Phooey Fluey

[peterbirks]

Bah, or, as Peter Kay might say, "I'm full of flu, me".

Well, maybe it isn't 'flu, but I feel like shit. I began to feel poorly yesterday, went to bed at a reasonable hour, woke up this morning, knocked off the required 50 FPP at Full Tilt (during which I couldn't lose a hand -- thus proving that the one thing I was missing at Full Tilt was ever having a hand with which I wanted to go to showdown) and promptly went back to bed for another four hours' sleep.

But, I was determined to get to Brian Creese's Christmas Drink near Goodge Street. I had misread his e-mail and had thought that it started at 5pm. When I checked the location of the pub, I saw that the timing was actually 2pm to 5pm, not 5pm on. Luckily, since I plan ahead, it was still only 1.30pm, so I would only be a bit late.

My annual season ticket expired on December 10, so I decided to incur the wrath of the Sunday-only travellers by renewing my ticket today. Why so? Well, if you've ever queued for a ticket on a Sunday, you will be aware that these people never know where they are going, never know how to get there, will always want to discuss their life history with the ticket man (as if he cares why they want to go to Oprington for the day) and will alwyas, but always, want to pay for the fare, no matter how small, with a credit card.

Actually, since cash is going out of fashion, credit and debit card sales are now probably quicker than cash sales. Gone are the "please sign here" farces. It's just "put the card in slot, type pin, fuck off".

So, as I typed in my PIN for my nine hundred and twenty eight pounds worth of annual fun, Mr Ticket-Man said, pointing to the nice gold-coloured piece of paper (surely the most expensive scrap of paper ounce for ounce in the civililzed world) "don't leave this next to your mobile phone, or near your computer, 'cos the stripe gets demagnetized". I mean, for fuck's sake, I have to impose apartheid on my pockets now? Then he gave me a new plastic wallet, because I tend to put a lot of stuff in my travelcard wallet -- it's my equivalent of a ladies' handbag, because it's the one thing I always carry with me (the wallet, not a ladies' handbag. I am not a pervert, no matter what the records at the police station claim).

I was just in time for the 13.53 to Charing Cross and I legged it to platform One, got on the train, and set about transferring my cards to the new wallet. Visa, Fitness First, Citibank Dollar card (what's that doing in there, I wondered? Am I likely to wake up tomorrow in America?), Work ID card, Season ticket, but no American Express Card.

Shit. Did I leave it with the ticket seller? It was that or I left it on the side of the counter after I had bought the season ticket.

So, I leapt of the train at New Cross, scurried with my little legs as fast as I could across to platform C (ahh, god bless the vagaries of English platform numbering) and, luckily, caught a train straight back to Lewisham.

I then queued up behind the peiople wanting to tell their life stories to the ticket seller, and, finally, got to ask him "did I leave my American Express card here" (for which, read, "did you forget to give it back to me and did I fail to notice?").

"Ah yes", said nice ticket man, "did you hear the platform annnouncement?"

"Well, ah, no, because I was on the train."

"Oh."

Still, pleasant to meet up with Mr Creese and friends, where we discussed such various items as the viability of setting up a company selling landmines to deter squirrels from digging up bulbs in the garden, and whether we have the right to demand of our elderly relatives that they carry around a mobile phone at all times in case they fall over and need to call the emergency services (young people, in favour, we middle-aged, mainly against).

This latter debate arose because one of the younger generation was peeved that her grandmother got given a mobile phone for just such a scenario, but then kept leaving it in a drawer. Cue debates about our rights to impose modern technology on a different generation just so that we can have peace of mind.

+++++++++

This morning was really one of those 'can do no wrong' mornings. I wonder if one of the causes of 'winners' tilt' is that, if you have an extended period of good cards, you come to expect it, which causes you to get frustrated when the cards regress to the mean? When I got home from the pub I needed another three hours' sleep to recover (which is why I am awake now), and I have just finished an hour or so on Betfred. The cards were mainly tedious, but I suffered a couple of bad beats on one table that threw up an interesting point (well, interesting for me).

In the first case a $30 short-stack moved all in from the small blind after I had raised to 3xBB from UTG (9-handed) and had been called in two spots. One was a loose player who had me out-stacked. The other was a very short-stacked player about whom I knew nothing.

I was sitting on 8d 8s here, but the all-in guy looked laggy and I had a feeling that this was another case of a person who doesn't really understand squeeze plays. He might have got away with this a few times against the notoriously wimpish IP Network players.

I decided to reraise to $54 (effectively a mini-reraise). Big stack folded (my main concern) and small stack called.

Small Blind turned over Ah 2c. Short stack turned over Qh 6h. Ace came on the flop and that was that. No worries.


About 20 minutes later I raised to 3xbb again UTG, this time with Ad Qc. Once again, called in two spots. Madman in the small blind this time goes all in for $67. Once again I call him.

This time he turns over Qs Ts. Great, I thought, I've got him dominated. That's until the flop of KJ9 . And no 10 appeared to save me, damnit (rigged, I tell you).

A few months ago I typed something and then said "and I bet no-one knows what that refers to", at which point someone responded with the answer and said "don't make bets when Google is around". Well, duh, I thought. I hadn't written "I bet no-one can find out what that refers to....".

So, fully aware that every single one of you poker players will put it into Pokerstove (as indeed, I did) and then pretend that you knew the answer all along without having to refer to Pokerstove at all, how much more of a favourite do you think my Ad Qc is against Qs Ts than my 8d 8s is against Ah 2c?

Or, to put in terms of cash. Suppose I was all in for $100 against someone else's $100, how much would you (instinctively) be willing to pay me to "buy" the AQ vs QT and how much would you be willing to pay to buy the 88 vs A2?






In fact, the 88 is better than the AQ. The 8d 8s is 70.06% against Ah 2c. The Ad Qc is only 68.03% against the Qs Ts.

Over 1000 hands you would win $70,100 and lose $29,900 for a net gain of $40,200, or $40.20 a hand with the 88. With the AQ you win $68,030 and lose $31,970 for a net gain of $36,060, or $36.06 a hand. So, you would be willing to "pay" $4 more to buy the 88 than the AQ, rather than the other way round.

Anyway, those are lots of Sklansky dollars that I shan't be spending just yet.

Comments

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

Cards quicker than cash? Not at Starbucks, mate. They have the slowest chip-n-pin machines in the world.

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

The system at teh Lewisham ticket office seemed more streamlined for card-purchase than for cash (the same now applies at Tesco's, where I suspect many of the staff actively dislike having to handle cash and give change). Starbucks, I would guess, is still "cash-biased", on the grounds that anyone who wants to use a card to buy a cup of coffee (even one as expensive as is sold in Starbucks) deserves to be garrotted.

Speaking of which, can I recommend for any budding misogynists or GOMs that they read Richard Herring's New Statesman blog at http://www.newstatesman.com/200712110001 which exemplifies the classic young lady in London attitude these days of "Oh, I've come out without any money". Actually, I'm not sure about the misogyny. I was with three people in their 20s the other week and the average cash in our pockets was a hundred quid. And I had four hundred in my pocket. I think one of them wanted to find a cashpoint so that he could take out a tennner.

Just found a good word in the dictionary. Misology. There's a word for society today that DU would love


PJ

[(Anonymous)]

My travelcard wallet was a handbag too, until I realised that there is a good chance that cardreader demagnetizes stripes in other cards (two gym cards destroyed, luckily no CCs).

Flushdraw makes the difference, otherwise AQ vs QT would be slightly better. Generally they are roughly the same 70-30, it's surprising how many players think its 80-20.

Aksu

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Hi Aksu. A merry festive season to you. I played the Prince CD again the other day!

Fortunately I have one of the old-fashioned cards that is "fed through" rather than just touched to the reader. However, my office card is contactless, and I wonder if this might have affected my (also contactless) gym card.

PJ

[(Anonymous)]

Beats me why these things aren't chip'n'pin, which would obviate the problem. Mind you, I haven't looked up the comparative costs.

I believe the Government is even now hatching a plan, somewhere on Tyneside no doubt, to force everybody to carry around One ChipNPin To Bind Them All. Presumably the end result will be that Everybody can be Anybody and get in Everywhere, and For Free.

Well, at least it's not elitist.

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

... and they might even let LiveJournal use it for sign-on purposes.

[(Anonymous)]

So damn good save, that it almost feels like you did it on purpose =)

Aksu

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure what you are referring to here. Do you mean the contactless cards? That's not really practical for things such as the unlocking of the front door to the building, and certainly isn't practical for Oyster cards.

But it hadnn't occurred to me that the card readers de-magnetized other cards. That causes severe problems if you head over into a range of contactless cards. Indeed, I'd idly contemplated making this house over to electronic locks, until I realized that a power-cut would cause fairly severe problems in that area....

PJ

It's Christmas! A Miracle! I'm Still Logged In!

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

I'm still waiting for the java-driven company VPN, so the Grinch is probably hovering over my shoulder.

OK, it's simple (but is still limited by economics). Remember your O-Level Physics. There are three basic vectors at work here: magnetic polarity, an electric field (simplified, with due apologies to Mr Maxwell), and rotational movement. You don't have rotational movement, but you do have various electrical and magnetic fields. These conflict.

Any mag-stripe card is prehistoric technology. Christ, Visa (and other card processors) went to a double-stripe technology in around 1980, just because they could fit around 256 bytes on, rather than 128 bytes. (Numbers approximate.)

Mag-stripes are evil. For a start, and you're numerate enough to understand this, it's a bit difficult to enforce 128-bit DES encryption on a 256-byte stripe. Even if you assume no lossage and checksums for that lossage. Not going to work.

Mag-stripes are the current technology of choice for providers of practically anything because, well, they're the mass-produced standard. Everybody (except me) has a credit card or two. We're happy with them. The path of least resistance is to implement a new "service," such as the Oyster card, as a mag-stripe.

Stop and think.

Did you ask for a mag-stripe? Does it make you feel warm and cuddly? Are you prepared to put up with cosseting the little darling in your man-bag? Do you not object to going through the gruelling process of standing at the end of a queue at the station, behind several half-dozens of people who are randomly explaining why they are visiting their auntie in Orpington (an experience I have sacrificed my other life as a millionaire merchant banker to avoid. Double good karma.)?

It's crap technology. It's thirty years old. Credit card companies are not noted for being on the bleeding edge, but even they are trying to demote mag-stripe to the level of cheques.

There. Does that clear up your confusion?

Now, I will admit that there are several technical hurdles to deal with here. (Again, I'm ignoring economic costs for the sake of argument.) In all honesty, though, an EEPROM version of a chip'n'pin card would be the obvious solution for the catastrophic £2 billion and counting disaster that is the NHS central system.

It's also true that chip'n'pin is not an exact solution for your problems. For starters, you don't want to enter the pin. Mind you, this is just the way the thing has been developed and marketed. There is no reason for a chip-based Oyster not to be able to feed off a very low ohmage local supply at a ticket barrier: say from around a couple of foot or so, probably tuned to the length of the barrier.

Result? No pointless delay, no muss, no scratch ... and perfect knowledge of who you are and where you got on board and where you're going to.

Since that would be Muswell Hill, or some other equally exotic destination, the Met would still shoot you in the head seven times from point blank range anyway.

But at least, with a chip'n'pin card, they couldn't claim that they didn't know that you were Brazilian. The best they could do is to point out that, after they'd gunned you down, they removed your underwear and discovered that you didn't have a Brazilian wax.

This is probably good enough for 90% of High Court Judges.

Anyway, where was I?

Yes. The technology is dead. It's obviously stupid. You know it doesn't work. You've proved it doesn't work.

Since you seem grumpy and old enough to accept the status quo and not to complain about it enough to make a difference, may I suggest that you buy yourself a man-bag for Christmas rather than a pair of boxing gloves and the "Spice Girls Reunion" calendar? (Joke recycled from GH circa 53, if memory serves. Which it's fuckin' gonna have to, on a Tuesday night in Bracknell.)

Re: It's Christmas! A Miracle! I'm Still Logged In!

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm all for getting rid of the magnetic stripe technology. I thought you were saying that contactless cards should use chip'n'pin, which would entail typing in a combination wevery time you used an Oyster or tried to enter my office building.

For season tickets it would entail a plastic season instead of a paper card, at least at themoment it would. That's fine for annual season tickets and possibly even for monthlies, but it leaves the daily and weekly season tickets in a bit of a no-man's land.

As soon as they get rid of those and make people buy Oysters instead, liooks like the mag stripe is here to stay for travelling.

Plus, of course, there's the US, which appears to be a few years behind Europe in the chip'n'pin introduction stakes.

PJ

Re: It's Christmas! A Miracle! I'm Still Logged In!

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

And, as if by magic, here's a part of PB's report on his visit to the Buffalo V Cleveland game...

Anyway, beer was easy to get because the stadium wasn't full, though we had to walk a section over to get not Budweiser. [on a side note, another comment on the Brown's management related to foodservice: they don't have credit card machines at the counter of any concession stand. The cashier has to call for a person from the back [YO! CREDIT CARD! YO! CREDIT CARD!] because they aren't allowed to leave their cash register, the person comes up, gets the card and the amount (verbally) then goes back and rings it up. This leads to at least one purchase amount error in ten trips, where they have to cancel it and redo it all again. This is for EVERY credit card transaction. They have no separate cash line.]

I think that they should introduce that system at Starbucks.

PJ

Let's Talk!

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

Well, we may have to do the stripe/chip thing again some time. Put simply: chips don't get fucked by other chips -- or stripes, or any other thing you might have around (basically, it's down to redundancy of 10M transistors). The concept does not require a PIN (that's just the way they're used at the moment). They store a ridiculous amount of, possibly personal, information, and they can secure it via high-level cryptography.

They are quite capable of building in a low-power transceiver that works off the wattage supplied by the thing sitting two feet away from them. (Think Bluetooth, but slightly more realistic.)

And no, I don't do any of that stuff. It would just depress me.

I fully understand being depressed whilst queuing for beer at a Buffalo/Cleveland game.

Oddly enough, I have put myself in the position of being depressed by going through Cincinnati on the Greyhound (an altogether nicer city than Cleveland -- although mainly because the river wasn't on fire at the time), and depressed by driving around a thousand miles to get close to Buffalo. (It was a wedding in Rochester. Rochester was dismal enough.)

Expecting to get a decent drink at a B/C game is just insane. Complaining about it is just a minge. God's sakes, if you insist on doing this sort of thing, at least go and watch Green Bay: now there'sclass in adversity.

Re: Let's Talk!

[real-aardvark.livejournal.com]

And if they introduced that technology at Starbucks, Woodhouse would just drink coffee faster.

Which can't be good for him. After all, he'd have to get back to work.

Which can't be good for him.

Re: It's Christmas! A Miracle! I'm Still Logged In!

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking as someone who works in this area, the Oystercard is already quite old technology, but it is phenomenally popular. Barclaycard recently introduced a hybrid card that allows small cash transactions together with Oyster and a credit card, and more of that sort of stuff will follow. Most of the train operators serving London are gearing up to introduce at least the Pay As You Go aspect of Oyster travel fairly soon, and from there it's potentially a small step to them selling Travelcards and Point to Point season tickets on them. You can, after all, purchase a Travelcard on Oyster anyway, you just have to buy it from a Transport for London outlet. I think everyone can see the problems with having a £1K product on a small piece of cardboard with a magstripe on it. I just bought my first one ever a week or so ago, and it makes me nervous.

The tricky part will be integrating the tourists and pass-through passengers who have no need for an Oystercard except when they visit London. On that subject I would only note that the cash underground single fare to tourists is the oft-quoted £4 and allow people to draw their own conclusions about the Mayor's attitude to these travellers' needs.

In any case, give it a couple of years and all this will probably be done with mobile phones!