More mathematical nonsense

A small piece in Metro this morning said that a study by, presumably, the Department of National Savings, found that Matthew was the "luckiest" name when it came to prizes on Premium Bonds. Claire was the "luckiest" female name. Unluckiest, apparently, were Albert and Doris.

What do you reckon the chances are that this analysis was weighted according to the number of Claires and Dorises who own Premium Bonds? Pretty small, I reckon.

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Looks like the US is actually going to back down over the passport farce, with the existing digital passports "passing" for biometric. Of course, they aren't biometric at all, but the US has finally realized that it might not be a good idea to cause massive disruption to transatlantic travel, particularly to irate business customers, who could just as easily go to India or China.

Conveniently, the US bete-noire, the French, still have laminated photos rather than digital ones, so they (and the Italians) might still have to apply for visas post-October. Neat. But it would be nice if someone put the US Department of Homeland Security in touch with the real world.

Speaking of which, an online player in Toronto yesterday was quite amazed that it was evening in the UK at 8pm BST. "Wow, it's only mid-afternoon here!" he said, as if the notion of the world being cirvular and rotating was utterly radical.

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I can't get the photos thing to work, fuck it. And I don't know what's wrong, because sometimes it seems to work, and sometimes it doesn't. I load the things into "My photos" on BTYahoo, and then right-click on the photo for "properties". Then I paste that into the log with the appropriate img src etc etc (there's definitely nothing wrong with the code). And, voila, it seems to work. But then I go to the entry again, and I just see the "alt" note. Has it worked/not worked for other people?

Hmm, I think I've sussed it out. The "address" on the properties thing within BTYahoo albums seems to change frequently. Anyone think of any way round this? How do other people get their photos up? I really want to manage this for my next Vegas trip so that I can show pictures of the tournaments, etc.

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A loss of $50 on the Ultimate PLO last night, $23 of which was down to a dubious call on the turn. I might write about it later, because it was quite interesting. Another part of the loss was probably bad game selection. There was no paying off on the river in this game, and I never got to a situation where I could get all the money in on either flop or turn as a big favourite. A good learning experience.

A PLO hand that went tits up:

Here's that Omaha hand that went ever so slightly wrong.

(Pot Limit Omaha) ($50 max buy-in, 25c-50c)
Powered by UltimateBet
Full table. Irrelevant players not included for brevity

shutermcgavin is at seat 2 with $55.60.
bob446 is at seat 3 with $49.50.
Birks is at seat 4 with $44.20.
Akilees is at seat 5 with $51.45.
Luca Brasi (BUTTON) is at seat 6 with $49.65.
Doe_Billy (SB) is at seat 7 with $85.80.
David3763 (BB) is at seat 8 with $41.85.


Birks: Kd 9s 2s Ad

A hand I will play in late position without a raise or a raise likely behind me.

Pre-flop:

shutermcgavin calls. bob446 calls. Birks calls. Akilees calls. Luca Brasi calls. Doe_Billy
calls. David3763 checks.

Flop 9d 8d 7s

a nut flush draw and top pair, but my hand isn't worth much at the moment with a straight possibly/probably out there. Any aggression from anywhere and I will probably walk away.

Doe_Billy checks. David3763 checks. shutermcgavin bets $1. bob446 calls. Birks calls. Akilees folds. Luca Brasi calls. Doe_Billy folds. David3763 folds.

I don't define a $1 bet as "aggression".

Turn 9d 8d 7s Kh

Top two pair and nut flush draw. No sign of that straight. I'm prepared to call a pot bet here.

shutermcgavin bets $4. bob446 calls. Birks calls.

I'm definitely prepared to call a $4 bet

Luca Brasi raises to $27.50. shutermcgavin folds. bob446 calls.

Ahh shit. This is so obviously the top straight from Luca that my only problem is working out Bob's hand. We've got to assume that he is on a flush draw as well and that this takes out two of my diamonds. Luca is a tight player and he wouldn't be in on a random JT. But he's willing to raise with big hands in late. QJT7 with one diamond? Seems a reasonable guess to me. I have a horrible feeling that I am not getting 25% equity here, but I can't see Luca definitely passing for his last $20 if a diamond hits A 40% chance that he or Bob would call?. That pushes up my equity a bit, but not much. No, I've got to fold this.

Birks calls.

Or maybe not. :-)

River 9d 8d 7s Kh 4h

bob446 checks. Birks checks. Luca Brasi goes all-in for $20.65. bob446 folds. Birks folds.


Summary:
$3 is raked from a pot of $94.
Luca Brasi wins $91.


Bob later said that he had "millions of draws". In fact he had 7d Td a king and a rag. He had two sevens and one diamond (Luca had the Jack of diamonds, he said) to win.

Running this through Pokercalc, my equity comes out at 22.2%. I'm a lot better off than Bob (8%), but Luca played it spot on. checked and called flop, checked and raised river with nuts and a blocker. If I had known he was capable of that, I wouldn't have put in the $4!

So what's my negative EV on this?

Let's assume Luca folds if I hit my diamond, but that Bob calls (hell, he's in there with a diamond draw).

That means in 100 hands I lose 78 lots of $27.50, (=$2,145) and in 22 hands I win $83 (the $63 profit on the call, plus $20 from Bob calling my river bet). That comes to $1,859, making a negative EV of $2.86 a hand.

Knew I should have folded. Instincts right again!


However, I've just read on Gutshot how Richard Oakley played an Omaha hand when he flopped a set of sevens (in a $200 max buy in game). Miros (Bill Purle) summed up Richard's play fairly succinctly (the gist being the word "awful"). It gives me hope for the higher level games after all.