I will go through the flaws in the common complaints briefly, and only because they are so pervasive that I feel the need to refute them.

1.  The software is rigged against them or to ensure more rake.  Most poker software is inspected by 3rd parties to ensure fairness and there has never been any case that they have been tampered with or that they have  malfunctioned.  Many people have played a statistically significant number of hands (I have played over 10 million hands in my career) and these hands and boards can be imported into a database in order to ensure they are occurring at the correct frequencies.  People have done this and the random number generator has never been found to be unfair in any way.  Since hand histories are available and people can compile a statistically relevant number of hands, if there were irregularities, they would have been found.

2.  The “cashout curse,” is when people lose soon after they cash out their winnings.  The best explanation I have heard for this phenomenon  is regression to the mean.  This is when a losing player runs above expectation (is lucky and wins) and then cashes out.  When they then return to expectation (by losing) they view losing as something anomalous, because now they believe themselves to be winners who have cashed out.  The easiest way to resolve this internal conflict is to blame it on the software being rigged against people who cash out, rather than to admit that they are not as skilled as they believe.

3.  Statistically unlikely events.   I smile every time I get aces on the same table in back to back hands, because I know how many players would say the software is rigged because it is so rare (about 48,000 to 1 against).  In actuality, I play more than 25,000 hands a week on average, so while it is unusual for me to have aces in back to back hands, it comes up about every 2 weeks.  Even I have been a professional for a long time, I sometimes feel like I have lost every hand for a few days in a row.  In reality, when I feel like I am getting unlucky, I tend to forget the hands I win and focus on the hands I lose.  The truth is that variance occurs and that relative to my winrate, sometimes I lose more than I should and sometimes I win more than I should.  Overall, it is exactly as expected.

The irony of the parallel between the 2016 Presidential Election and the people who complain about online poker being rigged is not lost on me.   For the past several weeks Donald Trump has started to forcefully call the election, the voting and the media rigged against him.

First, Trump saying that he might lose because the election is rigged is not a sound argument because that would require the coordination of thousands of local, state and federal election officials, who have both Republican and Democratic party affiliations.  Polls in Pennsylvania show Trump down approximately 10 points and predict he has a less than 10% chance of winning.  This independent data serves a check against claims of widespread voter fraud in same way I can evaluate my hand histories to ensure that the random number generator is operating correctly.  The most likely explanation for Trump losing is not that the polls, media and election are rigged, but that voters are favoring Hillary Clinton by a significant margin.  It is highly unlikely that significant voting fraud will take place since there have been several studies who have determined that it is minimal(under 100 cases in the last 3 elections). Anecdotal evidence is not evidence of widespread conspiracy in the same way that your friend getting aces twice in a row doesn’t mean that the software is rigged.

Second, when Trump is suspicious of Republican candidates’ poor performances in inner city districts comprised of mostly minorities, he fails to consider that: a) The districts are small, as small as a few hundred people.  b) The districts are comprised of people and demographics who tend not to vote for Republicans.  c)Trump is polling in the low single digits with minorities.  So, it is not an anomaly that he would get few votes in a district where the polls say people are not voting for him and the demographics predict he should be doing poorly.  I am sure Trump isn’t suspect of rural Wyoming districts where he is winning nearly 100% of the vote.

Third, Trump’s complaint that the media is rigged is bogus.  The media’s hyperfocus on him has resulted in enough attention to get him this far.  He achieved unprecedented fame and recognition simply from being wealthy. He was in the tabloids when he was younger, on the Apprentice, and now, every news channel covers his rallies, which gives him a platform to expand his audience.

Trump’s expectation in the primaries and in the presidential campaign was poor because of his lack of experience, lack of knowledge and his many scandals.  Most other politicians would have lost their support long ago, and the fact that none of his outlandish and offensive statements or actions were enough to squash his campaign meant that he was surely “running above expectation.”  Until the last few weeks, the media coverage has been to his “yuge” benefit, so he is starting to sound a lot like someone who is complaining about the “cashout curse.”  Over the past few weeks, he has returned to his expectation, in which people are horrified and unlikely to vote for him based upon what he has said and done is merely reversion to the mean.  It is not statistically surprising.

In addition, Trump has pursued a strategy that is unlikely to earn him enough votes to win the election.  His attacks on Republican allies, attacks on women and minorities and his reluctance to encourage the voters on a local level, do not appeal to voters he desperately needs to win.  He has doubled down on his core of support to the almost to the exclusion of others and his core does not contain enough voters for him to win.  Touting irrelevant statistics like online click polls and the number of people at rallies as proof Trump is winning are akin to measuring poker earnings by how often your opponent folds to your bluffs.  In the past, and hopefully in the future, anyone who behaves like Trump and has views like his will reach their expectation sooner and not be considered a serious candidate for President.

These are some of my random musings from the last few weeks:

Tim Kurkjian is an awesome baseball analyst and definitely my favorite to listen to.

Running is so relaxing and I love it.

Selling yourself at a markup when getting staked in poker tournaments is ridiculous because there is very few that have the ROI+ risk + effort to make it worth an investment.  Bring back the Bank of Timex.

Places that sell things who don’t have enough minimum wage employees to sell the goods still shock me.

No matter how well I learn how to swim, swimming in the open water in July is going to be scary.

Having read I am Malala, she deserves every accolade she has been given.

I don’t want to hear anymore about Joe Flacco’s great record when the defense is so good.  You know who is great in my 2 on 2 basketball league? Me and LeBron James.

Comparing historical football records is ridiculous.  Do you think it matters today that my team is on a 7 game losing streak against yours when the time period is 60 years?

Physical Therapy is the act of taking something that looks very easy and making it very, very hard.

Learn, adapt, conquer.  Repeat.

Huffington Post

Bonus: Jon Stewart on Chris Christie

Playing $1/2 6max no limit.  I raise 99 in first position to $6 and get called on the button by a very weak recreational player(60/20 for those interested in stats) and a poor playing regular(27/12) in the small blind.

The flop comes 9h9s6c giving me four 9′s.  The small blind checks. Since neither of the two players were likely to have anything or to call with nothing(float), and the button was likely to bet when checked to, I elected to check.  Unfortunately the button checked behind.

The turn is the 6h.  The small blind checked and I bet $6 into $19 hoping that my opponents would either call me with Ace high or a pair, or try to bluff me, since it doesn’t look like I have too much.  The button folds and the small blind calls.

The river is the 5h, so the final board is 9h9s6c6h5h and the small blind open shoves for $190 into the $31 pot.  I call, he shows a 8h7h for a straight flush and I lose.

The point of the story isn’t to complain about how unlucky and rare it is to lose with four 9′s, but is to wonder what the heck the small blind was thinking and how we can use his mistakes to better our play in the future.  Here is the way he should be thinking about the hand on the river from his point of view (forgetting about ways to take alternative actions previously):

“It looks like my opponent doesn’t have much, so betting a large amount is likely to make him fold the vast majority of his hands.  If he did have something like AA that checked behind the flop or a flush, there is no way he can call a huge amount(6 times the pot) on the river with so many hands that he loses to.  My best bet is to bet something small in the hopes that he thinks I am bluffing either with something like T8, a pair under 6′s that got counterfeited or ace high.  If I bet a small amount and he does have a 9 or maybe even a 6, he is likely to raise and I can reraise and get all the money in, the same as if I had shoved.  Plus, if I bet small, there is a chance he might decide to bluff me.  If I shove all in, I take away all chance for him to call me with weak hands (since he knows I would never do this with a bluff) and he also cannot bluff me.  Clearly, the best play is to bet small, pray to be raised and expect to be called sometimes.”

His actual thinking went something like this:  ”I made a straight flush!  I am going to push all in and hope to get called because I cannot be beaten.  Wow, I can’t believe someone called me, didn’t he realize I had a straight flush?  What an idiot!”

Before I called, I remember wondering what he possibly could have(given that I had all the 9′s, his most likely shoving hand) and that whatever hand he had, he misplayed it.  For instance, if he had four 6′s, he should use the same logic I outlined above for when he had a straight flush and he should never be bluffing all in when a smaller amount would have done the job done with a similar frequency.  Fortunately for me, this short term variance where people grossly misplay their hands and still win occurs frequently.  Over time though, playing my hands more correctly than my opponents leads to better outcomes for me and is the reason I have been a successful professional.

For the record, on the river it’s still a good call by me because he would do this with one combination of four 6′s and one combination of 8h7h.  This means I win 50% of the time, and need to call $190 into $411, which only requires me to win 46% of the time to break even.

Poker is mainly about math, not reading people or tells.  At the primary level, it is about odds, such as am I getting the right odds to call with my flush draw? how often will I flop a set?  or how big a favorite is AA over KK?  Basic poker math and memorizing some odds can help you get right answers to these common questions and knowing these numbers are necessary to becoming a winner.  Those are the easy questions to ask and answer and they have nothing to do with tells.

The secondary level is about ranges.  In poker, a range considers all the possible hands someone would take a particular action with.  For example, if you have KK, but your opponents range is AA(meaning he only does something with AA), you had better be getting great odds, because you are about a 4-1 underdog.  If you have KK and your opponents range is AA, KK, and QQ, you are 50/50 against his range.  Getting an opponents exact range down is difficult and takes a lot of practice.  Determining a range is mostly math and how your hand fares against someone else’s range is strictly math as well.  This is also necessary to becoming a winner at poker and it comes up in every single hand and affects the outcome of every decision.  In live poker, tells might have a small impact in determining how wide someones range is, but because most decisions are clear cut mathematically and having a tell doesn’t help change them, it therefore only has a small impact on your bottom line.

The tertiary level of poker thinking is to take things like how often someone folds and other tendencies and to put that together with an opponents range to determine what the correct play is.  Again, the vast majority of the time, the answer is so clear cut that it can not and should not be overridden by tells, unless your opponent were to actually say what he had and you were to believe them.

Playing poker on the internet provides me with an enormous amount of statistics for analysis and allows me to go in further in depth in the three levels mentioned above. Having worked on poker for so long, I have a base of knowledge that allows me to adjust my play based on whether my opponent opens 35% on the button or 40% and whether they bet the flop 50% or 60% thereafter.  I have done analysis on a broad array of players with varying and specific tendencies.  Creating this  base of knowledge is virtually impossible in live poker and the translation of that skill is the reason that players who have been successful playing poker on the internet have had little trouble translating that success to live poker despite their lack of practice reading people.  Most successful live poker players who cannot transition to internet play blame it on the lack of live tells, when in actuality it is analysis of situations mathematically that needs to be improved.

They could not give a time frame for PokerStars coming to New Jersey, since their licensing is still being processed, but as  soon as it is (I have read sometime in October) they expect to hit the ground running.  They have experience in implementing single country PokerStars brands and they expect to be able to improve on many of the areas which the current sites lack, namely depositing problems, software malfunctions, customer service and the rewards programs.

With so many of the major problems improved, I believe that they will be are able to pick up significant market share and I look forward to playing on PokerStars New Jersey as soon as it becomes available.  I hope that they can show other states what is possible when internet gaming is run the right way and thereby encourage internet poker to be more accepted in the United States.

My reply lately has been to ask why these players aren’t in Ivey’s Room in the Aria Las Vegas where the buyins are hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Clearly these players exercise some choice in who they play, and their willingness to play anyone extends only to playing people they believe they have an edge over.  In fact, many of these players do not play every available game online in New Jersey, but are using criteria for game selection that is not primarily concerned with profitability.  Though I find it irritating to be berated, especially by people with whom I have been friendly, I believe that they are less skilled in achieving the end goal of playing poker professionally: making money.

I believe there are 2 sets of essential poker skills, hard skills and soft skills.  Hard skills encompass everything related to playing a poker hand like whether or not to bet, how much to bet or whether you think your opponent is bluffing.  Soft skills are everything else involved in playing poker, like being in the correct mindset, where to sit at the table and how not to tilt.  You need both sets of skills to be a successful professional.  For example, someone who is great at betting, but who tilts off their whole bankroll when they take a bad beat, has soft skills that counteract their hard skills to the point that it is going to be tough for them to be a long term winner.  

There are many, many situations that occur at the poker table, and as a professional, it is my job to know which ones are profitable and to try to put myself in those situations.   I have spent thousands of hours doing analysis in order to figure out where the money is made and how best to make it.  For example, there are many players who I would not like sitting on my left (acting after me) but who I am happy to have on my right (acting before me).  Does that mean that I will never sit with them on my left?  Of course not, but there needs to be a something positive that counteracts the money I lose (or cannot make) because of the tough player on my left.  If you are not consistently not discerning about these small edges that frequently occur, they quickly add up  and really eat into the bottom line.

Before I play a hand, I try to determine whether or not it is profitable for me to play in a game.  Into that calculation goes some of the following: am I a favorite in this game?, will it distract from my other games?,  do I have enough games going now?,  will I learn something from playing here?,  will the game start if I play heads up?, in addition to many other things.  I do the mental calculation to figure out if  I think it is profitable, and if it is, then I play, if not, then I don’t.

Often when I do start a game and the weaker player sits, I find myself in a poor position and not able to make money, while someone else who sat later will get one of the more profitable seats and therefore reap the benefits of my playing heads up to start games.  I don’t generally play in a game with 5 other tough regulars, not because I don’t think I can win in the game, but because its not worth my time and mental energy to win at a small rate (and endure a lot of variance),  when I could be focusing my attention on more profitable scenarios.  If my opponent does x, and I have trouble reacting to x, I am not going to go out of my way to play them heads up, a.k.a. giving them money.  Once I figure out a good way to counteract what they are doing, I might play them heads up to challenge myself and see if my solution works.

I play poker to make money, not for ego or to show the world who the better player is.  In fact, if one of the people who berated me had asked me nicely, I probably would have talked poker with them and we could have discussed how I think we match up against each other.  If other good players want to battle each other by “playing anyone” and distract themselves from the games I am in, go for it!  If I sit out against you heads up, please don’t be mad at me, take it as a compliment that I thought you were good enough to not be worth my time and energy to play.

The Spartan Race was super fun and a really great experience.  I would definitely do another one!

The course was very hilly and at every point on the course, it felt like I was either a)climbing up a hill b)trying not to fall down a hill or c)doing an obstacle.  I think the course was steeper than hiking up Table Mountain (which I did 5 years ago) and very, rocky.  I had to be constantly vigilant to be sure that I stepped down correctly and, for me, it made it more about completing the race, than actually racing.

I was proud that I was able to complete most of the obstacles and that my hard work paid off in a few important spots like climbing the cargo net and getting over the 8 foot wall.  I will recap some of the obstacles along with my predictions.

I will finish(98%) I was really happy to finish and it was pretty cool to be in the top 18% of competitors.  The chances of me finishing were probably lower than estimated given given the rocky uphills and downhills.

Rope Climb(30%) I made it about halfway up the rope, and my lack of practice really hurt me.  I think that if I was used to the climbing technique, and to the doing the descent, I could have made it.  Next time I will!

Monkey Bars(50%) This year they decided to make the monkey bars uneven, which I had not trained for, and do not think I could have done.  As it was, my hand slipped so I did 30 burpees and was on my way.

Monkey Net Cargo(15%)  It didn’t seem to be as hard as I thought, though I only made it about 3 lengths before my hand slipped and I fell into the mud.  I think I actually underestimated my chances of completing it.

Barbed Wire Crawl(100%) It wasn’t wasn’t as long or bad as I thought it was going to be and I think I moved through it pretty efficiently.

80lb Stone Carry(75%)  The stone was heavy and awkward, but once I got it up, I was able to get it across and back without too much trouble.

Wall Climb (80%) I needed every one of my practice pullups to get myself out of the mud and up the wall.  It was a great feeling though, because my hard work paid dividends and I pushed myself hard.

Spear Throw (30%) I had one throw and I missed.  More burpees.

Other Obstacles: The Cargo Net Climb was really high(also overlooking a massive downhill) and I am not a fan of heights.  I moved slowly and was extremely careful not to fall.  I am interested to see how the picture of me taken in mid-climb looks.

The Sandbag Carry was straight uphill and heavy.  Probably the toughest obstacle because it required continuous perseverance with a heavy burden.

The Log Carry was big and awkward(I choose my log poorly) and I dropped it, nearly breaking the feet of the people behind me.  The hill wasn’t so steep though and the course was short, so it wasn’t too bad.

The 6 foot, 7, foot and 8 foot walls were pretty easy and I was so happy that I was able to complete them without any assistance.  I made the 8 foot wall by my fingertips and was able to pull myself up.

The organization of the race is top notch.  The route you need to follow is obvious in order to register for the race, get your number, timing chip etc.  There were plenty of showers, changing areas and tents all of which were closely located and easy to find.  The course was well marked with signs and there was no way to get lost.   However, because of the staggered start (200 people leave every 15 minutes), and the one person width trails that caused bottlenecks at a few points, it didn’t feel as much like a race for me as I had hoped it would.

As Coach Flex said, “Now that you have one under your belt, you know what you need to work on and how to get better.  Then you get after it.”  Good words to end this blog with!

http://www.wnyc.org/story/new-jersey-online-gaming-bet-comes-up-short/

-Jason

While watching an episode of Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles, Josh, a broker, was met with the owner of a multimillion dollar house that he needed sold within 30 days.  The seller seemed like a shrewd businessman when he negotiated his contract with Josh to sell the house, and Josh assured him it would be sold within the allotted time.  When Josh was unable to sell it within 30 days, he called the seller begging for additional time.  Josh wanted the nearly $250,000 commission for selling the house and on the phone he said, “we can definitely sell this house in an additional 30 days,” “we have a number of interested people” and other similar unverifiable, yet very soothing things.  These sort of bold, self serving statements that have no penalty for being incorrect bother me.

In light of his previous promise and failure, I was surprised that the owner allowed Josh the additional time without adding in any additional stipulations.  After all, it was the seller who lost if the house went unsold, and there were no negative consequences for Josh only monetary gain.

If I were the seller in this situation, I would have suggested that if Josh was unable to sell the house in the 30 days, he should owe me a set amount of money.  Without any skin in the game, Josh was free to guarantee the house would be sold with me taking all the downside risk if it did not sell.  In this case, he was free to guarantee it twice without any consequence for being wrong.  If Josh truly had an idea of the timeframe for the sale of the house, then he should have been willing to wager on it (especially since he is the expert and the seller was not).   In this case, it would work like an option.  If he sold the house, he would get $250,000 and if he did not, he would give me some set amount of money, say $50,000.  Since Josh is an expert and “knows the house is going to sell,” it should be easy money for him.

The truth is that Josh was exaggerating his knowledge of the situation and making him put his own money on the line would make him be more circumspect about what the real probabilities of selling the house are.  If they were forced to wager on the outcome, the seller (who is in the broker’s realm of expertise) could get a more accurate picture of what the broker believes the true probabilities are.  This seems like a good way to bring more honesty in businesses like contracting where one side has an incentive to make outlandish predictions without any penalty for being incorrect.