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Taking a bit of a bath at the moment online, although twice in the last two days I have got back from "seriously down" (more than two buy-ins) to merely "down" (roughly one buy-in).
The falls are well within the parameters of variance, but you still start making slightly worse marginal decisions because things keep going wrong.
I actually called an all-in with QQ pre-flop from a player who had just sat down, and I probably shouldn't have ... and yet, my gut feelilng is that I might just have been positive EV to call. It simply comes down to what you think players at this stake level are likely to do. Normally I would have folded because I couldn't see the move being made with less than KK (or at least, not often enough to make a call plus EV), but here the circumstances were special:
$200 buy-in, $1-$2 blinds:
Hero ($200) (BB) Qs Qd
Villain ($150) (UTG): Posts $2
Tight-Aggressive Player (MP2)
Villain checks.
TAG raises to $10
All passed to Hero
Hero raises to $37
UTG goes all-in for $150
Villain passes
Hero thinks. Calls for $113.
UTG shows Ac As (or similar). No help on board. I pull up more cash from the bank.
Why the call? Well, my logic, and I still can't decide whether it's flawed or not, is that anyone who posts under-the-gun is not likely to be that good.
Secondly, this player was unknown to me, but this looked like as good a hit-and-run bluff situation as any. $150 to win $48 if both opponents fold, and it's a hard call for opponents to make with anything but AA, or KK at the outside. And these squeeze plays seem to be coming into fashion in cash games.
The question is, how often will this be AA (or KK) and how often will it be AK, or Ax, or complete tosh?
If I put in my $113 I'm getting 197-to-113 for my money, so I want to be winning 36.5% of the time to break even. If he's AA half the time, AK a quarter of the time and AJ or less the remaining quarter of the time (I'm being pessimistic here and assuming I'm never up against a hand that I completely dominate), then my chances are
.22*.5
.6*.25
.7*.25
=
.11
.125
.13
which comes out at about 36.5%. Just on the cusp (I'm doing this at work without Pokerstove, so apologies if my calcs are utterly up the creek)
But if he's AA a third of the time, AK a third of the time, and AJ or less the other third, then I get
.22*.33
.6*.33
.7*.33
(slightly rough figures, I know, but there's no need for pinpoint accuracy here)
=
.07
.2
.225
which makes me nearly 50% against the range -- a clear call.
I think that I might have let the facts that the guy posted UTG and that this was his first hand cloud my judgement. Did it really make it a 50% chance that the guy didn't have Aces?
+++++++++++++++++
The latest important piece of economic news was tucked away amidst a mish-mash of budget commentary, none of which matters a toss, to my mind.
The important news was that the return on five-year US Treasuries has gone slightly negative, which indicates that the market thinks real interest rates will average less than zero over the next five years. That could mean low rates and less low inflation, or medium rates and high inflation. Or, to term it another way, recession vs stagflation. Whichever, it's crap news for anyone who thinks that this problem will be over by next Christmas (step forward Alistair Darling).
Lovers of semiotics will have noticed that Darling used the word "stability" some 23 times in his stultifyingly tedious speech. DY and I have both expressed views in the past that stability is only a good idea if the situation currently in place is a good one. The "stability is good" line is as specious as the "change is good" concept so beloved in companies that like to think they are hip.
There was an interesting comment on US Treasuries last night on the World Service. An Academic observed that there are two ways that a government issuing bonds can default. One is to stop paying the interest. The second is to carry on paying the interest, but to reduce its value.
This is, he said, precisely what the US is doing, thus, presumably unintentionally, imitating banana republics that issued bonds and then devalued the currency to such a level that none of the bonds was worth more than a loaf of bread. How long, the academic asked, before countries buying US Treasuries get fed up with the "real" value of those treasuries (i.e., as measured in euros, or sterling, or yuan) diminishing even further? If you bought a $100 10-year Treasury with euros in 2000, I reckon that your return on that would be about half what you paid for it, before allowing for inflation. And yet it's still triple A rated, because payment back of the principal (no matter how worthless that principal has become) does not count as a default.
If inflation starts to kick in as well, then the default on US Treasuries will become de facto the case. At which I expect Mr Butler to step in, waving his gold bars (valued in dollars, btw) and tell us where to from here.
One distinct possibility is the end of the dollar as the measuring stick. If it didn't have the horrible potential for creating some nasty derivatives that could cause even more trouble in future, I'd suggest creating an "artificial" basket currency, in which gold, oil, commodities etc could be denominated.
Any suggestions for names?
____________________
The falls are well within the parameters of variance, but you still start making slightly worse marginal decisions because things keep going wrong.
I actually called an all-in with QQ pre-flop from a player who had just sat down, and I probably shouldn't have ... and yet, my gut feelilng is that I might just have been positive EV to call. It simply comes down to what you think players at this stake level are likely to do. Normally I would have folded because I couldn't see the move being made with less than KK (or at least, not often enough to make a call plus EV), but here the circumstances were special:
$200 buy-in, $1-$2 blinds:
Hero ($200) (BB) Qs Qd
Villain ($150) (UTG): Posts $2
Tight-Aggressive Player (MP2)
Villain checks.
TAG raises to $10
All passed to Hero
Hero raises to $37
UTG goes all-in for $150
Villain passes
Hero thinks. Calls for $113.
UTG shows Ac As (or similar). No help on board. I pull up more cash from the bank.
Why the call? Well, my logic, and I still can't decide whether it's flawed or not, is that anyone who posts under-the-gun is not likely to be that good.
Secondly, this player was unknown to me, but this looked like as good a hit-and-run bluff situation as any. $150 to win $48 if both opponents fold, and it's a hard call for opponents to make with anything but AA, or KK at the outside. And these squeeze plays seem to be coming into fashion in cash games.
The question is, how often will this be AA (or KK) and how often will it be AK, or Ax, or complete tosh?
If I put in my $113 I'm getting 197-to-113 for my money, so I want to be winning 36.5% of the time to break even. If he's AA half the time, AK a quarter of the time and AJ or less the remaining quarter of the time (I'm being pessimistic here and assuming I'm never up against a hand that I completely dominate), then my chances are
.22*.5
.6*.25
.7*.25
=
.11
.125
.13
which comes out at about 36.5%. Just on the cusp (I'm doing this at work without Pokerstove, so apologies if my calcs are utterly up the creek)
But if he's AA a third of the time, AK a third of the time, and AJ or less the other third, then I get
.22*.33
.6*.33
.7*.33
(slightly rough figures, I know, but there's no need for pinpoint accuracy here)
=
.07
.2
.225
which makes me nearly 50% against the range -- a clear call.
I think that I might have let the facts that the guy posted UTG and that this was his first hand cloud my judgement. Did it really make it a 50% chance that the guy didn't have Aces?
+++++++++++++++++
The latest important piece of economic news was tucked away amidst a mish-mash of budget commentary, none of which matters a toss, to my mind.
The important news was that the return on five-year US Treasuries has gone slightly negative, which indicates that the market thinks real interest rates will average less than zero over the next five years. That could mean low rates and less low inflation, or medium rates and high inflation. Or, to term it another way, recession vs stagflation. Whichever, it's crap news for anyone who thinks that this problem will be over by next Christmas (step forward Alistair Darling).
Lovers of semiotics will have noticed that Darling used the word "stability" some 23 times in his stultifyingly tedious speech. DY and I have both expressed views in the past that stability is only a good idea if the situation currently in place is a good one. The "stability is good" line is as specious as the "change is good" concept so beloved in companies that like to think they are hip.
There was an interesting comment on US Treasuries last night on the World Service. An Academic observed that there are two ways that a government issuing bonds can default. One is to stop paying the interest. The second is to carry on paying the interest, but to reduce its value.
This is, he said, precisely what the US is doing, thus, presumably unintentionally, imitating banana republics that issued bonds and then devalued the currency to such a level that none of the bonds was worth more than a loaf of bread. How long, the academic asked, before countries buying US Treasuries get fed up with the "real" value of those treasuries (i.e., as measured in euros, or sterling, or yuan) diminishing even further? If you bought a $100 10-year Treasury with euros in 2000, I reckon that your return on that would be about half what you paid for it, before allowing for inflation. And yet it's still triple A rated, because payment back of the principal (no matter how worthless that principal has become) does not count as a default.
If inflation starts to kick in as well, then the default on US Treasuries will become de facto the case. At which I expect Mr Butler to step in, waving his gold bars (valued in dollars, btw) and tell us where to from here.
One distinct possibility is the end of the dollar as the measuring stick. If it didn't have the horrible potential for creating some nasty derivatives that could cause even more trouble in future, I'd suggest creating an "artificial" basket currency, in which gold, oil, commodities etc could be denominated.
Any suggestions for names?
____________________
