blonde poker forum

This is an interesting set of scenarios, and many people act irrationally in this situation - and wondered if poker players would act in the same way as the 'general population'.

SCENARIO 1
You go into a shop to buy a kettle.  It's priced at £19.99.  It's the one you want, and you take it to the checkout and the sales assistant looks at you and says "Not sure I should be telling you this, but from tomorrow morning this kettle is going to be on sale and you'll be able to buy it for only £4.99."

Do you buy it for £19.99 anyway, or go back tomorrow to get it?

SCENARIO 2
You go into a shop to buy a laptop.  It's priced at £969.99. It's the one you want, and you take it to the checkout and the sales assistant looks at you and says "Not sure I should be telling you this, but from tomorrow morning this laptop is going to be on sale and you'll be able to buy it for only £949.99."

Do you buy it for £969.99 anyway, or go back tomorrow to get it?

How far are this shops from my abode? Can I park outside them? Are they nice? Do I want to visit again tomorrow? How does my diary look for tomorrow? Stack sizes?

1. If for whatever reason i'm that bothered about the kettle I prob buy anyway as it's taken enough effort to go to the supermarket in the first place.

2. Same.

Though I do see the point you are trying to make. I went into a service station a while back for a bottle of water. They were charging £2. I went home thirsty.

Let's assume that it's the same shop and it's on a retail park 4 miles from your humble abode.  You diary is pretty empty for tomorrow, although you're going to the gym on Friday. 

Was the service station on the M40 ;) ?

I'd cancel my visit to the gym.

first thought go back n get the kettle tommorrow. and buy the lappy there n then coz its only £20 saving. then thought wait a minute i'm going back tomorrow to save £15 but you wont hang on a day to save £20. then realised i was totally confused went home ordered em both on line and been waiting over two weeks for em to be delivered now

I value my time pretty highly so Im probably buying both there and then.

I deffo go back the next day. I mean I'm coming back to buy the kettle at a quarter of the price anyway so might as well save £20 on the lappy too.

Id buy both there and then, if ive gone out my way to buy them i must need them. The kettle could be free tomoro and id still buy it now, i reckon the laptop would have to be half price tomoro for me to go back, assuming the only reason im going is my 3 laptops all dont work and i need to get online. Actually in that case i probably wouldnt even go back the next day if it was half price, maybe if it was 66% off

Definitely getting the laptop right then.

If the kettle was at a shop where it was of no inconvenience to me to go back I'd go the next day. Otherwise I'm buying.

Pretty sure my dad would buy the laptop and definitely go back for the kettle.

Snap buy both obv.

My time is more valuable to me than the £20 saving and I hate going shopping anyways so would just buy both there and then and be done with it.

Online I'd wait a day.

Buy 2 of each just for rofls

And rub them on your titties afterwards?

Would get the lappie, but couldn't ever buy the kettle knowing its going down by 75% in a day, would go back if practical.

I am wondering why I am paying a grand for a laptop and 20 quid for a kettle in the first place.

Nits gonna nit.

£20 for a kettle seems pretty reasonable

Sure did pay 20 quid for my kettle (think it was less than 10), it just boils water innit don't really get paying that much.

It has to go with your kitchen, doesn't it? No idea what we paid for our kettle but £20 ish sounds about right.

1. depends on the opportunity cost of going back to buy it, but if i knew the sale would last more than a week and there was a limitless supply id wait

2. snap buy it obv

I've got the skewed sense of grievance at prices to, i'll fritter money away on rubbish like you wouldn't believe but embarrass the hell out of my missus when i refuse to believe they are charging £2.75 for a bottle of Dr Pepper in the cinema and make the person ring it through again with a massive queue behind me huffin and puffin.

ask the manager for a discount now.

offer prawn crackers until he gives in.

if he doesnt let me have a discount

i would prob buy all the 4.99 kettles tomorrow and try and flog them off for some profit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but buy the laptop now so i could list the kettles on ebay and spam on ppls facebook.


I remember when 24 pack of bog roll was buy one get one free
we bought two trolleys full

This was a shoo-in, or Choo-in.

:D

I think I read the same books as you... ;marks;

Good isn't he?  Was reading this bit today and then thought if there's a group of people who act irrationally with their decisions surrounding money, it has to be poker players.

Especially the ones who moan at DTD that a pint is 50p more expensive than the pub down the road - and then straddle to £16 and check pre and fold on the flop.

Yeah, me too, though I haven't really read any of it yet... Is it any good?

As for the question, I almost certainly just buy the laptop. The kettle might be a different, er, receptacle of fish, depending on how I'm feeling.

I probably just want the kettle, but I also don't really want to reject the favour that the assistant's doing in telling me about the sale. Given that they're probably only getting a bit above minimum wage for selling kettles, I might feel that they feel that it's quite a big favour, since for them the saving could be maybe three hours' work.

If I just happened to somehow know automatically, without being told, that I could get it for five quid tomorrow then I'd just buy it today for twenty anyway. But the problem is that I know that they know that I know that I could save fifteen quid by coming back tomorrow. That's what, level 3 kettle buying, and it's all got a bit too much. So I'd probably thank the assistant enthusiastically for the advice and then go to the shop over the road and just buy one there for twenty quid in what would hopefully be a customer-service-free, level nought transaction, where I don't feel like they think I'm an idiot for allowing myself to get ripped off like that.

Obviously, with the laptop the saving is greater and I know that, but I also know that the perceived saving is less, so I'm not so bothered.

So what would the rational decision be? And which book are you on about?

I assume you're both talking about Richard Wiseman's book - Quirkology.  Yes, it's interesting reading, and occasionally has some interesting points like that, which make you think.

Of course, it's probably in another 100 books and you were referring to one of them.

Spite buy all the kettles then come back tomorrow and laugh at the nits complaining that there aren't any left.

Just mentioned the book above.

In terms of what the rational response is, well that depends.  Something like 80% of people questioned on this would come back for the kettle, but buy the laptop. He doesn't go into too much detail beyond that to be honest. 

Of course, if your time's more important than the money saved you should probably just buy both and not worry about the saving.  But if the saving is worthwhile to you, it's irrational to consider going back for the kettle but not for the laptop, when the figure that should matter is the total amount you spend/save - rather than saving a smaller amount on a cheaper item even if it's a higher percentage of the price of that item.  Of course, sometimes we pay over the odds for something because the utility of that item is worth a lot to us (or we perceive it to have a high utility value).  We might pay a few hundred quid more than we know we should on a used car if we find one that's "perfect"; the same goes for a house that might be quite a few thousand over the 'market value', but if we don't buy it for that price we run the risk of someone else snapping it up and us losing out on our "dream home".

Cf mentioned the service station and their prices - and it's a very good example.  I hate the way they hold their captive audience to ransom by over-charging for things.  Yes, I know they have overheads, but I'm sure it doesn't justify the inflated prices.  Same goes for WHSmiths at train stations.  I resent paying over a pound for a can of Coke, but am quite happy buying a glass of coke in a pub for a few pound (obviously not happy, but I don't question it).

That'll really annoy Mr Ho.

yeah but it will be funny that matt bought 30 kettles full price just to spite me

Would be great if the researchers did find themselves asking a load of poker players and got these responses. I think there'd be a lot of deep breaths, and "Perhaps we could start again"s.

Always thought houses were a bit weird in this sense - people worry about wasting ten quid on a kettle, but not twenty quid on a laptop or two hundred on a car. But then they want to negotiate a grand or two off a big house, which is far less in percentage terms than either the kettle or the laptop, and will probably cost them about a fiver a month on their mortgage.

I guess it isn't really down to the outright saving, more to do with feeling like they've made a fair trade and haven't been ripped off, which obviously has a value to most people. I suppose some economists would like to see that as somehow irrational and therefore interesting, which it kind of is, but maybe not as much as they'd like to make out on the blurb of their books.

Buy both then. I would've went to buy both in a taxi, so wouldn't save anyway.

There's definitely a large element of not wanting to feel ripped off.  That's probably the driving factor for many with the kettle scenario. Even though it's not a lot of money, they'll "know" they could have got it cheaper.  I've done it before - I bought a telly, and then saw the same one £30 cheaper elsewhere and my immediate reaction was to be annoyed.  I was happy with my purchase before seeing the cheaper price elsewhere - why should I be unhappy now? 

rofl

Ah I was on about Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely (couple of talks by him here if you're interested: http://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_ariely.html) which covers similar points.

girgy's gonna have a heart attack when he sees how many people would pay £20 for the kettle!

It was a calculator in the book, but your kettle-buying discussion inspired me to change it :D

My brother who is pretty much always busto got 2k compensation a little while ago, decided to buy a kettle and a toaster for £80 each. WTF is that about ?

fyp

I wouldn't pay anything for a calculator. I'd either work it out in my head or use the one on my phone/lappy

what if it was a scientifc calculator tho?

the one on my lappy has 4 modes one of which is scientific. 3 of the 4 modes have buttons I will never use

Another reason for changing it to a kettle.

A proper calculator is far far far superior to using a phone/computer.

Sure is.

All phone/computer calculators i use don't have the nCr button. Highly highly annoying!

Is the sales assistant female?

shame you didn't use one before posting on george's fb status

Aye. That was shameful.

not only was your answer wrong your workings were pretty rubbish. why 2x49s?

cf doesn't deserve to have a proper calculator imo

try http://www.calculator.org/CalcHelpCD/stats.aspx

Or rather than search the web I could just use my calculator which has the functionality I need and is much quicker to use.

Excellent question, this may sway things for some blokes.

your so balla these days

Richard Wiseman also wrote about the reason why some people appear to be luckier than others, and how you can train yourself to be one of them...

It helps to explain how it is that some poker players always seem to hit when they play 63o and yet others don't.

Was watching some poker thing on telly the other day, and Hellmuth was commentating and saying that Negreanu is one of the luckiest players and also that Luke Schwartz was creating 'bad energy' by bad-mouthing people on the rail and at the table.

As for people hitting more than others, Snoopy wrote a good article (well, it wasn't bad) for a magazine that I think was published a year or so ago.  It was basically outlining the basic common-sense logic that players who get their money in behind more often will deliver more outdraws than players who wait for monsters before sticking their money in.  If you don't get it in behind, you can't outdraw anyone basically.

It's obvious, but I think the majority of poker players (especially the losing ones) don't seem to grasp this, and they also don't understand that although AKs v 75o is a 65% favourite pre-flop, that means that 1 in 3 times (on average), the 75o would win an all-in 'race' pre-flop.  They seem to think that the odds are 100/1 they way they moan about their 'bad-beat', and how lucky the other player was.

Then there's Mitch of course...