresome.
2) Germans have weird, weird taste in music. Exhibit A:
Tell me that's not fucking weird.
And, of course, for those who still doubt, let's not forget they made this guy a superstar:
I rest my case.
2) Germans have weird, weird taste in music. Exhibit A:
Tell me that's not fucking weird.
And, of course, for those who still doubt, let's not forget they made this guy a superstar:
I rest my case.
More fun facts about Germany
More fun facts (well, technically, observations):
- German foods border on the decadent. After seeing the size of the lunches that they eat and the fattiness of the food, I'm just completely flummoxed as to how they're not all fatter than Americans. Claudia, incidentally, has lost about 10 pounds since moving here, whereas I have gained about 10 pounds. I have no idea why this is the case. She suggests it's because of the lack of processed food, which maybe my body was immune to. This one still stumps me.
- Case in point re: decadent food. I got a frozen pizza and cooked it only to discover that it was not a pizza, but rather a Flammkuchen. Flammkuchen is just like pizza except that it uses creme fraiche instead of tomato sauce. Yeah, you heard that right. Oh yeah, and the classic toppings are onion and bacon. And these people will eat about a 10" one of these, by themselves, for lunch.
- The biggest minority here, by far, is Turkish. How this came to be is kinda complicated and is written up very nicely here, but the essense is that lots of Turks came on guest worker programs when Germany was being rebuilt, and they stayed, and they multiplied, and their families came too. Generally, you will see plenty of them around here (although to be honest I can't tell a Turk from an Indian from a Persian, but it's kinda like, in California, if you see a Latino, it's probably safe to guess that he's Mexican). The amount of Turks I see here is roughly the same as Latinos or Blacks in New York; they definitely have a presence, but they're very obviously a minor percentage of the population. Anyway, what really amazes me is how blatantly and unashamedly prejudiced the Germans are about the Turks. When we were looking around for an apartment, we were trying to get a sense of costs relative to neighborhood etc. Our agent told us that it depends, and started going through neighborhoods in terms of quality and price. When she got to the bottom, she said "of course, you could find someplace cheaper, like a Turkish neighborhood, but you wouldn't want to live there." She said this in a way as to suggest that a Turkish neighborhood would be your neighborhood of choice only if there was nothing available directly under the airport runway flight path, or near the sewage treatment plant. Come to think of it, those neighborhoods are probably Turkish.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Today's games
So, today was a pretty good day, despite the fact that I probably lost more (theoretical) money today on FTP than any other day. Back in my early days of figuring out what the hell I was doing, I used to occasionally partake in the $6.60 token extravaganzas on FTP. These are actually a pretty good deal on FTP if you're willing to put in the time and have a substantial bankroll (which I don't, and therefore am not messing about in these tourneys anymore - furthermore, if I had the bankroll I probably wouldn't be willing to put in the time), although just like so many other low-limit games on FTP there can be some crazy moves that will drive you nuts. Anyway, from those early days, I had three $26 tournament tokens lying around (hey even the donkeys win sometimes), and I've been determined to use one in a real, non-turbo, preferably deep-stacked multi-table tournament (MTT) while Claudia was in Brazil (since one of these tournaments can easily take 5-6 hours to finish, assuming you get that far).
Anyway, today I woke up early and decided that today would be the day to spend that token - I entered a deep-stack, multi-table tournament with 450 people, and finished 88th - sadly, I still had quite a few spots to go to take the money. Overall I was happy with the way I played except at the end (well, hell, I can almost always say that!) - I simply got frustrated with not playing and watching my stack go from well above average to "all-in or fold" mode; I must have folded 35 hands in a row pre-flop because I was either getting nothing, or a decent hand that wasn't good enough to justfy the two or three raisers in front of me. The couple of times I had something decent with position, I'd raise it up and completely miss on the flop, then have to decide whether to C-bet or leave it be. Every time, I seemed to make the wrong call. I ended up calling a 3-bet with AJ on my BB - the board had nothing noteworthy on it, we checked it down to the river, till I finally pushed all-in for about 3/4 of the pot, and he called me with AK. Ouch.
Still, like I said, I'm happy with it, and it was nice to play in a tournament with a deep stack, slow blind structures, and good players who weren't just shoving all-in all the time. It would be nice to have the money to do that more often.
So, after that, I chatted with Clau some (always one of the highlights of my day), then went with my friend Stefan and his friends to the Munich-Dortmund football match. Jan (Stefan's friend) apparantly had some friends who had business seats, and they were willing to sell them to Jan. I have a feeling that I was invited out of sympathy, but that's cool! It was kick-ass. Muenchen won with a goal in the final minutes of a game that had been tied 1-1 for the entire 2nd half, and man the place was rocking. The stadium holds 69,000 and apparantly it's sold out for the entire season. Crazy. Oh yeah, did I mention that we were center court (slightly on the Muenchen side, naturally) in the EIGHTH ROW?!? The tickets were 65 Euros each but totally worth it. I got lots of snaps on my blackberry, hopefully some of them came out good. The only problem was it was really, really cold - I'm still feeling a bit of the chill. Overall, though, a fantastic experience. Afterwards, Stefan and I grabbed one last beer, then headed back, at which point I started writing this post and got totally sidetracked in that last post about the fool sucking out on me with a gutshot straight. That one's gonna burn for a while.
But, today I watched Muenchen trounce Dortmund along with 68,999 other people and I loved it, so that's the happy thought I'm going to bed with.
Anyway, today I woke up early and decided that today would be the day to spend that token - I entered a deep-stack, multi-table tournament with 450 people, and finished 88th - sadly, I still had quite a few spots to go to take the money. Overall I was happy with the way I played except at the end (well, hell, I can almost always say that!) - I simply got frustrated with not playing and watching my stack go from well above average to "all-in or fold" mode; I must have folded 35 hands in a row pre-flop because I was either getting nothing, or a decent hand that wasn't good enough to justfy the two or three raisers in front of me. The couple of times I had something decent with position, I'd raise it up and completely miss on the flop, then have to decide whether to C-bet or leave it be. Every time, I seemed to make the wrong call. I ended up calling a 3-bet with AJ on my BB - the board had nothing noteworthy on it, we checked it down to the river, till I finally pushed all-in for about 3/4 of the pot, and he called me with AK. Ouch.
Still, like I said, I'm happy with it, and it was nice to play in a tournament with a deep stack, slow blind structures, and good players who weren't just shoving all-in all the time. It would be nice to have the money to do that more often.
So, after that, I chatted with Clau some (always one of the highlights of my day), then went with my friend Stefan and his friends to the Munich-Dortmund football match. Jan (Stefan's friend) apparantly had some friends who had business seats, and they were willing to sell them to Jan. I have a feeling that I was invited out of sympathy, but that's cool! It was kick-ass. Muenchen won with a goal in the final minutes of a game that had been tied 1-1 for the entire 2nd half, and man the place was rocking. The stadium holds 69,000 and apparantly it's sold out for the entire season. Crazy. Oh yeah, did I mention that we were center court (slightly on the Muenchen side, naturally) in the EIGHTH ROW?!? The tickets were 65 Euros each but totally worth it. I got lots of snaps on my blackberry, hopefully some of them came out good. The only problem was it was really, really cold - I'm still feeling a bit of the chill. Overall, though, a fantastic experience. Afterwards, Stefan and I grabbed one last beer, then headed back, at which point I started writing this post and got totally sidetracked in that last post about the fool sucking out on me with a gutshot straight. That one's gonna burn for a while.
But, today I watched Muenchen trounce Dortmund along with 68,999 other people and I loved it, so that's the happy thought I'm going to bed with.
The current state of my online poker playing
At this point, I've got about $200 in my Full Tilt Poker (FTP) account. I generally play low-stakes turbo multi-table tournaments (MTTs) - low-stakes because of my relatively low bankroll ($200), and turbo because I tend not to have a lot of time. And before anyone points it out, I know that $200 is less than the amount of money I budget to lose on gambling in one trip to Nevada, but this is supposed to be a cheap hobby, and I'm determined not to reload on FTP until I've burnt through it all, and to always base my decisions on that bankroll (most of your monetary limits are based on the size of your bankroll, so I won't enroll in a very expensive tournament just because I could afford to top up my account if I wanted to). Anyway, one of my favorite tournaments is the $3.30 90-person KO SNG tournament - it just sells like hotcakes and I _never_ have to wait more than 5 minutes or so for the tournament to fill up, it's at the threshold for my bankroll (theoretically I ought to be capping out at about $3 for a MTT but I cheat since it's limited to 90 players), and it almost never lasts more than 2 hours, even if you take it to the bitter end.
For those unfamiliar with tournament types, a KO tournament is a tournament where you get a bonus for busting a player out of the tournament, typically something like 1/6 of the buying - in the case of the $3.30 tournament each KO gets you 50 cents. A SNG is a sit-n-go tournament, where you always have the tournament ready to run as soon as X number of people sign up for it - in the case of this particular tourney, that number is 90.
The problem with playing so many low-limit turbo MTTs is twofold; first, because it's a turbo tournament, the blinds go up really, really fast - hence the tourney almost never lasting more than 2 hours - by the time you've passed hour 2, you're dealing with huge blinds and antes and even just limping into a pot will probably cost you 5-10% of your stack. The problem with this is that a typical raise might be 2 or three times the BB, and with blinds so high you can easily get pot committed just playing a drawing hand. I mean, there's still some skill involved, but the luck/skill slide meter is way on the luck side towards the end of a turbo tournament.
The second problem is the low stakes - for the last few days I've been running bad from being impatient, and just when I get my shit together again, something happens that totally makes me lose my shit. Here's an example - you can watch it now, then I'll go over what was going through my mind:
This is how I busted out of a MTT - for some historical background, this was a KO tournament for FTP points (frequent player points, which you can use for swag or to enter promotional tournaments) - you put in 50 FTP points and you get 50 points for every player you knock out. I had been doing decently at my first table and was about 1000 dollars up (not actual money, but rather "tournament dollars"), although I hadn't knocked anyone out, and had gotten moved to this table about 2 orbits (18 rounds or so) before. "Player 5" had been using his big chip stack to bully the table for a few rounds at this point, frequently raising and following through with continuation bets that would put most folks all-in. At this point, he's got almost 8k in chips, and I'm a distant 2nd with about 4k. All the other poor bastards have just been caving in to his bullying (the idea is that he can raise with just about any two cards - for example, $400 is only about 5% of his chip stack, whereas it's about 25% of most folks' chip stacks, and if they put in 25% of their chips with anything less than a premium hand then their time in the tournament may very well come to a quick end). On my big blind (one player always has to put in the minimum bet before seeing his cards, and it was my turn) I was dealt two 9s, there was one limper (player 9) ("limping in" is the term for just putting in the minumum amount to be involved in a hand) and the bully raised it from 60 to 270 (a very large raise) when I had the big blind, which is basically his way of saying "give me your chips, unless you feel like risking your survival in this tournament". So, on my big blind, I decided that I would call with my 9s and see what happens (perhaps this is poor strategy on my part, but when I have two cards on the upper side of "marginal" in the BB and someone tries to steal, I tend to just call rather than raise and see what happens on the flop - this is probably because at lower limits folks will often respond to a re-raise with an all-in shove, and I do _not_ want to go all-in with 99 against a raiser - I mean, if he turns over some semi-bluff like queen-ten then it's still a coin-flip!).
After I've made this decision, player 6 decides to come along for the ride, and then player 9 (the original caller) calls as well.
Now, the basic premise with just about any kind of pocket pair is twofold:
1) If it's relatively low, you're hoping to hit three of a kind (aka a "set") on the flop - the odds of this are about 7 to one, and even then it's possible that you'll end up in a shit situation - for example, if I call with a pair of nines, and the flop comes out 7-8-9 of spades, then even though I've flopped my set, there are still plenty of ways I can get screwed. The more players you have coming along for the ride here, the more likely that one of them has got at least one spade or at least one card to complete a straight. So, sets can get you in trouble, but more often than not they're really, really good, because most people don't consider pocket pairs when wondering what you might have.
2) If it's a high pair (like, for example, QQ), you're looking for a flop that doesn't have overcards (i.e. no kings or aces) and isn't too flush-y or straight-y. If you hit that kind of flop, then you tend to press it hard.
99 is kinda in the middle between those two - it's definitely possible for three under-cards to appear on the flop, but really you're hoping to make a set.
Now, where things get really tricky with pocket pairs like 55 or 99 are concerned, is that you also need to consider what you'll do if it works out, and if it's worth it. Here's the simple version: your odds of making the set on the flop are about 7 to one. Let's call the odds of a "safe" set (i.e. something that you'll feel comfortable pressing with) at about 9 to 1. In that case, you need to feel like there's at least 9 times your investment available for the taking if you hit it. So, that means that if you're only going to be up against one other person, both you and him better have at least 9 times the amount of money you've got to call. In this case, in order to make a call of 210 extra chips, I need to have a potential windfall of at least 1700 or so to work with. In this case, everyone seems to fit the bill, so I call. Actually, I would have called anyway, since 99 is a pretty decent pocket pair, I wanted to stand up to the bully, and there were already two callers (which means that someone is likely to come along for the ride if I make my set).
So, before we even see the flop, the pot is up to $1100. This is definitely a dangerous situation and I'm probably bailing at my first opportunity if I don't hit my set (even if there are no overcards).
So, the flop comes out just the way I want it: 8d-Qd-9c. I've made my set, but there are two things to be aware of:
1) There's an overcard there - the queen. I'm not all that frightened of anyone having a pair of queens (giving them a set of queens) for a couple of reasons: the bully could have it, but he's been raising pre-flop constantly lately, and he really could have any two cards of ten or higher, or a pocket pair of his own - him happening to have QQ this one time would just be really shit luck. The other two players, seeing as they're getting a little low in chip stacks, would probably have re-raised with a hand like QQ to to increase their chance of a heads-up with the bully, or else force him to let it go right then and there. Much more likely, though, in the low-limit world, is that either one of these players would have just shoved all-in with QQ (which wouldn't have been a bad move considering the situation). At any rate, if someone (including the bully) shoves all-in on me then I'll revisit it, but for now I really don't think it's a possibility. Potential bad news for me, but in this case I think I'm OK.
2) There's an overcard there - the queen! This means that someone who called with a hand like AQ or KQ is now in deep shit against me, because he/she is going to have what's called "top pair, top kicker" or TPTQ. This is a hand that gets folks in trouble all the time, and can be really tough to walk away from when the board doesn't look dangerous. Good news for me.
3) There are two diamonds on the board. This, more than anything else, concerns me. There's a potential flush draw out there, and with three other players in the pot, one of them just might have A-x of diamonds or a suited connector (like 5d-6d). Flushes are the great set killers, since folks just love to draw to flushes, even when the odds can't justify it.
Since I'm in the BB and the SB folded, I'm first to act after the flop. Whether to bet your set or slow-play it (i.e. get cute, just check, and see if someone else wants to bet in order to extract some more chips out of your opponents) depends on the situation every time. At this point, we've built up a nice pot of about $1100, more than 1/4 of my current stack - I'd be happy to take it right here! Besides which, those diamonds scare me.
The trick with betting out against a potential flush draw is to not give your opponent incentive to draw, or at least to make it a bad idea mathematically. In this case, a bet of about $1000 ought to be enough to scare at least the short stacks away - since it's likely that they won't make their flush on the next card, it would be a bad idea for either one of them to pursue the draw with such a large percentage of their stacks, and even if they do then I'll be firing another bullet if the turn card isn't a diamond, and they know it. If we were all deep-stacked, or if the pot and bet sizes were ten times smaller, then it might be worth it, but that's another conversation.
So, I bet out $1000 with the intention of having everyone fold right there and then - at this point my stack is down to $2805 and the pot's up to $2100. Sure enough, the short stacks fold, but the bully calls.
The call doesn't give me a lot of information - if he had raised me all-in then I might have had to reconsider the QQ possibility (although I very likely would have called - I don't think he's got QQ for the reasons I described above). If he had raised me anything other than all-in then I probably would have put him on some kind of queen, but not a pair of them, and I can change my focus to extracting as many chips as possible from him. At this point, my guess is either he's on a flush draw or he's got either TPTK or two pair. I'm leaning toward the second scenario but I can't discount the first.
Just for reminder here - pot is now at $3100 and my chip stack is slightly less than $2800.
Turn comes, it's a beautiful and non-threating 4h. Now's the time to really fire the cannons - either he's got nothing (and he'll fold), the flush draw (and he'll fold), or some kind of two-pair that he can't let go and he'll call or push me all-in (which would be fine). What I don't want to do here is give him a free card for a flush draw and have him hit it on me. If he wants to see the river card, he'll have to pay for it.
I throw in a bet of $2000, taking my stack down to a dangerous $800. Why didn't I just throw the whole thing in? Well, I'm not really sure, except that generally I don't like pushing all-in - I tend to base stuff on the size of the pot, and I often like to give folks the idea that they're getting pot odds, even if they're not. In the case of a flush draw (which I'm becoming more and more sure is this guy's story), I like to make them think about it - now, having to call $2000 to win $7000 is _not_ good enough to call on a flush draw, _particularly_ when your opponent has only $800 left in his stack. Put it this way: if there are two diamonds in your hand and two diamonds on the board, then there are, as far as you know, 9 cards left in the deck that can give you the flush. With 9 diamonds left, the odds of the next card being a diamond are roughly 1 in 5 (or 4 to 1 if you prefer to think of it that way, which I actually don't but it makes for better storytelling). Therefore, if you're getting more than 4:1 odds on your money, then it's worth it to call. Of course, you always have to think about "what happens if I get it?" If you've got a nutjob who keeps betting, and you think you can extract even _more_ money out of him if you hit that flush, then maybe it's worth it to keep going, even if you're not getting 4:1 odds just from the bet. So, if the pot's $1000 and your opponent bets $500, then you need to call $500 to win an extra $1500, which is 1:3, which is not good enough. On the other hand, if you think that hitting the flush will enable you to extract an extra thousand in the final round of betting, then you're actually talking about betting $500 to win an extra $2500, which is right on the cusp of being worth it. These are known as "pot odds" and "implied pot odds", and nobody (including me) except maybe the pros ever gets it right all the time. At least, that's what I tell myself since I have trouble doing these on the fly while trying to pay attention to everything else.
So anyway, back to this hand: my throwing the $2k in there makes the pot $5110, so the villian needs to bet $2k to win $5k, so he needs roughly a 2:5 chance to win it for it to be mathmatically correct. The odds of getting a diamond on the river are about 1:4, and I've only got $800 left, so there aren't a lot of implied pot odds here. Even just a basic guesstimate will tell a person that it's not worth it to call this on a flush draw, and I expect him to either fold (most likely) or shove all-in. If he puts me all-in, then at this point I absolutely HAVE to call, even if I think he's been toying with me with QQ the whole time - the ratio of the amount of money in the pot ($7900 if he re-raises me all-in) to the amount of money I have left ($800) is simply too big to let go. This is what we call "pot committed" and it's a state that you want to avoid, but I seem to always end up in (hey I'm still an amateur and I don't think quite far ahead enough - I'm getting there).
Instead, he calls. I'm now totally flummoxed and can only imagine that he's chasing the flush draw, or maybe he's been really stupid and he's been calling with A-K this whole time (A-K leaves 6 cards that could potentially give you the winner, which makes you about a 7:1 underdog - definitely not the kind of hand you want to bet $2k to win $5k with). With anything concrete, it would make the most sense to put me all-in - I mean, at this point, what can possibly happen on the river that will make him decide not to bet $800 when the pot's already so huge?
The final card comes - Jc. If he was chasing the flush or the A-K draw, he missed on all counts. So, knowing I've got the best hand, I have two options: check or go all-in.
If I check: either he checks (most likely), sees my set of 9s, and I win, or else he bets my last $800 in a silly bluff attempt (very unlikely, since given the whole pot-committed thing I just described plus the fact that I've been the bet initiator the whole time, there's almost no situation in which I'd fold), I show him my set, and I win.
If I bet: he either folds and I win without showing him (and the rest of the table) what I've been working with (again, unlikely given the ratio of my remaining stack to the pot size, but it's always better to win without showing your cards), or most likely he calls and I take the whole thing.
Obviously betting is the better choice here. So, I bet my last $800, he calls, and shows me his KT of SPADES for a king-high straight.
Knowing what his cards were, let me just replay the action after the turn from his perspective. I called his big raise behind one other caller (so I knew I would be facing at least two opponents on this hand), I put out a healthy bet in first position after the flop, and I put out another bet that pretty much pot-commits me after the turn. I am definitely NOT betting with nothing here. The cards at this point give him King-high, in other words nothing. He has no flush draw, although there is one on the board. The ONLY cards that can give him a likely winning hand are the four jacks in the deck. Let's be generous and say he's put me on a single queen, maybe something like AQ. In that event the three remaining kings could give him a POTENTIALLY winning hand. So, being generous, let's say he's got 7 cards that he thinks could give him the winner (the four jacks plus the three kings). Even so, that translates to about a 15% chance of hitting one of those cards, which is about a 5.5:1 underdog. My chip stack is basically gone - if he calls this bet, he's not going to be able to to extract much more out of me to take advantage of his good fortune. Therefore, putting in $2000 to win $5100 is NOT worth it, not by a logshot. Heck, putting in just $1000 to win that same $5100 wouldn't be worth it, and again that's assuming that I just had the queen (and, of course, no king). And yet he called - and hit. And my time in the tournament was over.
This hand had me practically screaming at the computer. Suckouts happen all the time in FTP - you go all-in with AA vs. 95 offsuit and they beat you with a straight - it happens and you move on, secure in the knowledge that if you had it to do all over again, you would do it the same way. Some of them, like this one, just stick with you.
Of course, for every one of these losses, there's also two losses that I genuinely deserved, either because I made a mistake, I was bored and/or impatient, or someone simply played better than me. I've identified some key leaks in my game, although I've discovered that it's a lot easier to identify a leak in your game than it is to fix it, which is weird - I thought just finding them would be the problem. Maybe I'll get to that in another post, but this one has taken more time and energy than I planned, and even so I haven't written the post I meant to write in the first place when I started this one - that post will be next...
For those unfamiliar with tournament types, a KO tournament is a tournament where you get a bonus for busting a player out of the tournament, typically something like 1/6 of the buying - in the case of the $3.30 tournament each KO gets you 50 cents. A SNG is a sit-n-go tournament, where you always have the tournament ready to run as soon as X number of people sign up for it - in the case of this particular tourney, that number is 90.
The problem with playing so many low-limit turbo MTTs is twofold; first, because it's a turbo tournament, the blinds go up really, really fast - hence the tourney almost never lasting more than 2 hours - by the time you've passed hour 2, you're dealing with huge blinds and antes and even just limping into a pot will probably cost you 5-10% of your stack. The problem with this is that a typical raise might be 2 or three times the BB, and with blinds so high you can easily get pot committed just playing a drawing hand. I mean, there's still some skill involved, but the luck/skill slide meter is way on the luck side towards the end of a turbo tournament.
The second problem is the low stakes - for the last few days I've been running bad from being impatient, and just when I get my shit together again, something happens that totally makes me lose my shit. Here's an example - you can watch it now, then I'll go over what was going through my mind:
This is how I busted out of a MTT - for some historical background, this was a KO tournament for FTP points (frequent player points, which you can use for swag or to enter promotional tournaments) - you put in 50 FTP points and you get 50 points for every player you knock out. I had been doing decently at my first table and was about 1000 dollars up (not actual money, but rather "tournament dollars"), although I hadn't knocked anyone out, and had gotten moved to this table about 2 orbits (18 rounds or so) before. "Player 5" had been using his big chip stack to bully the table for a few rounds at this point, frequently raising and following through with continuation bets that would put most folks all-in. At this point, he's got almost 8k in chips, and I'm a distant 2nd with about 4k. All the other poor bastards have just been caving in to his bullying (the idea is that he can raise with just about any two cards - for example, $400 is only about 5% of his chip stack, whereas it's about 25% of most folks' chip stacks, and if they put in 25% of their chips with anything less than a premium hand then their time in the tournament may very well come to a quick end). On my big blind (one player always has to put in the minimum bet before seeing his cards, and it was my turn) I was dealt two 9s, there was one limper (player 9) ("limping in" is the term for just putting in the minumum amount to be involved in a hand) and the bully raised it from 60 to 270 (a very large raise) when I had the big blind, which is basically his way of saying "give me your chips, unless you feel like risking your survival in this tournament". So, on my big blind, I decided that I would call with my 9s and see what happens (perhaps this is poor strategy on my part, but when I have two cards on the upper side of "marginal" in the BB and someone tries to steal, I tend to just call rather than raise and see what happens on the flop - this is probably because at lower limits folks will often respond to a re-raise with an all-in shove, and I do _not_ want to go all-in with 99 against a raiser - I mean, if he turns over some semi-bluff like queen-ten then it's still a coin-flip!).
After I've made this decision, player 6 decides to come along for the ride, and then player 9 (the original caller) calls as well.
Now, the basic premise with just about any kind of pocket pair is twofold:
1) If it's relatively low, you're hoping to hit three of a kind (aka a "set") on the flop - the odds of this are about 7 to one, and even then it's possible that you'll end up in a shit situation - for example, if I call with a pair of nines, and the flop comes out 7-8-9 of spades, then even though I've flopped my set, there are still plenty of ways I can get screwed. The more players you have coming along for the ride here, the more likely that one of them has got at least one spade or at least one card to complete a straight. So, sets can get you in trouble, but more often than not they're really, really good, because most people don't consider pocket pairs when wondering what you might have.
2) If it's a high pair (like, for example, QQ), you're looking for a flop that doesn't have overcards (i.e. no kings or aces) and isn't too flush-y or straight-y. If you hit that kind of flop, then you tend to press it hard.
99 is kinda in the middle between those two - it's definitely possible for three under-cards to appear on the flop, but really you're hoping to make a set.
Now, where things get really tricky with pocket pairs like 55 or 99 are concerned, is that you also need to consider what you'll do if it works out, and if it's worth it. Here's the simple version: your odds of making the set on the flop are about 7 to one. Let's call the odds of a "safe" set (i.e. something that you'll feel comfortable pressing with) at about 9 to 1. In that case, you need to feel like there's at least 9 times your investment available for the taking if you hit it. So, that means that if you're only going to be up against one other person, both you and him better have at least 9 times the amount of money you've got to call. In this case, in order to make a call of 210 extra chips, I need to have a potential windfall of at least 1700 or so to work with. In this case, everyone seems to fit the bill, so I call. Actually, I would have called anyway, since 99 is a pretty decent pocket pair, I wanted to stand up to the bully, and there were already two callers (which means that someone is likely to come along for the ride if I make my set).
So, before we even see the flop, the pot is up to $1100. This is definitely a dangerous situation and I'm probably bailing at my first opportunity if I don't hit my set (even if there are no overcards).
So, the flop comes out just the way I want it: 8d-Qd-9c. I've made my set, but there are two things to be aware of:
1) There's an overcard there - the queen. I'm not all that frightened of anyone having a pair of queens (giving them a set of queens) for a couple of reasons: the bully could have it, but he's been raising pre-flop constantly lately, and he really could have any two cards of ten or higher, or a pocket pair of his own - him happening to have QQ this one time would just be really shit luck. The other two players, seeing as they're getting a little low in chip stacks, would probably have re-raised with a hand like QQ to to increase their chance of a heads-up with the bully, or else force him to let it go right then and there. Much more likely, though, in the low-limit world, is that either one of these players would have just shoved all-in with QQ (which wouldn't have been a bad move considering the situation). At any rate, if someone (including the bully) shoves all-in on me then I'll revisit it, but for now I really don't think it's a possibility. Potential bad news for me, but in this case I think I'm OK.
2) There's an overcard there - the queen! This means that someone who called with a hand like AQ or KQ is now in deep shit against me, because he/she is going to have what's called "top pair, top kicker" or TPTQ. This is a hand that gets folks in trouble all the time, and can be really tough to walk away from when the board doesn't look dangerous. Good news for me.
3) There are two diamonds on the board. This, more than anything else, concerns me. There's a potential flush draw out there, and with three other players in the pot, one of them just might have A-x of diamonds or a suited connector (like 5d-6d). Flushes are the great set killers, since folks just love to draw to flushes, even when the odds can't justify it.
Since I'm in the BB and the SB folded, I'm first to act after the flop. Whether to bet your set or slow-play it (i.e. get cute, just check, and see if someone else wants to bet in order to extract some more chips out of your opponents) depends on the situation every time. At this point, we've built up a nice pot of about $1100, more than 1/4 of my current stack - I'd be happy to take it right here! Besides which, those diamonds scare me.
The trick with betting out against a potential flush draw is to not give your opponent incentive to draw, or at least to make it a bad idea mathematically. In this case, a bet of about $1000 ought to be enough to scare at least the short stacks away - since it's likely that they won't make their flush on the next card, it would be a bad idea for either one of them to pursue the draw with such a large percentage of their stacks, and even if they do then I'll be firing another bullet if the turn card isn't a diamond, and they know it. If we were all deep-stacked, or if the pot and bet sizes were ten times smaller, then it might be worth it, but that's another conversation.
So, I bet out $1000 with the intention of having everyone fold right there and then - at this point my stack is down to $2805 and the pot's up to $2100. Sure enough, the short stacks fold, but the bully calls.
The call doesn't give me a lot of information - if he had raised me all-in then I might have had to reconsider the QQ possibility (although I very likely would have called - I don't think he's got QQ for the reasons I described above). If he had raised me anything other than all-in then I probably would have put him on some kind of queen, but not a pair of them, and I can change my focus to extracting as many chips as possible from him. At this point, my guess is either he's on a flush draw or he's got either TPTK or two pair. I'm leaning toward the second scenario but I can't discount the first.
Just for reminder here - pot is now at $3100 and my chip stack is slightly less than $2800.
Turn comes, it's a beautiful and non-threating 4h. Now's the time to really fire the cannons - either he's got nothing (and he'll fold), the flush draw (and he'll fold), or some kind of two-pair that he can't let go and he'll call or push me all-in (which would be fine). What I don't want to do here is give him a free card for a flush draw and have him hit it on me. If he wants to see the river card, he'll have to pay for it.
I throw in a bet of $2000, taking my stack down to a dangerous $800. Why didn't I just throw the whole thing in? Well, I'm not really sure, except that generally I don't like pushing all-in - I tend to base stuff on the size of the pot, and I often like to give folks the idea that they're getting pot odds, even if they're not. In the case of a flush draw (which I'm becoming more and more sure is this guy's story), I like to make them think about it - now, having to call $2000 to win $7000 is _not_ good enough to call on a flush draw, _particularly_ when your opponent has only $800 left in his stack. Put it this way: if there are two diamonds in your hand and two diamonds on the board, then there are, as far as you know, 9 cards left in the deck that can give you the flush. With 9 diamonds left, the odds of the next card being a diamond are roughly 1 in 5 (or 4 to 1 if you prefer to think of it that way, which I actually don't but it makes for better storytelling). Therefore, if you're getting more than 4:1 odds on your money, then it's worth it to call. Of course, you always have to think about "what happens if I get it?" If you've got a nutjob who keeps betting, and you think you can extract even _more_ money out of him if you hit that flush, then maybe it's worth it to keep going, even if you're not getting 4:1 odds just from the bet. So, if the pot's $1000 and your opponent bets $500, then you need to call $500 to win an extra $1500, which is 1:3, which is not good enough. On the other hand, if you think that hitting the flush will enable you to extract an extra thousand in the final round of betting, then you're actually talking about betting $500 to win an extra $2500, which is right on the cusp of being worth it. These are known as "pot odds" and "implied pot odds", and nobody (including me) except maybe the pros ever gets it right all the time. At least, that's what I tell myself since I have trouble doing these on the fly while trying to pay attention to everything else.
So anyway, back to this hand: my throwing the $2k in there makes the pot $5110, so the villian needs to bet $2k to win $5k, so he needs roughly a 2:5 chance to win it for it to be mathmatically correct. The odds of getting a diamond on the river are about 1:4, and I've only got $800 left, so there aren't a lot of implied pot odds here. Even just a basic guesstimate will tell a person that it's not worth it to call this on a flush draw, and I expect him to either fold (most likely) or shove all-in. If he puts me all-in, then at this point I absolutely HAVE to call, even if I think he's been toying with me with QQ the whole time - the ratio of the amount of money in the pot ($7900 if he re-raises me all-in) to the amount of money I have left ($800) is simply too big to let go. This is what we call "pot committed" and it's a state that you want to avoid, but I seem to always end up in (hey I'm still an amateur and I don't think quite far ahead enough - I'm getting there).
Instead, he calls. I'm now totally flummoxed and can only imagine that he's chasing the flush draw, or maybe he's been really stupid and he's been calling with A-K this whole time (A-K leaves 6 cards that could potentially give you the winner, which makes you about a 7:1 underdog - definitely not the kind of hand you want to bet $2k to win $5k with). With anything concrete, it would make the most sense to put me all-in - I mean, at this point, what can possibly happen on the river that will make him decide not to bet $800 when the pot's already so huge?
The final card comes - Jc. If he was chasing the flush or the A-K draw, he missed on all counts. So, knowing I've got the best hand, I have two options: check or go all-in.
If I check: either he checks (most likely), sees my set of 9s, and I win, or else he bets my last $800 in a silly bluff attempt (very unlikely, since given the whole pot-committed thing I just described plus the fact that I've been the bet initiator the whole time, there's almost no situation in which I'd fold), I show him my set, and I win.
If I bet: he either folds and I win without showing him (and the rest of the table) what I've been working with (again, unlikely given the ratio of my remaining stack to the pot size, but it's always better to win without showing your cards), or most likely he calls and I take the whole thing.
Obviously betting is the better choice here. So, I bet my last $800, he calls, and shows me his KT of SPADES for a king-high straight.
Knowing what his cards were, let me just replay the action after the turn from his perspective. I called his big raise behind one other caller (so I knew I would be facing at least two opponents on this hand), I put out a healthy bet in first position after the flop, and I put out another bet that pretty much pot-commits me after the turn. I am definitely NOT betting with nothing here. The cards at this point give him King-high, in other words nothing. He has no flush draw, although there is one on the board. The ONLY cards that can give him a likely winning hand are the four jacks in the deck. Let's be generous and say he's put me on a single queen, maybe something like AQ. In that event the three remaining kings could give him a POTENTIALLY winning hand. So, being generous, let's say he's got 7 cards that he thinks could give him the winner (the four jacks plus the three kings). Even so, that translates to about a 15% chance of hitting one of those cards, which is about a 5.5:1 underdog. My chip stack is basically gone - if he calls this bet, he's not going to be able to to extract much more out of me to take advantage of his good fortune. Therefore, putting in $2000 to win $5100 is NOT worth it, not by a logshot. Heck, putting in just $1000 to win that same $5100 wouldn't be worth it, and again that's assuming that I just had the queen (and, of course, no king). And yet he called - and hit. And my time in the tournament was over.
This hand had me practically screaming at the computer. Suckouts happen all the time in FTP - you go all-in with AA vs. 95 offsuit and they beat you with a straight - it happens and you move on, secure in the knowledge that if you had it to do all over again, you would do it the same way. Some of them, like this one, just stick with you.
Of course, for every one of these losses, there's also two losses that I genuinely deserved, either because I made a mistake, I was bored and/or impatient, or someone simply played better than me. I've identified some key leaks in my game, although I've discovered that it's a lot easier to identify a leak in your game than it is to fix it, which is weird - I thought just finding them would be the problem. Maybe I'll get to that in another post, but this one has taken more time and energy than I planned, and even so I haven't written the post I meant to write in the first place when I started this one - that post will be next...
Saturday, February 07, 2009
The law
So, I'm watching the Daily Show (available streaming online, sooooo awesome although I do wonder why on earth Viacom allows it to happen since they can't make any money from it), and there's a big section about the stimulus package and how the Senate's debating it. Which led me to an interesting question - I've always wondered why it's possible and even common for a bill to have a seemingly unrelated rider, and how that comes to be. Although I don't live in the U.S. anymore, I try to somewhat keep up with the news, and as I recall the stimulus package was turned from a 3- or 4-page document from the Fed to a bloated legal behemoth. And now, of course, the thing's got to get debated, but I'm getting distracted - back to the original question:
How are these riders getting through? It seems that both parties in both houses are guilty of this - how do they get away with it? For example, check this story for a Democratic abuse, or just look at how the Real ID act came into existence (although there are maaaany examples to choose from, these just popped up first in Google for me). I also found this gem of an answer where an Irishman asks this question in plain and simple terms, the response to which is a (admittedly pretty good) summary of the two legislative houses and their functions and interactions. Later on, as an update, someone points out "nice explanation, but you didn't answer the question" and the response is "It happens, deal with it". Nice. Thanks for making me read your summary of the legislative branch, asshat.
Anyway, any legal types or those who hang out with legal types or especially those with hard-working friends in Washington, please feel free to let me know how things like the Real ID act (or, if you don't want to pick on Republicans, use this as an example) can make it into seemingly unrelated bills. I don't recall this part of the process being described when I received my early education about law...
How are these riders getting through? It seems that both parties in both houses are guilty of this - how do they get away with it? For example, check this story for a Democratic abuse, or just look at how the Real ID act came into existence (although there are maaaany examples to choose from, these just popped up first in Google for me). I also found this gem of an answer where an Irishman asks this question in plain and simple terms, the response to which is a (admittedly pretty good) summary of the two legislative houses and their functions and interactions. Later on, as an update, someone points out "nice explanation, but you didn't answer the question" and the response is "It happens, deal with it". Nice. Thanks for making me read your summary of the legislative branch, asshat.
Anyway, any legal types or those who hang out with legal types or especially those with hard-working friends in Washington, please feel free to let me know how things like the Real ID act (or, if you don't want to pick on Republicans, use this as an example) can make it into seemingly unrelated bills. I don't recall this part of the process being described when I received my early education about law...
Monday, February 02, 2009
Comments about Hulu
Well, every time there's any sort of article / press release / etc about Hulu, there are always a boatload of people squawking about how they can't watch it in their non-U.S. country and how Hulu is a bunch of evil bastards who don't think that anybody outside of the U.S. even matters and it's all so damn inconsiderate of them to block stuff. Well, if you've read ramblings about distribution contracts and such, then you know that the true reason is that those distribution contracts I talked about only apply to the country in which they're made, and Hulu was created by two media companies who have distribution contracts in the U.S. (and not outside of it). One comment I recently read on one of these bitch sessions:
That having been said, the amount of work required to make Hulu functional outside of the U.S. would not be insurmountable. Without divulging anything that could even be considered proprietary, let me just say that Hulu restricts playback based on the location as determined by your IP address. Some foreigners circumvent that by finding an available U.S.-based proxy and piping Hulu through that, although that sucks up the proxy's bandwidth pretty darn quick. At any rate, the problem isn't so much the technical aspect, but rather that each different country would require:
1) Checking to make sure that the piece of content was licensed to be played in that country
2) Determining who was the licensed distributor for that country (i.e. who gets paid when we roll an ad)
3) Making an ad call specifically for that region (i.e. an ad in the local language etc).
Of course, there are also other problems, such as audio tracks - programming in most countries is dubbed as opposed to subtitled - there are exceptions of course (for example, if memory serves correctly, most content is subtitled in the Netherlands, whereas almost all content is dubbed in Spain), but that means that you have to, at the very least, have a corresponding CC file for the local language, and more likely you need to have an audio track in the local language. This is assuming, of course, that you're determined to use the same video file for all locales, as opposed to just having multiple copies with different languages.
What I'm getting at is that there's more to it than might be apparent at first blush, but it's not impossible. I think that if Hulu wanted to bring their content to a new market (say, for instance, GERMANY), then their best strategy would be to simply create a German version of the site, more or less from scratch. I know it can be done, and probably in a matter of a few months! Of course, that's only addressing the technical hurdles - I think that the business side of it would be the really difficult part.
I'm also completely ignoring the distribution partner aspects (did you know that Hulu content is available on AOL, Yahoo, MSN Video, Fancast, and MySpace video?), which have helped drive traffic to Hulu - even after it seemed like everybody and their brother on the Internet knew about Hulu, I still only had about a 25% success rate when I talked about it in meatspace.
At any rate, speaking as an expat, I didn't really appreciate all of the instant gratification services available for my entertainment on the Internets until they were gone. Hulu truly is fantastic, as is the Netflix instant viewing. I can only hope that markets in other countries start following suit.
I love how every article about problems in the USA is flooded by a horde of foreigners claiming how glad they are proud to live in whatever country they are from. But when we have something minor and stupid like hulu they start clamoring about how they have some right to access it.
We have to put up with all the crap here, let us be able to stream old episodes of Airwolf in peace
That having been said, the amount of work required to make Hulu functional outside of the U.S. would not be insurmountable. Without divulging anything that could even be considered proprietary, let me just say that Hulu restricts playback based on the location as determined by your IP address. Some foreigners circumvent that by finding an available U.S.-based proxy and piping Hulu through that, although that sucks up the proxy's bandwidth pretty darn quick. At any rate, the problem isn't so much the technical aspect, but rather that each different country would require:
1) Checking to make sure that the piece of content was licensed to be played in that country
2) Determining who was the licensed distributor for that country (i.e. who gets paid when we roll an ad)
3) Making an ad call specifically for that region (i.e. an ad in the local language etc).
Of course, there are also other problems, such as audio tracks - programming in most countries is dubbed as opposed to subtitled - there are exceptions of course (for example, if memory serves correctly, most content is subtitled in the Netherlands, whereas almost all content is dubbed in Spain), but that means that you have to, at the very least, have a corresponding CC file for the local language, and more likely you need to have an audio track in the local language. This is assuming, of course, that you're determined to use the same video file for all locales, as opposed to just having multiple copies with different languages.
What I'm getting at is that there's more to it than might be apparent at first blush, but it's not impossible. I think that if Hulu wanted to bring their content to a new market (say, for instance, GERMANY), then their best strategy would be to simply create a German version of the site, more or less from scratch. I know it can be done, and probably in a matter of a few months! Of course, that's only addressing the technical hurdles - I think that the business side of it would be the really difficult part.
I'm also completely ignoring the distribution partner aspects (did you know that Hulu content is available on AOL, Yahoo, MSN Video, Fancast, and MySpace video?), which have helped drive traffic to Hulu - even after it seemed like everybody and their brother on the Internet knew about Hulu, I still only had about a 25% success rate when I talked about it in meatspace.
At any rate, speaking as an expat, I didn't really appreciate all of the instant gratification services available for my entertainment on the Internets until they were gone. Hulu truly is fantastic, as is the Netflix instant viewing. I can only hope that markets in other countries start following suit.
TV in Munich
OK, this is probably the simplest of the topics that have been burning a hole in my brain, and I thought it might be interesting for other folks.
I don't think I need to explain to anyone how TV works in the U.S., but just for kicks, let's establish a few ideas:
In Germany, the model is very similar, with a couple of big differences; first off, the list of TV stations that are available "for free" is much larger, due to a ubiquitous cable infrastructure. I have NO idea how this came to pass, but for some reason every apartment building has a cable box that's rigged to a central receiver; if you have a TV, you just plug it into the existing cable jack and away you go, with about 30 channels available through the standard receiver. The actual cable infrastructure is maintained by the building, and a small part of your common charges go into that. I'm not sure how it works for houses, because we didn't consider a house when looking to move.
Anyway, this is what Germans refer to as "free" TV. It's all paid for the same way as OTA broadcasts in America, although just for fun, there are also a few public stations similar to the BBC, that are supported by a TV tax. Merely owning a television in Germany makes you subject to the TV tax, which is somewhere around 10 Euros per month. Similarly, merely owning a car radio also makes you subject to a car radio tax (something like 1-2 Euros a month). If, like me, your TV is directly connected to your computer, or your radio is directly connected to your iPod, that doesn't matter - you still have to pay the tax.
The TV tax pays for the government-owned stations, and the rest of the stations are supported by ad revenue. The system still works the same way - producers pitch / auction shows to distributors, and the distributors sell ad time on their stations.
There are also a lot of "pay TV" stations - some of these are HBO-style, but most are stations that cater to a specific crowd, such as sports fans or fans of a particular genre.
Here's where things get strange; I work for a major media company that, as described above, is also merged with a production company. In America, this company is one of the big networks. In Germany, it's a collection of Pay TV stations. Even stranger, the big shows that come out of the production company are shown by the most popular Free TV networks, and the stations from my company primarily syndicate older, genre-specific programs. Since our networks are all Pay TV, the viewership is relatively limited, and we can't make much money from advertisers - the majority of our revenue comes from subscription fees. To make things even weirder, there's one person working here for the production side of the house, and he's effectively in his own little world, because his responsibility is to sell the shows, and our little networks can't even come close to matching the offers of the Free TV stations.
This, to me, seems totally bizarre. Effectively, we're just a small collection of Pay TV stations, and we make enough money to stay afloat but not do anything really ground-breaking. Up until very recently, we also owned a single Free TV network, but we just spun it off. For some reason, management has decided that the best course of action is to focus on our Pay TV properties, but I have no idea why we're doing that. I'd like to stick my nose into this, but right now I'm a little busy with my current project for the U.S./India.
Anyway, I just thought that was interesting. Next time I'll tackle the really big topic of TV distribution and independent production, which is something that's been even more on my mind than the operations of our little station collective in Munich.
I don't think I need to explain to anyone how TV works in the U.S., but just for kicks, let's establish a few ideas:
- Today, TV generally costs money. You pay X dollars for basic cable, with X being a function of local monopoly and economy (i.e. in NYC you get raped by Time Warner, in other areas you have multiple choices of providers for a reasonable amount of money). You can also pay extra for premium channels like HBO, Showtime, every NFL game played that season, whatever. Typically these come in bundles.
- Theoretically there are still TV broadcasts coming over the air (OTA). There are a few networks (USA, Comedy Central, CW, Food Network, Lifetime, etc) that have original programming but are not available over the air, but generally the big boys are available, at least in parts of the country, over the standard antenna. However, NOBODY uses this except for the folks on the two ends of the spectrum; folks who are absolutely too poor to have paid cable (and from a lot of books and newspapers I've read, cable / satellite is one of the things that even people in relative poverty find a way to pay for), and the techno-geeks who know that the OTA HD quality is still superior to anything delivered over a wire. OTA is free to the consumer, and is supported by advertising revenue.
- There are quite a few players in the making and broadcasting of a TV show. There are, of course, the producers - the folks actually making the shows. They're responsible for the writing, casting, shooting, editing, etc etc. The producers' final product is a tape of an episode of the show, which then goes to the distributor. To give an example, the show "Smallville" is produced by Warner Brothers, and distributed by the CW (generally, when a company owns both a production and distribution company - i.e. NBC/Universal or Fox/20th C - , the two go hand in hand, but that's not the way it always works). The distributor's job is, as the name implies, to get the content into the eyes and ears of the people.
- As you can guess, the money for all of this comes from advertisers. The business of securing and delivering advertising for a distribution network is very complex, but effectively it boils down to paying for popularity. If everyone does their job right, the show is properly marketed (which, incidentally, is generally the responsibility of the distributor), it gets a high viewership, the advertisers are happy, the distribution network is able to charge more money for ads the next time around, and the producer is able to sell the next set of episodes to the distributor for a higher amount. Incidentally, note that almost ALL the money comes from the advertisers. There are other revenue channels such as online distribution, iTunes, DVDs and other merchandise, but the vast majority of the revenue comes from the on-air advertising.
- The folks responsible for the actual delivery (DirectTV, cable company, or broadcast station) also play a part. Generally, their relationship is a symbiotic one for distributors; more delivery channels means more viewers, and when a popular distribution channel is available on the delivery mechanism (for example, when TNT is available on DirectTV or Time Warner cable), it makes the product more attractive to consumers who are willing to pay to have that TV station delivered to them.
In Germany, the model is very similar, with a couple of big differences; first off, the list of TV stations that are available "for free" is much larger, due to a ubiquitous cable infrastructure. I have NO idea how this came to pass, but for some reason every apartment building has a cable box that's rigged to a central receiver; if you have a TV, you just plug it into the existing cable jack and away you go, with about 30 channels available through the standard receiver. The actual cable infrastructure is maintained by the building, and a small part of your common charges go into that. I'm not sure how it works for houses, because we didn't consider a house when looking to move.
Anyway, this is what Germans refer to as "free" TV. It's all paid for the same way as OTA broadcasts in America, although just for fun, there are also a few public stations similar to the BBC, that are supported by a TV tax. Merely owning a television in Germany makes you subject to the TV tax, which is somewhere around 10 Euros per month. Similarly, merely owning a car radio also makes you subject to a car radio tax (something like 1-2 Euros a month). If, like me, your TV is directly connected to your computer, or your radio is directly connected to your iPod, that doesn't matter - you still have to pay the tax.
The TV tax pays for the government-owned stations, and the rest of the stations are supported by ad revenue. The system still works the same way - producers pitch / auction shows to distributors, and the distributors sell ad time on their stations.
There are also a lot of "pay TV" stations - some of these are HBO-style, but most are stations that cater to a specific crowd, such as sports fans or fans of a particular genre.
Here's where things get strange; I work for a major media company that, as described above, is also merged with a production company. In America, this company is one of the big networks. In Germany, it's a collection of Pay TV stations. Even stranger, the big shows that come out of the production company are shown by the most popular Free TV networks, and the stations from my company primarily syndicate older, genre-specific programs. Since our networks are all Pay TV, the viewership is relatively limited, and we can't make much money from advertisers - the majority of our revenue comes from subscription fees. To make things even weirder, there's one person working here for the production side of the house, and he's effectively in his own little world, because his responsibility is to sell the shows, and our little networks can't even come close to matching the offers of the Free TV stations.
This, to me, seems totally bizarre. Effectively, we're just a small collection of Pay TV stations, and we make enough money to stay afloat but not do anything really ground-breaking. Up until very recently, we also owned a single Free TV network, but we just spun it off. For some reason, management has decided that the best course of action is to focus on our Pay TV properties, but I have no idea why we're doing that. I'd like to stick my nose into this, but right now I'm a little busy with my current project for the U.S./India.
Anyway, I just thought that was interesting. Next time I'll tackle the really big topic of TV distribution and independent production, which is something that's been even more on my mind than the operations of our little station collective in Munich.
Lots of thoughts
I've had a ton of thoughts spinning through my head lately, so this is a bunch of totally random stuff, each of which could be its own post. However, I just don't have time for all that so here's the outline form:
So, as you can see, lots going on in my little brain. Actually, now that I've started whetting my appetite, I think I want to tackle one of those "this could be an entire post" topics. Stay tuned.
- Not such good luck with the online poker lately - can't seem to get my head into it, and experience has shown that when I'm not into it, it's not a good idea to play. Still, I forced myself somewhat, since Clau is out I don't need to worry about scheduling or anything like that. However, after stinking up the joint, I've decided to take a little break. Of course, maybe making that decision will get me in the mood again. Who knows.
- Been thinking a lot about my pathetic lack of ability to be a long-distance friend. I'm soooo terrible about keeping in touch with folks - I still keep in occasional contact with most of my friends in California and Santa Barbara, but by occasional I mean "extremely infrequent". And, now, I feel myself losing touch with the folks in New York. Sometimes I wonder if moving here was really the right thing to do. We moved to Munich because there are a lot of things that it provides that New York simply can't - a decent quality of life, easy access to all of Europe, carreer opportunities for Claudia, an opportunity for me to learn another language and culture, a chance to have a two-bedroom apartment, and the list goes on and on. But, one of the things that makes New York great is that the best of the best go there, in everything, and as a result you have the opportunity to meet a LOT of highly intelligent, motivated, interesting people. Over here, not so much; of course, there are smart and fun people wherever you go; I had a lot of similar friends in Oakland (most of whom moved to New York at one point or another!), and I eventually managed to find some similar folks in Santa Barbara, so I'm not hopeless as far as Munich is concerned, but it's certainly not as easy to find good peeps here.
- Actually, reading over that last part, I don't know if it's entirely true; Claudia has managed to find quite a few nice, interesting folks here - even her co-workers are a pretty good crowd. I guess it's more that I haven't felt like we really clicked with anyone yet - for me, the top two classes of friends are folks I like and admire, and am happy to have a beer or conversation with, and there's the top class of folks where there's just that click, and every time you see them it's a blast. We've met plenty of folks from the first category, but none from the second.
- My employer in Munich is soooo different from New York. This will have to wait for another post, because there are a lot of complexities and details.
- As often happens when Claudia goes on a long trip without me, I have re-discovered Starcraft for the umpteenth time. Nothing, but nothing, can suck me into a temporal black hole like that game; it's mental crack cocaine - I can play for hours and hardly be aware of the time. I spent most of the weekend absorbed in the Terran and Zerg missions (yes, I've finished the game before, but I honestly get just as much pleasure every time I play from the top, at least until the end of the Protoss missions when things get ridiculously hard).
- While browsing through Miro, I came across The Hayley Project. What a cool idea - of course, a lot of folks are comparing it to lonelygirl15, although I watched a couple of LG15 episodes (way back in the day, before it broke that it was all staged) and thought "why is this popular again?" As with so many other things, my interest in things like THP is not so much for the thing itself (about 75% of the acting and dialogue is good, the other 25% is pretty amateurish), as much as for the idea. To me, it's the semi-grassroots version of Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog, which had some budget and (let's face it) some serious talent behind it. Again, musings on this could fill an entire post (and probably will soon).
So, as you can see, lots going on in my little brain. Actually, now that I've started whetting my appetite, I think I want to tackle one of those "this could be an entire post" topics. Stay tuned.
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