Another milestone

There is a Las Vegas-based company, Love Cloud, that caters to those that want to join the Mile High Club (MHC). For $799, one can fly above Sin City in a specially outfitted Cessna 421 for 40 minutes.

Joining this exclusive club has always been a dream of mine. It took me 7 months of hard work to raise the required $799, and I am pleased to report that, as of this afternoon, I finally am a member of the MHC. I couldn't convince anyone to join me and took the flight by myself, but technically I still qualify.

Skill and luck

If you have a spare 50 minutes, please take the time to watch the keynote speech of Michael Mauboussin, Head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse, presented at the 17th Asian Investment Conference on the topic "The Success Equation - Untangling Skill and Luck".

Second promotion in as many weeks

After 2 weeks of bagging orders to go, I am now actually greeting and serving customers. It was only a matter of time before management finally recognized my great people skills.

In other news, I am entertaining the idea of a possible poker cruise sometime in 2015.

I've been dreaming of this for years now, and would be interested in hearing from readers who have any experience in stowing away on a ship.

Promotion at work

I knew my 6-week Mandarin language course would eventually pay dividends. My shift manager at Panda Express just informed me that effective today I am being promoted within the Service and Kitchen team to a customer-facing position. Till now I was restricted to the confines of the back kitchen with strict orders not to ever appear within sight of the public. Last week, however, one of the patrons heard me reciting a Hamlet soliloquy in Mandarin, which I sometimes resort to when steam frying the rice. Apparently he wrote to corporate headquarters lamenting the fact that such talent should not be wasted, and demanding an immediate promotion for the yet unseen and unknown employee he had been so impressed with.

In other news, I am now a little closer to the required entry fee for a $150 satellite to Event #55 ($1,500 No-Limit Hold'em), which I will be playing on my only day off for the month, June 28. As posted earlier, I am confident of a very deep run which in turn will provide the bankroll for my much anticipated trip to Macau. I can already picture the look on my shift manager's face when I hand in my immediate notice of resignation.

I turn on the WSOP live stream and who do I see?

At this time of year, I usually persuade the librarian in one of Clark County's public libraries to let me stay after closing so that I can enjoy the WSOP live stream, not to mention the airconditioning. As I sit here, there are 3 players left on the final table in the Seniors Event and one of them is none other than Memphis MOJO!!!

He is putting on a clinic and I hope he takes it down.

Update : MOJO finished in 3rd place for $279,412. Congratulations, great job and well deserved!!

John Grisham's statistical flub

I'm going through a John Grisham phase, having recently finished "The Last Juror" and "The Racketeer". I'm now reading his first work, "A Time to Kill", and like with all his books I just can't put it down once I start. His legal research, not surprisingly, is impeccable. However he appears to have made a mathematical error in Chapter 28 :

           "I hope you do the right thing, Joe Frank. I just hope
            they put you in that jury box. We need some people
            with some sense."

           "Wonder why they picked me?"

           "I heard they fixed up a hundred and fifty summonses.
            They're expectin' about a hundred to show up."

           "What're my chances of gettin' picked?"

           "One in a hundred," said Lela.

           "I feel better then. I really ain't got time to serve,
            what with my farmin' and all."


 There remains the small chance that it was intentional and meant to highlight Lela's lack of numeracy, but I doubt it.

WSOP here again

My, how time flies! The town is once again filled with poker-playing hopefuls about to get their dreams shattered and their souls crushed.

My next day off from Panda Express will be on June 28th, enabling me to play in Event #55 ($1,500 No-Limit Hold'em). I am confident of a deep run and wouldn't be surprised if I made the final table. There just remains the minor detail of overcoming a $1,462 cash flow shortfall.

The poker ecology

Every few years I happen to stumble upon and reread the excellent paper written by Lawrence Harris entitled "The Winners and Losers of the Zero-Sum Game : The Origins of Trading Profits, Price Efficiency and Market Liquidity".

Trading is a zero-sum game when measured relative to underlying fundamental values. No trader can profit without another trader losing. People trade because they obtain external benefits from trading. These benefits include expected returns from holding securities, risk reduction from holding correlated assets and gambling entertainment. 

Three groups of stylized characteristic traders are examined. Winning traders trade for profit. Utilitarian traders trade because their external benefits of trading are greater than their losses. Futile traders expect to profit but for a variety of reasons their expectation are not realized. 

Winning traders make prices efficient and provide most liquidity. Utilitarian and futile traders effectively underwrite the winning traders' efforts. 

In the paper he mentions the similarity between trading and poker. He lists the many types of traders and how, even among the winning styles, one group will profit from another but will lose to other specific styles.

So informed traders will profit from market-makers but lose to bluffers, while parasitic traders will profit from upstairs traders but lose to informed traders. Note that informed traders, market-makers, bluffers, parasitic traders, and upstairs traders are all classified as winners i.e. if skilled, these traders will profit from trading in the long run.

It would be interesting to see a similar analysis for the different poker playing styles.

One step closer to Macau

I successfully completed the 6-week Mandarin language immersion course last week and immediately tested my linguistic prowess by making some very late night phone calls to Chinese sounding names I randomly pulled out of the phone book. Not only did I manage to effortlessly communicate with the parties involved, but I also picked up a few choice curse words that, not surprisingly, weren't on our syllabus.

Paying for the aforementioned course, however, has put a severe dent in my bankroll and may delay my plans somewhat. In the meantime I am frantically trying to raise some funds to at least cover the cost of the cab ride to McCarran, and a standby ticket to Macau. To this end, I am pleased to report that this post is sponsored by Spreaditfast, and I sincerely hope that other sponsors will step forward to help me realize my dreams.

Speaking of dreams, I now dream in Chinese. This is what 6 weeks of immersion does to you. Upon completion of the course, my mind was so clogged that I had forgotten simple and basic skills like peeling a banana and tying my shoelaces. The good news is that these all can be relearnt fairly quickly. In fact I had even forgotten the hand rankings in poker and how to play Texas Hold'em, but thanks to the following video, a great introductory tutorial produced by our friends at PokerStars, I will now be able to hit the ground running when I eventually touch down in Macau.

Next stop : Macau

I'm wasting my time and potential here in Vegas. The games are no longer a challenge. I have my eyes set upon the nosebleed cash games currently being held in Macau, and am presently enrolled in a 6-week Mandarin Chinese language immersion program jointly run by Berlitz and Panda Express. 

More woes

Microsoft will be withdrawing support for its Windows XP operating system on April 8, 2014. As a long time XP user, I can barely afford the daily bus fare to the Strip, let alone buy a new computer in order to update to the Windows 8 (P)OS. It's true that we were given adequate warning, but Microsoft is abandoning millions of faithful users, so fuck them and the horses they rode in on.

Before you get a tattoo ....

.... make sure the guy can spell.

Eureka!

After years of searching for the Holy Grail of poker, I think I may have finally found it. No more looking for a career, Easy Street here I come.

Poker Player has been advertising a revolutionary new book, "Average Joe's Method", in which we are shown how to predict future flops based on the outcomes of previous flops :

Reduced probability is the essential ingredient of my method. Let me explain. As we know, all poker decks consist of 52 cards, however each one of these cards contain 4 of kind. 52 divided by 4 equals 13. We are now working with a reduced number of 13 digits. Based on 10 players per table, each player will have two whole cards which add up to 20. Since there are only 13 digits available, we now understand that 7 players must have the same digit as one of the other players, or a pocket pair. Statistics have shown that pocket pairs occur 6% of the time or once every 17 hands. Let us assume that on average, one player will have a pocket pair during each deal. This now means 6 players will have matching cards to one another. This reduces the card ratio by another 10.8%. We are now playing with 11.8 digits .....

And so it goes, getting more complicated as one proceeds, but not to worry :

My book omits all the mathematics of my method so it's an easy read for anyone.

Thank goodness for that, because I had started losing the flow of his logic. Anyway, the book arrives in 2 days and then it's financial freedom.

I posted this 4 years ago

Watching the Winter Olympics brings back fond memories of when I competed in the 1988 games in Calgary. I was lagging at the back of the field in the biathlon and, out of sheer frustration, decided my only chance was to open fire directly above the heads of the other competitors. Fortunately sanity prevailed and I quashed that plan. I haven't competed since.

Posting chip stack pics

It's become fashionable to post pictures on Twitter, Instagram, and poker forums of big chip stacks during a winning session.

For consistency's sake, where are the pictures after a brutal, losing session?

Bit of a mouthful

These are the home games you want to be invited to :

This post will self-destruct in 10 minutes

Trying an experiment similar to Snapchat's self-destructing mechanism. If this works, I'll be able to retire and not have to worry about finding work again.

Edit (4 hours later)
As can be seen, the post did not self-destruct. Very disappointing, considering I spent over 2 months writing the necessary code which, when applied to the Blogger template interface, should have resulted in this post's automatic disappearance after 10 minutes. Alas, my dreams of retiring were greatly exaggerated and premature.

The Queen and Dolly

Queen Elizabeth and Dolly Parton die on the same day and they both go before an Angel to find out if they'll be admitted to Heaven.

Unfortunately, there's only one space left that day, so the Angel must decide which of them gets in. The Angel asks Dolly if there's some particular reason why she should go to Heaven.

Dolly takes off her top and says, "Look at these, they're the most perfect breasts God ever created, and I'm sure it will please God to be able to see them every day, for eternity."

The Angel thanks Dolly, and asks Her Majesty the same question. The Queen takes a bottle of Perrier out of her purse, drinks it down, then wees into a toilet and pulls the lever.

The Angel says, "OK, your Majesty, you may go in."

Dolly is outraged and asks, "What was that all about? I show you two of God's perfect creations and you turn me down. She wees into a toilet and she gets in! Would you explain that to me?"

"Sorry, Dolly," says the Angel, "but even in Heaven, a Royal Flush

beats a pair - no matter how big they are."

Casino Player Magazine

Among the various magazines available in some Strip poker rooms is Casino Player. Described as "America's gaming lifestyle magazine", it contains articles on gambling strategy as well as up-to-date casino news, and dining and show reviews.

They claim to look out for the player but it's blatantly obvious by the ads and content that they are deeply in bed with the casino industry. This would be fair enough if they didn't resort to the misleading and luring promises on their front cover and inside.

So, for example, on the cover of the June 2013 edition we are promised "tips for FINALLY beating three card poker". Upon looking inside, the article has the more realistic and sober subheading "Lower the casino's edge with these optimal strategies". Somewhat different from the cover's verbiage and offering no solution to overcoming that pesky 3% house edge.

The latest December 2013 issue has "WINNING BACCARAT STRATEGY" emblazoned on the top left of the cover. Once again, when we bother to actually read the article inside, we are informed that by betting on the banker we will win more frequently than betting on the player, but alas the house edge is still 1.06%. Not to disappoint however, the article ends with "So go ahead and win frequently."

But what really caught my eye was a full-page article about the opening of a new $800-million resort casino. In the sidebar there was the following quote :

Remember this : The house doesn't beat the player. It just gives him the opportunity to beat himself.
-Nicholas Dandalos
"Nick the Greek"
(1883 - 1966)

 Aaah, so that's what keeps the Strip lit up.

Sign me up

I may have found my next career choice.

While watching the Nelson Mandela memorial, I couldn't but help notice the ease with which the sign language interpreter conveyed the meaning and emotion of the world leaders' eulogies. It looked fairly simple and I could only discern 7 different signs, making it something even I could master with a little effort.

Once certified, I could be a major asset to any poker room whenever a floor decision needs to be explained to a deaf player.