Shabbir's Diary

Profit by position: What would you pay to be psychic in poker?

So for several weeks I've been doing an experiment that Andrew and I came up with. I ran the math on all limit hold'em hands, and then constructed a set that I thought were playable for one bet, and another set playable for two bets. With a roughly repeatable preflop and postflop strategy, I set out to play 5 or 10,000 hands in exactly the same way. I basically set out to be my own poker bot, to test the actual profitability of my strategy against real humans.

I'm 4,400 hands in, and these are my results so far.  I was talking with Andrew about it and he pointed at my results from the button and the cutoff (position 1 off the button).  He pointed out that I was getting roughly the same playable hands at every position.  The distribution over time will give me Aces the same number of times from the button as it does from the under-the-gun spot.  But clearly, with all my hands evening out, I'm getting better profitability from the late position hands.  He said, "There you go, that's the value of position."

I remember another conversation we had about position where Andrew said, "Playing late position is like playing while being psychic.  You get to act after everyone else acts.  What kind of value would you put on being psychic?"

Apparently quite a lot.

OneCause are spammers

I signed up for OneCause, a group that claims to capture rewards from your purchases and give them to the school of your choice, in order to support my preschool.  Sadly, they don't even pretend to be obeying my email preferences, and are now spamming me for their new toolbar.

I recently got this e-mail:

And I proceeded to try and check AGAIN to unsubscribe from their crap, and found this:

That's right, I'm not subscribed to anything.  Which means I can't unsubscribe.

Nice work, spammers.

I fucking draw the line at nudity.

A few weeks ago I had to fly to DC for some business.  I flew Virgin America.  If Virgin America was a woman, I'd cheat on my wife.  They understand the psychology of what frustrates people on planes so well, and have architected the experience so perfectly, that I'm in love.

Anyway, I flew SFO to Dulles (IAD) and went through security.  I was busy taking off my shoes, pulling out my liquids, removing my laptop, when it was my turn to go through the metal detector.  It was an odd looking one, and I was in it, holding my arms over my head, when I realized it was the through-clothes imaging device.

I felt entirely hoodwinked.  The sign that explains what it is is right up against the scanner, and you're not in any position to make a decision with 100 people behind you tapping their foot, and the TSA guy in front of you telling you to walk in and put your arms in the air.

It aggravated me so, I went back out and re-entered security in a normal, traditional metal detector line, just so I could get a look at the sign.  No way does anyone read it.   Too small type, awful placement.

Today, I had to fly and I had an extra hour, so I decided I was drawing a line.  I do not believe I need to be photographed with technology that creates a nude photo of myself.  I gave my id and boarding pass to the last TSA screener and announced, "I don't care that the only line has the nude scanner, I'm not going through it"

He was surprisingly helpful, "No problem sir, tell them when you get up front that you want to be patted down."

At that moment they opened a traditional metal detector line and I was saved from getting groped by going through a plain old metal detector.

You have a choice, and I urge you to refuse to use this technology.  The TSA does not engage in security to protect us, merely security theater.  Given the abuses of the last eight years, I don't believe that there's any kind of adequate protection on the data collected by these scanners.

Draw the line at nudity.