One cool thing about youtube is that it's helping lots of folks push the multitracking envelope - like for example I didn't realize that this was possible:
I mean, that kid is REALLY good on all 4 parts.
Or, another one is this:
And while admittedly there are different folks singing, the (18-year old!) kid playing all the instruments is unreal.
More to come later, just been busy with otehr stuff...
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Simply Red
Forgot to write about this - we just got back from the Simply Red concert. I didn't really want to go but I'm glad I did - it was a good concert.
The lead singer looks pretty old but he was absolutely phenomenal - I don't think I've ever sung that good in my life and I doubt I ever will. Every single note was spot on, and he just sounded amazing.
In other news, Clau and I realized that we live in a fantastic location for going to concerts - 20 minutes on the subway and we're there. Nice.
The lead singer looks pretty old but he was absolutely phenomenal - I don't think I've ever sung that good in my life and I doubt I ever will. Every single note was spot on, and he just sounded amazing.
In other news, Clau and I realized that we live in a fantastic location for going to concerts - 20 minutes on the subway and we're there. Nice.
Vacation!
Finally taking that vacation - we leave for Thailand tomorrow, two glorious weeks of solitude, beach, tropical fruits, and scuba diving. Really, really looking forward to this...
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Poker hand on my mind
OK, just got back from Salzburg, among many other things I went to the casino last night and played some poker. One hand in particular sticks with me.
The table's a mixed group, 7-handed. Twice have I have watched one fellow get all-in when he had the other opponent absolutely crushed, and the other guy sucked out on him. One time a opponent hit a two-outer on the river after being put all-in on the turn, and the second time the opponent actually hit a runner-runner full-house. I don't even know what you call that, when the opponent needs two specific cards on the turn and river and hits them both. I call it "time to call it a night" but I'm sure there's a more technical term for it.
So anyway, I'm playing 2/4 NLH, the only game available at this swanky place, and I've got maybe 120 in chips in front of me. I look down at AKo (that's Ace-King off-suit) in about 4th position. The aforementioned guy in 1st position limps in for 4 along with the fellow behind him, I raise it to 12, everybody folds, and they both call the 12. Flop comes Jh-4c-Th. I now have two over-cards and a gutshot straight draw. Not particularly great, but not terrible, and even if one of these guys has paired the board I probably have 10 cards that will give me a better hand (any A, K, or Q). Both players check, I c-bet out 30 (about 2/3 of the pot), unlucky bastard smooth calls, the other guy bails out.
Turn is a rag, something like 5d. Unlucky fellow checks. The only thing that really makes a lot of sense here is that he's chasing the flush or less likely a straight of his own. I figure if he's chasing the flush, I'm gonna make it totally unreasonable for him to do so. I bet out 60 this time, which is a bit more than 1/2 the pot (leaving me with only about 35 in front of me), and he...calls. So this doesn't make any sense, unless he's just willing to chase the flush at any price. I mean, I know not everyone thinks about odds and all that, but I saw this guy make spectacular shoves before and get screwed, so I have no idea what he's doing. River card is a very unfortunate Qh, giving me my straight, and most likely giving him the flush. He looks at me and says "I put you all in". At this point it's about 35 more to call, and there's already about 200 in the pot, which means that I kinda have to call, even though I fully expect to get beat. I shove my chips in and patiently wait for him to show his hand. Eventually he turns over two tens, for a flopped set. I guess he misread my immediate facial expression (confusion) for defeat, but I very promptly turned over my AK for the rivered straight. He gets a completely disgusted look on his face and starts going off about folks sucking out on him on the river. I said something like, "sorry man, but I had to make that call".
Here's what really confuses me. Thinking about this from his perspective, what should he have assumed I had?
Pre-flop - I've been playing pretty damn tight at this table, so I gotta have something pretty good to be raising on top of two limpers in middle position here - at minimum a med-high pocket pair (like maybe 99) or else two paint cards like AK, AQ, AJ. When the flop comes with two high-ish cards and two hearts and I c-bet, and he's flopped a set, then by far the best thing for him to do is to raise me. Actually, he probably should have bet out in the first place, but check-call is about the worst play he can possibly do. Best to just bet out or check-raise after the flop and put the pressure on me to decide if it's worth it or not. Maybe I've got a flush draw, in which case I'll either call or fold, maybe I've got two overcards, in which case I'll either call or fold (but more likely fold), maybe I've got JJ and I'll re-raise him, and maybe I've flopped a pair or already had an overpair, in which case I'll come along like a lamb to the slaughter. If he just check-calls he's really got very little idea, particularly when it's a c-bet. But, I'm guessing he wanted to milk it - not a good idea with a textured flop (two connected cards and two hearts). Same goes for after the turn when a completely unconnected card showed up - he should have just put the pressure on and forced me to go all-in or fold right there. Now, admittedly he probably thinks I've got an overpair here, so maybe he's just letting me hang myself with my own rope, but a set's not enough of a powerhouse hand to get away with that, unless you've got a completely unconnected board and you've got top set, and even then you're living a bit dangerously.
The final big screwup is when that last card shows up. Puts three connected hearts on the board, and should definitely be a warning sign. I could realistically have a few hands that just connected, like QQ or AK or even AKh for the royal flush (I didn't, but I could have!). So, at that point, perhaps he should have played it ever so slightly safer and just checked, figuring that he'll call if I push all-in. Or, to put it another way, what could I possibly have that would mean that I would fold to the final all-in bet (nothing that I can think of) vs. what might I reasonably have that would beat him?
So, to summarize, he played that hand terribly. I think he got a lot of sympathy based on what other folks had seen before, but anyone who seriously thought about it would probably also conclude that he did a bad job of it.
Incidentally, the session went really interestingly. I started with 125 in chips, at one point was down to about 60 or 70, mostly from just giving away the blinds when the cards were not coming and from a couple of times where my promising pre-flop hands went nowhere. I lost a quick 20 on AcQc when the flop came down with Kc-xQs-x and two cowboys started getting into a pissing match (but at least I got out of the way quickly, needless to say I would have lost it all if I had stayed in) and was starting to wonder if I wanted to try to use my ATM card in Austria or if I should just call it a night. With about 40 or 50 left in my stack I limped into a pot in 1st position with Ac7c with about 5 other players, the BB popped it up to 12, three players call including me. We see a four-way flop of A-3-7 rainbow, BB checks, I push all-in (less than the size of the pot, but the only thing that would make this a bad call is if someone happens to have 33 or 77, and hopefully someone has Ax and wants to come along for the ride), everybody folds to BB, BB calls me with KK, meaning that there are exactly two cards remaining in the deck that can save him, or to put it another way making him about a 10-to-1 underdog. Amazingly he does not suck out on me (this guy had been on a serious suckout roll and I think everyone was actually expecting a king to show up), and suddenly I'm back to about my starting stack. That and the hand I described earlier put me at about 325 when the casino shut down at 2:30am. I got there at about 12:30am so it was definitely a good session!
I just love playing live - it's so much more fun than playing on the computer. I met a young guy there who lives in Munich, he said he comes down once in a while since it's only about 75 minutes away. I might have to start making Salzburg road trips more often.
The table's a mixed group, 7-handed. Twice have I have watched one fellow get all-in when he had the other opponent absolutely crushed, and the other guy sucked out on him. One time a opponent hit a two-outer on the river after being put all-in on the turn, and the second time the opponent actually hit a runner-runner full-house. I don't even know what you call that, when the opponent needs two specific cards on the turn and river and hits them both. I call it "time to call it a night" but I'm sure there's a more technical term for it.
So anyway, I'm playing 2/4 NLH, the only game available at this swanky place, and I've got maybe 120 in chips in front of me. I look down at AKo (that's Ace-King off-suit) in about 4th position. The aforementioned guy in 1st position limps in for 4 along with the fellow behind him, I raise it to 12, everybody folds, and they both call the 12. Flop comes Jh-4c-Th. I now have two over-cards and a gutshot straight draw. Not particularly great, but not terrible, and even if one of these guys has paired the board I probably have 10 cards that will give me a better hand (any A, K, or Q). Both players check, I c-bet out 30 (about 2/3 of the pot), unlucky bastard smooth calls, the other guy bails out.
Turn is a rag, something like 5d. Unlucky fellow checks. The only thing that really makes a lot of sense here is that he's chasing the flush or less likely a straight of his own. I figure if he's chasing the flush, I'm gonna make it totally unreasonable for him to do so. I bet out 60 this time, which is a bit more than 1/2 the pot (leaving me with only about 35 in front of me), and he...calls. So this doesn't make any sense, unless he's just willing to chase the flush at any price. I mean, I know not everyone thinks about odds and all that, but I saw this guy make spectacular shoves before and get screwed, so I have no idea what he's doing. River card is a very unfortunate Qh, giving me my straight, and most likely giving him the flush. He looks at me and says "I put you all in". At this point it's about 35 more to call, and there's already about 200 in the pot, which means that I kinda have to call, even though I fully expect to get beat. I shove my chips in and patiently wait for him to show his hand. Eventually he turns over two tens, for a flopped set. I guess he misread my immediate facial expression (confusion) for defeat, but I very promptly turned over my AK for the rivered straight. He gets a completely disgusted look on his face and starts going off about folks sucking out on him on the river. I said something like, "sorry man, but I had to make that call".
Here's what really confuses me. Thinking about this from his perspective, what should he have assumed I had?
Pre-flop - I've been playing pretty damn tight at this table, so I gotta have something pretty good to be raising on top of two limpers in middle position here - at minimum a med-high pocket pair (like maybe 99) or else two paint cards like AK, AQ, AJ. When the flop comes with two high-ish cards and two hearts and I c-bet, and he's flopped a set, then by far the best thing for him to do is to raise me. Actually, he probably should have bet out in the first place, but check-call is about the worst play he can possibly do. Best to just bet out or check-raise after the flop and put the pressure on me to decide if it's worth it or not. Maybe I've got a flush draw, in which case I'll either call or fold, maybe I've got two overcards, in which case I'll either call or fold (but more likely fold), maybe I've got JJ and I'll re-raise him, and maybe I've flopped a pair or already had an overpair, in which case I'll come along like a lamb to the slaughter. If he just check-calls he's really got very little idea, particularly when it's a c-bet. But, I'm guessing he wanted to milk it - not a good idea with a textured flop (two connected cards and two hearts). Same goes for after the turn when a completely unconnected card showed up - he should have just put the pressure on and forced me to go all-in or fold right there. Now, admittedly he probably thinks I've got an overpair here, so maybe he's just letting me hang myself with my own rope, but a set's not enough of a powerhouse hand to get away with that, unless you've got a completely unconnected board and you've got top set, and even then you're living a bit dangerously.
The final big screwup is when that last card shows up. Puts three connected hearts on the board, and should definitely be a warning sign. I could realistically have a few hands that just connected, like QQ or AK or even AKh for the royal flush (I didn't, but I could have!). So, at that point, perhaps he should have played it ever so slightly safer and just checked, figuring that he'll call if I push all-in. Or, to put it another way, what could I possibly have that would mean that I would fold to the final all-in bet (nothing that I can think of) vs. what might I reasonably have that would beat him?
So, to summarize, he played that hand terribly. I think he got a lot of sympathy based on what other folks had seen before, but anyone who seriously thought about it would probably also conclude that he did a bad job of it.
Incidentally, the session went really interestingly. I started with 125 in chips, at one point was down to about 60 or 70, mostly from just giving away the blinds when the cards were not coming and from a couple of times where my promising pre-flop hands went nowhere. I lost a quick 20 on AcQc when the flop came down with Kc-xQs-x and two cowboys started getting into a pissing match (but at least I got out of the way quickly, needless to say I would have lost it all if I had stayed in) and was starting to wonder if I wanted to try to use my ATM card in Austria or if I should just call it a night. With about 40 or 50 left in my stack I limped into a pot in 1st position with Ac7c with about 5 other players, the BB popped it up to 12, three players call including me. We see a four-way flop of A-3-7 rainbow, BB checks, I push all-in (less than the size of the pot, but the only thing that would make this a bad call is if someone happens to have 33 or 77, and hopefully someone has Ax and wants to come along for the ride), everybody folds to BB, BB calls me with KK, meaning that there are exactly two cards remaining in the deck that can save him, or to put it another way making him about a 10-to-1 underdog. Amazingly he does not suck out on me (this guy had been on a serious suckout roll and I think everyone was actually expecting a king to show up), and suddenly I'm back to about my starting stack. That and the hand I described earlier put me at about 325 when the casino shut down at 2:30am. I got there at about 12:30am so it was definitely a good session!
I just love playing live - it's so much more fun than playing on the computer. I met a young guy there who lives in Munich, he said he comes down once in a while since it's only about 75 minutes away. I might have to start making Salzburg road trips more often.
Friday, May 08, 2009
Mashups
I am soooo into mashups. I really need to thank my buddy Matt for starting me on this road. You already saw the youtube mashups, which I still think is one of the most genius things ever. My buddy James shot me a link for this video and it's also brilliant. Here's the youtube version for those of you without facebook (the FB version is much higher quality, though):
Also on the mashup front, I may have mentioned earlier how in love I am with the 2007 Best of Bootie album. Go download it, it's free, and listen to "Funky Goes to Hollywood" or "Tequila Lip Gloss". I am constantly on the lookout for new and awesome mashups though, so send them my way if you have any good ones...
Also on the mashup front, I may have mentioned earlier how in love I am with the 2007 Best of Bootie album. Go download it, it's free, and listen to "Funky Goes to Hollywood" or "Tequila Lip Gloss". I am constantly on the lookout for new and awesome mashups though, so send them my way if you have any good ones...
Chillin' - gettin' paid
After the NDTV project finished, I've been doing probably an average of 3 hours of work per day, and the rest of the time is dedicated to cleaning, errands, catching up on blog posts and TV, etc. It's been grand.
My in-laws are in town for the next few weeks, then Claudia and I are heading to Thailand on vacation. We have booked ourselves into swanky places the whole way though - it's a total red-carpet situation and should be very relaxing.
After we get back from vacation, we have about a week free and then my mom will hopefully be coming to see us. She's never been to the continent before so I think she'll like it.
After that, we'll see. I really, really want to work out a trip back to the states, but that will probably have to wait until late August, since plane fares for June / early August are ludicrously high.
And, of course, at some point there will be another project! Till then, I'm mostly chillin' and gettin' paid...
My in-laws are in town for the next few weeks, then Claudia and I are heading to Thailand on vacation. We have booked ourselves into swanky places the whole way though - it's a total red-carpet situation and should be very relaxing.
After we get back from vacation, we have about a week free and then my mom will hopefully be coming to see us. She's never been to the continent before so I think she'll like it.
After that, we'll see. I really, really want to work out a trip back to the states, but that will probably have to wait until late August, since plane fares for June / early August are ludicrously high.
And, of course, at some point there will be another project! Till then, I'm mostly chillin' and gettin' paid...
Cars for po' folks
While they're not generally my type of folks, I have over the course of my many years become friends with some pretty right-wing people. Of these, a few (maybe 5-10) are people that I am truly happy to call my friends, the rest are folks who I ended up meeting or working with and occasionally keep in touch with for whatever reason.
So, a post from one of them (not one of the close friends) got me thinking - he was referencing this article (which in turn references this article) and he had this to say about it:
Out of the 200 families, 40 ended up losing the job within the first year but keeping the car. Out of those, 2 ended up re-employed and are no longer receiving welfare assistance. Out of the remaining 38, we're pretty sure that 15 of them intentionally gamed the program just to get the car. The rest, we don't know.
Out of the remaining 160 families, another 10 lost the job after the 1-year period was up and are back to full-time welfare assistance.
Out of the remaining 150, 100 families have been completely without state assistance since receiving the car. Out of those, 5 have risen to a family income of more than $60,000/year (or whatever middle-class benchmark you want to use), etc. etc.
To get most of that data would be a simple matter of looking up the case files of the folks who received cars - for the rest, you would have to talk to 200 families or case workers to catch the really interesting details (like, for example, that one guy who started his own business using the car and is now a successful entrepreneur, or those 10 families who realize that they were actually better off before they made the deal to get the car, and would gladly go back in time and reverse it if they could). Call it an average of 10 minutes per family / case worker, and you're talking 2000 minutes, or about 30 man-hours to get a decent picture of every single family who participated in the program - throw in another 40 hours (and I'm being pretty generous here - it's probably a lot fewer hours) to run data analysis and write a report on it, and you can have a detailed picture of this government program, what works, what doesn't work, and how it can be tuned to improve. Or, if the data is not at all encouraging, then maybe the program should be scrapped.
I've kinda lost momentum with this post due to being forced to work (gasp!) many times during the writing of it, so I'll stop here. I guess if I had to make a conclusion, it would be this: I expect people to be reasonably good at what they do, particularly when there's theoretically some sort of hurdle or test (like an election) that they need to pass in order to get the job. I would expect that folks who come up with programs like these would have a process and resources in place to determine the program's efficacy, hopefully accounting for some of the factors that can't easily be expressed quantitatively. Maybe everything I've described is already being done, but I'm guessing not...
So, a post from one of them (not one of the close friends) got me thinking - he was referencing this article (which in turn references this article) and he had this to say about it:
Disgusting. The state ought to have no part of this - I have no problem with private charities and enterprises taking up the cause of providing for those who are lacking the resources to get by, but tax dollars that are automatically deducted by payroll cannot and should not be used for this purpose. I'm having a hell of a time paying for the car I have already and saving for a minivan, I'm not about to go buy the poor people in my neighborhood cars!!!Which, sadly, is so often the conservative approach to things.So, my response to his post (which, due to a fat-finger, I didn't send):
From TFA: "Kehoe defended the program, saying the state breaks even by cutting welfare payments to the family - about $6,000 a year."I continued on with some other stuff (before I accidentally erased it), but you get the gist. I often wonder about government programs; I mean, it's impossible to account for all the ramifications of these things when you're talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of people, but at least small program like this, you could try! 65 cars per year, the program's been running since 2006, so let's call it 200 cars so far to make the math easier. Spend 10 minutes following up on each family that received a car, you might come up with something like this:
So I guess it evens out, although since there's apparantly a 20% recidivism rate (for lack of a better term), it still ends up being about $1200/yr/car, and at the rate of 65 cars/year, that's still a net cost of $78k/year for the program.
Also from TFA: "To get the cars, they must be unable to reach work by public transportation and have a clean driving record. The program is only available to families on welfare with children."
You know, this always bothers me; people come up with ideas like this, and in general I think they're a good idea, but could we PLEASE try to come up with a control group?!? I mean, I'm guessing there are a lot more families that qualify for the program than actually receive a car, so can we try to get some stats on families that qualified but for whatever reason (didn't ask for a car, a car wasn't available, etc) didn't get a car. Take the differences in control group vs. families who got cars, and if the cars statistically cost less than the amount of welfare payments you're _not_ giving to the families who receive them, then it's a good deal. If not, then it's a expense that needs to be seriously examined. Why can't we ever get data on these things?!?
Out of the 200 families, 40 ended up losing the job within the first year but keeping the car. Out of those, 2 ended up re-employed and are no longer receiving welfare assistance. Out of the remaining 38, we're pretty sure that 15 of them intentionally gamed the program just to get the car. The rest, we don't know.
Out of the remaining 160 families, another 10 lost the job after the 1-year period was up and are back to full-time welfare assistance.
Out of the remaining 150, 100 families have been completely without state assistance since receiving the car. Out of those, 5 have risen to a family income of more than $60,000/year (or whatever middle-class benchmark you want to use), etc. etc.
To get most of that data would be a simple matter of looking up the case files of the folks who received cars - for the rest, you would have to talk to 200 families or case workers to catch the really interesting details (like, for example, that one guy who started his own business using the car and is now a successful entrepreneur, or those 10 families who realize that they were actually better off before they made the deal to get the car, and would gladly go back in time and reverse it if they could). Call it an average of 10 minutes per family / case worker, and you're talking 2000 minutes, or about 30 man-hours to get a decent picture of every single family who participated in the program - throw in another 40 hours (and I'm being pretty generous here - it's probably a lot fewer hours) to run data analysis and write a report on it, and you can have a detailed picture of this government program, what works, what doesn't work, and how it can be tuned to improve. Or, if the data is not at all encouraging, then maybe the program should be scrapped.
I've kinda lost momentum with this post due to being forced to work (gasp!) many times during the writing of it, so I'll stop here. I guess if I had to make a conclusion, it would be this: I expect people to be reasonably good at what they do, particularly when there's theoretically some sort of hurdle or test (like an election) that they need to pass in order to get the job. I would expect that folks who come up with programs like these would have a process and resources in place to determine the program's efficacy, hopefully accounting for some of the factors that can't easily be expressed quantitatively. Maybe everything I've described is already being done, but I'm guessing not...
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Just about done
So, we launched at the beginning of this week and it's been surprisingly smooth since then. Some issues have come up, but nothing major and nothing that has anything to do with me. I think I'll actually get a couple of days free before I need to head back home.
Since launch I've gotten three consecutive nights of 6+ hours sleep, and it's been fantastic. I feel like a totally new person - I was so stressed that I was about to bite everyone's head off, and I was letting the pressure of the project get to me. My work actually started to suffer - I made a few rookie mistakes because I just wasn't thinking clearly. But, we pulled it off in the end and everyone's happy - the customer, my boss, his boss, his boss, etc. Overall it was a definitely success.
I definitely have some wrap-up to do, but I'm hoping to focus today solely on the stuff that has to get done while I'm here. If possible, I'll also write up some "buttons" in case of emergencies (like breaking news events) so that I rather than talking folks through the process of changing settings, I can talk them through pushing the button. And, if I get that done, then I can just chill here in Delhi and enjoy myself on Thursday and Friday! W00t!
Oddly enough, I have no desire to see the Taj Mahal. I do, however, want to get a feeling for some local culture other than this office building (although it has been interesting to work in an industrial area, where there is not another blond head ANYWHERE). So, assuming I actually get done today, I will check out Delhi for the next couple of days - or, I might just check out the pool and the television tomorrow and check out Delhi Friday with a coworker. At any rate, it feels good to be done!
And, of course, starting Saturday I have to focus on all the personal life that fell by the wayside for the last few months...
Since launch I've gotten three consecutive nights of 6+ hours sleep, and it's been fantastic. I feel like a totally new person - I was so stressed that I was about to bite everyone's head off, and I was letting the pressure of the project get to me. My work actually started to suffer - I made a few rookie mistakes because I just wasn't thinking clearly. But, we pulled it off in the end and everyone's happy - the customer, my boss, his boss, his boss, etc. Overall it was a definitely success.
I definitely have some wrap-up to do, but I'm hoping to focus today solely on the stuff that has to get done while I'm here. If possible, I'll also write up some "buttons" in case of emergencies (like breaking news events) so that I rather than talking folks through the process of changing settings, I can talk them through pushing the button. And, if I get that done, then I can just chill here in Delhi and enjoy myself on Thursday and Friday! W00t!
Oddly enough, I have no desire to see the Taj Mahal. I do, however, want to get a feeling for some local culture other than this office building (although it has been interesting to work in an industrial area, where there is not another blond head ANYWHERE). So, assuming I actually get done today, I will check out Delhi for the next couple of days - or, I might just check out the pool and the television tomorrow and check out Delhi Friday with a coworker. At any rate, it feels good to be done!
And, of course, starting Saturday I have to focus on all the personal life that fell by the wayside for the last few months...
Sunday, April 05, 2009
so f'in foreign!
Wow, things are different here. Little things I hadn't seen in quite some time, like extremely persistent beggars, most of them old women and small children, some of whom are trying the old trick of "you distract him, I'll pick his pocket". Thankfully I'm wearing relatively tight jeans and not carrying much with me, anyway.
Just ordered room service from the hotel, ordered a drink called "Jal Jeera" billed as a "refreshing summer drink". It tasted like spiced saltwater, but I figured "hey, I should see this through - maybe I'll acquire the taste by the time I get to the bottom of it." Needless to say, that didn't happen, and as I finished it I found myself wondering where the water to make it came from. I guess we'll find out tomrorow.
Lots of other interesting things so far; lots of programming, particularly soaps, seems to be in a strange Hindi-English pidgin. Of course there are no subtitles for either language, which makes me wonder; does everyone who watches TV speak both languages?
Tomorrow I start in the office - even though the travel time has sucked, it's actually been pretty good to not be working for a couple of days....
Just ordered room service from the hotel, ordered a drink called "Jal Jeera" billed as a "refreshing summer drink". It tasted like spiced saltwater, but I figured "hey, I should see this through - maybe I'll acquire the taste by the time I get to the bottom of it." Needless to say, that didn't happen, and as I finished it I found myself wondering where the water to make it came from. I guess we'll find out tomrorow.
Lots of other interesting things so far; lots of programming, particularly soaps, seems to be in a strange Hindi-English pidgin. Of course there are no subtitles for either language, which makes me wonder; does everyone who watches TV speak both languages?
Tomorrow I start in the office - even though the travel time has sucked, it's actually been pretty good to not be working for a couple of days....
Thursday, March 12, 2009
My life lately
Yes, I have basically dropped off the face of the earth as far as friends and family are concerned. Here's why:
- Work - the project I'm currently working on is in full balls-out git 'er done mode. Clau was in England a couple of weeks ago and I literally worked from 7am till about 2am for that week (which, in retrospect, was stupid, because I'm still not fully recovered and there is still much to do). This crazy time started about a month ago and will continue for about another 6 weeks. After which Claudia's parents come to visit for a month. After which Claudia and I will take a well-deserved vacation. The vacation thought keeps me going.
- Moving - that week that I worked from 7am-2am? That was the last week in February, and I kinda lied - I only worked Mon-Thu, and on Friday the movers FINALLY came and brought our stuff from NYC to our new apartment. WooHoo!
- Settling in. I believe I mentioned this before, but in Germany an apartment is basically just an empty shell - it's up to you to fill it. As of last night, we officially have a full-on Ikea kitchen and closet, which puts us at about 30% done with filling the shell. Couch and sofa are on their way and hopefully will arrive before Claudia's parents. We still need a desk for my office, a linen closet, shelves for the bathroom, etc etc the list goes on and on. All of this, in addition to being outrageously expensive, is absolutely exhausting.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Comics times table
I don't know why I think it's so awesome, but I do...
http://creebobby.com/timestable.html
http://creebobby.com/timestable.html
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Brain teasers
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?
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?
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...
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