tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-368800872024-03-18T05:48:51.399-04:00Poker GrumpAll the things I hate about the game I loveRakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.comBlogger4690125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-24540181929472524472023-09-01T15:07:00.008-04:002023-09-01T15:08:43.451-04:00Deuce-Four defeats Jean-Robert Bellande<p> In the latest episode of "High Stakes Poker," Rick Salomon raised with deuce-four, Bellande three-bet with pocket queens, and Salomon quickly re-raised all-in. After agonizing a bit, Bellande folded. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj49wFy9vVqX7J1-HebkWMck1QhmBZPC_PDzpjzucDgEzBXPW2BjYPb5BmRFjsIBJS0Ei2DdsEeEiLII1ZbYa7lz_5hBexWca4qlxM7wBvOWaMRsh56v0Kri0sIorVW_yIrQycsCb-eqvnSi9fTtJOmHHzrROAxQEwQqp1yWl1fCNWK0e8GiDQSJQ/s4080/PXL_20230830_223923382.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4080" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj49wFy9vVqX7J1-HebkWMck1QhmBZPC_PDzpjzucDgEzBXPW2BjYPb5BmRFjsIBJS0Ei2DdsEeEiLII1ZbYa7lz_5hBexWca4qlxM7wBvOWaMRsh56v0Kri0sIorVW_yIrQycsCb-eqvnSi9fTtJOmHHzrROAxQEwQqp1yWl1fCNWK0e8GiDQSJQ/w400-h301/PXL_20230830_223923382.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And this is Bellande's face after Salomon showed: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_t5srhBxUm97KbY_8J8il23PphjAnU3VhrMjWcUyeZ_FmapZNFX_FyhVHenErAUSwS3UB3Ygf2CT8-p_yU1ho4b3aY3KXgp7ykFZBiWu6LjgmhM0yMVLruVUlPl66EhZ3_jyMHxKXRbkMiwxqa77XogVRCWiDKU7n3AaasPpa6MWt1GAUlGMuKA/s4080/PXL_20230830_224023905.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4080" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_t5srhBxUm97KbY_8J8il23PphjAnU3VhrMjWcUyeZ_FmapZNFX_FyhVHenErAUSwS3UB3Ygf2CT8-p_yU1ho4b3aY3KXgp7ykFZBiWu6LjgmhM0yMVLruVUlPl66EhZ3_jyMHxKXRbkMiwxqa77XogVRCWiDKU7n3AaasPpa6MWt1GAUlGMuKA/w400-h301/PXL_20230830_224023905.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Now, this doesn't make sense. If Bellande were any good at poker, he would be exhibiting relief. He would know that QQ doesn't stand a chance against 2-4, and that he made the right decision. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p>Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-85637747356229013312023-03-26T07:04:00.002-04:002023-03-26T07:04:35.173-04:00ChatGPT knows nothing about poker I asked it this: "Is deuce-four a strong starting hand in no-limit hold'em poker?"<div><br /></div><div>It replied: </div><div><br /></div><blockquote><div><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f7f7f8; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: #374151; font-family: Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em; white-space: pre-wrap;">The strength of any starting hand in no-limit hold'em poker depends on various factors such as your position at the table, your opponents' tendencies, the stack sizes, and the stage of the tournament or cash game.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f7f7f8; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: #374151; font-family: Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 16px; margin: 1.25em 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">That being said, deuce-four is generally considered to be one of the weakest starting hands in no-limit hold'em. It is unlikely to make strong pairs or straights, and it can be easily dominated by higher pairs or stronger hands. In most cases, it is not a hand that you would want to invest a lot of chips in, especially in early or middle positions.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 transparent; --tw-shadow: 0 0 transparent; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #f7f7f8; border: 0px solid rgb(217, 217, 227); box-sizing: border-box; color: #374151; font-family: Söhne, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 16px; margin: 1.25em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, there may be some situations where deuce-four can be played profitably, such as in late position or against weaker players who are more likely to make mistakes. However, in general, it is not a hand that you would want to rely on to win big pots in no-limit hold'em poker.</p></div></blockquote>Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-84221417788715090292021-05-22T15:35:00.014-04:002021-06-10T12:37:00.474-04:00A betting paradox that might make your head hurt<blockquote><p> I read about this paradox in a Scientific American article, and could not believe it was true until I had played around with the numbers for a while. It still bothers me, even though I've accepted it. </p><p>Suppose a casino has introduced a new table game they call "17/20." You put a bet down--let's say $100. They flip a fair coin--a genuinely random, 50/50 chance of heads or tails. If it's heads, you win 20% of your bet. If it's tails, you lose 17% of your bet. </p><p>Sounds great, right? It's obviously +EV to play, because you'll either win $20 or lose $17. That's a positive EV of $1.50. </p><p>Now consider what happens if you play twice, and one time it's heads, the other time it's tails. If heads comes first, you now have $120. But then the next toss is tails, so you lose 17% of $120, which is $20.40, leaving you with $99.60--less than you started with. </p><p>If tails comes up first, you lose $17, leaving you with $83. Then it's heads, and you win 20% of that, or $16.60. Now you have $99.60--the same as when it went heads then tails. This shows that it doesn't matter what order the wins and losses come in. </p><p>Even if you win exactly half the time and lose exactly half the time, you still bleed your money away to the house over time. And that is so even though each potential win is greater than each potential loss, before the coin is tossed. </p><p>So this is the paradox: The game is +EV to play once, but -EV to play more than once. The reason is pretty straightforward: 17% of $120 (your loss on the second toss in the head-then-tails scenario) is a larger amount than 20% of $100 (your win on the first toss). And 17% of $100 (your loss on the first toss in the tails-then-heads scenario) is a larger amount than 20% of $83. </p><p>You could fiddle with the percentages and change the long-term outcome. If a win is defined as 20% of your bet, the break-even point will be if a loss is 16.666...% of the bet. Any more than that, and the game is a loser. Below that, it's +EV in the long run. </p><p>Now, I think you could game it so that you're effectively resetting it each time to be like the first toss. That is, if your first toss is a win, you take the $20 profit off the table and bet $100 again. If the first toss is a loss, you add $17 from your pocket and bet $100 again. With a balanced number of heads and tails, and each heads a $20 profit and each tails a $17 loss, you should make money over time. But I think we have to assume that the casino's rules wouldn't allow that, since they're not going to spread any game that's that easy to beat. (Let's not quibble over exactly how the rules would be written or enforced; this is just a hypothetical exercise.) But if you leave the money on the table untouched, and keep playing, it will eventually disappear into the casino's coffers. </p><p>I was hugely surprised by this. I would not have thought it possible to devise a game--especially one so simple--that is +EV to play once, but -EV to play more than once. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Addendum, May 24, 2021 </b></p><p>You'll need to read the discussion in the comments below for this to make sense. My commenters have caused me to rethink and recalculate. I did so in an attempt to show why they were wrong--but that's not exactly what happened. </p><p>There are a few different pieces to this. </p><p><u>The two-toss strategy</u></p><p>In the OP, I said that the game would be +EV to play one toss, but -EV for more than one. So suppose you walk into this casino every day and, starting with $100 on the table, play for exactly two coin tosses--no more, no less--then quit for the day. What would be your long-term results? </p><p>As the commenters point out, there are four equally probable outcomes: HH, HT, TH, and TT. Over the long run, those should happen equally often. The net profits/losses are, respectively, +44, -0.40, -0.40, and -31.11. The sum of those is +12.09, an average of $3.02 per day profit, or $1.51 per coin toss. </p><p>Interestingly, that's a hair more than the $1.50 profit per toss that we would calculate to be the EV of playing one toss and quitting. Which suggests that playing the two-toss strategy is more profitable. </p><p><u>The three-toss strategy</u></p><p>So I went to the obvious next step: Suppose I always play three tosses per session. Now there are 8 equally probable outcomes. One outcome is HHH, which yields +72.80. One is TTT, which yields -42.82. There are three combinations with two heads and one tails, each of which is +19.52. there are three combinations with one heads and two tails, -17.33. Add all those up, and it's +36.55, for an average profit of $4.57 per day, or $1.52 per toss. </p><p>So now it appears that the 3-toss strategy is more profitable--both per day and per toss--than the 2-toss strategy, which in turn is more profitable than the 1-toss strategy. </p><p>This is not what I expected. </p><p><u>Asymmetry </u></p><p>As the commenters point out, the difference lies in the outcomes when you don't have an exactly 50/50 split in heads and tails. It's clearly, demonstrably true that any session you play in which the heads and tails are exactly evenly divided results in a net loss. E.g., playing 8 tosses, with 4H and 4T (in any order) yields a net loss of $1.59 on the initial $100 bet (again, with all the money left on the table until the end). </p><p>But the interesting part happens in the asymmetrical outcomes. On the rare occasion that you play an 8-toss strategy and get all 8 tails, you're left with $22.52 on the table at the end, for a loss of $77.48. But you will equally often get a run of all 8 heads, at the end of which you will have $429.98 on the table, for a profit of $329.98. The probabilities are symmetrical, but the outcomes are decidedly asymmetrical. The same sort of thing is true for each balanced pair of possible outcomes, e.g., 7H1T/7T1H, or 5H3T/3H5T. </p><p>In fact, if you extend the idea to, say, a 1000-toss strategy, you'll quickly realize that many days you'll lose the entire starting $100 (assuming that the casino doesn't deal in bets of a fraction of a penny) long before the thousandth toss. Your losses are capped at $100, but your wins are potentially unlimited. </p><p>This is, I now think, the key consideration. I was previously assuming that an exactly 50/50 split was the most likely, and since the probabilities of uneven heads/tails splits were symmetrical, those could just be disregarded. </p><p><u>Long sessions</u></p><p>With that in mind, I set up an Excel spreadsheet to simulate a 10,000-toss strategy, and ran it 20 times. I kind of suspect that Excel's random-number generator is a little wonky, because I got 15 outcomes with more than 5000 heads, and only 5 with less. But that doesn't matter for present purposes. </p><p>In 13 trials, I had a fraction of a cent left--call it zero. In five trials, I had less than $1 left. These included, e.g., 5038 heads leaving me with $0.24, and 5041 heads leaving me with $0.73. (Remember that because an exactly even 50/50 distribution is always a loss, you have to be well above the average number of heads to ever leave with a profit.) </p><p>But in two trials, I had hugely positive results. In one that had 5086 heads (and, of course, 4914 tails), the final amount on the table was $11,629,561! And in one extremely improbable trial, the spreadsheet somehow came up with 5125 heads, yielding--you'd better be sitting down for this--$20 trillion! </p><p>Now, that's another outcome that makes me suspect Excel's RNG, because getting 5125 heads out of 10,000 tosses has a probability of only about 0.0064. (I used this <a href="https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx">online binomial calculator</a> to get that number.) But the point is that in long sessions in which luck favors you with substantially more heads than tails, you can win huge amounts, while in the equally probable sessions with substantially more tails than heads, you still lose only $100 each time. </p><p><u>Conclusion</u> </p><p>I think I was wrong about how to calculate the EV of the game beyond a single toss--as was the author of the Scientific American article. And I appreciate the two commenters for pressing me to look deeper. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>Addendum, May 24, 2021 </b></p><p>Not all Scientific American articles are available online, but the one that started this for me happens to be. "Is Inequality Inevitable?" by Bruce M. Boghosian: <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/</a></p><p>Here's the relevant section: </p><br /><br /><br />In 1986 social scientist John Angle first described the movement and distribution of wealth as arising from pairwise transactions among a collection of “economic agents,” which could be individuals, households, companies, funds or other entities. By the turn of the century physicists Slava Ispolatov, Pavel L. Krapivsky and Sidney Redner, then all working together at Boston University, as well as Adrian Drgulescu, now at Constellation Energy Group, and Victor Yakovenko of the University of Maryland, had demonstrated that these agent-based models could be analyzed with the tools of statistical physics, leading to rapid advances in our understanding of their behavior. As it turns out, many such models find wealth moving inexorably from one agent to another—even if they are based on fair exchanges between equal actors. In 2002 Anirban Chakraborti, then at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata, India, introduced what came to be known as the yard sale model, called thus because it has certain features of real one-on-one economic transactions. He also used numerical simulations to demonstrate that it inexorably concentrated wealth, resulting in oligarchy.<br /><br />To understand how this happens, suppose you are in a casino and are invited to play a game. You must place some ante—say, $100—on a table, and a fair coin will be flipped. If the coin comes up heads, the house will pay you 20 percent of what you have on the table, resulting in $120 on the table. If the coin comes up tails, the house will take 17 percent of what you have on the table, resulting in $83 left on the table. You can keep your money on the table for as many flips of the coin as you would like (without ever adding to or subtracting from it). Each time you play, you will win 20 percent of what is on the table if the coin comes up heads, and you will lose 17 percent of it if the coin comes up tails. Should you agree to play this game?<br /><br />You might construct two arguments, both rather persuasive, to help you decide what to do. You may think, “I have a probability of ½ of gaining $20 and a probability of ½ of losing $17. My expected gain is therefore:<br /><br />½ x ($20) + ½ x (-$17) = $1.50<br /><br />which is positive. In other words, my odds of winning and losing are even, but my gain if I win will be greater than my loss if I lose.” From this perspective it seems advantageous to play this game.<br /><br />Or, like a chess player, you might think further: “What if I stay for 10 flips of the coin? A likely outcome is that five of them will come up heads and that the other five will come up tails. Each time heads comes up, my ante is multiplied by 1.2. Each time tails comes up, my ante is multiplied by 0.83. After five wins and five losses in any order, the amount of money remaining on the table will be:<br /><br />1.2 x 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.2 x 0.83 x 0.83 x 0.83 x 0.83 x 0.83 x $100 = $98.02<br /><br />so I will have lost about $2 of my original $100 ante.” With a bit more work you can confirm that it would take about 93 wins to compensate for 91 losses. From this perspective it seems disadvantageous to play this game.</blockquote><p><br /></p><p><b>Addendum, June 10, 2021 </b></p><p>I emailed the author of the article about my concerns. He responded, saying that many people had raised similar questions, so when the article was reprinted in a book, he took the opportunity to revise the section in question for greater clarity. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p style="text-align: left;"> Here's the relevant portion of the revised version of the article he sent me: </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8bhztvo0axIksf739IVZ3KXVVu9R1eNWZK2pa25vIM3xab3_V1jESAOmHN4ZBEmCRiDbcI_Y91llYicCyg8M_sgsRgPW2yXrvLAykxI2Jw0AodJ9LzNPDuq82Y1bPc-8yuvTneQ/s1498/snap038.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1498" data-original-width="877" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8bhztvo0axIksf739IVZ3KXVVu9R1eNWZK2pa25vIM3xab3_V1jESAOmHN4ZBEmCRiDbcI_Y91llYicCyg8M_sgsRgPW2yXrvLAykxI2Jw0AodJ9LzNPDuq82Y1bPc-8yuvTneQ/w375-h640/snap038.jpg" width="375" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;">(The revision is posted here with Mr. Boghosian's kind permission. Source: B.M. Boghosian, “The Inescapable Casino”, reprinted in “The Best Writing on Mathematics 2020”, M. Pitici ed., Princeton University Press (2020).)</p><p style="text-align: left;">This revision sounds correct to me: the EV is positive, but you'll lose more often than you'll win. I still quibble with the last sentence, that "it seems decidedly disadvantageous to play this game." I mean, there's a sense in which that's true, but only if you're tallying wins and losses, while taking no account of their magnitudes--which seems like not the best method of accounting. It was this sentence that made me think that Mr. Bohosian was saying that the game's EV was negative when played more than one toss. I see now that that wasn't actually what he was trying to say. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Of course, you have to be able to tolerate the losses without going broke. In his email to me, Mr. Boghosian mentioned the Kelly criteria for determining what fraction of one's bankroll can be risked. I think Kelly's formula is pretty well known among serious poker players. Phil Laak is particularly vocal about it--e.g, <a href="https://www.espn.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=bluff_magazine&id=4381359">this 2009 Bluff magazine column</a>. For an introduction, see <a href="http://www.sitandgoplanet.com/sitandgo/sng_bankroll/Kelly_Criterion.html">here</a> or <a href="https://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/applying-the-kelly-criterion-to-tournament-poker/">here</a>. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-70162193008495370852021-04-25T15:35:00.002-04:002021-04-25T15:40:10.518-04:00What are the odds?<p> Yesterday Poker News published <a href="https://www.pokernews.com/news/2021/04/poker-player-stuns-final-table-calling-entire-runout-39028.htm">this article</a> about a remarkable hand at the final table of an event in the Lone Star Poker Series. It was all-in pre-flop, Troy Clogston's JsJh against short-stacked Don Iyengar's AdJc. Nothing remarkable about that, or about the way the board fell. What <i>was</i> remarkable was Clogston calling every card of the board before seeing it. Read the article and watch the embedded video there for the details of how it played out. </p><p>Last night I was telling Nina about this. She asked what the probability was. Offhand, I guessed one in a million. This was an actual quick estimate on my part, not just thoughtlessly spouting the cliched "one in a million." Nina thought that was low by an order of magnitude--more like one in ten million. </p><p>So I decided to do the math and see. As I write these words, I still haven't done the calculation, so I don't know the answer. By the time I finish this post, I will. </p><p>We start with the flop. Clogston called for 8-9-10 rainbow. (I don't actually hear "rainbow" in the video, because the announcer talks over it, but I'm assuming it's there, as the text of the article says.) The flop not only comes 8s9h10c, but in that exact order. Now, I don't think the order matters, because surely everybody would give him credit for the call even if the order had been different. So let's ignore the left-to-right order. With 48 unknown cards, and none of the known cards being of the three ranks in question, what is the probability of this guess? </p><p>There are 17,296 different ways of drawing three cards from a deck of 48. (You can find a combination/permutation calculator <a href="https://www.calculator.net/permutation-and-combination-calculator.html">here</a>.) There are 24 different ways of assembling 8-9-10 rainbow. (Each of four 8s can be matched with each of three 9s and each of two 10s, and 4 x 3 x 2 = 24.) So 24 of the possible 17,296 combinations would fulfill the first guess. Probability: 24/17,296 = 0.001388. This equals about 1 in 720. </p><p>Now we're to the turn. We have 45 unseen cards remaining. So guessing one is the straightforward probability of 1/45, or 0.02222. </p><p>On the river, it's 1/44, or 0.02273. </p><p>For Clogston to get all three components of his guess correctly, we have to multiply those three probabilities: 0.001388 x 0.02222 x 0.02273 = 0.0000007010. This equals 1 in 1,426,000. </p><p>So under the conditions as specified here, my guess was the closer one--and not too far off, for taking only a few seconds to think about it. </p><p>However, perhaps you disagree with my decision about the order of the flop. If you want to make the challenge harder by saying that you would only accept Clogston's guess as correct if he got the order of the 8, 9, and 10 correct, it adds extra difficulty. </p><p>Out of 48 cards, the first card must be an 8; probability 4/48, or 0.08333. The second card must be one of three nines that doesn't match the suit of the 8; probability 3/47, or 0.06383. The third card must be one of the two tens that doesn't match either of the previous suits; probability 2/46, or 0.04348. All three of those must be true simultaneously, so again we have to multiply the independent probabilities together. 0.08333 x 0.06383 x 0.04348 = 0.0002313. This equals about 1 in 4324. (A faster way to get the same result is to realize that you have the same 24 winning ways to make 8-9-10 rainbow, but now we're talking about permutations instead of combination, and a permutation calculator says that there are 103,776 unique orders of three cards that can be drawn from a deck of 48 cards. 24/103,776 works out to 1/4324 exactly.) </p><p>If you now multiply that by the turn and river probabilities calculated previously (they are unchanged for this), you get 0.0000001168, or about 1 in 8,560,000. That is much closer to Nina's guess than to mine. </p><p>So who won our little guessing game? As the classic poker answer goes, "It depends." </p>Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-62977947259210298672021-01-07T13:45:00.004-05:002021-01-07T13:45:41.898-05:00Rick Salomon knows<p> From last night's new episode of High Stakes Poker (on PokerGo): </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvnr25xyyzFNDxgBGy-1Z9auyFNWJwpTTGtemdkQr63yOu-8JzMrIrEWmYGcGj5Kq_Y44Q994NVR7_bhUHJdzuU4EjEM852P4rRXrc44XMaci2PSM1Y28XafHqrEkN7WDC01B7BA/s2048/DSC_2090.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvnr25xyyzFNDxgBGy-1Z9auyFNWJwpTTGtemdkQr63yOu-8JzMrIrEWmYGcGj5Kq_Y44Q994NVR7_bhUHJdzuU4EjEM852P4rRXrc44XMaci2PSM1Y28XafHqrEkN7WDC01B7BA/w640-h360/DSC_2090.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-86719147127039233592019-12-04T14:35:00.004-05:002019-12-04T15:01:33.494-05:00"Poker & Pop Culture"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6TZP4zs5H2jAdG_h5QAIJT6TOCTD7Ynl3a5yEbl8SoBZPmsIw4gW1Uyyt1RFEbdZgsCsUFg7RFvfZAhehBj7iPHdx7bicAMtVwABDR3hirBYuFmtgiBPg70TUVyHzDP89jbPxiQ/s1600/DSC_1294b.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6TZP4zs5H2jAdG_h5QAIJT6TOCTD7Ynl3a5yEbl8SoBZPmsIw4gW1Uyyt1RFEbdZgsCsUFg7RFvfZAhehBj7iPHdx7bicAMtVwABDR3hirBYuFmtgiBPg70TUVyHzDP89jbPxiQ/s640/DSC_1294b.JPG" width="360" /></a></div>
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I recently finished reading <i>Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America's Favorite Card Game</i> by my friend Martin Harris, aka Shamus of <a href="http://hardboiledpoker.com/">Hard-Boiled Poker</a>. (Amazon link <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1909457981/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1909457981&linkCode=as2&tag=hardboilpok0b-20&linkId=fdf6eac6e8e35f744e0dd78cddc864de">here</a>.) That's it up there on my Kindle, which is how I prefer to read most books these days. It was published six months ago, but I took a while to get through it because of my bad habits of (1) trying to read, like, five books at the same time, and (2) being easily distracted by whichever new one I just bought ("squirrel!") instead of sticking with one until it's finished.<br />
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The book has a fair amount of overlap with <i>Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker</i> by James McManus, and that work is cited extensively. If you've read it, you'll probably feel that there are whole chapters of Martin's book that you can skip over lightly. This is especially true near the beginning, where, of necessity, he starts with the origins of the game itself and how it spread.<br />
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But then he gets to the core of his subject: how poker appears in and has shaped popular culture--particularly books, magazine, movies, music, television, and radio. Martin has written about many facets of this before, but the essays are scattered around his blog and the various online outlets he has written for; here it's all in one place, plus a ton of details I don't recall seeing before. Martin practically has a corner on the market in this subject matter. Nobody else has written about or researched it as extensively as he has. He has even taught college courses on exactly this stuff.<br />
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Let me show you screen shots of some of the things I highlighted because I found them particularly surprising or interesting:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1qEXO4Usdc4D_q95lDdjUd4sDoNq4xReSvo_V6m7IJZ8MQWYgFGkLJ3dGjjJdWbN9k36CzMBb7yaFQxCamcQxtlGIXJ_9X1OJblbxhsmo_FKUwFh9F-NMoZFPblaSMikTIOuww/s1600/Screenshot_2019-12-04-13-26-15.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1qEXO4Usdc4D_q95lDdjUd4sDoNq4xReSvo_V6m7IJZ8MQWYgFGkLJ3dGjjJdWbN9k36CzMBb7yaFQxCamcQxtlGIXJ_9X1OJblbxhsmo_FKUwFh9F-NMoZFPblaSMikTIOuww/s640/Screenshot_2019-12-04-13-26-15.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Truth! This is what makes playing poker with tourists in Vegas profitable.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-HCpcIebwC0gN4C4E6odVOZkZQ9VzCRPYzSxWBnhV4Uy3MwN-cHRcUCsfYsy7F3_TLpF83MiGLfwsN5YCHQY93z3c8icBbxI1R30aQrvzIZ5a0Nms2CWngfb0bQdQvo1bMJKTiw/s1600/Screenshot_2019-12-04-13-27-51.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-HCpcIebwC0gN4C4E6odVOZkZQ9VzCRPYzSxWBnhV4Uy3MwN-cHRcUCsfYsy7F3_TLpF83MiGLfwsN5YCHQY93z3c8icBbxI1R30aQrvzIZ5a0Nms2CWngfb0bQdQvo1bMJKTiw/s640/Screenshot_2019-12-04-13-27-51.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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WTF? R U SERIOUS? 66 cards, five suits, and a joker? I can't even imagine how this works. So, where do I sign up?<br />
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Also truth. Well, except for the making money part of it.<br />
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I don't see how there can be any argument to the contrary.<br />
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This sounds amazing. You had me at "Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart." <a href="https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/destry-rides-again">Here's a list of where you can find it on various streaming services</a>.<br />
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Back-story to the Kenny Rogers hit. I did not know that Cash had recorded it at roughly the same time. You can hear it on YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOKMVSk4j9w">here</a>. Maybe it's just familiarity, but I think Rogers's version is much better, even though I love Johnny Cash.<br />
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When I read this, I said to myself, "No effin' way!" and rushed to YouTube to find this thing. Here, let me save you the trouble, because you <i>have</i> to see this:<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kNnrTNFWcsg" width="560"></iframe>
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Perhaps oddly, my favorite part of the book is the appendix. In it, Martin lists 100 movies either about poker or with a key poker scene, and ranks them, best to worst. (Spoiler alert: "The Cincinnati Kid" nabs the #1 spot, and some piece of dreck called "<a href="https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/zeta-one">Zeta One</a>" brings up the rear.) I don't think I could have listed a hundred such movies if my life depended on it.<br />
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Between that appendix and the main chapter on poker in the movies, I've highlighted in the text maybe a dozen that sound good enough that I plan to seek them out and watch them. Some I've never heard of before, some are classics that I've inexcusably neglected all these years. My future viewing list includes "Winchester '73," "Rio Bravo," "Silverado," "Dr. Jack," "Poppy," "Tillie and Gus," and "Thursday's Game."<br />
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One quibble: The Kindle version has a glitch throughout, in which every ellipsis in the original text is rendered as an ampersand. There are dozens of these scattered throughout the book. But one soon learns to ignore the anomaly.<br />
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If the general subject matter interests you--and, since you're reading this blog, why wouldn't it?--then order it from Amazon or directly from the publisher, <a href="https://www.dandbpoker.com/book/poker-and-pop-culture">here</a>. If you're going to read it on Kindle, I suggest buying it from Amazon, because it will be available across all your devices, which the eBook version from the publisher won't do. (Once you have the eBook file, you can install it in any device you want, but you have to do it separately for each one; with Amazon, it's automatic.)<br />
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In any format, there is much to learn and enjoy here.<br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-8980051873296109772019-07-14T16:41:00.000-04:002019-07-14T16:41:18.850-04:00OliverMy second cat, Oliver, died yesterday. He had had low-grade chronic renal disease for a long time, and for unknown reasons it rapidly worsened over the past several days, to the point that his kidney were irreversibly shut down.<br />
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I don't know how old he was. The shelter from which I adopted him told the story in a newsletter a short time later:<br />
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It still makes me choke up to see how sick and miserable he was. Compare that to how cozy-comfy he got once he had settled in with me:<br />
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His favorite place to perch was on top of my recliner:<br />
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He thought it was an even better spot when I would sit in the chair with him above me:<br />
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Sometimes this would result in a head bath that I thought was unnecessary, but Oliver obviously thought otherwise. This was the first of what would turn out to be many:<br />
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My main regret is that I could never get Oliver and Lucy to be friends. Mostly, they just barely tolerated each other. This isn't a great photo, but it nicely illustrates the prevailing mood:<br />
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But once in a while, there would be a real dust-up. Oliver usually picked the fights, and always came out the loser:<br />
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Sometimes they would nap calmly in fairly close proximity, showing a glimmer of mutual tolerance:<br />
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And once in a great while, there were moments of what appeared to be affection, which would always send my hopes soaring that a better inter-feline relationship would come:<br />
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The best I can say is that in the last several months things <i>were</i> improving between them--though at a glacial pace.<br />
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He was a pretty derpy, messy cat. His tongue often stuck out, and he would make giant messes out of his food, water, litterbox, and everything else. But he did have his moments of letting his handsome flag fly:<br />
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One of his best features was that he had eyeliner on fleek. Women would die to get their eyes done this perfectly:<br />
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He was constantly affectionate.<br />
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He was endlessly funny and entertaining.<br />
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Looking through my photo/video archives, I just want to show you all of it. But that would be self-indulgent, rather than a proper tribute. So I'll call it quits with this:<br />
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For the last time, Oliver says "blep."<br />
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I already miss him terribly.<br />
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<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-3496062120435564472019-04-15T17:44:00.002-04:002019-04-15T17:44:54.422-04:00Historic playing cardsMars Hill University is a small college just a little north of Asheville. I was at an event there today in the library, and the library had an exhibit about historical games. Nina spotted this on one of the walls. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a wider picture of the whole deck, and the lighting didn't allow me to get good quality photos of the individual cards. But you can still see the general idea.<br />
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<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-62678027742994185282019-02-24T09:58:00.005-05:002019-02-24T09:58:49.432-05:00Memphis Mojo on the Mighty Deuce-FourSee here: <a href="http://pokerandbridge.blogspot.com/2019/02/mighty-deuce-four-strikes-again.html">http://pokerandbridge.blogspot.com/2019/02/mighty-deuce-four-strikes-again.html</a><br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-73446509106674089292019-01-05T12:12:00.001-05:002019-01-05T12:12:28.550-05:00It hasn't forgotten meYesterday I played online poker for the first time in a couple of years, I think. Just an easy $15 single-table sit-and-go.<br />
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This is what happened:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wP7MgEgQsE0Db3AiYkhJGyIwsTzxS9YfsMNFUiNd0fRM_xkfdd5VBu0Pbqnx-xL3PAVt_PD4JzrEqEPYNaeJLIXXzPWGnWwWKqm4yMYARmdG5SbJbOtmEb7XgJ_Klj5T2ZBZbA/s1600/snap013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wP7MgEgQsE0Db3AiYkhJGyIwsTzxS9YfsMNFUiNd0fRM_xkfdd5VBu0Pbqnx-xL3PAVt_PD4JzrEqEPYNaeJLIXXzPWGnWwWKqm4yMYARmdG5SbJbOtmEb7XgJ_Klj5T2ZBZbA/s640/snap013.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-47972723695484097132018-06-14T07:17:00.002-04:002018-06-14T07:17:15.872-04:00Deuce-Four wins againThis time it was the final winning hand in the WSOP "Millionaire Maker":<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2018-wsop/event-21-millionaire-maker/">https://www.pokernews.com/tours/wsop/2018-wsop/event-21-millionaire-maker/</a><br />
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<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-75914247485244460132018-04-30T12:56:00.001-04:002018-04-30T16:41:43.831-04:00Some news about "TBC" TonySome of you have already heard that Tony was arrested and jailed yesterday. I learned of it from this tweet:<br />
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Tony Bigcharles (<a href="https://twitter.com/sevencard2003?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sevencard2003</a>) was arrested this afternoon in what appears to be a charge related to a blog post he made today. <a href="https://t.co/mZNvj3iki1">pic.twitter.com/mZNvj3iki1</a></div>
— John Mehaffey (@John_Mehaffey) <a href="https://twitter.com/John_Mehaffey/status/990765661235232769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2018</a></blockquote>
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The blog post in question is <a href="http://sevencard2003.blogspot.com/2018/04/does-anything-matter-anymore-and-does.html">here</a>. This is its final paragraph:<br />
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The blog post was quickly followed by this explicit threat of suicide posted on Facebook:<br />
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It appears from the inmate info shown in the tweet above that he has his first hearing scheduled for Tuesday, May 1 (tomorrow as I write this). You can search Clark County inmate information <a href="http://redrock.clarkcountynv.gov/ccdcincustody/inCustodySearch.aspx">here</a>.<br />
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I think it's almost inevitable that the following information will come out publicly in the legal proceedings. After all, the police officers will have to explain what information they were acting on. So here it is: I'm the one that made the report. (Of course, others might have, too. I don't know.) I've been torn about saying this, because on the one hand I don't want to sound like I'm boasting (far from it), but on the other hand, when it becomes public, I don't want it to look like I was trying to conceal my actions, as if I'm ashamed of them. I'm not.<br />
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Here's the story:<br />
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Tony has made threats of both suicide and violence against others before, of varying degrees of vagueness. But if memory serves, they've always been accompanied by disclaimers along the lines of, "Of course I would never really do that," explaining that he's a coward at heart, and/or that he wouldn't want to go to hell. It weighed on me that there was no such disclaimer in either of yesterday's alarming communications. Maybe the omission was inadvertent, but it seemed that it might be significant. The line about getting his name on TV and in the newspapers also seemed to me like it added a new element of scariness and seriousness that I had not detected in his previous outbursts.<br />
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After stewing over Tony's blog post for an hour or so, I decided that I couldn't ignore it. Threatening to join the ranks of mass public killers is a line that one simply cannot cross. Much like threatening to kill the president or saying at the airport that you have a bomb in your suitcase, I think we have a collective social obligation not to wave off such communications, even when, as here, our hunch is that they will not be acted upon.<br />
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I decided to call security at the Hoover Dam Lodge, where I assumed Tony still was. I did that rather than calling police, reasoning that casino security are better than police at quietly taking somebody into a secure location. Put another way, there would be less chance of the encounter spiraling out of control into a police shooting or some other tragic, unintended, violent outcome. The security guy I talked to was well aware of who Tony was, and that he had been in house all weekend.<br />
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I read him the crucial sentences of the blog post, and answered a bunch of his questions: No, I didn't think Tony would actually carry out his threat--in fact, I thought it was only about a 1% chance that he would. No, I didn't think he had any weapons. That sort of thing.<br />
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He called me back a few minutes later, because he had been unable to find the blog post. I walked him through getting to it. In the meantime, I had seen the Facebook post about suicide, and passed that along. Hearing that, the man said he had to call 911, and hung up.<br />
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Some more time passed, and then I got a call from a Metro Police dispatcher, asking me to repeat the information, though she was focused entirely on the suicide threat, not the murder threat. She asked me to read the Facebook post to her while she transcribed it word for word. (I offered to email a link or screen capture, and she said they couldn't take information that way, which seemed strange and primitive to me.) I answered several more questions about what I knew about Tony's mental health, whether he used any drugs or alcohol, etc. That conversation was the last I heard until I saw John Mehaffey's tweet several hours later. I don't know what transpired in between.<br />
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I feel terrible about the trouble that Tony is in, even though I knew that something like that would be the nearly inevitable result of making that initial phone call. He doesn't need more issues on his plate to deal with.<br />
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I've looked briefly at the criminal statute under which he's being charged, and my first impression is that it doesn't fit very well with what actually happened. I think a good attorney could probably get him out of this with a guilty plea on some much lower misdemeanor charge and minimal or no jail time. But, of course, he'll be depending on a public defense attorney, and it's impossible to know how skilled, experienced, and overworked they might be.<br />
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I hope with all my might that the main outcome is Tony getting some court-ordered help, rather than left in a jail cell to get even angrier than he already is. I know Tony well enough to be able to guess that he will blame me for all of the fallout from this incident. I still consider him a friend, and hope that he will do the same, but it won't surprise me if I become <i>persona non grata, </i>either temporarily or permanently.<br />
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I weighed that consequence before making the report, but in the end decided that I just couldn't look the other way on this one, as I and so many others of his friends and followers have done previously. Maybe I'm wrong, but this one struck me as several notches of escalation beyond what I had seen and heard before. I'm not easily alarmed, but it alarmed me in a way that I don't recall feeling with his previous antics.<br />
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I suppose some readers will think I did the right thing, while others will think I was being petty or vindictive or grandstanding or dramatic or whatever. All I can tell you is that it felt awful to do, and still feels awful now. Not awful in the sense of being wrong, but awful in the sense of dreading the consequences but still feeling like it was what needed to be done. I can only imagine how terribly angry and miserable and scared Tony must be in jail today, and I hate that that is so, and that there's nothing I can do to make it any less terrible.<br />
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In life, as in poker, all we can do is make the best decision possible with imperfect information and imperfect judgment, then let the cards fall where they may.<br />
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Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com59tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-87814495675800684872018-01-22T14:47:00.000-05:002018-01-22T14:47:00.182-05:00Memphis MOJO on the Mighty Deuce-FourGood story here:<br />
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<a href="http://pokerandbridge.blogspot.com/2018/01/wsop-circuit-is-in-tunica.html">http://pokerandbridge.blogspot.com/2018/01/wsop-circuit-is-in-tunica.html</a><br />
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<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-35745380100746333832017-10-23T18:03:00.002-04:002017-10-23T18:03:15.810-04:00Life updateI adopted a second cat. His name is Oliver. He's had a hard life. He was abandoned by persons unknown, and left to die--and he very nearly did. He has no teeth and no tail. But now he'll have enough love that it won't matter.<br />
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<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-32654314915451187702017-08-15T18:43:00.001-04:002017-08-15T18:46:30.533-04:00Confederate monumentsI can recall only one unexpected encounter with a Confederate monument.<br />
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In December 2015, Nina and I went for a hike in Pinnacle Park, near the town of Sylva, NC. Afterward, we decided to poke around the town and see what was there. We quickly found our way to what seemed to be the highest point: the courthouse. </div>
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From the front of the building, there's a spectacular view down the main drag, with mountains in the background, as seen below. If I took a photo of that view, I didn't save it, but here's a good one: </div>
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(<a href="http://www.city-data.com/picfilesc/picc11369.php">Source</a>) </div>
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From behind, I thought that statue was probably a WWI soldier. I went down the steps far enough to see it from the front, and was surprised by what you can see in the photo below: "Our Heroes of the Confederacy." </div>
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I'm no PC snowflake, but the statue and its engraving instantly made me feel, well, icky. The Confederacy was the enemy of everything I cherish, ideologically; it was awful in every conceivable way, from its conception to the moment it was destroyed. </div>
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A speech that Frederick Douglass gave in 1878 sums up the matter more eloquently than I ever could: </div>
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Nevertheless, we must not be asked to say that the South was right in the rebellion, or to say the North was wrong. We must not be asked to put no difference between those who fought for the Union and those who fought against it, or between loyalty and treason.... </blockquote>
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I admit that the South believed it was right, but the nature of things is not changed by belief. The Inquisition was not less a crime against humanity because it was believed right by the Holy Fathers.... </blockquote>
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It was a war of ideas, a battle of principles and ideas which united one section and divided the other; a war between the old and new, slavery and freedom, barbarism and civilization; between a government based upon the broadest and grandest declaration of human rights the world ever heard or read, and another pretended government, based upon an open, bold and shocking denial of all rights, except the right of the strongest.... </blockquote>
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There was a right side and a wrong side in the late war, which no sentiment ought to cause us to forget, and while to-day we should have malice toward none, and charity toward all, it is no part of our duty to confound right with wrong, or loyalty with treason.</blockquote>
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(See <a href="http://frederickdouglass-civilwar.blogspot.com/">here </a>for the whole thing.) </div>
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I am not in the "tear them all down" camp--especially when that is decided by mob rule rather than through the processes of representative democracy. But neither am I in the "we need to honor our heritage" camp. It is preposterous to worry that we will erase the Civil War, the Confederacy, and its important lessons from our collective conscious if all the flattering monuments were to be hit by wrecking balls. </div>
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But I'm not sure that's the right approach, at least not across the board. </div>
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One of the most interesting things I saw on my one and only trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, was the city's central plaza. It is home to an obelisk monument erected in 1868:<br />
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(<a href="http://www.sangres.com/newmexico/santafe/santafe.htm#.WZNxU1GGOUk">Source</a>.) </div>
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The obelisk itself is forgettable, indistinguishable from a million others. But I was intrigued by the combination of the original inscription and the explanatory plaque added much, much later: </div>
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(You will note that the word "savage" has been defaced out of the original, presumably after this plaque was added. This was vandalism, not an official act. I don't approve of it; your mileage may vary.) </div>
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I like this general approach. It allows the visitor to see what was important to the people who erected the edifice, in their own words. But then it adds a modern comment, gently (perhaps too gently) expressing a collective, contemporary disavowal. </div>
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Maybe the added plaque should go further, and express remorse over the entire genocidal enterprise, rather than being apologetic only for the use of two words that make those of modern sensibilities cringe. But my point is not that this one example is done exactly right; rather, I think the general approach is a worthy one, and it's one I don't recall having seen done anywhere else. </div>
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I can imagine approving of a heroic-appearing Civil War monument, with its original inscription intact, but augmented by an updated perspective--one explaining that while we do not wish to erase the past, we also do not wish to condone or leave unchallenged the views that cloaked Confederate evil in the glory of a heroic public statue. It would not displease me one bit if some of Douglass's wonderful prose, such as that quoted above, made its way onto these new additions to the memorials. </div>
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Those who built all these monuments did so in order to speak to people of the future. Fine, let them. We don't need to silence their voices in order to add our own. </div>
Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-58815386022228395702017-02-02T09:45:00.001-05:002017-02-02T10:40:13.014-05:00Frederick Douglass on immigrationWarning: No poker content.<br />
<br />
Last night I started reading this book:<br />
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<br />
I bought it, after it had sat on my Amazon wish list for a long time, because I was reminded about Douglass by Donald Trump's embarrassing reference to him yesterday.<br />
<br />
I'll mostly read it in order, but I first turned to an 1869 speech Douglass gave about immigration, since that's a hot topic these days. He was specifically reacting to the anti-Chinese fervor that was then in the news. The US had signed some sort of agreement with China to let workers in temporarily, but not permanently, and would not let them become citizens.<br />
<br />
I'm quite radically in favor of immigration, viewing a right to roam freely about the globe as one of the natural rights of man; the movement of people should be as unrestrained as the movement of goods and ideas. With a few pragmatic qualifications, I am, therefore, an advocate for open borders. I was delighted to find that Douglass basically shared that viewpoint.<br />
<br />
His speech here is very long; the few things I've read from him, while rhetorically impressive, reveal a tendency to be hugely verbose, at least by modern standards. So I've done a Reader's Digest job on the speech, cutting it down to maybe 10% of its original length. You get the essence of his message, and all the best bits, in a fraction of the reading time.<br />
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Douglass also, kind of embarrassingly, peppered this speech with racial, ethnic, and national stereotyping: the Chinese share these characteristics, the Germans these, etc. A man can be ahead of his time, yet still limited by it. I've quietly omitted most of those parts, as I suspect Douglass himself would if he could rewrite the speech today.<br />
<br />
Here we go:<br />
<br />
<b>“Our Composite Nationality,” a speech delivered on December 7, 1869 in Boston, Massachusetts and published in Boston Daily Advertiser, December 8, 1869. </b><br />
<br />
A government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for its existence, or sanction for its laws, than nature, reason and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family, is a standing offense to most of the governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.<br />
<br />
Of errors and defects we certainly have not less than our full share, enough to keep the reformer awake, the statesman busy, and the country in a pretty lively state of agitation for some time to come.<br />
<br />
We have for a long time hesitated to adopt and carry out the only principle which can solve that difficulty and give peace, strength and security to the republic, and that is the principle of absolute equality.<br />
<br />
We are a country of all extremes, ends and opposites; the most conspicuous example of composite nationality in the world. Our people defy all the ethnological and logical classifications. In races we range all the way from black to white, with intermediate shades which, as in the apocalyptic vision, no man can name or number.<br />
<br />
We stand between the populous shores of two great oceans. Our land is capable of supporting one-fifth of all the globe. Here, labor is abundant and better remunerated than anywhere else. All moral, social and geographical causes conspire to bring to us the peoples of all other over-populated countries.<br />
<br />
Europe and Africa are already here, and the Indian was here before either. He stands today between the two extremes of black and white, too proud to claim fraternity with either, and yet too weak to withstand the power of either. Heretofore, the policy of our government has been governed by race pride, rather than by wisdom.<br />
<br />
Until recently, neither the Indian nor the Negro has been treated as a part of the body politic. No attempt has been made to inspire either with a sentiment of patriotism, but the hearts of both races have been diligently sown with the dangerous seeds of discontent and hatred.<br />
<br />
The policy of keeping the Indians to themselves, has kept the tomahawk and scalping knife busy upon our borders, and has cost us largely in blood and treasure.<br />
<br />
Our treatment of the Negro has lacked humanity and filled the country with agitation and ill-feeling, and brought the nation to the verge of ruin.<br />
<br />
Before the relations of those two races are satisfactorily settled, and in spite of all opposition, a new race is making its appearance within our borders, and claiming attention.<br />
<br />
America is no longer an obscure and inaccessible country. Our ships are in every sea, our commerce is in every port, our language is heard all around the globe, steam and lightning have revolutionized the whole domain of human thought, changed all geographical relations, make a day of the present seem equal to a thousand years of the past, and the continent that Columbus only conjectured four centuries ago is now the center of the world.<br />
<br />
The same mighty forces which have swept to our shores the overflowing population of Europe; which have reduced the people of Ireland three millions below its normal standard; will operate in a similar manner upon the hungry population of China and other parts of Asia. Home has its charms, and native land has its charms, but hunger, oppression and destitution will dissolve these charms and send men in search of new countries and new homes.<br />
<br />
The conclusion of the whole will be that they will want to come to us, and, as we become more liberal, we shall want them to come, and what we want done will naturally be done.<br />
<br />
They will no longer halt upon the shores of California. They will burrow no longer in her exhausted and deserted gold mines, where they have gathered wealth from barrenness, taking what others left. They will turn their backs not only upon the Celestial Empire but upon the golden shores of the Pacific, and the wide waste of waters whose majestic waves spoke to them of home and country. They will withdraw their eyes from the glowing West and fix them upon the rising sun. They will cross the mountains, cross the plains, descend our rivers, penetrate to the heart of the country and fix their home with us forever.<br />
<br />
Assuming then that immigration already has a foothold and will combine for many years to come, we have a new element in our national composition which is likely to exercise a large influence upon the thought and the action of the whole nation.<br />
<br />
Already has the matter taken shape in California and on the Pacific coast generally. Already has California assumed a bitterly unfriendly attitude toward the Chinaman. Already has she driven them from her altars of justice. Already has she stamped them as outcasts and handed them over to popular contempts and vulgar jest. Already are they the constant victims of cruel harshness and brutal violence. Already have our Celtic brothers, never slow to execute the behests of popular prejudice against the weak and defenseless, recognized in the heads of these people, fit targets for their shilalahs. Already, too, are their associations formed in avowed hostility to the Chinese.<br />
<br />
In all this there is, of course, nothing strange. Repugnance to the presence and influence of foreigners is an ancient feeling among men. It is peculiar to no particular race or nation. To the Greek, every man not speaking Greek is a barbarian. To the Jew, every one not circumcised is a gentile. To the Mohametan, every one not believing in the prophet is a kaffer.<br />
<br />
Nature has two voices, the one high, the other low; one is in sweet accord with reason and justice, and the other apparently at war with both. The more men know of the essential nature of things, and of the true relation of mankind, the freer they are from prejudice of every kind. The child is afraid of the giant form of his own shadow. This is natural, but he will part with his fears when he is older and wiser. So ignorance is full of prejudice, but it will disappear with enlightenment.<br />
<br />
I have said that the Chinese will come, and have given some reasons why we may expect them in very large numbers in no very distant future. Do you ask if I would favor such immigrations? I answer, <i>I would</i>. Would you admit them as witnesses in our courts of law? <i>I would.</i> Would you have them naturalized, and have them invested with all the rights of American citizenship? <i>I would.</i> Would you allow them to vote? <i>I would.</i> Would you allow them to hold office? <i>I would.</i><br />
<br />
But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry?<br />
<br />
To all this and more I have one among many answers, altogether satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise it will be entirely so to you.<br />
<br />
I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible.<br />
<br />
Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity.<br />
<br />
I want a home here not only for the Negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. Right wrongs no man.<br />
<br />
And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt.<br />
<br />
It has been thoughtfully observed that every nation, owing to its peculiar character and composition, has a definite mission in the world. What that mission is, and what policy is best adapted to assist in its fulfillment, is the business of its people and its statesmen to know, and knowing, to make a noble use of this knowledge.<br />
<br />
I need not stop here to name or describe the missions of other or more ancient nationalities. Ours seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen.<br />
<br />
In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds. We are not only bound to this position by our organic structure and by our revolutionary antecedents, but by the genius of our people. Gathered here from all quarters of the globe, by a common aspiration for national liberty as against caste, divine right govern and privileged classes, it would be unwise to be found fighting against ourselves and among ourselves, it would be unadvised to attempt to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another, or prescribe any on account of race, color or creed.<br />
<br />
The apprehension that we shall be swamped or swallowed up by Mongolian civilization; that the Caucasian race may not be able to hold their own against that vast incoming population, does not seem entitled to much respect. Though they come as the waves come, we shall be all the stronger if we receive them as friends and give them a reason for loving our country and our institutions. They will find here a deeply rooted, indigenous, growing civilization, augmented by an ever-increasing stream of immigration from Europe, and possession is nine points of the law in this case, as well as in others. They will come as strangers. We are at home. They will come to us, not we to them. They will come in their weakness, we shall meet them in our strength. They will come as individuals, we will meet them in multitudes, and with all the advantages of organization. Chinese children are in American schools in San Francisco. None of our children are in Chinese schools, and probably never will be, though in some things they might well teach us valuable lessons. Contact with these yellow children of the Celestial Empire would convince us that the points of human difference, great as they, upon first sight, seem, are as nothing compared with the points of human agreement. Such contact would remove mountains of prejudice.<br />
<br />
It is said that it is not good for man to be alone. This is true, not only in the sense in which our women’s rights friends so zealously and wisely teach, but it is true as to nations.<br />
<br />
All great qualities are never found in any one man or in any one race. The whole of humanity, like the whole of everything else, is ever greater than a part.<br />
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When the architect intends a grand structure, he makes the foundation broad and strong. We should imitate this prudence in laying the foundations of the future republic.<br />
<br />
If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all the nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.<br />
<br />
The great right of migration and the great wisdom of incorporating foreign elements into our body politic, are founded not upon any genealogical or ethnological theory, however learned, but upon the broad fact of a common nature.<br />
<br />
Man is man the world over. This fact is affirmed and admitted in any effort to deny it. The sentiments we exhibit, whether love or hate, confidence or fear, respect or contempt, will always imply a like humanity. A smile or a tear has no nationality. Joy and sorrow speak alike in all nations, and they above all the confusion of tongues proclaim the brotherhood of man.<br />
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Let the Chinaman come; he will help to augment the national wealth; he will help to develop our boundless resources; he will help to pay off our national debt; he will help to lighten the burden of our national taxation; he will give us the benefit of his skill as manufacturer and as a tiller of the soil, in which he is unsurpassed.<br />
<br />
Even the matter of religious liberty, which has cost the world more tears, more blood and more agony, than any other interest, will be helped by his presence. I know of no church, however tolerant; of no priesthood, however enlightened, which could be safely trusted with the tremendous power which universal conformity would confer. We should welcome all men of every shade of religious opinion, as among the best means of checking the arrogance and intolerance which are the almost inevitable concomitants of general conformity. Religious liberty always flourishes best amid the clash of competition of rival religious creeds.<br />
<br />
To the mind of superficial men the future of different races has already brought disaster and ruin upon the country. The poor Negro has been charged with all our woes. In the haste of these men they forget that our trouble was not ethnological, but moral, that it was not difference of complexion, but difference of conviction. It was not the Ethiopian as a man, but the Ethiopian as a slave and a coveted article of merchandise, that gave us trouble.<br />
<br />
I close these remarks as I began. If our action shall be in accordance with the principles of justice, liberty, and perfect human equality, no eloquence can adequately portray the greatness and grandeur of the future of the republic.<br />
<br />
We shall spread the network of our science and our civilization over all who seek their shelter, whether from Asia, Africa, or the isles of the sea. We shall mold them all, each after his kind, into Americans; Indian and Celt, Negro and Saxon, Latin and Teuton, Mongolian and Caucasian, Jew and gentile, all shall here bow to the same law, speak the same language, support the same government, enjoy the same liberty, vibrate with the same national enthusiasm, and seek the same national ends.<br />
<br />
<i>Douglass, Frederick. The Essential Douglass: Selected Writings and Speeches. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
(I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to speculate as to what Douglass would advise 21st-century America to do with refugees seeking asylum on our shores from war and persecution. Let them in, or turn them away?)Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-62822877324530410122017-01-30T12:11:00.000-05:002017-01-30T12:11:02.690-05:00PokerNews article #147On how good sleep can be your secret weapon for better poker.<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/sleep-better-play-better-how-sleep-affects-your-poker-26969.htm">https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/sleep-better-play-better-how-sleep-affects-your-poker-26969.htm</a><br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-4022694294378062612017-01-26T11:11:00.002-05:002017-01-26T11:28:07.337-05:00PokerNews article #146<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/six-ways-cooperation-is-a-virtue-in-poker-26890.htm" target="_blank">Six ways in which cooperation is a virtue in poker </a><br />
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<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-30780143679104633132017-01-17T12:42:00.002-05:002017-01-17T12:42:35.096-05:00PokerNews article #145Today I discuss an empirical study of how poker players change their strategies after winning or losing a big pot.<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/changing-strategy-big-win-loss-regression-to-mean-26808.htm">https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/changing-strategy-big-win-loss-regression-to-mean-26808.htm</a><br />
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<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-51846521942858703242017-01-09T13:15:00.002-05:002017-01-09T13:15:11.255-05:00PokerNews article #144This is part 2 of the two-part column on regression to the mean, this time with its poker-specific implications.<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/regression-to-the-mean-unusually-good-or-bad-poker-results-26736.htm">https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/regression-to-the-mean-unusually-good-or-bad-poker-results-26736.htm</a><br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-16774419668804992832017-01-03T11:35:00.002-05:002017-01-03T11:35:21.388-05:00PokerNews article #143This is the first of a two-part article on "regression to the mean"--what the phenomenon is and how it informs our understanding of variance in poker.<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/randomness-in-your-poker-results-regression-to-the-mean-26688.htm">https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/randomness-in-your-poker-results-regression-to-the-mean-26688.htm</a><br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-41592775979082763512016-12-19T15:30:00.004-05:002016-12-19T15:30:58.015-05:00PokerNews article #142Things are always changing in poker. Are you paying attention?<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/can-you-spot-the-ways-the-game-has-changed-26631.htm">https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/can-you-spot-the-ways-the-game-has-changed-26631.htm</a><br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-50365674700108573992016-12-12T11:49:00.003-05:002016-12-12T11:49:28.099-05:00PokerNews article #141Are you committing any of the Seven Deadly Sins of Poker?<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/seven-deadly-sins-of-poker-how-many-are-you-guilty-of-26565.htm">https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/seven-deadly-sins-of-poker-how-many-are-you-guilty-of-26565.htm</a><br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-75561014777531996042016-12-05T17:27:00.003-05:002016-12-05T17:27:55.673-05:00PokerNews article #140What should you do if you suspect cheating in your poker game?<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/suspect-cheating-in-a-poker-game-heres-what-to-do-about-it-26458.htm">https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/suspect-cheating-in-a-poker-game-heres-what-to-do-about-it-26458.htm</a><br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36880087.post-71125785966602666622016-11-28T17:15:00.001-05:002016-11-28T17:15:33.828-05:00PokerNews article #139If you make a bad call, don't compound the error with a bad justification of it.<br />
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<a href="https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/two-things-you-should-never-say-at-a-poker-table-26465.htm">https://www.pokernews.com/strategy/two-things-you-should-never-say-at-a-poker-table-26465.htm</a><br />
<br />Rakewellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15873391354585352712noreply@blogger.com0