Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[77dave]

I saw somebody's view which seemed reasonable.

I don't remember the exact details but it was along the lines of:
To win a tournament is 80% luck
To be winning over a year is 60% luck
To be winning over a decade is 40% luck
and to be winning over a lifetime is 20% luck

If i was to accept that being a winning player over the course of a year is down to 60% luck i think id have to quit playing

[tikay]

the % of luck vs skill imo pertains to how likely you are to generate a profite that correlates to your percieved expectation... and assuming you have a 100% roi in tournaments, if you play one solitary tournament, then given that most of them pay circa the top 10%, its highly unlikely that you will cash, and therefore highly unlikely that you will generate a profit that matches your expectation, so over a minute sample like that, luck is always going to be a lot more important then skill... but the more you play, as others have mentioned, the more likely it is that your results will aggregate a profit that matches your expectation.

obviously you then have to compare live vs online, because its looking increasingly likely that you wont ever reach a sample size that is sufficient to call "the long term" if you are only playing 2/3 tournaments a week live, so I think the luck aspect is going to be higher in live because your sample size cant match the 10/20 tournaments a day you can play online.

I think the best thing to do is to spend a bit more time worrying about things that matter, like how to beat people that "turned the game into a farce", and spend a little less time worrying about things out of your control, like the turn of a card.

maybe

And that, maybe, sums it up very nicely indeed I guess.

Did you read that Update?

What do you think the other players could, or should, have done, to combat Andrew's game? They all realised he was a handful, but none of them seemed to know how to adapt such that they could do him. Or are we saying that this was just one of those small sample size jobbies that has no long-term correlation?

I'm not at all critical of Andrew, by the way, or his opponents. Just curious.

[celtic]

Reading the updates it seems that every pot he played the deck hit him in the face but i'm sure there were plenty occasions where it didnt that wasnt reported. Also as well he used his large chip stack well it seems. I have just posted asking why people are being harsh about him / his style of play etc. as it seems some people think he turned the game into a farce?? Be interested to hear why people think this.

[totalise]

this is where the luck comes in, when you are playing someone that is playing too many hands but is hitting every flop, they are close to unbeatable, not even Ivey can beat them when they are nailing it all, but that doesnt make it a farce, it just makes it another composite of poker that every player at some stage experiences, and that is running well.

Maybe mistakes were manifested by letting him see too many flops, or maybe they were folding too much postflop letting him give off the illusion that he was hitting every flop, maybe they let him get too far clear, turning down small edges waiting that for the golden goose of a bigger edge later on that never materialised,  who knows what was happening.

[JaffaCake]

I had several Invites a while back to take a place in the "Dream Team" Promotion run by another site - only because, one imagines, they were desperate for a "body". I dodged a serious bullet there judging by what I read today on the Betfair Forum.

Oh my good God - it's the most depressing indictment of organised Online "Team Poker" I've ever seen in my entire poker life.

I shall never, never ever, accept an Invite to play in such a thing as long as there's breath in my body.

Sometimes, you know, Poker just stinks.

whats this about tikay, i think this is the one i'm in. is it paul merson related, or anything to do with any other ex-arsenal midfielders? paul davis maybe, steve morrow, perry groves ftw?

[tikay]

Joking aside, I'm haunted by the fear of dementia, because, presumably, the sufferer is unaware they have it. This is a piece by Carol Thatcher about her mother, Lady Thatcher. I found it dreadfully sad. Yeah, yeah, Lady Thatcher may not have been too popular with a large number of people, but she's long retired now, & deserves respect. IMO, that is.

Baroness Thatcher has been suffering from dementia for at least seven years, her daughter has revealed in the first public account of the former Prime Minister’s illness.

Carol Thatcher tells how her mother’s memory is failing and says that she sometimes struggles to finish sentences but has flashes of her “old self . . . particularly when events from the past are mentioned”.

Ms Thatcher details her mother’s fading mental powers in a memoir of life in and out of Downing Street. The death of Sir Denis Thatcher in 2003 was “truly awful” since she “kept forgetting he was dead”, according to the book, A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl: A Memoir. “Every time it finally sank in that she had lost her husband of more than 50 years, she’d look at me sadly and say ‘Oh’, as I struggled to compose myself. ‘Were we all there?’ she’d ask softly.”

Lady Thatcher, 82, was advised to stop public speaking on health grounds shortly before her husband’s death. Although it is known widely that she has suffered a number of strokes, her dementia has been far less publicised. The first signs were apparent when she was 75, according to her daughter, who tells of her becoming confused about the Bosnian and Falklands conflicts during a lunch in 2000.

“I almost fell off my chair. Watching her struggle with her words and her memory, I couldn’t believe it. I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and 100 per cent cast-iron damage-proof. The contrast was all the more striking because she’d always had a memory like a website.”

In the book, serialised in The Mail on Sunday, Ms Thatcher adds: “From the fateful day of our lunch, telltale signs that something wasn’t quite right began to emerge. Whereas previously you would never have had to say anything to her twice, because she’d already filed it away in her formidable memory bank, Mum started asking the same questions over and over again, unaware she was doing so.

“It might be something innocuous — such as, ‘What time is my car coming?’ or ‘When am I going to the hairdresser?’ — but the fact she needed to repeat them opened a frightening chapter in our lives. I had to learn to be patient. I also had to learn she had an illness and that it wasn’t personal.

“That’s the worst thing about dementia: it gets you every time. Sufferers look and act the same but beneath the familiar exterior something quite different is going on. They’re in another world and you cannot enter.”

On bad days Lady Thatcher can “hardly remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she got to the end”. Ms Thatcher adds: “It took us time to realise that couldn’t remember a newspaper headline she had just read, or what she’d had for breakfast that morning. But when a friend asked, off the cuff, ‘Oh Margaret, do you remember rationing?’ he got a full ten minutes of my mother’s best grocer’s daughter’s tips on how to jazz up tinned Spam or powdered egg.”

[tikay]

I had several Invites a while back to take a place in the "Dream Team" Promotion run by another site - only because, one imagines, they were desperate for a "body". I dodged a serious bullet there judging by what I read today on the Betfair Forum.

Oh my good God - it's the most depressing indictment of organised Online "Team Poker" I've ever seen in my entire poker life.

I shall never, never ever, accept an Invite to play in such a thing as long as there's breath in my body.

Sometimes, you know, Poker just stinks.

whats this about tikay, i think this is the one i'm in. is it paul merson related, or anything to do with any other ex-arsenal midfielders? paul davis maybe, steve morrow, perry groves ftw?

I don't think it involved Merson or Merton......

But it sure reveals the murky side of Online Poker.

[JaffaCake]

I had several Invites a while back to take a place in the "Dream Team" Promotion run by another site - only because, one imagines, they were desperate for a "body". I dodged a serious bullet there judging by what I read today on the Betfair Forum.

Oh my good God - it's the most depressing indictment of organised Online "Team Poker" I've ever seen in my entire poker life.

I shall never, never ever, accept an Invite to play in such a thing as long as there's breath in my body.

Sometimes, you know, Poker just stinks.

whats this about tikay, i think this is the one i'm in. is it paul merson related, or anything to do with any other ex-arsenal midfielders? paul davis maybe, steve morrow, perry groves ftw?

I don't think it involved Merson or Merton......

But it sure reveals the murky side of Online Poker.

can't see it anywhere? murky....sounds mysterious

[Dry em]

having played in this for the past 40 weeks I wouldn't be of the opinon that it "stinks". It's actually been good fun and am looking forward to the final coming up. Obviously I haven't seen what Tikay is alluding to but bear in mind when you sign up to a "team poker" event, you know this is a slightly different animal than a normal tournament series. Caveat thingy or whatever it is you say.

[the sicilian]

Think Dave is right...avoiding being unlucky is a bigger factor than being lucky....not many of us can get away from a cold deck or prevent our opponent drawing out horribly on us...

if you continue to play well and get your money in in front and ahead the law of odds dictate .... neutralising your own mistakes especially in nlhe is more key..

[redsimon]

I picked up "The Independent on Sunday" today - jeez, it was £1.80! Imagine, 1 pound, 16 shillings for a newspaper! My first wage was £5 a week.

Anyway, it was discussing the return of Radio's most-loved comedy quiz, "I'm sorry I haven't a Clue", previously chaired, for like 30 odd years, by the so sorely missed "Humph".

So, they were ruminating on likely replacements for Humph, & they came up with this list.....

Stephen Fry. Good choice, but is he mentally stable enough for a long-running Show? Ceretainly, an amazingly clever & funny man.

Jarvis Cocker.  Wild Card entry, said to be very "dry", as was Humph.

Angus Deayton (sp?). Seriously funny, got all the credentials. & maybe he's over those indiscretions which saw him sacked from HIGNFY.

Sue Perkins. They cannot be serious.

Pam Ayres. She's got Chompy-ism - too one dimensional.

Sandi Toksvig. Clever, & funny, but her voice grates on me. Oddly, her voice, & even to a degree, her looks & build, remind me so much of Claire Balding. I vote against her, but I really don't know quite why.

Who's your choice? John Peel would be mine, but that's a bit awkward right now. But Paul Merson might just fit the bill.

Jarvis FTW, Sue Perkins just shows how far you can stretch very little talent I guess, she pops up in loads of stuff but why???

[ripple11]

having played in this for the past 40 weeks I wouldn't be of the opinon that it "stinks". It's actually been good fun and am looking forward to the final coming up. Obviously I haven't seen what Tikay is alluding to but bear in mind when you sign up to a "team poker" event, you know this is a slightly different animal than a normal tournament series. Caveat thingy or whatever it is you say.

I cant find any reference to this on Betfair either,.... perhaps you could expand further Tikay,especially as a " Blonde" team entered !

[tikay]

having played in this for the past 40 weeks I wouldn't be of the opinon that it "stinks". It's actually been good fun and am looking forward to the final coming up. Obviously I haven't seen what Tikay is alluding to but bear in mind when you sign up to a "team poker" event, you know this is a slightly different animal than a normal tournament series. Caveat thingy or whatever it is you say.

I cant find any reference to this on Betfair either,.... perhaps you could expand further Tikay,especially as a " Blonde" team entered !

That would be because, unsurprisingly, the Thread has now been removed by Betfair.

Are the "blonde" Team still in?

[ripple11]

having played in this for the past 40 weeks I wouldn't be of the opinon that it "stinks". It's actually been good fun and am looking forward to the final coming up. Obviously I haven't seen what Tikay is alluding to but bear in mind when you sign up to a "team poker" event, you know this is a slightly different animal than a normal tournament series. Caveat thingy or whatever it is you say.

I cant find any reference to this on Betfair either,.... perhaps you could expand further Tikay,especially as a " Blonde" team entered !

That would be because, unsurprisingly, the Thread has now been removed by Betfair.

Are the "blonde" Team still in?

The Roundheads...yes technically still in, as you slowly gather pts for the live final at Loose Cannon in a few weeks.

However our team pts score and no. of "live" players means we are highly unlikely to win the WSOPE packages and it also clashes with the Bolton GUKPT and so the team have decided to not go.

[Dry em]

Basic summary would be accusation of someone attempting to "buy" another person's chips at last years live final to help his team win. Said person said it was only a drunken conversation and didn't actually happen.