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Perhaps this is the reason my PC has been overheating lately.
I knew something was up, it grinds to a halt on occasion – most often when I’m caning it with Poker Tracker imports! – and then I’ll reboot to see the CPU at 80 degrees, panic and shut it down for half an hour to recover. I could see that the fan was spinning, but hadn’t really bothered trying to fix the problem yet…
So today I actually decided to take a look and see if there was anything obviously wrong. It was, in fact, pretty obvious. This picture shows the cooler after I’d started scraping the dust out of the fins on one side. The top was totally covered in crap and would have stopped any air from being sucked through the heatsink at all.
My PC maintenance skillz are not what they used to be, so I’m slightly chuffed at this result. I guess we still have to wait and see if it runs hot though…
This may have been covered numerous times in various places already – it’s about 4 years old now – but I only just got round to starting to watch the World Poker Tour box set, so – as usual – I’m just a little bit behind the times. In any case, it’s still just wrong.
When I was watching this with Claire, we diligently paused the DVD to work it out 🙂 I said at first that you’d be about 70% favourite, whilst she said about 75% and I said, well actually yes that’s probably more like it. You’re clearly a favourite as over half the deck improves you hand and there are two cards to come.
So, according to WPT you have any heart (9), 7 (3 non-hearts), 9 (3), J (3) or Q (3 non-heart) to win. But you can also win with the other 3 10s, and somehow they’ve missed this! As if 21 outs wasn’t enough, you actually have 24.
There’s so many outs here that the rule of four isn’t close to accurate, and the full house redraw to lose or running pair to win makes it pretty tricky to work our from first principles, even if you can divide numbers into 45 and 44 in your head! The rule of four would make you a 96% favourite on the hand, and with that logic the universe starts to falls apart.
However I couldn’t believe that you’re only 2-1 here so I had to plug it into a calculator to find out if they got that wrong too… but alas no, the answer was just over 69% – a bit better than 2-1 but not as far ahead as I thought.
What use this is I don’t really know, although it’s made me – somewhat compulsively – check out how the open-ended straight flush draw looks against various other hands. You’re in pretty bad shape against an opponent holding 88 or 99, of course. But you’re also behind to any overpair, the worst situation being QQ with the Q of hearts where you’re actually worse than 40% to win, and even ace-rag of hearts is just beating you.
Here’s what I didn’t consider and have subsequently learned, thanks to the WPT’s mistake! The pair on board with two cards to come gives an opponent with any pocket pair a 17% chance to make a full house. So even if you do improve to a straight or flush, you’ll still lose this hand one time in six. If the board is not paired, you’ll only lose to a full house one time in 35.
I’ve not made any secret of the fact that I was going to see Take That in concert this weekend. Certainly not my number one choice of band to see (I actually got the tickets for Claire‘s birthday) but really, whatever you think of them, whatever dissent you might show to boy bands in general, you have to find it fascinating that a pop group that split up ten years ago can still sell out the country’s largest venues in a matter of hours. I don’t really get it, and I’m not that embarassed, so I thought it might actually be interesting to see what the fuss is about.
The only problem was that we’d been given probably the absolute worst seats in the place. I expected it to be a long way away, so I was prepared to only be able to see four dots jumping around the stage (or, as I’ve now learned, three jumping around and one just acting a bit wooden). However I had expected to actually be able to see the stage. Look at the picture below (apologies for the quality from my camera phone) – tell me how this is not a "restricted view" seat!
The big white arch changed colour when it got dark. Very pretty. Shame that it obscured all but the very front of the stage from view, including the large projection screens! We ended up moving to the left quite a way into a block of empty seats for a better view of one of the screens, with not much less of a view of the stage – still pathetic though for a full price ticket, and whenever there was some kind of running about or dancing going on, we were oblivious.
60,000 girls and about 300 men certainly seemed to enjoy the show. The female bias was pretty severe – and the commercials they showed on the big screens were somewhat targeted towards the audience: for body spray, spot cream and… bingo!
Support act was probably the safest choice in the world – the hopelessly bland Sugababes. Oh, and if you didn’t guess from the title, the real, actual Lulu was there to sing her bit of Relight My Fire. I wonder if she’s going to travel around with them the whole tour just to do half a song…?
Below is the transcript of a post I made to the UK Poker Info forums, which somehow actually resulted in me getting banned from the site and the entire thread being deleted – it was only my 3rd ever post!
Whilst there is clearly an element of smugness in my being able to find fault with the original poster’s strategy hints (notably, this is one of the players who used to come to our home game, and now thinks that he is too good for us) I really did enjoy writing this and found it very satisfying to be able to create what I think is a well-reasoned analysis.
I’ll let you judge for yourself. I’ve colour coded this for your viewing pleasure – my response is in blue, original poster is red and too-good-for-home-game is in green.
The thread began with someone asking for advice on how to play a live satellite tournament, and initial responses advised her to play tight in the early stages…
knowing u always only play prem hands and if I had a good chipstack I would call your raise with anything like 67 suited
ok how come u would call my raises with 67 suited????
if flop comes low cards which gives me some str8 options it would be hard 4 u to call a bet or a raise with cards like AK A10 etc unless u had an overpair but even so if I had an open ended str8 I would be 2 /1 to hit it.
There are just so many things wrong with this logic…
For starters, let’s face it – you’re calling a raise with garbage. You know you are behind in the hand and are – at best – a 2:1 dog. Assuming the raiser’s range from early or mid position is AK-AJ and pairs AA-99 then you are actually going to be a 4:1 dog about 40% of the time (36 ace-hands vs 24 pairs). Therefore the preflop action is serious negative equity.
(Note: I’ve since realised I miscounted here, there are 48 ace-hands – 12 suited and 36 unsuited – making you a 4:1 dog 33% of the time.).
Then by smooth calling you just keep adding to your problems. You not only don’t make any attempt to win the pot yet, or to define your hand, you also encourage other well-stacked players to join in and create a pot that becomes very difficult to get away from when you do catch some kind of donkey draw. You might get the odds to keep going which would be great in a cash game when going bust is not a problem. But in a tournament you could be risking your future with 4-1 shot after the turn, or have to make another mistake by folding when you actually have the correct odds to draw.
Once you are in this pot, suddenly calling with suited connectors starts to become attractive – but not for you, for the next guy to act, and the next one, and only because of your mistake. You’re just stuck in the middle not knowing where the hell you are at.
But as you didn’t mention position at all, lets assume that you are on the button and have great reads on both the blinds and know they are going to fold. So you smooth-called a raise from a solid player who only plays big hands, and expect them not to bet at almost any flop? Now you’re going to raise then back to try and find out how much they like their hand? The price for this information just went up.
The times your opponent missed, if you’ve got the balls to raise you’ll win a fair pot, probably 3-4 times your investment pre-flop. The times you’re wrong (I can’t see why we shouldn’t still use the 40% 33% number here) you’re making a huge mistake, spewing chips and digging a very deep hole for yourself on the next street. You are investing much more than you can ever hope to win.
On the other hand if you are talking about a "first to the pot wins" move on a low board you are in much better shape to make this play out of position, which means limping in early position with a shit hand and then calling a raise, or stubbornly defending a blind. Or maybe you know that the player is transparent and will bet if they hit the flop (or still like their overpair) and check if they miss. This is about the only opportunity you will have to bet and make it hard for her to call.
The problem here though is that your implied odds are a big fat zero. Whilst no-limit poker allows you to play hands with a negative pre-flop expectation because of the potentially huge payoff you can get when you make a monster hand, calling a raise and playing heads up against a premium hand is not the way to do this. Your pre-flop call is dead money, and then you’re having to make a large bet to win it back, along with the other player’s initial raise. Net profit is what – 3 big blinds?
Finally, if your intention is to outplay Little Miss BigCards when the board comes low and you think she’s missed, the hand selection is irrelevant. You don’t have to have a small hand do it – any two will do.
Basically, (original poster), don’t be afraid of getting calls like this. You need ’em.
Apologies for the amazing technicolor dreampost – it seemed a better idea before I painted it up. Hope it’s readable!
I really had wanted to plan this a bit better to take advantage of as many World Cup promos and new player signups as possible, but as usual I’d left it too late. So after getting back from town today about an hour before kick off, I scrambled to at least find some kind of good value bet I could put on the England game.
I discovered a £60 free bet offer with Victor Chandler. I’ve used their poker software but not their sports betting site so I qualified for this as a new player. After placing your first bet of between £10 and £60 you are awarded the same amount as a free bet to place on another event in future.
The only stipulation is that the first bet you place has to have odds of evens or greater – basically you can’t lump £60 on a sure thing at 1/20 odds and still take them for the free bet.
I decided to back England on the half time/full time market at 5/4 – I win £75 if they are leading at half time and win the match. My original plan was to have lots of different free bets working for me all hedged against each other for a sure-fire profit. With the "odds must be evens or higher" rule, which applies to most promotial bets, this is tricky but I’m sure it can be done! Without enough time to do it properly though today, I was happy enough having a flutter on England with a second chance free bet still to play.
Sure enough, the early goal means England are ahead at half time and this bet is in good shape. I wimp out a bit and lay off part of the bet with Betfair, making sure that I’m guaranteed a win – I’ll make a net profit of £60 now if England win and £15 if they choke – freerolling! England win – £60 kerching – and I still have another £60 of Mr Chandler’s money to bet with on the next game.
I mentioned I was in town before the game: having realised that I’ve continued to grow outward since last summer and can no longer fit into most of my shorts, I thought it was time to get a new pair and show off my lovely white legs again. The world truely appreciates this effort. With that mission accomplished, Claire also finds herself a bag that will be most useful for our Vegas trip (T-42).
I ponder whether I should get one myself – not the same one of course as it’s a woman’s bag – but something similar, but kinda more manly. I don’t really know what I’m looking for, but all I can think of is Jack Bauer’s bag in the latest season of 24. This bag went everywhere with him, and of course contained almost anything you’d ever need to use on a counter-terrorist mission, despite Jack having not worked for CTU for quite some time until that morning.
So, I need to find a "Jack Bag". Reckon I can pull this look off?
Title sounds like a poker set for babies, doesn’t it.
I don’t have a date for this – thanks to a hard disk crash all my screenshots (yeah, pretty sad but tell me you don’t do it too. Oh, just me?) have the same timestamp on them. I’m pretty sure this was my first Royal Flush experience.
This has to be from 2002 or earlier. Wagerworks ceased to be a long time ago, which is a shame really. This was a not-for-real-money casino games web site. You played with play money but the more action you racked up the more player points you got, and those player points could still be redeemed for real stuff. The site was operated by (then) MGM Mirage, so there were goodies for half a dozen Vegas casinos to collect.
The games were obviously rigged with a positive payback. I had written a macro to keep pressing the button on Keno or some of the slot machines so I could just leave it overnight clocking up points 🙂 I never once went broke and won a huge amount of play money along the way! For the trouble, we earned a few free buffets at and a ride on the Manhattan Express.
It’s been a week since we discovered a hacker had gained access to a few of our customers’ web servers, and I’m still playing catch-up because of the little bastard. For those who understand these things, he apparently used a common exploit with XML-RPC in older Linux versions.
I just haven’t had time to keep up to date with Linux lately. I started getting back into it a bit when I had to an emergency update on the Fedora Unleashed book for Fedora 2 (should have had an author credit really, but instead I got my name in bold in the Acknowledgements…) but it didn’t last. So I really don’t know what this involves, but Kev our security guy said "I’d be surprised if it hasn’t been hacked ten times over" when he took a look at the remains of one of them. Pretty widespread stuff then.
The hacker, as it turns out, was a cheeky little sod. He actually tried to contact us whilst logged into one of the machines. He created a user account called "hi" and sent console messages to one of my colleagues, offering his services to fix our servers.
Seriously – does anyone ever reply and say "oh yes please"?
Well if I’m finally going to start updating this regularly I need an idea of what I’m going to write. Oh my god, it’s another poker blog. Just what the world needs. Well if nothing else, I need to keep updating regularly so that I qualify for the mighty "blogger tournaments". PokerStars just announced one of these, but unless I come up with two month’s worth of fake posts I’m not going to get in that one… 🙂
So why am I doing this? Mainly I have a terrible memory. Really bad. If something isn’t written down, it never happened – so I’m starting to write things down. I’ll probably spout some random thoughts now and again as well as bore the world to death with my poker antics.
The impetus for getting off my backside and doing this – is that I’m going to be in Vegas for 4 weeks in the summer and I wanted to keep a diary of that trip. I actually made the same journey last year, and kept a blog for a couple of weeks of it but lost momentum – probably the desert heat or something. This time Claire is keeping her own blog – on account of getting into the main event of the World Series of Poker – and for those who have too much time on their hands it might be interesting to read both our accounts of the trip and see it from two different points of view.
I also remembered that I scribbled the makings of a travelog from a previous trip to Vegas in Summer 2003. If I can fish out these notes, I’ll use them to fill the space when I have nothing else to say. Might be interesting for any other Vegas geeks out there… you never know.
OK so I’ve not quite achieved what Claire’s managed to do just yet, but
I’m still having a rather good run lately. My sights were set a little
lower than the main event, however I’m still GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER BABY.
So here begins my journey.
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