Insurer For Sale
Sep. 23rd, 2008 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksAIG's new CEO Ed Liddy will announce next week which bits of AIG are up for sale. Rumours are swirling that Manchester United is going to buy the UK life assurance intersts of the company. AIG employees will be required to wear Manchester United shirts to work (although for formal meetings a suit with the executives name and staff number stitched on the back will be allowed). In addition, AIG will have "club days" wear clients of Manchester United will be able to attend important pricing meetings, claims discussions and staff evaluation sessions.
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I keep forgetting to mention that the FT Magazine on Saturday had an article on BadBeat, the operation that backs a number of players. I assume this is the deal that Ben Grundy has signed. What the management of this operation say makes a frightening amount of sense (most players play too high for their bankroll; they want to play $25-50 even though they have a higher EV multi-tabling $5-$10; there's far too much testosterone and far too little business sense, and so on), and I do hope that most people pay no attention. I've always felt that my edge has been in the fact that I don't suffer tilt to the same degree of other players and I don't have this desperate desire to play at higher stakes. Or, to put it bluntly, I am not a gambler. I know that we see the headlines of youngsters who shot up to the highests levels, and this selection bias leads any number of writers to advise "taking a shot" far earlier than is wise.
The Badbeat team also took note that one of the major flaws in these hotshots is that they don't play enough. They are, in essence, lazy (and this character flaw is what attracts them to professional poker in the first place. Or, to put it another way, people with a strong work ethic do not tend to become professional poker players). BadBeat instills discipline into these players, demanding a rather pathetic number of table hours a month (I waltz through the number required and hold down a full-time job at the same time). But what I like about the business model is that it looks to me that BadBeat keeps the rakeback. That, if you like, is the small print. At high stakes it won't make much difference to most players, but, over the whole year, you are probably looking at $5 per hour rakeback per player. If 95% of players win over the whole year (and that's a matter for the player selection process), then that would all add up.
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I keep forgetting to mention that the FT Magazine on Saturday had an article on BadBeat, the operation that backs a number of players. I assume this is the deal that Ben Grundy has signed. What the management of this operation say makes a frightening amount of sense (most players play too high for their bankroll; they want to play $25-50 even though they have a higher EV multi-tabling $5-$10; there's far too much testosterone and far too little business sense, and so on), and I do hope that most people pay no attention. I've always felt that my edge has been in the fact that I don't suffer tilt to the same degree of other players and I don't have this desperate desire to play at higher stakes. Or, to put it bluntly, I am not a gambler. I know that we see the headlines of youngsters who shot up to the highests levels, and this selection bias leads any number of writers to advise "taking a shot" far earlier than is wise.
The Badbeat team also took note that one of the major flaws in these hotshots is that they don't play enough. They are, in essence, lazy (and this character flaw is what attracts them to professional poker in the first place. Or, to put it another way, people with a strong work ethic do not tend to become professional poker players). BadBeat instills discipline into these players, demanding a rather pathetic number of table hours a month (I waltz through the number required and hold down a full-time job at the same time). But what I like about the business model is that it looks to me that BadBeat keeps the rakeback. That, if you like, is the small print. At high stakes it won't make much difference to most players, but, over the whole year, you are probably looking at $5 per hour rakeback per player. If 95% of players win over the whole year (and that's a matter for the player selection process), then that would all add up.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 04:48 pm (UTC)http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cd08df46-86ad-11dd-959e-0000779fd18c.html
And gem contained within :
The main reason for BadBeat's initial losses was that its first recruits were high-profile names from the UK's live poker circuit.
Lollerskates !
Andy.
PS LOL !!!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 06:29 am (UTC)For links to the stars, watch a few Late Night Pokers from 2000 and ask yourself where many of the faces of the day are today.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 07:40 pm (UTC)There's a bit of a dollar overhang coming up, isn't there? Ignoring the obvious effect this is going to have on the price of commodities and/or the inflation rate in China, I'm looking forward to the next great Reverse Ferret -- that of central bankers (excluding the Fed) the world over.
"Yes, the Bank will take extraordinary measures to combat the crisis, old boy, but this sort of Yank bailing-out thingie ... well, they're NQOS, are they? Stronly worded warnings should do the trick."
"Intervention of this form, it seems of Weimar zu schmecken, zwar, Mr Trichet?"
"At Nippon Central we are still dealing with our own systemic problems of twenty years ago, thank you, Paulson-san."
In an interesting inversion of the beggar-thy-neighbour attitude so prevalent in the '30s, this appears to be a bugger-thyself strategy. It may well work in the medium term, but I foresee weird things happening in the currency and bond markets.
Let's face it, if the euro edges up towards one-for-two against the dollar, not even the ECB is going to be able to maintain 5% interest rates and a prim stance against moral hazard with a straight face.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 08:04 pm (UTC)No, what we need is a new currency in the US. This would be a "promise to pay" on maturity of the toxic shit. So, you pay the banks the mark to market value now (in dollars) plus a promise to pay (at a rate of, say, 80%) of any maturity value, in dollars, when the product matures.
This new currency would be transferable between financial institutions and could, I suppose, be rated at less than the US dollar in terms of guarantee (i.e., could trade at 98 cents to the dollar or some such, on the premise that the Democrats might get in and welsh on the whole deal).
This solves the problem of not quite getting the crooks out of jail for nothing, while succeeding in getting the shit out of the economy. And it ALSO doesn't pump as many dollars into the economy as the currently planned system will.
PJ
Rabbit? What rabbit?
Date: 2008-09-23 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 10:28 pm (UTC)Absolutely no reaon for swapping stupid picutre
Date: 2008-09-23 10:50 pm (UTC)Well, I was joking (not really), and I was making the assumption that central banks, the world over, would come to this conclusion.
Why, O why, do we pay these fuckers writing for the Daily Mail/Telegraph/Express and/or Spectator a couple of hundred thousand a year without offering us any useful insight on how, for example, we might be able to protect our pensions (I'll be dead by then) or else score with the 21-year-old blonde on page 7 of the Telegraph Business section (she really was quite exquisite, and hopefully extremely stupid, too -- but then she's an Estate Agent). Her name was Emily, I believe, and she's on her gap year.
Mind you; and having vented; this makes perfect sense to me. The Chinks want to tie the Renmimbi to the Dollar. Fine -- you go ahead. That'll be fun. We'll introduce the Ducat, which is sort of like a dollar, but isn't, at parity.
What do you do now, if we start trading in ducats?
(Not that far off how Remnimbis were traded, in the good ole times.)
Re: Absolutely no reaon for swapping stupid picutre
Date: 2008-09-24 06:33 am (UTC)Well, if the US introduces "Dollar Lite" then it would of course be traded, even though it wouldn't be printed. This might be missing a trick, because if you printed some high-value denominations, you could probably tie in a sponsorship deal with McDonald's and then tie the value of the McDollar Lite to the cost of a Big Mac (i.e., one dollar lite buys the same number of Big Macs, no matter which country you are in). That way, you guarantee purchasing ppower parity for the McDollar lite worldwide.
PJ
Re: Absolutely no reaon for swapping stupid picutre
Date: 2008-09-24 12:04 pm (UTC)Glad to see that they've set up a committee to at last appear to question it.
The public are being asked to pay for corporate excess, so why isn't the public out in the streets, rioting, killing and burning?
Are we that beaten?
It's slavery by another name. Pure and simple.
If you are lucky enough to have a non-job, assuming it hasn't been given by a self-loathing middle-class (ex-working-class with more than average wealth) liberal to an immigrant, then you will be taxed, cheated and inflated to zero wealth in no time at all.
So ends my Rant in E minor.
Funny that...
Date: 2008-09-24 06:55 pm (UTC)