Shabbir's Diary

Coming to terms with one's own past

This week's Sunday New York Times has a great piece by David Carr where he goes back 20 years in his life to when he was a crack addict.  He investigates his experience through interviews with people that knew him, medical and arrest records, and most powerfully, people that took custody of his twin infant daughters while he took years to get clean.

There's a lot of great aspects to the story.  One of my favorite is his ability to learn from the addict experience without romantic notions, or denial of responsibility:

I always thought that people who spent endless amounts of time drilling into their personal histories are fundamentally unhappy in their lives, and I’m not. I’m ecstatic in my own dark, morbid way and subscribe to a theory of the past that allows the future to unfold: We all did the best we could.

I find that the ability to forgive yourself for your mistakes, something Buddhists refer to as avoiding the "second arrow" is really about cutting yourself some slack.  Cutting yourself slack for time spent as a crack addict poorly parenting two twins is somewhat monumental, but clearly possible.  Check it out.

Things that make me happy

My poker tutor doesn't think I'm a complete idiot.  He sat behind me today while I played a 3 hour session at my local cardroom and gave me a lot of really good advice, none of which was, "You need to go find a lower stakes game while you figure out how to play poker." :)  A number of hands he said he would have played just the same as I actually did.

I complete the drip irrigation system for Sarah's vegetable garden.  It's very conservative in the amount of water it uses.

Modeling $3/$6 players

I'm doing some math modeling of hand equity of various hands with pokerstove.  What happens to JJ at a table when someone raises,and you've got 2, 3, 4 players?  What if they're solid players?  What if one is a complete donk?  Does the hand have a positive or negative expected value?

If you were doing a player model, would you use these profiles?  Remember, this is casino $3/$6, the lowest level of limit hold'em offered.

Typical raiser:

• TT+ (tens or better);
• ATs+ (Ace-Ten-suited up through Ace-Jack-suited); and
• KJs, KQs, AQo, AKo, and KQo

Typical caller of said raiser:

• 22+; (any pair, in the hopes of flopping a set)
• A2s+ (any suited ace for a flush or two pair);
• 54s (all suited connectors bigger than 54 for a straight or baby flush); and
• ATo+ (all Aces with a ten kicker or better, hoping I'm raising with a small ace or KK-TT)

And just for good measure, when I'm doing the math for callers, I'm assuming that the fifth caller of the raise is a complete donk, and will call with the following hands:

• 22+ (any pair);
• A2s+ or A2o+ (any ace, suited or unsuited, with any crappy kicker);
• 32s+ or 32o+ (any connector, suited or not); and
• K2s+, Q2s+, and J2s+ (any suited piece of junk hoping for a flush).

Do I need to tell you that the "complete" donk profile is a negative expected value play? 

Are there some bad habits of low limit players you know of that I should include in this math?  (I mean, besides obsessively playing 72 for show value.)