peterbirks | A win-win situation

A win-win situation

Not often that a company comes out with an offer that makes sense, will be well-received by customers, and increases the company's profits, but the supermarkets' "Buy One, get One Free (Next Week)" is definitely one of them.

One of the maddening things about the old "B1G1F" promotions was that a single person (e.g., me) would never be able to eat the second item before it went off. With stuff that freezes (bacon, the 100% beef burgers, etc) it's not a problem, but with fresh fruit and veg, the offer was fairly useless.

So, Tesco and Sainsbury now offer the opportunity on some items (the lettuce offer at Tesco caught my eye) to buy the item and to receive a voucher at check-out that can be exchanged for the same item the following week.

Obv Tesco and Sainsburys' are talking about "reducing waste", but it also increases their profits, because the take-up on these offers will clearly be less than 100%. My guess is that it will be below 50%. That means that such a promotion "costs" Tesco far less. You could have twice as many B1G1L promotions as B1G1F promotions, for less cost.

But if it's food that would otherwise be thrown away, then that's fine by me. In effect, as the Butler would put it, you are using Tesco as your freezer for goods that you wouldn't be able to freeze anyway. All that you have to do is remember to go to collect it.

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It's been a wearying and hard-work month online. In a sense this is good; I am beginning to see what my limits are in terms of time, energy and focus. I've become comfortable with six-tabling (four now seems slow), so it's possible that I could progress to a "comfortable" eight-table scenario for 90 minutes a time. That would boost the hands per hour very nicely -- up to 500 or so. With the progressive nature of rakeback (each 'extra' hand earns you proportionately more in rakeback than the previous hand) that makes $10 a hundred at $1-$2 easier to achieve, provided I can maintain the same winrate at the tables as I am achieving six-tabling at the moment.

The maths on that are not hard -- I could be looking at an average $40 to $50 an hour before the end of the year if things go right. That won't be the average for the whole year, although $35 now looks within reach. And there's always the chance of a stinky run that pushes me back down to 50c-$1,

One begins to see why so many "good" players are 24-tabling at $1-$2 and $2-$4 full ring rather than three-tabling at $25-$50 short-handed. Even though they can beat both games, they probably earn more at the former (with considerably less volatility and mental effort) than they could at the latter. Even when six-tabling you head into a certain degree of auto-pilot, something you have to be careful about if you are playing the same opponents again and again.

There's clearly two streams of poker thought here (and I'm not talking about full-stacking vs short-stacking this time). The business-players talk about reducing beta, generating a higher RoE and RoI, sustainability, and basically loads of business model stuff, while many of the old-schoolers talk about gambling and the thrill.

In simple terms, they can be split into "risk-avoiders" and "thrill-seekers".

The latter just can't see the point of the former ("you might as well get a job", they say) while the former look on the "thrill-seekers" as gambling degenerates with a serious personality flaw that needs to be cured or pitied rather than celebrated.

I've known the thrill of big bets, the satisfaction of a hefty win and the despair of a lumpy loss. I can see its appeal. But I know that, to be a winner online, these things necessarily have to be tucked away in the drawer. These are the weaknesses in other players that I will exploit. The old saws of poker come out. "Games can be good and games can be fun, but rarely can they be both at the same time" and "Once you let emotions get in the way of your poker play, you are the fish".

This is where Poker and zen come together. A "perfect" poker session isn't the type described by Conor Tate online, some massive win at PLO where you chopped off four all-in 52%-shots on the spin. The perfect session is when you play 1,000, then 2,000, maybe 3,000 hands. You have some good mini-runs and bad mini-runs, but you know that you are making right decisions. When something goes wrong -- a two-outer, whatever, you move on to the next hand in a state of complete calmness. Your next decision is as cool, calculated and correct as the previous one. You are thinking quickly, smoothly, and you KNOW that you are in control of your game at everyone of your tables. No other player is irritating you, fooling you, playing you around. Everything, as they say in Louisiana, is copacetic.

The reality, of course, is usually different. There's nearly always one fucking multi-tabler who really pisses you off, who is playing a blinder, and whom you just can't seem to beat. There's one fish luckbox who is two buy-ins up and can't stop talking in the chat-box. You know he will go broke within a couple of hours (unless he leaves), and you know that it probably won't be to you. Poker, in other words, is usually about coping the best you can with these irritants, it's about attempting to attain that state of mind mentioned in the previous paragraph. You might only get to the top of that mountain very rarely, but that does not make it a bad idea to climb the next step.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Don't forget the annoying short-stacker who sits for a couple of orbits, ships the lot with AK v 99. Hits, waits for the big blind to come around and leaves, only to reappear at a different table 30 seconds later.

I take your point, but once you've seen something at least 5,000 times, it rather loses its power to irritate!
But if you want a neat one, it's great when you stack off a short-stack with AQs vs KK, and then YOU leave, preferably with the comment "that's $40 you won't see again".

PJ

Hi Pete, I wrote about this the other day. The problem with massive multi-ing is that it's not scaleable. That is, once you get over a certain level, you just can't find that many games, your opponents are not playing that many games, and the style you play is probably dangerous at the higher limits. So you either get "stuck", which may not be a bad thing if you are grinding 6 figures, but has inherit risks, or you have to reinvent your game, which has a whole heap of a different set of risks!

cheers

Dave D

Hi Dave.
When you write "it's not scaleable", you mean, of course, that it isn't limitlessly scaleable, which is importantly different, because it brings in the question of "how scaleable does it need to be?"
I reckon the best massive multi-ers are pulling down a million bucks a year (taking Clarkatroid as a parameter), which I assume most would say is "scaleable enough".

Secondly, the only thing which is probably limitlessly scaleable is NL Hold'em short-handed (in that the limits have not yet been reached). Tom Dwan will prob play $2k-$4k NL if he can find the opponents. Elsewhere, well, even Ben Grundy seems to have discovered that SH PLO isn't limitlessly scaleable.

But is it a good thing to aim for those insane levels? In other words, is the limitless scaleability good for anyone but the hopelessly degenerate gambler, to whom the money is basically meaningless?

But this is all a bit of a red herring. Should you be asking youself this question? A better question would surely be "Given the current state of online poker (or indeed, online and b&m poker, or, indeed, life in total) and my estimate of future trends, what strategy will give me the best balance of satisfaction and profit?"

Once it's termed in that way, the "problem" of scaleability (or lack of, limits to) disappears. It becomes a non-issue. Or, rather, it becomes just one factor in the "bigger question". I think Ben Grundy might have to reinvent his game (and Isildur certainly will!), so the inherent risks involved in metagame strategies are not just limited to the multi-tablers.

As for me -- well, as I've written before, although multi-ing is still well scaleable for me (I could go up at least four limits and up to 4 times as many tables in theory, although that would restrict me mainly to pokerstars) I'm not sure that it's the right strategy for me, beccause I think that I would burn out. For me, there's still a bit of joy in the "challenge" in the individual hand against another good play. But the money to pay off the mortgage just gets given a greater weight by me at the moment!

PJ

Clarkatroid made $250K, far from your million. Still amazing money, but it shows exactly where the limits of grinding lie. Remember he played over 1 million hands. That is a lot of hands. Perhaps I wasn't making clear what I meant by scaleable - I'm talking about a style of play and how it applies, and certainly NLHE isn't nor PLO. What I mean is, to do what Clarkatroid does, to take him as a very good example, he has to play a very different game from someone 4 tabling. This is, if anything, even more the case for PLO where the multi grinders play a very customised game. The EV they lose from playing like this, is somewhat gained back by simply playing many, many more hands. But what happens when you can't get the volume? And the game you have played the last two years is now exploitable so your EV shrinks further? Now being trapped earning $250K is not exactly an unhappy ending. But it has risks. Say the market contracts again and better players start coming into your stakes? Or as a greater risk, you simply burnout through the volume.

cheers

dd

Hi Dave:
Yes, I know that Clarkatroid made a quarter of a million -- that's why I said that I was using him as a parameter, because I don't think that he is the top of the tree. I think that the top of the tree guys are pulling in about a million.

When you say "it isn't scaleable" in the sense that you are meaning --- well, yes. You lose EV from a lack of "individualization" which you more than gain back by playing more tables. Eventually you reach a cut-off point, and that level varies from stakes to stakes and from player to player.

But your "what happens when you can't get the volume" question has a parallel in 'ordinary' poker -- "what happens when your game dies or one of the two fishes disappears". The risks that a multi-er faces are, in this sense, paralleled in the risks that any successful poker player faces.

I think that the bigger risk is burn out. People underestimate how doggone wearying long periods of multi-tabling is. And without the intellectual spark that you get from playing at "slightly dangerous" stakes with occasional episodes of intellectual stimulation (bad for EV, good as mind food), you tire of the whole thing much faster.

That point of "difficult decisions" is important. To maximize EV when multitabling I want to eliminate all difficult decisions. I should be able to do everything automatically.

But to get better at the game and to maintain interest, I have to seek out "tough spots", because that's the way I learn to become a better player.

An interesting dichotomy.

Pete

The BOGOFNW offer definitely sounds like a good idea from all perspectives - reduces waste, reduces take-up (as you note, not everyone will bother), and also ensures the people who do take it up come back to the shop, where they buy other stuff - and probably get another BOGOFNW offer in turn. So it keeps customers coming back to that chain rather than another.

Over here we get a lot of offers that are Buy One Get Two Free. If these are on meat then they're great (assuming you have a freezer) but otherwise, yeah, for just a couple like us or a single person then they don't necessarily mean much. But these offers cycle round often enough that we rarely buy meat unless it's on that kind of offer.

Yes, I'd meant to mention that it also got people back into the shop the following week, but then it slipped my mind. This is another plus factor for the supermarket, which means that the offers actually might turn out to be rather good!

PJ

Nope, sorry.

No niggas down in St. Tammany Parish would call anything at all "copacetic." I'll admit that there are other parts of Louisiana to which you may be referring. Hey ho, here we go with the bayous ...

I believe that (wishing to be inoffensive, as you would) you actually meant "perfectly cromulent."

Yes. That would make sense. "Copacetic" is the sort of word that would make Wm. Faulkner cringe.

Copacetic?

What the Hell is wrong with you?

I refer you to James Lee Burke and Tom Waits --- both masters of the Louisiana argot. "Copacetic" really is one of those curious words that would have (arch.) put by it in an English dictionary and (dial.) put by it in an American one.

PJ

"James Lee Burke?"

I refer you to James Lee Burke and Tom Waits --- both masters of the Louisiana argot. "Copacetic" really is one of those curious words that would have (arch.) put by it in an English dictionary and (dial.) put by it in an American one.

Which part of that do you understand as being a master of the "Louisiana argot;" not that you'd have a clue about that, because there's no such fucking thing as a single unifying Louisiana dialect -- let alone some sort of argot that fails to transcend state lines.

James Lee Burke is a transparent Texan from Houston. I mean this in a nice way. If'n you'd ebba visited the parishes (and I assure you: you should. The food is superb), you'd be dissin' Massa J-Lee. (B.)

Tom Waits? Now you're just trying to hurt me.

I'm not even going to bother with that googlink thing for lyrics.

Probly off Pasties & n'G-String.

Heck, that's just my faulty memory. A sweaty little word, but I'm afraid you used it in an entirely incorrect context.

Which was the point.

James Lee Burke was born in Houston, which is very far from being Louise-ish, despite the proximity and the oil and stuff.

Tom Waits, as we both know, popped out of the back-end of a pickup truck in Pomona (California). Not really a stellar argument for Louisiana argot. Damn fine interpreter of the Claret & Blooz, tho.

As ever, I lap up everything you write about poker. I'm glad that you're progressing, enjoying your progress, continuing to challenge yourself and continuing to tell us about it.

More or less everyone else seems to have an opinion on Full Tilt's Rush Poker. When so much of the skill of the poker metagame seems to be game selection, I can't quite understand why people would go wild for something that would seem to strip that aspect of it out - or is part of the attraction that it strips it out for all the other "good" players as well?

Would Rush Poker Heads Up work, with every hand against a different single opponent? Would a significant proportion of players try to remain disciplined but end up sticking it all in if they ever were drawn against a "name" opponent?

Well, I totally did my bollocks over the weekend (lost about 1/3 of winnings for month, half of winnings at table). So I'm taking a rest tonight. That will prob cost me $40 on the Party cash machine, but fuck it. Picked up about $40 in 350 hands and decided to stop at a winner, after three shite days. I had begun to play badly, and I knew it.

Part of the appeal of Rush Poker is probably that it allows multi-tabling on a lower bankroll. And the big multi-tablers play an ABC game that doesn't used HUD (i.e., plays are not player specific). Other players who would like it would be the HEM/PT3 haters and non-users. And then there's the pure action junkie for the evening. Finally there's the people on the move with only a Netbook monitor. Now, that for me is the real appeal. I'd just have to accept the loss of the HUD. All in all, not an unattractive mix, but not one I'd choose all the time.

Heads Up? Well, Heads Up is kind of Rush Poker anyway.

It's funny, but "game selection" has suddenly become "bum hunting", thanks to the Heads Up controversy. I've long been of the opinion that if you are playing at a level where you have to find "good" tables, then you are playing at too high a level. That's why I'm interested in the forthcoming book that I've heard about on exploiting regulars. Fish are nice bonuses, but if you need to find them, then you are in trouble these days. Your bread and butter needs to be the break-even players -- preferably the massive multi-tablers who are playing by rote. For a start, there are lots more of them. Secondly, they tend to play in similar ways. Thirdly, you don't have to worry about finding "good" tables, because all tables are likely to be good.

So much of this is ego-related. People look for bad players at 10-20 just so they can say they are 10-20 players. In fact they could probably make far more money stiffing the auto-pilot tight-regs at 1-2. If you want to see a recurring theme from winning players, it's that they all have come to realize that ego has no place these days for the winning poker player. That's one reason that I've virtually given up following "the stars", except where I feel I can learn something from them. Dwan is a great player, but I think as a metagamer he is flawed. Antonius, meanwhile, is shrewder. Ivey is the greatest all-round player in the world with a good sense of bankroll (I think), but he is flawed because gambling has become everything. It has become the end in itself, rather than getting him lots of money which he can spend in the real world. For Ivey, gambling IS the world.

Poker is just so full of these contradictions. That's what makes "success" at it more subjective than was previously thought. Money is a way of keeping score, but it's no longer seen as the only way of keeping score.

PJ

Ouch! Sorry to hear it, but glad to hear that you've taken the right decisions to turn the corner.

I wonder if Rush Poker might work substantially better than regular poker on the sort of small screen you'd expect to find on a mobile device? Many mobile device manufacturers would not support the presence of such a client in their app store, but it still might be of interest.

I guess everyone has their own utility function; some will derive utility from the balla lifestyle and "hanging with the big dogs", as you say in your second last paragraph, others measure their bankroll, others still might measure how much money they manage to redirect from the poker universe to their favourite cause - quite possibly, their mortgage.

Does Neil Channing take much money out of the gambling universe, would you know? I don't think he's at all short of winnings, but there was a moment on a poker show I saw recently (quite possibly not a recent show...) where he ended up with a sizeable, middling-final-table payout and then admitted (possibly unusually candidly, or quite possibly just for image - who knows?) that he would "probably just gamble it". The Black Belt Poker enterprise seems to have been inspired, at least in part, by his conisderable staking arrangements.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A win-win situation

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