Mach Five

More bluffing with the best hand

2009-09-16T22:15:00.003-04:00

Straight draws are nice hands with which to bluff/semibluff because of the combination of fold equity and suckout equity. That being said, I was pretty sure I was toast when Villain (25/14 pf) didn't fold the turn.

LOL donkaments

2009-09-16T00:15:00.003-04:00

I just booked a wager with DA, one of my new coworkers. I'm laying 5:1 odds that Phil Ivey won't win the 2009 WSOP Main Event. The best part of the negotiations was when I proposed a small wager size, and DA immediately countered with a significantly larger wager. I feigned nervousness and swallowed hard before accepting the offer.

Anywho, although I am certainly tempting fate by opposing Phil Ivey and posting about it, the image below makes me feel pretty good about my chances.

"Everyone kills people, murders people, steals from you, steals from me"

2009-09-06T09:10:00.003-04:00

So says Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor. (Scroll ahead to 2:45 if you're impatient.) I guess if that's the case, then running a dogfighting ring is like TPing someone's house in comparison.

Anyway, there's a good reason college teams often don't let their players address the media solo. That being said, I'd like to think that if I were one of the reporters there I'd have given Pryor a chance to retract or amend his statement, but oh well.

These people aren't your friends; they're paid to kiss your feet

2009-09-06T08:25:00.002-04:00

From Marginal Revolution, we learn that some marketing company in Australia is selling "friends" to Facebook users.

I have to say that $177 for 1,000 friends is rather expensive, though. For that price, I'd expect them to attend my wedding as well.

This guy is either on super gorilla tilt, or he read my soul. Possibly both

2009-09-04T22:16:00.003-04:00

Villain here is 18/13 preflop, and I had 3bet him a couple times and forced him to fold preflop.

Bluffing in 3-bet pots is fun. Especially with the best hand

2009-08-24T22:01:00.001-04:00

Turning a made hand into a bluff, I guess

2009-08-15T18:15:00.002-04:00

How long has the (KGB/Mossad/any other foreign intelligence agency) known about the SSN algorithm?

2009-07-07T21:10:00.004-04:00

If a couple of academic researchers can decipher the Social Security Number algorithm (up to whatever randomization measures are used), I can only imagine how long foreign intelligence agencies (especially those of our enemies) have known about it. Frankly, I'm extremely impressed by their restraint.

Review: U2, Barcelona, June 30, 2009

2009-06-30T19:54:00.003-04:00

Just got back from the opening concert of U2's 360 tour. I forgot to bring a USB cable with me, so pics will have to wait until I get back home. Post is full of spoilers obviously, so if you don't want to be spoiled then go away.

Setlist:

Breathe
No Line On The Horizon
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Beautiful Day
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Angel Of Harlem
In A Little While
Unknown Caller
The Unforgettable Fire
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Pride
MLK
Walk On

Encore:
Where The Streets Have No Name
One

Encore:
With Or Without You
Moment Of Surrender

Generalities:

The stage has the same inner platform + outer walkway from the previous two tours and a giant cylindrical silkscreen. The whole thing is capped off by this really odd inverted claw thingy. The tour has this futuristic theme -- in the middle of tonight's show, the band even held a brief conference call (only part of it intelligible) with the crew aboard the International Space Station.

Review:

Performance-wise, this is easily the worst U2 concert I've been to. Obviously some of it can be chalked up to rust, but there were other problems as well.

Let's start with the good. The setlist was outstanding -- Ultraviolet hasn't been played since the ZooTV tour if I recall correctly, and The Unforgettable Fire died out after the Joshua Tree tour. Both songs sounded great. I was pretty high up in the stands, so I couldn't see if Edge was using his Fernandes or an EBow for the sustain for the UF string part, but it had a real snarl to it. Angel of Harlem was as soulful as ever, and Bono dedicated it to the late Michael Jackson and performed brief bits of Man In The Mirror and Don't Stop Till You Get Enough at the end.

The new album material was mostly excellent as well, but I didn't really understand why Breathe was chosen as an opener. NLOTH and Magnificent are much better openers and much better songs overall, and both sounded excellent. I'll Go Crazy turned into this really wack hip-hop remix that can't be described here.

Okay, now out come the knives. U2 brought back Walk On in light of Aung San Suu Kyi's recent troubles, and for some reason they thought it would be a good idea to distribute life-size masks of her face to everyone in the audience, and also to bring out a couple dozen crew members to wear them out on the catwalk during the song. I thought it was super-super tacky and hope they abandon the idea tomorrow.

Bono's never had the most refined sense of style, but unfortunately his voice and memory seemed to have gone missing for most of the night. During numerous songs Bono had to have the audience pick him up as he either skipped lines or couldn't hit them, and he repeated the first verse of With Or Without You. In addition, his voice (speaking and singing) had absolutely no bottom end for most of the concert; instead it sounded thin and nasal. Finally, the band screwed up One pretty horribly. I'm not sure what happened, but for some reason Bono didn't go into the third verse ("Have you come for forgiveness/have you come to raise the dead") as the band played on. I'm not sure how this happened, but the crowd again tried to pick him up, and I think the crowd actually went straight into the middle-eight ("Love is a temple/love the higher law"), and eventually Bono had to tell Edge in front of everyone to go back and redo the verse. At least Edge was reasonably cool about it -- I thought there was about a 2% chance that he was going to kill someone.

Despite the band's foibles and Bono's shredded voice, U2 still put on an uplifting, energizing show. Just don't expect a bravura performance from the diva.

EDIT: After listening to a boot of the concert, I figured out what happened on "One". Bono forgot the lyrics to the second verse ("Did I disappoint you") and requested a mulligan on the second verse. The band played the verse and chorus again, then launched into the middle-eight ("Love is a temple") and the band followed, while Bono thought they were going to go into the third verse ("Have you come here for forgiveness"), and it took a minute for everything to get sorted out.

Possibly the dumbest article ever written about sports, or by a political pundit on any subject ever

2009-06-30T01:08:00.006-04:00

Fresh off the US's upset of Spain in the Confederations Cup semis and near-upset of Brazil in the finals, Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute manages to pooh-pooh soccer in the US. His primary argument is that it appeals to Europe and Central/South America's fruity socialist sensibilities and not to Americans because it's the sport in which the less-deserving team has the biggest chance to win.

Indeed, in the first two games, the U.S. was hammered by Italy and Brazil and only got into the semifinal match by beating Egypt and the fluke of a very arcane scoring system that soccer uses to break ties among teams.

Ranking by W-L record, then goal difference, then goals scored? Yeah, that's some pretty crazy tiebreaker scheme.

And even in this game, a neutral observer would have said that Spanish players clearly outplayed the Americans, outshooting the U.S. squad by a margin of 20 shots on goal.

Um, no. FIFA's match report lists the shots as 29-9, but later on where each player's shots are listed, they only total 19-8. Now this counts "shots", which is pretty much any attempt by a player to smack the ball into the goal, whether it goes in, gets saved, misses the target entirely, or gets blocked before it gets anywhere near the goal. The "shots on goal" statistic, which counts only goals or shots that are saved by the goalkeeper, favors Spain 8-2, as many of Spain's shots were blocked before they got anywhere near goal. In addition, any neutral observer who actually watched the game would have concluded that only 3 or 4 shots really gave US keeper Tim Howard any significant trouble. He played well, but it wasn't an unusual performance at all by his standards. Late in the game when the US had the lead, the team was happy to concede possession of the ball because Spain couldn't actually do anything with it. It wasn't much different from one of those frequent Detroit Red Wings games where the Wings outshoot the opponents 40-15 but lose because all of their shots were from long range or bad angles while the other guys scored on odd-man rushes or on shots from the slot.

For sure, there may be a number of reasons that is the case but my suspicion is that the so-called “beautiful game” is not so beautiful to American sensibilities. We like, as good small “d” democrats, our underdogs for sure but we also still expect folks in the end to get their just desert. And, in sports, that means excellence should prevail. Of course, the fact that is often not the case when it comes to soccer may be precisely the reason the sport is so popular in the countries of Latin America and Europe.

This season in the English Premier League, the worst team out of 20 won 12 out of 38 games for a .316 percentage, if you count wins as 1/2.

This season in MLB, the worst team out of 30 has so far won 22 out of 74 games for a .297 percentage, and teams routinely win games despite not getting on base as often because of the way scoring works -- HR + hit + hit < hit + HR.

It completely boggles my mind why ignoramuses (mostly in US sports media, but apparently also in other publications) feel the need to publish such nonsense about soccer. It's almost as if they feel personally threatened by a fantastic sport that they don't understand.

"A good career move"

2009-06-24T08:16:00.001-04:00

So said Gore Vidal about his rival Truman Capote's demise. It's also the first quote that popped into my head once I heard that Jon and Kate Gosselin were divorcing.

Shut up Simon

2009-05-05T19:03:00.000-04:00

Letters of marque

2009-04-15T10:38:00.003-04:00

After Navy SEALs rescued a ship captain from Somali pirates, Ron Paul has suggested that the US government put the free market to work by issuing letters of marque, which are essentially contracts for seafaring mercenaries whereby the recipients get to keep whatever loot they capture from enemies.

I doubt that hiring privateers will make that much of a difference; I bring it up mostly because it reminds me of Sid Meier's PIRATES!, a classic computer game from the 1980s (which has since been remade for more modern platforms).

So Aristotle thinks of two integers, and he tells Plato their product and Socrates their sum

2009-04-06T09:20:00.006-04:00

In yesterday's New York Times is an article about Larry Summers's part-time gig with D. E. Shaw, a firm that hires world-class mathematicians and scientists to create brainteasers and test them on college kids and grad students. Rumor has it that they trade stocks and bonds in order to finance their operations.

I'm sure that a fellow who was once Secretary of the Treasury, President of Harvard University and who still is one of the premier economists in the world (and also appears to be a male, to boot) was quite flattered that Shaw wanted to field-test their new brainteasers on him.

Knock it up a notch

2009-03-24T18:12:00.003-04:00

I snapped this photo of Neptunian celebrity chef Elzar in the restaurant of the Hotel Ad Hoc Monumental in Valencia.

Tots Units Fem Forca

2009-03-22T19:01:00.007-04:00

The Camp Nou, FC Barcelona's stadium.

Victor Valdes, Barca's goalkeeper, warms up before the match against Malaga. Barca won 6-0. Barca could have won 8-0 or even 10-0 with a little luck -- the Malaga goalkeeper made some fine saves during the first 30 minutes, Lionel Messi (who scored a ridiculous goal) missed one or two really easy chances, Xavi and Andres Iniesta (who sliced through the Malaga central defense like hot knives through butter) left early with injuries, and the Barca defense softened up a bit and started allowing Malaga to control the ball for the last 30 minutes of the game or so. This was a once-every-five-years performance.

Messi takes a corner kick.

Barcelona es meva

2009-03-20T21:46:00.002-04:00

Barcelona's official motto is "Barcelona es teva", which means "Barcelona is yours" in Catalan. The title above is supposed to mean "Barcelona is mine", but is likely an incorrect translation.

El Gran Casino de Barcelona.

The poker room. They had one 5-10 PLO game and three 2-5 NLHE games running. The NLHE table I sat at was quite profitable, despite the enormous rake (something like 5% uncapped). Unfortunately I have to get up early, so I only played for an hour and a half or so.

La Placa de Catalunya, a stone's throw from the hotel.

NFL competition committee keeps heads buried in sand

2009-03-19T07:22:00.004-04:00

The NFL competition committee has decided not to change the overtime rules for yet another year, despite robust evidence that the overtime coin-toss winner has a significant advantage (60-40 or so).

Cripes. How hard is it to change the spot of the kickoff (40-yard line or so) or the spot of the initial possession (15-yard line) in order to minimize the impact of the coin toss?

Pickup soccer

2009-03-13T15:53:00.003-04:00

I played soccer in a light drizzle with some folks from the math department for an hour today; it's the first real exercise I've had in several months. Despite the long layoff, I was able to run up and down the pitch without any problems.

As for my actual performance, well, let's say it doesn't compare favorably to the guys in this video. It'd be nice if I could dribble or trap a ball with any degree of skill, but oh well.

Japan sucks at math

2009-03-10T08:54:00.005-04:00

Well, maybe not the entire country, but their World Baseball Classic coaching staff certainly does.

Bottom of the 8th, down 1-0 to Korea, one out, Ichiro singles to center. The next guy promptly sacrifice bunts (intentionally). Baseball Prospectus estimates that the bunt cost them nearly two-tenths of a run on average, and that's assuming that the sacrifice bunt works 100% of the time. Historical figures from 1999-2006 indicate that the move reduced Japan's chances of winning the game by 7%.

Apparently the sabermetric revolution has not taken root in Japan yet.

EDIT: Japan coaches get pwnz0r3d by Fidel Castro's corpse.

Folding AA in a donkament

2009-03-06T17:55:00.006-05:00

Folding aces preflop is obviously never correct in a Hold 'Em cash game, but it is sometimes correct in tournaments when one sits on a cash bubble. Another situation might be when one possesses telepathic powers.

In the situation pictured above, the tournament is heads-up, winner take all. Hero has aces on the button, and Villain has shoved preflop blind, rendering Hero's telepathic powers useless. Throughout the tournament, Villain has held far more than his share of huge hands and has pulled off some astonishing suckouts, including one where he called a shove with 72o preflop and his opponent flopped a set, then died. AA is a 85-15 favorite against a random hand. What would the stack sizes have to be in order for Hero to consider folding preflop and waiting for a better spot?

Strings attached

2009-03-04T14:18:00.004-05:00

Apparently our new Obaman overlord doesn't want bailout beneficiaries taking corporate vacations in Las Vegas.

This makes me very unhappy; I think that encouraging bankers and executives to blow their personal fortunes in Vegas is way better (for the local economy and for crafty gamboolers like yours truly, anyway) than capping their salaries. How else are we supposed to recover the stimulus monies that are being taken out of our paychecks?

But I has top pair

2009-03-03T12:06:00.004-05:00

During a recent review session, it was pointed out that perhaps I get a little too skittish with top pair-type hands when I get raised on textured flops. I dunno if the villain here (22/15ish preflop, 100% fold BB to steal over 80-ish hands) perceived me that way, but I basically decided to call down unless a fourth straight card fell. The turn action makes the hand a lot less interesting poker-wise, but the outcome is hilarious.

It's getting a little dusty in here

2009-02-25T03:20:00.000-05:00

My content. Not yours

2009-02-24T05:28:00.004-05:00

Facebook users probably are familiar with the whole kerfluffle surrounding the company's attempt to update its terms of use. For whatever reasons, they decided that they wanted to retain legal rights over all content posted on their site, then were forced to back down.

Recently, I noticed that FB's notes-importing utility (which I use with this blog) stopped including external links to the original source; surely this was related to FB's desire to own all content on its site. Pretty lame. Some other annoyed FB bloggers slapped together a kludge using Yahoo Pipes that more or less does what I want. It's kind of inelegant, but it's the best solution I can find.