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lassitude and longitude
Dec. 14th, 2007 11:25 amMr J Harrington (not to be confused with Mr Harrington, whom many readers would assume to be Dan, and not to be confused with Johnny H, whom many readers would assume to be Johnny Hughes) wrote recently in his excellent (if intermittent) blog http://my.opera.com/fiendishgames/blog/ that it didn't matter if you were out of work, you still never seemed to have any time.
Holidays at home are a bit like that. You look up and you wonder to yourself, 'where did the day go'?
Well, three hours of it went before I got up. Usually I hear the dustmen on a Friday as I am preparing to leave the house. Today I heard them in a half-doze before waking up more than two hours later at 8.35.
I managed to put the TV/Video/Digital set-top-box system together upstairs (although I haven't actually taped anything yet). This gives the household the (theoretical) ability to record three digital channels and one terrestrial channel simultaneously -- thus giving me the opportunity to compile even more recordings of stuff that I never get round to watching.
Then I started on my Christmas cards. At this point I realized that, although I had the stamps, the envelopes and the addresses, I was a bit low on the actual card element -- something which might be considered important in the context of "Christmas cards". Clearly I had sent out many many cards in past years as accompaniments to Greatest Hits, thus building up a stockpile of envelopes. I wonder if I could sell them on e-bay to someone who buys lots of Christmas Cards early in the year, but then uses up the envelopes?
Well, no, I couldn't, because I haven't worked out how to sell stuff on e-bay.
And, well, that was the morning gone, really. Wow.
One of the paradoxes of manic-depression is that when you don't feel much like doing anything, you can't really be sure whether it's because you are depressed or just plain bone-fucking-idle. Hell, I'm on holiday. I know that I've got a lot to catch up on, but, well, if you can't do what you want to do when you are on 'holiday', then when can you?
The answer to this, of course, when you are an adult with responsibilities, is, 'never'.
And it's too cold to go out. Leaving the house is not something I look forward to at the best of times. But when your nice Google Desktop blares "Minus Three!" at you, then going out voluntarily seems little short of masochistic.
I was going to do an Around The Blogs, since a few interesting posts have cropped up. Rob Sherwood decided to stop posting, but then started again two days later. MilyBarKid has an end of year review (Birks prediction for 2007 that a lot of the high-rollers would find life tougher proved true, but Ben bounced back) and Terrence Chan has a first big tourney win under his belt and is going for back-to-backs.
But it was a post by jnala (occasional poster here, so I hope he forgives me for nicking it) that caught my eye.
As with all great concepts when expressed succinctly, you say to tourself "why didn't I think to express it that way?" Here's what he wrote:
This is just about the best reason for playing high-stakes tourneys that I have read. If you can take the added volatility, and if you focus on tournaments with a high proportion of qualifiers, it's as if you were playing in a $2,000 buy-in cash game with 5 guys who are really $25 buy-in players, who happened to win a lottery with 495 other $25 buy-in players.
The rider is, of course, the "added volatility". Plus, once the vast majority of these bad players are out of the way, and once the stakes increase, you start entering the arena of non-linear chip valuation. In other words, you do need other strings to your bow.
However, this could explain why a number of good MTT players struggle at cash games. For the level required ($100 buy-in games are probably the same as $50 tournaments in terms of expected earn in the long run for the average winning player, I would guess) you are meeting a generally lower level of competence on average. The top 5% in each field are probably equally competent, whereas the bottom 5% in tournaments are probably far worse than the bottom 5% in cash.
+++++++++++++
( hand, strategy thoughts )
Holidays at home are a bit like that. You look up and you wonder to yourself, 'where did the day go'?
Well, three hours of it went before I got up. Usually I hear the dustmen on a Friday as I am preparing to leave the house. Today I heard them in a half-doze before waking up more than two hours later at 8.35.
I managed to put the TV/Video/Digital set-top-box system together upstairs (although I haven't actually taped anything yet). This gives the household the (theoretical) ability to record three digital channels and one terrestrial channel simultaneously -- thus giving me the opportunity to compile even more recordings of stuff that I never get round to watching.
Then I started on my Christmas cards. At this point I realized that, although I had the stamps, the envelopes and the addresses, I was a bit low on the actual card element -- something which might be considered important in the context of "Christmas cards". Clearly I had sent out many many cards in past years as accompaniments to Greatest Hits, thus building up a stockpile of envelopes. I wonder if I could sell them on e-bay to someone who buys lots of Christmas Cards early in the year, but then uses up the envelopes?
Well, no, I couldn't, because I haven't worked out how to sell stuff on e-bay.
And, well, that was the morning gone, really. Wow.
One of the paradoxes of manic-depression is that when you don't feel much like doing anything, you can't really be sure whether it's because you are depressed or just plain bone-fucking-idle. Hell, I'm on holiday. I know that I've got a lot to catch up on, but, well, if you can't do what you want to do when you are on 'holiday', then when can you?
The answer to this, of course, when you are an adult with responsibilities, is, 'never'.
And it's too cold to go out. Leaving the house is not something I look forward to at the best of times. But when your nice Google Desktop blares "Minus Three!" at you, then going out voluntarily seems little short of masochistic.
I was going to do an Around The Blogs, since a few interesting posts have cropped up. Rob Sherwood decided to stop posting, but then started again two days later. MilyBarKid has an end of year review (Birks prediction for 2007 that a lot of the high-rollers would find life tougher proved true, but Ben bounced back) and Terrence Chan has a first big tourney win under his belt and is going for back-to-backs.
But it was a post by jnala (occasional poster here, so I hope he forgives me for nicking it) that caught my eye.
As with all great concepts when expressed succinctly, you say to tourself "why didn't I think to express it that way?" Here's what he wrote:
The reason I play tournaments is that they're so amazingly soft. For instance, 2-3 hours into a $10k event, you're still playing with linear chip values for stakes equivalent to $50/$100, but it's far softer than any $50/$100 NL cash game in existence. Four hours after that it's still mostly fish and you're playing $200/$400 NL against them. Tournaments and satellites are an astonishingly effective system for funnelling bad players into higher stakes than they'd ever normally play.
This is just about the best reason for playing high-stakes tourneys that I have read. If you can take the added volatility, and if you focus on tournaments with a high proportion of qualifiers, it's as if you were playing in a $2,000 buy-in cash game with 5 guys who are really $25 buy-in players, who happened to win a lottery with 495 other $25 buy-in players.
The rider is, of course, the "added volatility". Plus, once the vast majority of these bad players are out of the way, and once the stakes increase, you start entering the arena of non-linear chip valuation. In other words, you do need other strings to your bow.
However, this could explain why a number of good MTT players struggle at cash games. For the level required ($100 buy-in games are probably the same as $50 tournaments in terms of expected earn in the long run for the average winning player, I would guess) you are meeting a generally lower level of competence on average. The top 5% in each field are probably equally competent, whereas the bottom 5% in tournaments are probably far worse than the bottom 5% in cash.
+++++++++++++
( hand, strategy thoughts )
