Time

And so, it's a standard Friday, with five hours of the day gone and little apparent progress made, despite hardly stopping for breath. Did my life used to be like this? No? But, in a way, I'm not sorry that it is. It's good to keep busy. Lethargy is a beguiling mistress.

I received a letter from Friends Provident this morning (they administer my company pension scheme) telling me that it had accepted my contribution of £3,088. This would be nice, if I had any awareness of making such a contribution. I suspect that my employers are up to their usual tricks, deploying contributions at certain times and in certain ways for reasons of tax efficiency. Oh well, who am I to moan? I'll just wait until the next statement comes in to see if I'm really any richer.

My company also uses an at one time obscure but now increasingly popular technique for cutting down on our National Insurance payments - the "holiday fund". I guess that the Inland Revenue will stomp on this eventually, but for the moment it has two impacts on me. The first is that I get paid more (good) and the second is that my salary varies from month to month, apparently dependent on how many days' holiday I took. This makes it rather hard to work out how much I am actually getting paid.


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As promised, here are the pictures I took at St Martin's. Be warned, a large number of pictures, although none is larger than 70K. This kind of thing takes ages. Bleeaggghhhh

( St Martin's Pictures )

Still In

Many is the time that I have uttered those famous words (at poker, in the office, in life) "I'm still here". Despite all attempts at self-destruction in life, despite a complete lack of willingness to play the corporate political game, I survive.

Perhaps it's because I know that in those two areas I have been ridiculously lucky that I am so hesitant to go for three-for-three and play at stakes which intellectually I think I can beat, but which emotionally might be too much for me.

It was therefore with some comfort that I read a great post from Double As a few days ago (http://doubleas.blogspot.com/)

As far as people saying that the games are harder these days, I’m not sure but I have seen some pretty bad play by some experienced players lately. Just read blogs or “professional player” articles where they’re talking about their play. Call it tilt. Call it whatever you want but well-known players donk off their money too. Rumor has it that a large number of the players that I looked up to in the short-handed NLHE games are busted. Who is the better player: the person who does it as a part-time hobby and is still playing mid-stakes after 3 years or the guy who has been playing for 10 years and dominated the highest stakes games for 3 years until finally busting himself down to having to get backed in order to play even the mid-stakes games and his pride doesn’t allow him to play that low? At least I’m still playing and my ego doesn’t forbid me from sitting down at lower stakes.

Yes, someone else has come out with the "I'm still here" post.

So much of poker looks at the successes but takes an incorrect statistical view of the result. Suppose 90% of rebuy tournaments are won by people playing an aggressive style from the beginning. That must be the right way to play then, mustn't it?

Well, it might be (and it might not be), but it ain't necessarily so. If 95% of people are playing that style, and only 5% are playing tight early on, getting aggressive when the rebuys end, then a playing style adopted by only 5% of the players is winning 10% of the tournament (I use this merely as a statistical example, not as an empirical statement).

At the higher levels of poker, and life, we see people who have usually adopted a particular style to get there, but that does not make it the right style. It's just a style suited to gamblers, and the kind of person (say, like Warren Buffett, you know, Jimmy's dad) who has a different character, but the right abilities, is very rare, but might well be more likely to succeed. For every Richard Branson success, there are probably 1,000 wannabe failures (just watch The Apprentice) For every Buffett success, there are probably far fewer failures, mainly because people with Buffett-like abilities are few and far between. One should not confuse style with substance, but that is what the contestants in The Apprentice seem to do.

( a poker hand )