Feb 17
ept copenhagen
I’m sitting at a bar in the Newark NJ airport waiting for my plane to depart for londons heathrow airport.This woman just tried to walk with a drink out of the bar and the bartender told her that she had to stay inside with the glass, she gave the bartender a nasty eye roll. Why the meanness for just doing her job?
I’m getting to Copenhagen in a roundabout way, flying virgin atlantic to London at which point I have 5 hours to get my bags, change terminals to british airways, and check in for my flight from London to Copenhagen. On the way back I’ll spend a few days in London, hopefully with cash in my pocket if the tournament goes well. My friend Luke (Lukekim.blogspot.com) is flying from Vegas to join me for this trip so props to him for coming along. If anyone is going to be in Copenhagen or London drop me a line, also if you have any good ideas for things to do in either place let me know.
I’ve gotten a bunch of emails lately and I’m sorry for being unable to respond to the questions, I’ve been really busy. One person asked said that there were too many terrible players for him to beat the low stakes sngs. As I havent played them for awhile I don’t really know how tough they are, but my guess is too many bad players cant really be a bad thing. This is one of the many dumb/weird things that especially live poker players do, they talk like people are terrible then they say they don’t want to play with them. For example, I was playing 2 5 nl with some friends at the borgata a few weeks ago, when i play that low, i sometimes play pretty loose and terrible. My friend with me plays far worse than me. More than one of the “regulars” made some absurd offhand comment about how the players at this table were too loose and terrible for them, and they needed a table change. Several others left. I honestly dont understand how people so illogical can live in the world and get by. I mean, I sometimes have trouble ordering pizza, and yet people with so little thought are capable of living rich full lives. Note that I’m not making fun of casual players that choose not to devote much time to understanding poker, the players I speak of are borgata REGULARS that utter those sentiments.
I just read a book called Moneyball which profoundly interested me. I have a big blog coming up with my thoughts on it when I get the time, but for now, anyone that can get their hands no this book should read it, even if you don’t like baseball. Anyway, my laptop is dying so I’m gonna start one of my books. Everybody start reading Moneyball now!
February 19th, 2008 at 8:49 am
g/l in copenhagas
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
One comment on the complaining about bad players – the players complaining probably don’t know this, but is very possible that a decent player can make more from a table of slightly weaker players than from a tablel of terrible players. Against a table of terrible players you get an effect called schooling, where the bad players effectively protect one another. If the game is wild enough, the volatility may be so high that you rarely have significant edge because the weak players are forcing you to gamble. It becomes kind of like the shootouts that occur at the end of tournaments. Yes, the better player always has edge, but less. Against slightly weaker players, you may be able to consistently outmaneuver them to have tremendous edge.
Using fencing as a metaphor – when I first started fencing Epee, I was practicing with an exceptional fencer and consistently losing 5 to 3. He would complain that I was being stupidly wild and erratic and was fencing terribly. When I started using proper technique, he started beating me 5 to 0 or 5 to 1. I complained that my “better” fencing was having me do worse and he explained that wild fencing might let me score higher, but I would always be a consistent loser with it. If I used proper technique he could more easily beat me because he knew what to expect, but that was the path to greatness and the only way I could ever consistently beat him.