![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI'll get some form of graphs and tables up, although it will be a mess.
Party in 2009:
Stars in 2009
Pacific in 2009
50c-$1 NL/PL 2009
$1-$2 NL/PL 2009
A major cause of the downswing in November was due to me suddenly running bad at $1-$2. People think of running bad as being a sequence of bad beats, but it isn't like that. The thing is, at NL, you will often be in against short-to-medium stacks on the turn when you will be 30% to 40%. You haven't done anything wrong to get to that position (most of the time you have taken the hand down either PF, on the flop or with your bet on the turn) but you are in the situation of "I'd rather not be here, but now that I am here, folding is worse than calling". If you lose eight or nine of these on the spin, plus you never hit a suck-out, plus you get one or two big suck-outs against you, then, bang, you've lost seven or eight buy ins compared to EV.
In my case, this was how the downswing started, and then it got to running bad as well (where you get to a bad position and folding is better than calling). Your EV line starts to flow down in sympathy with your actual results line. Experienced players will know the situation all too well.
$2-$4 NL 2009
All Birks
Year on Year comparison
The $3k or thereabouts downswing, which kind of started on October 10th and which really kicked in in November, was not a pleasant experience. I adopted my normal strategy. Keep playing, try to rock up and do nothing speculative, and move down in stakes. And, as predicted, the recovery took the path of
(a) slow the decline (rocking up, moving down in stakes, bad luck continues)
(b) begin a slow recovery (rocking up, lower stakes, bad luck has ended)
(c) gradually accelerate reciovery as confidence rebuilds (slightly less rocky, a little bit of higher stakes play)
(d) resume previous win rate (full recovery of confidence, back to standard playing style, more play at normal stakes).
Despite a net $2k loss in November, wins of $3k in the first 10 days of October and $4.5k in December (mainly down to heavy volume rather than a higher win rate) pushed me to $5.5k for Q4, with which I was delighted. That made the four quarters roughly $9k, $1.5k, $9k and $5.5k. I haven't included the gratis hotel in Monte Carlo or the €10k entrance to the EPT in my winnings, mainly through laziness (and the fact that I lost the €10k back fairly promptly).
I'm still not absolutely certain that I can beat $1-$2 (particularly on Stars) once the regs suss out my playing style. Paradoxically, I'm more confident at $2-$4 on Party and (when I get the nerve to attack it) $5-$10 on Party, where I feel "in tune" with the regulars and where you get the occasional single-tabling fish who likes to gamble. As for Pacific, well, I really think I could beat just about any full ring game that starts up there, but the software is so horrible (and the speed of play so slow) that it has to be ruled out as the main source of income.
The dream, at the moment, is to crack $2-$4 NL on Stars as well as Party. But at the moment I'm trying to re-establish myself as a $1-$ NL player. Hard to remember that one weekend in early October I played exclusively $2-$4 one weekend when I was on Party (sticking to $1-$2 on Stars). You have to be able to shrug your shoulders at $2k swings in a day if you are four-tabling $2-$4 and 6-tabling $1-$2, and I realized that I wasn't yet in a shoulder-shrugging frame of mind. It will come, but I probably need a six-figure bankroll (i.e., sitting in the various sites and on Neteller) to be able to do it.
Summary
+++++++++++
(Later);
Every so often Warren Buffett just cuts through the crap and nails a company's directors so firmly to the wall that it's a wonder any of them ever move again.
This time it's Kraft, in which Berkshire Hathaway owns a 9% stake, that is at the receiving end of an attack so blisteringly logical that if I were a Kraft director I would kill myself now.
Kraft, in a move that didn't look all that controversial, asked for permission to issue up to 370m shares to finance a paper bid for Cadbury. Berkshire said that it would be voting against this. But what was interesting was the superb justification it used:
As Eric Morecambe might have said, "Get out of that". Using paper to finance deals is very popular amongst senior executives -- it makes their company bigger (equals higher salaries) and doesn't involve onerous things like interest payments. But Berkshire has highlighted a fantastic contradiction, one that I suspect will be used many more times over the next few years. "Why are you valuing your stock at '$x' for this takeover when you valued it at '$x times 1.5' only a year ago when you were repurchasing shares?"
This goes to the heart of the stockmarket. Just because your stock was trading at $33 last year and is trading at $27 today, that does not change the underlying value of the company. And any share repurchase (reducing the amount of stock in issue) or paper-based takeover (increasing the amount of stock in issue) implies that you believe the stock to be in fundamental terms to be worth more than you are paying when you are repurchasing, or worth less than you are issuing when you are buying another company.
In reality, companies repurchase shares when they have nothing else to do with their spare money, and make paper-based takeovers when the market is depressed, because the acquired company looks "cheap". The flaw in this argument is that a company is only "cheap" if you are paying cash. If your own shares are also depressed, the "cheapness" is a complete illusion.
It would be more logical to use your paper to make what look like pricy purchases (because your own paper is overvalued, while the takeover target is presumably less overvalued) when the market is high, and to repurchase your stock when the market is low. Indeed, if capital rules allowed it, in times of recession it would make sense to borrow money from banks to buy back shares.
________________
Party in 2009:
Stars in 2009
Pacific in 2009
50c-$1 NL/PL 2009
$1-$2 NL/PL 2009
A major cause of the downswing in November was due to me suddenly running bad at $1-$2. People think of running bad as being a sequence of bad beats, but it isn't like that. The thing is, at NL, you will often be in against short-to-medium stacks on the turn when you will be 30% to 40%. You haven't done anything wrong to get to that position (most of the time you have taken the hand down either PF, on the flop or with your bet on the turn) but you are in the situation of "I'd rather not be here, but now that I am here, folding is worse than calling". If you lose eight or nine of these on the spin, plus you never hit a suck-out, plus you get one or two big suck-outs against you, then, bang, you've lost seven or eight buy ins compared to EV.
In my case, this was how the downswing started, and then it got to running bad as well (where you get to a bad position and folding is better than calling). Your EV line starts to flow down in sympathy with your actual results line. Experienced players will know the situation all too well.
$2-$4 NL 2009
All Birks
Year on Year comparison
The $3k or thereabouts downswing, which kind of started on October 10th and which really kicked in in November, was not a pleasant experience. I adopted my normal strategy. Keep playing, try to rock up and do nothing speculative, and move down in stakes. And, as predicted, the recovery took the path of
(a) slow the decline (rocking up, moving down in stakes, bad luck continues)
(b) begin a slow recovery (rocking up, lower stakes, bad luck has ended)
(c) gradually accelerate reciovery as confidence rebuilds (slightly less rocky, a little bit of higher stakes play)
(d) resume previous win rate (full recovery of confidence, back to standard playing style, more play at normal stakes).
Despite a net $2k loss in November, wins of $3k in the first 10 days of October and $4.5k in December (mainly down to heavy volume rather than a higher win rate) pushed me to $5.5k for Q4, with which I was delighted. That made the four quarters roughly $9k, $1.5k, $9k and $5.5k. I haven't included the gratis hotel in Monte Carlo or the €10k entrance to the EPT in my winnings, mainly through laziness (and the fact that I lost the €10k back fairly promptly).
I'm still not absolutely certain that I can beat $1-$2 (particularly on Stars) once the regs suss out my playing style. Paradoxically, I'm more confident at $2-$4 on Party and (when I get the nerve to attack it) $5-$10 on Party, where I feel "in tune" with the regulars and where you get the occasional single-tabling fish who likes to gamble. As for Pacific, well, I really think I could beat just about any full ring game that starts up there, but the software is so horrible (and the speed of play so slow) that it has to be ruled out as the main source of income.
The dream, at the moment, is to crack $2-$4 NL on Stars as well as Party. But at the moment I'm trying to re-establish myself as a $1-$ NL player. Hard to remember that one weekend in early October I played exclusively $2-$4 one weekend when I was on Party (sticking to $1-$2 on Stars). You have to be able to shrug your shoulders at $2k swings in a day if you are four-tabling $2-$4 and 6-tabling $1-$2, and I realized that I wasn't yet in a shoulder-shrugging frame of mind. It will come, but I probably need a six-figure bankroll (i.e., sitting in the various sites and on Neteller) to be able to do it.
Summary
| Position | Hands | $ | bb/100 | VPIP% | PFR% | 3Bet% | WTSD% | W$SD% | Agg | Agg% | Std Dev bb |
| 1) small bli | 32815 | ($12,809.83) | -25.79 | 18.8 | 7.7 | 3.8 | 20.8 | 52.6 | 5.93 | 38.9 | 54.33 |
| 2) big blind | 32812 | ($23,173.85) | -44.25 | 9.6 | 4.4 | 4.4 | 18.4 | 49.3 | 5.21 | 29.1 | 62.22 |
| 3) early | 84796 | $12,873.52 | 9.69 | 9.2 | 8.8 | 2.4 | 24.9 | 57.3 | 6.3 | 51.8 | 45.76 |
| 4) middle | 67691 | $15,413.08 | 15.49 | 11.4 | 10.6 | 2.7 | 24 | 57.9 | 5.04 | 45.1 | 53.58 |
| 5) cutoff | 35499 | $8,942.92 | 17.43 | 13 | 11.2 | 3.4 | 21.5 | 52.4 | 4.92 | 40.2 | 56.28 |
| 6) button | 33058 | $15,555.69 | 28.77 | 20.4 | 12 | 4 | 21.2 | 53.6 | 3.77 | 40.1 | 65.31 |
| TOTAL | 286671 | $16,801.53 | 3.98 | 12.7 | 9.3 | 3.6 | 21.2 | 53.4 | 5.12 | 38.8 | 56.25 |
| STAKE | |||||||||||
| SITE | Data | BONUS | $50 | $100 | $200 | RAKEBACK | $400 | $10 | Tournament | $600 | Grand Total |
| PTY | Sum of Win | $2,939 | -$196 | $4,355 | $2,132 | $1,066 | $2,171 | $56 | $12,523 | ||
| Sum of Hands | 0 | 991 | 66,007 | 64,036 | 0 | 8,301 | 77 | 139,412 | |||
| Pacific | Sum of Win | $225 | -$38 | $1,654 | $2,061 | $760 | -$114 | $117 | $4,665 | ||
| Sum of Hands | 0 | 1,184 | 41,190 | 10,516 | 0 | 1,037 | 12 | 53,939 | |||
| Littlewoods | Sum of Win | $142 | $2,269 | $261 | $20 | -$6 | $2,686 | ||||
| Sum of Hands | 0 | 15,832 | 1,398 | 0 | 5 | 17,235 | |||||
| Stars | Sum of Win | $890 | -$165 | $2,344 | $857 | -$143 | $1,339 | $5,122 | |||
| Sum of Hands | 0 | 27,919 | 40,611 | 0 | 307 | 1,860 | 70,697 | ||||
| UB | Sum of Win | $25 | -$17 | $8 | |||||||
| Sum of Hands | 0 | 432 | 432 | ||||||||
| FTP | Sum of Win | $760 | $161 | $921 | |||||||
| Sum of Hands | 0 | 5,972 | 5,972 | ||||||||
| Noble | Sum of Win | $41 | -$2 | -$4 | $35 | ||||||
| Sum of Hands | 0 | 243 | 50 | 293 | |||||||
| Total Sum of Win |
$5,022 | -$234 | $8,274 | $6,798 | $2,703 | $1,908 | -$19 | $1,335 | $173 | $25,960 | |
| Total Sum of Hands |
0 | 2,175 | 156,920 | 116,561 | 0 | 9,650 | 675 | 1,910 | 89 | 287,980 | |
+++++++++++
(Later);
Every so often Warren Buffett just cuts through the crap and nails a company's directors so firmly to the wall that it's a wonder any of them ever move again.
This time it's Kraft, in which Berkshire Hathaway owns a 9% stake, that is at the receiving end of an attack so blisteringly logical that if I were a Kraft director I would kill myself now.
Kraft, in a move that didn't look all that controversial, asked for permission to issue up to 370m shares to finance a paper bid for Cadbury. Berkshire said that it would be voting against this. But what was interesting was the superb justification it used:
What we know with certainty, however, is that Kraft stock, at its current price of $27, is a very expensive "currency" to be used in an acquisition. In 2007, in fact, Kraft spent $3.6 billion to repurchase shares at about $33 per share, presumably because the directors and management thought the shares to be worth more.
Does the board now believe those purchases were a mistake and that Kraft's true value is only the current price of $27 per share -- and that it is therefore fine to structure a major acquisition based upon that price? Would the directors use stock as merger currency if the price were, say, $20 per share? Surely the true business value of what is given is as important as the true business value of what is received when an acquisition is being evaluated. We hope all shareholders will use this yardstick in deciding how to vote.
As Eric Morecambe might have said, "Get out of that". Using paper to finance deals is very popular amongst senior executives -- it makes their company bigger (equals higher salaries) and doesn't involve onerous things like interest payments. But Berkshire has highlighted a fantastic contradiction, one that I suspect will be used many more times over the next few years. "Why are you valuing your stock at '$x' for this takeover when you valued it at '$x times 1.5' only a year ago when you were repurchasing shares?"
This goes to the heart of the stockmarket. Just because your stock was trading at $33 last year and is trading at $27 today, that does not change the underlying value of the company. And any share repurchase (reducing the amount of stock in issue) or paper-based takeover (increasing the amount of stock in issue) implies that you believe the stock to be in fundamental terms to be worth more than you are paying when you are repurchasing, or worth less than you are issuing when you are buying another company.
In reality, companies repurchase shares when they have nothing else to do with their spare money, and make paper-based takeovers when the market is depressed, because the acquired company looks "cheap". The flaw in this argument is that a company is only "cheap" if you are paying cash. If your own shares are also depressed, the "cheapness" is a complete illusion.
It would be more logical to use your paper to make what look like pricy purchases (because your own paper is overvalued, while the takeover target is presumably less overvalued) when the market is high, and to repurchase your stock when the market is low. Indeed, if capital rules allowed it, in times of recession it would make sense to borrow money from banks to buy back shares.
________________
no subject
Date: 2010-01-06 04:05 pm (UTC)Re: the finance, the majority of mainstream financial reporting is generally laughably shallow in my experience, and the idea of an analysis based on a thorough understanding of ROE would be quite refreshing. What I could find from Robert Peston on the subject was average, i would say.
Overall I think it's striking how much business leaders manage to get away with actions that are demonstrably and axiomatically wrong, even before uncertainty comes into play. Also, I think that the parallel to poker is interesting, since i think that there are ideas such as results-orientedness and sample size which are second nature to poker players which the business/finance world just seems willfully ignorant of.
ian
no subject
Date: 2010-01-06 04:26 pm (UTC)No, they are full ring. They would indeed be tight for 6-max! Hold Em Manager just arbitrarily divides things into six categories. As you can see "Early" and "Middle" have considerably more hands represented.
That said, I have got views on 6-max which are different from what I know of 2+2dom. To be honest, I try to steer clear of 2+2 group think mainly by not reading it. I just see how people play and adapt accordingly.
As I've written before, many apparently plain statements about the "right" thing to do have implicit assumptions, and if you fail to spot those implicit assumptions then you get into trouble when the implicit assumptions stop being true. To take one trite example, the apparently sensible line of "you have to make people pay to draw" contains two assumptions, one metagame and one hand-by hand. The hand-by-hand one is in fact a debate about "deny implied odds and call down to the end if they call" vs "offer implied odds, but fold often enough to make opponent's call not worthwhile". The metagame assumption is that the person doing the betting usually has the hand and the person doing the calling usually has the draw -- which is not necessarily the case the way I play.
Recently I've spotted some subtle changes to short-stack styles, but I think 2+2 land still thinks most short-stackers are still playing the way that they did this time last year.
PJ