World Cup South Africa 2010

‘The beautiful game’ as Pele called football (soccer if you are a US person brought up to believe handling a ball constantly is ‘football’, and not ‘handball’…), about to go ballistic in a major festival of the game which for a long time will mean wall-2-wall football. This will be like a drunk being let loose into a liquor store.

Partners who do not like the game will fume and get bitter, politicians will jump on any bandwagon going especially if their country is doing well and UK publicans will pray that the English team will single handling resuscitate the brewing industry by getting to the final and possibly winning it!

Can I make one prediction at this point – if England win the World Cup then England will be the place to be. It could revive the economics of this nation. It has been proved by numerous study that a nation doing well in some form of sporting endeavour has a knock on effect on the economics of the country involved. That is why the former Eastern Bloc countries spent so much time and energy on sporting achievements.

I think it was George Orwell that said ‘sport was war by another name…’, and Nelson Mandela certainly used sport (1995 Rugby World Cup) to help consolidate the relatively peaceful transfer of South Africa from apartheid to democracy. It is very unlikely that South Africa can do this again as the skill level between South Africa and say Brazil or Spain is far to great for something like this.

Which brings me onto poker. The World Series of Poker 2010 will be taking a major back seat as nothing can beat the religion that is football. As Liverpool legendary manager Bill Shankly once said football was more important than life and death. Like poker football manages to be more than a simple game. It represents a philosophy – just like poker.

Football is about community and kindred spirit in a common goal. Poker is naked capitalism and capitalism as practice by an individual who has nothing more than the knowledge of the cards he or she has. Football is about teamwork and although an individual can alter a game it is on the whole about a team mastering another team. Poker deals with wealth accumulation – yes there can be collusion but this is seen as cheating.

I have always been fascinated by the fact that a large number of US Presidents have been pretty good poker players – apparently. This maybe folklore to encapsulate the nature of US culture, but, it does make sense as the US of A was always seen to be the bulwark of Western 20th Century capitalism. In fact President Nixon was supposed to have financed his first political campaign for office via the winnings he made playing poker. It was not only because of Watergate was he called ‘Tricky Dicky’.

In both of these pursuits there are other similarities in the sense that both have very simple rules. Therefore everyone can learn to play. The difficulty comes in learning to win and win consistently. Undoubtedly there will be an element of luck, but, luck overtime does even its self out. The skill in poker is not to make mistakes and give away your chips. Just as in poker you do seem to see the same names at the top on the various trophy and league tables.

The big difference is that poker encourages mis-information. Poker demands that you tell lies and make your opponent believe you have a bad hand when you have a good hand, or, that you have a good hand when you have a bad hand. In football you cannot say that Didier Drogba is injured then bring him out next day fresh as a daisy, there would be enquiry etc. However, you can use mind games to get an advantage as practice by Alex Ferguson or Jose Morinho. These guys will say things which can un-nerve opposing teams or motivate their own teams to win games, a very subtle art.

So that makes the difference between the two games which are very similar and the way online poker firms have been pushing any form of linkage between the World Cup and poker it has captured the mind and soul of the world and I for one will be loving the month of June.

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Knave on trial

The new magic formula P =( 1/3S – C)/R, where P is the pot, S is the stack, R is the raise and C is the seating arrangement and position of play has had some spectacular results recently, however, the only problem is when you are short stacked in a early position you are still forced to go all in since it is the best option to gain chips and get rid of potential rivals. How this amazing scientific discovery was made can be read in previous post ‘Trial of Knave‘ and ‘The Formula is Working!’. So hopefully all those who had a irrational fear of jacks can now boldly go onto the poker tables knowing that they can bet away with confidence.

My mate Brian posed the question if it works for jacks, what about other starting hands? Good point, I thought. Of course it is down to the individual since it is a way of getting rid of the fear of the problem starting hands and therefore not giving away tells, chips and sanity.

If you are still not convinced, why not put it to the test this Sunday (14th of February 2010) at 8pm (GMT) in the Poker Totty St Valentines’ Freeroll Tournament. This is sponsored by Mansion Poker and the prize money is $150, so it is not bad as freerolls go. This will be a perfect opportunity to test out the formula and see how it measures up when put to the test.

So click the advertising banner or this link ‘$150 Freeroll’ DONT NOT FORGET THE BONUS CODE – PKNV.

Here is a classic Poker Totty interview with the brilliant Sky Hearn who has been one of our all time favorites. For more details about Sky, check out her website to see when her Nuts Magazine photoshoot is coming out!

Poker Totty Sky after a win

Try Some Patience...

Been playing very badly lately. My lack of patience which is normal, has now gone into overdrive giving my opponents ample opportunity to take advantage and gain my chips with little effort. The crazy thing about it is that I know I am doing this.

What is the cure for this silly attitude? I have tried creating plagiarized videos, tried tweeting, tried drinking and tried music/television/newspapers. The only thing I have not tried is a holiday. Maybe that is the answer because everything else is not working.

Online poker can be very rewarding, however, when things go bad they can avalanche and become a depression. Maybe I should try one of Oprah Winfrey’s self help, new age remedy The Secret?

So here goes, I am going to work on myself and therefore my poker playing skills by immersing myself into The Secret – wish me good luck.

‘I surrender all, I surrender all…’

The Science of Poker

Yesterday I wrote a piece about a report written by Kyle Siler about poker called School of The Bleeding Obvious.

In it I basically slammed the report called Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker for being a long tract saying in an email correspondence ‘…that being tight/aggressive and not playing too many hands is the most profitable method when playing online poker at any level, since, you cannot get any true tells on someone. However, when you play the higher stakes levels, taking reasonable risk with marginal starting hands will get you the money as long as you again do not play too many hands since everyone at that level tend to be tight/aggressive unless they are complete mugs…?’

However, an email from Kyle Siler made the point that it was not about strategies or how to win but about the nature of decision making that an online poker player has to make. He wrote ‘..The research is not necessarily dedicated to finding single best strategies or ‘rules’ for playing most profitable poker. Instead, it is looking at how people actually play, and what tends to work for people. For example, extremely skilled or unskilled players will presumably have divergent results within ‘profitable’ and ‘unprofitable’ strategies. I argue that one of the reasons that high win percentage is negatively correlated with profits (Table 11) is that as per Kahneman and Tversky, humans tend to overweight frequent small gains vis-a-vis occasional large losses. Relatedly, small stakes players have problems with middle pairs because they have problems dealing with hands of borderline value. Small pairs are more profitable for them (Table 12), even though they are weaker hands, because they generally always have a clear value (you hit your set, or else you probably fold)…’

In the end making a broad brush conclusion about this study could have been misleading if I wanted to draw conclusion about  social and psychological challenges of poker, but since I just want to win as much money as I can with as little effort as I need to expend, it was always going to be understandable that I was looking for some insight which would give me an edge.

Is this a worthwhile study, I am not sure, however, I did learn a new word which is heuristics – meaning to use ‘common sense’, intuition, ‘trial and error’ to make decisions. So learning is good, therefore yes it was a worthwhile exercise because learning for learning sake means the mind used and using the mind has spin off such as mot being bored on a Sunday afternoon watching Arsenal getting beaten by Stoke City 3 – 1 in the F.A. Cup.

There is a august forum called ‘Journal of Gambling Studies’ which publish stuff on gambling and the its psychological effects on people and society. It maybe a worth while thing to read and is probably a great thing to partake in. However, you do have to wonder why would anyone spend so much time to understand that playing a lot of hands leads to losses or that it is harder to win money the more expensive the buy in is?

Check out this abstract from the organisation:

Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker by Kyle Siler

‘Abstract Poker is a competitive, social game of skill and luck, which presents players with numerous challenging strategic and interpersonal decisions. The adaptation of poker into a game played over the internet provides the unprecedented opportunity to quantitatively analyze extremely large numbers of hands and players. This paper analyzes roughly twenty-seven million hands played online in small-stakes, medium-stakes and high-stakes games. Using PokerTracker software, statistics are generated to (a) gauge the types of strategies utilized by players (i.e. the ‘strategic demography’) at each level and (b) examine the various payoffs associated with different strategies at varying levels of play. The results show that competitive edges attenuate as one moves up levels, and tight-aggressive strategies––which tend to be the most remunerative––become more prevalent. Further, payoffs for different combinations of cards, varies between levels, showing how strategic payoffs are derived from competitive interactions. Smaller-stakes players also have more difficulty appropriately weighting incentive structures with frequent small gains and occasional large losses. Consequently, the relationship between winning a large proportion of hands and profitability is negative, and is strongest in small-stakes games. These variations reveal a meta-game of rationality and psychology which underlies the card game. Adopting risk-neutrality to maximize expected value, aggression and appropriate mental accounting, are cognitive burdens on players, and underpin the rationality work––reconfiguring of personal preferences and goals––players engage into be competitive, and maximize their winning and profit chances.’

So basically as far as I can understand a tight aggressive player will win money but small stake players will lose money if they play like they play at small stakes poker when they try to go up a level. Surprise, surprise if you have a lot of money you are more likely to not want to let it go too easily.

Don’t get me wrong I have not read the full publication so I cannot make a definitive comment on this study, and, the guy looks to have spent hours on this analysing 27,000,000 hands – apparently! My question is why? What will be the upshot of this hard work and what does it tell us about the nature of online poker that could have taken no more than an afternoon playing at all three levels?

In truth I am a bit jealous that this guy got paid to mess about online doing nothing more than come up with the bleeding obvious that it is harder to win money if the risk a greater.

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Pair of Jacks

I have devised a new way of playing those horrible hole cards pair of jacks. Now obviously a pair of jacks are better than a pair of Tens or a pair of Nines. But it seems like Jacks get cracked easier than Tens, Nines, Eights or even Sevens.

I may have selected view about it but it came to a point when I prefered to have a pair of Fours than have Jacks.

My method up until recently was to go all in and pray for a miracle that they stood up and I would win or even better in my view everyone folded.

However, I have recently decided that I needed to get to grips with this phenomena and sort out my psychotic obsession with Jacks and I have created a mathematical formula which seems to be working.

In my recent post ‘Trial of Knave’. I announced that I would put this formula to the test as all good scientist would do. Guess what it seems to be working. Oh yes my fear of playing Jacks is slowly seeping away. Now all I have to do is improve the rest of my game and I will win The World Series of Poker 2010.

Just a quick note about the Poker Tottys and what they are upto:

Toni Sharpe and Brooke-Elise Sharpe

The big news is that the first Poker Totty Toni Sharpe gave birth to a baby girl – Brooke-Elise Sharpe and is doing great.

In the future Poker Totty Toni will be involved in the modelling business but with Toni its all about the family first so do not expect a massive amount of photo shoots.

The one project she maybe involved in is still under discussion but it is the project yours truly has been working on for the last few months. so do not be surprised to see the Original Poker Totty in a new guise.

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Werewolf or a woman with PMT

A new report from The Medical Journal of Australia confirm my view that full moons mean trouble. In the article they did some research that showed that violence increased and the nature of violence changed when there is a full moon.

This is not new the Roman word for moon is Luna and it is also where the word lunatic comes from ie mad behavior is caused by the moon. Womens pre-menstural tension is also related to the moon which can be a source of grief as many men can tell you.

Landlords of pubs will tell you that the time to get grief is when there is a full moon. Doormen also testify to this and so will gamblers.

Time and time again weird and wonderful behavior accure when playing poker, betting on sporting events. As a rule avoid tempremental animals and dont drink when there is a full moon should be the unwritten law for all gamblers.

Why am I writing this today well in my pursuit to get more money on Rage Against The Machine and being thwarted, I rejected 3 major winning bets. Accrington Stanley to beat Notts County (9/2, 5.5), Joe beating Olly for X Factor (7/4, 2.75) and Ryan Giggs becoming BBC Sportsman of The Year (7/2, 4.5) and I blame the moon, not my stupidity.

This stupidity ‘insight’ led me to play some serious online poker and guess what I lost seriously. Can I blame it on the full moon – you betcha!

Antoine Saout

The big event on Saturday is set to start 12 noon (Pacific Time) and I have been given a surprise tip by Magical Tipser – it is Antoine Saout.

He is the 25 year old Frenchman who is the surprise package in this years final and subsequently he is a big price (18/1 on Betfair). As the rank outsider he is expected to be one of the first to be knocked out, however, do not be surprised if he stays in a lot longer than most people think.

Apparently he has been practicing very hard by playing in all sorts of tournaments and seems to have a lot of stamina which is needed for such competition.

James Akenhead – come into the calculations as another big price (15/1) but he is also short stacked and he too will need a miracle, but sometimes miracles do happen.

Grinding out a living from the online poker tables is getting harder and consequently getting more boring. I tend to find myself taking more time off and/or listening to more music. I have even found myself reading newspapers while playing which is not conducive to a winning strategy.

It is clear to me that grinding to win is becoming more popular amongst poker players and it must be down to idiots who like to call other players ‘donks’, ‘fish’, and other derogatory words. I sometimes have to ask my self ‘why upset the person that is paying your electricity bill’?. Its like those drunks who swear at the waiter in a resturant before they receive their dinner – utter mugs!

Anyway, here is the latest video on ‘Things To Do When Bored With Poker’. It shows a hitman gunning down a suspected Camorra (Neapolitan mafia) crime lord.

Things To Do When Bored With Poker #5

When not avoiding grinding out a living at poker, I have been partaking in some retro 80′s theme nights which are great for chatting up women and also dancing to some really dodgy music. However, there was some great music and here is one of them, the amazing Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five ground breaking and landmark single The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel.

This seminal underground hit contains samples of:

• Chic – “Good Times“
• Blondie – “Rapture“
• Queen – “Another One Bites the Dust“
• Sugar Hill Gang – “8th Wonder“
• The Furious Five – “Birthday Party”
• Spoonie Gee – “Monster Jam”
• Michael Viner’s Incredible Bongo Band – “Apache“
• Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – “Freedom”

Enjoy…