PokerNews article #121

Shannon Elizabeth, the "law of attraction," and the illusion of control in poker.


http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/what-you-can-and-cant-control-in-poker-and-why-it-matters-25357.htm

Which presidential candidate is best for poker?

See here for the answer:

http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/law-and-legislation/7141-gary-johnson-still-friend-online-poker/

PokerNews article #120

Five more poker-room promotions, and how to approach them.


http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/five-poker-room-promotions-and-how-to-exploit-them-25297.htm

PokerNews article #119

Tony asked if he had misplayed a hand. This is my detailed analysis.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/important-hold-em-lessons-from-a-seemingly-ordinary-hand-25221.htm

PokerNews article #118

An evolutionary biologist and George Costanza team up to teach you how to bluff better.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/deception-detection-bluffing-25151.htm

PokerNews article #117

Muhammad Ali has some poker advice for you.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/muhammad-ali-on-how-to-be-the-greatest-poker-player-25090.htm

On abrogating constitutional rights without due process (no poker content)

I wrote this for Facebook, then decided I might as well make it more accessible by posting it here. What got me thinking about the subject was this blog post by legal scholar Josh Blackman, whose writings I have come to like--including, e.g., his book on the legal challenges to Obamacare.



I've been ruminating more on the proposals--by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, and others--that if you're on a terrorist watch list or a no-fly list, you should be barred from being able to buy a gun. It's important to keep in mind that placement on such lists is based only on suspicion--by definition, less than needed to constitute "probable cause" for an arrest warrant, let alone evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" necessary for a criminal conviction.

The Adam Winkler proposal to have such determinations rubber-stamped by a FISA-like court (see the link I posted earlier today) doesn't improve matters much, because those are secret proceedings, in which the accused does not get to examine or contest the evidence the government claims to have against him. In fact, the accused doesn't even know that such a proceeding is taking place, so there's no right to be represented by an attorney, to confront witnesses, etc.

Just as a thought experiment, imagine if the result of being placed on one of those lists of suspects were a clear violation of some clear constitutional right *other* than that protected by the second amendment.

First amendment: "Citizen, you are under suspicion, and may no longer post your opinions about Islam anywhere on the Internet."

First amendment, again: "Citizen, you are under suspicion, and may no longer attend any Islamic place of worship."

First amendment, again: "Citizen, you are under suspicion, and may no longer have contact with friends or family members who are of the Muslim faith."

First amendment, again: "Citizen, you are under suspicion, and may no longer join in petitions to the government relative to the grievances you claim in the treatment of Muslims."

Fourth amendment: "Citizen, you are under suspicion, and law enforcement agencies from every level of government are now empowered to search your person at any time, and to enter your home and business and search all of your belongings, at their sole discretion, seizing any items they deem relevant, without a warrant."

Fifth amendment: "Citizen, you are under suspicion, and are now required to cooperate in our gathering of evidence against you. This means, specifically, that you must answer all of our questions about your various activities, businesses, social contacts, religious beliefs, ideas, and plans. If you do not comply willingly, you will be jailed in order to coerce your compliance."

Eighth amendment: "Citizen, you are under suspicion. Should jailing you fail to produce your compliance with the questioning described above, we are authorized to employ methods of torture to gain your cooperation."

Thirteenth amendment: "Citizen, you are under suspicion. Therefore, you are hereby declared to be a slave of the federal government. The US Marshal presenting you these papers will now escort you to the forced-labor camp. Noncompliance with any order will be severely punished."

If you would be willing to stand for ANY of these consequences on the grounds of being a mere *suspect*, without evidence sufficient for arrest (much less prosecution), then I'm afraid that your views and mine about rights, liberty, the constitution, and what it means to live in "the land of the free" are so far apart that there is no way to bridge the divide.

If, however, you share my sense of revulsion at the thought that the government could treat a citizen in this manner, then I respectfully invite you to consider whether we should allow the right to own/purchase a firearm, as guaranteed in the second amendment, to be abrogated with that lessened threshold of mere "suspicion."

PokerNews article #116

On why you shouldn't be the table's poker teacher.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/seven-reasons-not-to-be-the-tables-poker-know-it-all-25018.htm

Deuce-Four wins a WSOP bracelet

http://www.wsop.com/tournaments/update/1ECN/jean-gaspard-wins-the-10k-dealers-choice-championship/

Thanks to Eric Farbman for pointing this out to me.

What would you do?

Interesting story by Lee Jones. How would you react?

https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/lee_jones_journal/2016/letting-one-off-the-hook-162093.shtml

PokerNews article #115

Mind control in poker--it's totally possible!

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/mind-control-in-poker-24954.htm

Just for fun, here's some screen captures from that "Jessica Jones" scene described in the article:

PokerNews article #114

Tips for playing in seniors' tournaments:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/seniors-events-strategy-24830.htm

When non-poker-players pick license plates

PokerNews article #113

This is the second half of the article started last week, on using a combinations calculator to solve poker probability problems.

Thanks once again to the readers who sniffed out several goofs in this before it went online.


http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/how-to-take-your-poker-math-beyond-counting-outs-2-24776.htm

PokerNews article #112

This is the first half of a two-part article on how to do poker probability problems using combinations of cards, with the difficult math done by something called a combinations calculator.

I spent far longer writing this one than most of my PN contributions, and I'm really pleased with the result. If you follow along and do the work with me, rather than just blast through it as fast as your eyeballs can scan the words, you'll go from knowing nothing about this kind of calculation to being able to pose and answer complex poker-math problems on your own.

I owe a giant thanks to five blog readers who responded to my plea in the previous post, and took considerable time and effort to proofread my first draft. Between them, they found six mistakes, ranging from trivial to huge. Without their help in advance, I would now have to spend the next few days being embarrassed and submitting corrections as PokerNews readers pointed out my mistakes. But due to their careful scrutiny, I'm now pretty confident that everything is right.

And thanks also to "TBC" Tony, whose report of the unusual poker-room promotion in Shreveport is what got me thinking about tackling this subject for PokerNews. The calculation of how often that promotion is expected to hit is the last and most complex example I work through in the article, at the end of Part Two, next week.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/how-to-take-your-poker-math-beyond-counting-outs-1-24726.htm

Math double-check

I've written a thing for an upcoming PokerNews article that involves a lot of math--not highly advanced, but moderately complex poker probability stuff that can't be looked up online. I'd like to have any embarrassing errors discovered before it gets published, rather than after.

If you're reasonably good at figuring out probabilities using the formula for card combinations, and you're willing to spend what I think would be 30 minutes or so looking over my work, please let me know: submit a comment below with "do not publish" or words to that effect, and your name and email, and I'll send it to you for a look-over.

Thanks.

PokerNews article #111

Have you ever lamented that you finally pick up a big hand, and everybody folds to your raise? Here's how to fix that.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/everybody-folds-when-you-finally-have-a-big-hand-how-to-fix--24664.htm

PokerNews article #110

Autism, Star Trek, and Kenny Rogers:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/reading-emotions-and-poker-24610.htm

Full day of poker

Yesterday Nina and I went to Harrah's Cherokee to play in the second WSOP-C seniors event. (The first was April 17.) I did decently well in it, going out with about 150 left out of 568 entrants, but not well enough to make the money (last 63). As is often the case in such things, winning instead of losing one 50/50 race would have made all the difference.

Next I played in a cash game for a while. It's actually been three years since I played a $1-2 NLHE cash game with chips and a dealer instead of PokerPro machines. I kept forgetting to tip the dealer when I won pots. I started well, but eventually made a bad all-in move and lost my buy-in. The game was already breaking up, so I decided not to start over.

But they were assembling a 10-player, $125 sit-and-go for $1100 cash, winner take all. I don't think I've ever done a tournament format like that. The closest I've come has been some WSOP single-table satellites. I figured I had a couple of hours of good poker left in me, so I signed up. Nina came by when there was just one seat left, and I persuaded her to take it.

I picked a seat card at random and ended up sitting next to a blog reader, who lives in Durham. He recognized me and introduced himself. (Hi, Matt!) It wasn't too uncommon to run into readers at the poker tables in Las Vegas, but this is the first time it's happened since I moved to North Carolina.

I started the tournament epically card-dead. Just could not pick up a real hand to save my life. And every time I thought a good steal opportunity was coming my way, Matt, on my right, beat me to it.

The structure was fast. 2000 in starting chips, blinds going up every 15 minutes, starting at 25/25, then 25/50, 50/100, etc. The whole thing took less than two hours. So after losing some chips to blinds and speculative hands that went nowhere, I had to do something. When there were a few limpers but no raise, I decided to shove with A-3 offsuit and hope for the best. It worked. Matt thought a long time about calling, but finally folded with the rest of them, and I was back to my original stack.

Then card-dead again, until I finally made a stand with pocket 8s, flopped a set, and tripled up. Then I finally had enough chips to start really playing.

We had four women starting this event, and three of them, along with me, were the final four. That's right--I was the last man standing.

One got knocked out and it was down to me, Nina, and an odd older woman. She looked rather like a caricature of everybody's grandmother, including a hat that looked like it was meant for gardening. She was impossible to figure out--not because she was particularly skilled, but because she was so random. She would show up with hands that made no sense to have been playing in the spots she was playing them, and she made bad calls that somehow worked out almost every time.

Nina went out in third place, and I was left heads-up with Grandma. She wanted to chop the prize money. I gather that chopping the last two, three, or four places is pretty much de rigueur in these events, but I politely declined her repeated offers to do so. I wanted the whole $1100, I started heads-up play with more chips than she had (1200 to 800), and I was absolutely certain I was the better player. Besides, the tavern poker league I've been meddling in for the last year or so has given me a decent amount of experience heads-up with weaker players at the end of fast-structured tournaments. As long as I didn't do anything too stupid and didn't get too unlucky, I should be able to win.

And I did. The final blow came when I had pocket queens on the button. She called my raise. The flop was all low, uncoordinated, perfectly safe-looking. She checked, I shoved, and she insta-called with king-high, no pair. That was all she wrote.

Grandma shook hands politely, but walked away muttering something about my unwillingness to chop.

I liked the format. Not a huge time commitment, not too much of a financial investment, but a handsome payoff. It felt good to win.

PokerNews article #109

This installment is about anger--how it costs you money, and how it can make you money.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/three-ways-anger-costs-you-profit-from-others-anger-24563.htm