Chemical Sisters
Jul. 7th, 2007 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksYeah, well, what a band that combo would make, huh?
I only put that up because I have finally transferred all of Glastonbury 2007 that I recorded onto DVD. The Chemical Brothers peformance begins with the TV warning that "this performance contains strobe lighting". Well, quite, but this is a little bit like Le Chiffre saying to James Bond in Casino Royale, as the villain begins a prolonged torture sequence, that "this might hurt a bit".
I bashed $350 into Party and played 250 hands. I checked how much of the bonus I had cleared. 5%, the numbers claimed. What? I haven't checked the details of the Party bonus rules, but either I was at considerably tighter tables than I thought (to be fair, the 250 hands only took a fraction over 45 minutes) or Party has changed the rules relating to bonus clearance. Party has such a complicated page for trying to check these things (for example, one drop down menu has the choices "Balance and Bonus Details" and, just below it, "Bonus Details"; you have to click the latter to see how many points you have collected) that I can't be bothered to look it up. I'll play another 250 later this evening to see what happens.
So, 20x 45 minutes = 900 minutes, or 15 hours, when 4-tabling, for $52.50 in bonus. Bleeagh, the system on NoIQ is far better than that.
And Party's rake at the lower levels is an insult, taking the money in 1 cent increments. This adds up to an extra $3 an hour in rake when 4-tabling. Add to that the "Bad beat" deduction (because these tables tend to be looser, so the negative EV is not that great, but the SD is huge) and it costs you about $7 an hour more to play on a site that is run by shit-heads who I really hope come to an unhappy fiscal end. And, in addition it seems to be mass-populated by minimum buy-in Germans. Five or six to a table. This doesn't bother me. They are all singing from the same hymn sheet and are easy to beat, albeit at a slow rate (it's really a matter of raising them out pre-flop; if they are in for the flop for more than a limp, or a mini-raise maximum, they are virtually committing all their money anyway). But it does make for smaller average pot sizes (still raked at 5% to the nearest cent, thanks to the Party raking system) and less enticing play.
But taking their money a dollar at a time is fun, while taking them for $10 is even more fun. The trick is never to pay them off if they are in for the flop and you have failed to hit big time. They always bet about 25% to 30% of their remaining stack on the flop, and the rest on the turn. If they cold call a raise behind you, they probably have a good pair. Sometimes you can force them off on a flop of A-paint-x or Axx. If three low cards come, they are putting all their money in eventually. This makes it great if you have hit a set.
++++++
As the weeks wear on, my conviction rises that even masses of Russian money (hot or not) and City bonuses will be insufficient to stop a serious cooling off in the housing market.
I've discovered a new correlation, which is always fun. The luxury London property market, luxury cars (the $500,000-plus market) and the art market. All of these hit record highs in the early to mid-80s, suffered a collapse through to the mid-90s, and have been booming ever since. And all of them still look to be powering along.
But a quick look beneath the numbers reveals a bit more. The FT observes this morning that Land Securities and British Land stock are off 24% and 20% this year. Deutsche Bank, that home of perennial "the market can survive things now that it couldn't in the past" optimist Mikey, has noted that this implies a discount of 19% to net asset value. British Land is, in response, buying back shares, on the grounds that it is like buying property at a 15% discount.
Well, yes, but sometimes the market is not as stupid as you think, Mr Hester (CEO of British Land). Stock prices are not current reflections of value (if they were, there wouldn't be the "capital growth" vs "yield" argument -- everyone would just go for the yield stocks). They have a "futures" component as well. So, if the market is putting companies which are, in effect, de facto stockmarket equivalents of the land/housing market, at a 19% discount to land values, this implies an expectation that those values will, over the next 18 months or so, fall. And not just by 19% in total, because the "futures" component only makes up a part of the valuation. Most companies are valued on "part current/part future" basis, with the timescale and proportions varying from company to company and sector to sector.
With property companies, what is that timescale and what is the weighting? I would guess something like 50/50 and 18 months. That implies a guess that property stock is going to be worth a lot less in reality (if not on the books) in 18 months' time than it is at the moment.
The FT concludes that the buyback by British Land "should reassure investors that the balance of risk to rewards in the listed UK property sector has now swung in their favour".
I'm afraid that the Birks estimate of the British Land buyback is less optimistic. It's a long time since I took it on faith that newspapers knew what they were writing about and that CEOs knew what they were doing. A buyback of stock might be right, or it might be a case of "what else should we do with our money?". But it's no guarantee. Buying back at a theoretical 15% discount is no good if you are planning to sell in five years' time, and it turns out that what you bought back (be that the land itself or the shares representing that land) is worth only half what you paid for it.
__________
I only put that up because I have finally transferred all of Glastonbury 2007 that I recorded onto DVD. The Chemical Brothers peformance begins with the TV warning that "this performance contains strobe lighting". Well, quite, but this is a little bit like Le Chiffre saying to James Bond in Casino Royale, as the villain begins a prolonged torture sequence, that "this might hurt a bit".
I bashed $350 into Party and played 250 hands. I checked how much of the bonus I had cleared. 5%, the numbers claimed. What? I haven't checked the details of the Party bonus rules, but either I was at considerably tighter tables than I thought (to be fair, the 250 hands only took a fraction over 45 minutes) or Party has changed the rules relating to bonus clearance. Party has such a complicated page for trying to check these things (for example, one drop down menu has the choices "Balance and Bonus Details" and, just below it, "Bonus Details"; you have to click the latter to see how many points you have collected) that I can't be bothered to look it up. I'll play another 250 later this evening to see what happens.
So, 20x 45 minutes = 900 minutes, or 15 hours, when 4-tabling, for $52.50 in bonus. Bleeagh, the system on NoIQ is far better than that.
And Party's rake at the lower levels is an insult, taking the money in 1 cent increments. This adds up to an extra $3 an hour in rake when 4-tabling. Add to that the "Bad beat" deduction (because these tables tend to be looser, so the negative EV is not that great, but the SD is huge) and it costs you about $7 an hour more to play on a site that is run by shit-heads who I really hope come to an unhappy fiscal end. And, in addition it seems to be mass-populated by minimum buy-in Germans. Five or six to a table. This doesn't bother me. They are all singing from the same hymn sheet and are easy to beat, albeit at a slow rate (it's really a matter of raising them out pre-flop; if they are in for the flop for more than a limp, or a mini-raise maximum, they are virtually committing all their money anyway). But it does make for smaller average pot sizes (still raked at 5% to the nearest cent, thanks to the Party raking system) and less enticing play.
But taking their money a dollar at a time is fun, while taking them for $10 is even more fun. The trick is never to pay them off if they are in for the flop and you have failed to hit big time. They always bet about 25% to 30% of their remaining stack on the flop, and the rest on the turn. If they cold call a raise behind you, they probably have a good pair. Sometimes you can force them off on a flop of A-paint-x or Axx. If three low cards come, they are putting all their money in eventually. This makes it great if you have hit a set.
++++++
As the weeks wear on, my conviction rises that even masses of Russian money (hot or not) and City bonuses will be insufficient to stop a serious cooling off in the housing market.
I've discovered a new correlation, which is always fun. The luxury London property market, luxury cars (the $500,000-plus market) and the art market. All of these hit record highs in the early to mid-80s, suffered a collapse through to the mid-90s, and have been booming ever since. And all of them still look to be powering along.
But a quick look beneath the numbers reveals a bit more. The FT observes this morning that Land Securities and British Land stock are off 24% and 20% this year. Deutsche Bank, that home of perennial "the market can survive things now that it couldn't in the past" optimist Mikey, has noted that this implies a discount of 19% to net asset value. British Land is, in response, buying back shares, on the grounds that it is like buying property at a 15% discount.
Well, yes, but sometimes the market is not as stupid as you think, Mr Hester (CEO of British Land). Stock prices are not current reflections of value (if they were, there wouldn't be the "capital growth" vs "yield" argument -- everyone would just go for the yield stocks). They have a "futures" component as well. So, if the market is putting companies which are, in effect, de facto stockmarket equivalents of the land/housing market, at a 19% discount to land values, this implies an expectation that those values will, over the next 18 months or so, fall. And not just by 19% in total, because the "futures" component only makes up a part of the valuation. Most companies are valued on "part current/part future" basis, with the timescale and proportions varying from company to company and sector to sector.
With property companies, what is that timescale and what is the weighting? I would guess something like 50/50 and 18 months. That implies a guess that property stock is going to be worth a lot less in reality (if not on the books) in 18 months' time than it is at the moment.
The FT concludes that the buyback by British Land "should reassure investors that the balance of risk to rewards in the listed UK property sector has now swung in their favour".
I'm afraid that the Birks estimate of the British Land buyback is less optimistic. It's a long time since I took it on faith that newspapers knew what they were writing about and that CEOs knew what they were doing. A buyback of stock might be right, or it might be a case of "what else should we do with our money?". But it's no guarantee. Buying back at a theoretical 15% discount is no good if you are planning to sell in five years' time, and it turns out that what you bought back (be that the land itself or the shares representing that land) is worth only half what you paid for it.
__________
