Shabbir's Diary

I continue to improve against Sparbot

At my coach's urging, I have been playing heads up battles against University of Alberta poker bot, Sparbot.  It's the dumbest of their algorithms, playing a heads up hold'em game that's perfectly balanced without taking into account any opponent tendencies.  I'm playing it with it's configurable parameter set to "passive".

When I say "balanced", I mean it's bluffing bad cards enough, and slowplaying good card enough, that in theory you don't ever know what it has.  However if you play a conservative game and don't bluff a lot, and get a decent set of hands, I find that the balancing it does to it's game is a money loser.  Countless times I've called it down with a decent hand to find that it was bluffing and congratulations, you've confused me a little.  Now let me get back to stacking your (virtual) chips.

The same is true for slowplaying good hands, where you want to extract value but it doesn't for "balance" reasons.  When I get to draw for free against a better hand to a potentially better hand, and then make my hand, it's costing itself money, both in expected and real value.

Though my 16 sessions so far probably aren't statistically significant, there's a clear trend to them which I'm going to let my cognitive bias tell me means I'm getting better at playing this opponent. 

As a refresher, I'm playing 300 hand sessions against Sparbot.  At the end of each session I record my results, which gives a positive or negative "small bets per hand" for the session, either positive or negative, depending on if I made or lost money from my original buyin.  I'm not taking a rake out of the pot, since it's very hard to make a profit against the rake.  (I'd never make money, just lose less)

The blue line is a running average.  My opponent's algorithm has a slider setting for "passive" to "aggressive".  Sparbot is set to passive for this experiment.

Are vampires more popular now than before?

One of my friends on Facebook asked this, and the answer is yes.  Let's use Google Insights for search as a culture zeitgeist measurement.

Google's data only goes back to 2004, which postdates most of Anne Rice's Lestat novels.  Vampire popularity appears to have declined steadily from 2004 through 2007.  In 2008 the rush to create vampire entertainment was in full effect, with Twilight and HBO's True Blood driving people online to search for more information.  It appears to be in decline in 2009.

I did another graph, looking at the relevance and interplay between twilight, true blood, and vampires.  The results are surprising.  (click for larger graph)

The graph suggests that the vampire resurgence (which is waning) is probably driven by interest in Twilight.

Consider Larry Lessig for the long list for the Supreme Court

I'm sure that since the transition, President Obama's team has been thinking about nominees for the Supreme Court.  A democratic president means that some of the justices that weren't comfortable with an imbalance on the court could finally get to retire.  And now we have one.

I don't know if they've considered it, and I don't know Larry well enough to know if he'd want it, but I think you should take a moment and consider why Larry Lessig might make a qualified and interesting choice for Supreme Court justice.

Yes, I know he's not a woman, a latino, or an African American.  Diversity on the court is important, and frankly, Larry is a white guy.  But hear me out...

1. Larry is wicked smart.  Not just accomplished, but smart beyond what hard work brings you.  If there's any hope for finding someone who will have a chance at getting past the partisan gauntlet, they would have to be that smart.
2. He's pretty solidly in touch with the middle class.  I don't think Larry has had to worry too much about affording groceries, but I doubt he's ever had to decide whether to get the brown or the black interior for a new boat.  His family, like many American families, is doing well but not to the point where he longer worries about things like catastrophic illness devastating his family's finances.  (Let me tell you, that chestnut about all of us being one diagnosis from bankruptcy, that can happen to most people in this country, even with health insurance.  You should see the bills my sister and stepfather dealt with after my mom's cancer)
3. Besides copyright, his latest focus has been on an issue that serves all of us well, and that is corruption.  While it would make him no friend to the entire Senate that would have to confirm him, any issue agenda you support is made better by a lack of corruption.  We all benefit from his work to end corruption, and I would argue that because of the corruption present in the two other branches of government, only the judicial branch has a chance of solving this problem.
4. Larry is empathetically interested in the law.  After all, he doesn't study these problems because he's interested in making arcane points about the law in some sort of "I'm smart because I know this byzantine set of facts" manner.  Larry delves into problems such as copyright and corruption because they make a very real difference in how we live our lives, and exercise our country's full creative and economic potential.

I don't know Larry Lessig well enough to know if he'd even want the job.  It would mean an enormous commitment for him and end every other avenue of advocacy he's been pursuing.  He may even chafe at the restrictions that being on the Supreme Court require, and may not enjoy the heavy give and take that seems to characterize the 9 justices that seem to disagree ever so politely.

I specifically am not advocating that anyone start bombarding the White House with letter writing campaigns to advocate his appointment, but I think it's worth passing this meme around.  He's one of our society's smartest and most empathetic attorneys who truly understands the impact, both intended and unintended, that the law has on how we live our daily life.  That has to be something that would serve us well on the high court.

Thanks for reading.

My 42nd birthday

About one minute ago, I turned 42 on Facebook.  Not really, I use a "fake birthday" with all online services, since many parts of the financial world use your birthday as an identifier, but my birthday is in May, so close enough.  Thank you.

I wrote a long post about how the world has turned to shit and how it's actually also great at the same time, but I won't bore you with it.  I deleted it.  Instead, on my birthday, I have a request for you.  Please do the following things:

1. Take a moment and appreciate where you are.  If you're working, appreciate the fact that you have a job and realize that you're probably wealthier than 99.8% of the world, have better access to healthcare and nutrition, and have opportunities for advancement that most people in the world don't have.
2. Appreciate that unlike the world's other great superpowers (China and Russia), you don't have to worry about a deeply corrupt government that can't be changed (China), or a deeply corrupt government that routinely jails or assassinates its critics (Russia).
3. If you're not working, appreciate that there is some kind of safety net and you can't go to debtors prison (Dubai).
4. Call your family and check in.  You have family or friends that enjoy your company.  Appreciate that.  With a little bit of money, it really is all you need.   I've been very poor in the past (let me show you the scars on my arm from when I had to give blood plasma for groceries for a year) but even poor in America, I was still very fortunate.

And finally, if you just have to give me a gift, I would request that you give a little money to the nursing scholarship in the name of my stepmother, Linda Anderson.  If there were any proof in the world that love in fact exists, it's the way in which my stepfather Darryl and my stepmother Linda loved a giant passel of children, over their lifetime, that didn't come from their bloodstream.

To this day, my son identifies with my stepfather Darryl as "Grandpa Darryl", because of his and my stepmother's love and kindness.  He has actual relatives, but with small children, you do get A's for effort.  Linda made sure I didn't die or go to jail in my last years of high school, and when she met Darryl, taught me what love meant.  Darryl taught me what a gentleman is, and how to treat a lady.  After years of watching my male role models sleep around on their wives, I distinctly remember the day I saw Darryl hold a door open and then a chair out for my stepmother, and it opened my eyes.

I miss my mom, and I treasure Darryl and think of him several times a week. 

Honor me on this day by loving someone close to you.

Have a good day and thank you for your attention.

Combinatorics in Texas Hold'em Limit Poker

Combinatorics is the mathematical technique of enumerating and analyzing combinations of objects.  If you've ever had a pair of pocket Aces preflop and had an opponent bet his whole stack against you, you did a form of this analysis in your head.  Presumably your reasoning went something like this:
"I have the best hand.  Any two unpaired cards or any other pair is an underdog to me.  On the rare chance that my opponent has Aces, we're at best dead even in probability to win this hand.  Over all those hands, I'm an overall favorite, I shove."

Combinatorics are not necessary in that situation since the math is obvious.  But what about later in the hand, when you've got something less than the nuts and you've got to examine the range of hands that intersect with the common cards on the board?

When you don't have the nuts, knowing where you stand is important.  When you're a solid favorite, without the nuts, you should still raise when you're a favorite versus the likely range of your opponents hands.  Here's an example from a recent Limit Texas Hold'em $.50/$1 heads up game I played at Pokerstars.   If you want to practice your heads up Texas Hold'em, I recommend you pick an online poker site from this list.  If you're going to play at Pokerstars, use this Pokerstars marketing code.

Ok, onto the hand.  I'm the Hero, my opponent is the Villain, obviously.

Preflop: Hero is Button with , 
Hero raises, Villain 3-bets, Hero calls

I'm not going to do too much preflop analysis here, but suffice to say that my hand is in the top 15% of all hands, so not only should I raise it, but I can call three bets.  (One might argue that I missed a chance to cap it. I would not disagree)

Let's see how the rest of the hand went down.

Flop: (6 SB) , ,  (2 players)
Villain bets, Hero calls

Turn: (4 BB)  (2 players)
Villain bets, Hero calls

River: (6 BB)  (2 players)
Villain bets, Hero raises, Villain 3-bets, Hero calls

Total pot: $12 (12 BB) | Rake: $0.50

Results:
Hero had K, 10 (two pair, Kings and tens).
Villain had K, A (two pair, Kings and eights).
Outcome: Hero won $11.50

Our villain's line is Bet-Bet-Bet/Raise.  (That means "Bet on the flop, Bet on the turn, and bet and re-raise on the river).  What possible hands fit that line and also put in 3 bets preflop?

• Some combinations of 8x would play that way.  The preflop 3 bet implies A8s, A8o and K8s.  I could also add 98s.
• A number of pairs would play this way, including 66, 88, TT, JJ, QQ, KK, and AA.
• Some combinations of Kx would play that way, including AK, KQ, KJ, and KT.  
• An aggressive player might play 97 this way, betting until they hit their draw.  Definately 97 of diamonds, since it would have an ungodly number of outs with the flush draw.
• A flush draw being played aggressively this way might bet every street on the come, but wouldn't three bet the river without hitting something, such as an 8, a K, or maybe a T.  I would think we'd have to be looking at a pretty strong draw, such as A8 diamonds, AK diamonds, or maybe AT diamonds.

So that's the range we're up against.  Given those chances, what's my overall chance to win this?  How strong am I?

So check this out, 26 times out of 66 results, I lose.  That's 39% of the time.  36 times out of 66 results, I win, that's 55% of the time.  The board has a straight, three of a kind, and even quads on it, and yet my hand beats most of the hands that would play this same way.  Clearly, I should at least raise and then call 3 bets if it comes back.  Putting in a fourth bet is somewhat player dependent, but I chose not to.

Quite often, you find yourself in this situation and because there are so many hands that beat you, that you check/call or call the river, when in fact you should be raising with a hand that beats most of the field.

Of course, you can also do this the easy way with Pokerstove.  Just load these up options into Pokerstove and run the results:

There are shortcuts you can learn that lets you quickly figure out how many hands are out there, but that's a topic for another post.

Heads Up Poker Hand Selection

So for my Internet poker practice I’ve been almost exclusively playing heads up limit Texas Hold’em lately.   I don’t claim to be particularly good at it yet.  I’ve written before about my efforts to beat sparbot, an AI that plays a perfectly balanced game theory variant of Hold’em, but playing a real people online is a different game.  There’s some key differences in the game that are worth pointing out:

Stack size affects decision making
This is true at a full ring, and even more true heads up.  When you get down to just a few big bets, people go on tilt, calling for draws that wouldn’t otherwise make sense.

Hand standards seem appallingly broad as compared to full ring play
When you’re playing 70-80% of your hands, you don’t feel like you have any standards.  What does 60% of your hands look like?  Here’s a handy table:

Top % Of Hands	Range (Shorthand Pokerstove notation)
60%	22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J2s+,T3s+,95s+,85s+,75s+, 64s+,54s,A2o+,K2o+,Q5o+,J7o+,T7o+,97o+,87o
70%	22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J2s+,T2s+,93s+,84s+,74s+, 63s+,53s+,43s,A2o+,K2o+,Q3o+,J5o+,T6o+,96o+,86o+,76o
80%	22+,A2s+,K2s+,Q2s+,J2s+,T2s+,92s+,82s+,73s+, 62s+,52s+,43s,A2o+,K2o+,Q2o+,J3o+,T5o+,95o+, 85o+,75o+,65o,54o

Depending on who you ask, you should play 60-80% of your hands in heads up Limit Texas Hold'em. One wonders what you wouldn’t play in that situation, but remember 60% is the conservative hand range for heads up.  I’ve heard people talk about playing 80% of those, and that’s a lot.

I find myself raising on the button preflop with the top 30-35% of my hands or folding.  On the big blind preflop, I play a solid 70-80% of my hands, and often fold all but the top 30-40% if I get raised.

Position is huge
Tommy Angelo says that position is important in poker is like saying water is important in swimming.  It can’t be understated.  In heads up that especially true, as paying that turn bet may be the difference between a wildly unprofitable hand and a moderately profitable one.  You want to of course loosen your standards with the button, and raise a lot more of your hands.  How much depends on your opponent, of course.

You’re paying, always paying the blinds
Heads up takes a lot of getting used to because you’re always paying a blind.  That fact can start to wear on your psychologically and cause you to want to open your range, but it’s a bad temptation.  Your range is already absurd to begin with. 

I find that playing lots of heads up poker helps me with my full ring poker game, because it allows me to really focus on reading my opponents.  It’s also great practice for final tabling tournaments.   If you’re interested in practicing heads up, I suggest you try out these Top US Poker Rooms.  Many of them run heads up tables.

Kids, and why Roo is more observant about them than I am.

After seeing Louis CK do the bit above, Roo was riding in the car with me and Moishe.  Moishe said something entirely unimportant and Roo pointed out that Louis CK was right, kids often don't talk about anything important.  "No no, I insisted, Moishe's different, and often insightful."  Roo just nodded her head like, "You're not listening to me."

As the days went on, I started to notice little things Moishe said that had very little novel information content to an adult, but were probably the cause of mighty synpase thunderstorms in his brain.  More and more, I realized Roo was right.  I was just appropriately blind.

Then finally, on our trip to Lisa's wedding in the elephant in New Jersey last week, we were driving to the airport and Moishe said:

"2 car train is approaching"

For those of you that live in the Bay Area, my son was quoting the automated announcements in the MUNI rail stations letting you know a car is approaching.  I came to realize, the more I listened to him, how much my son resembles the Cylon hybrid on Battlestar Galactica.

Perhaps I can plug him into the house to repair the rain damage.

Battlestar Galactica Final Episode thoughts

First of all, go read my friend Aaron Pressman's thoughts on the final BSG episode.

Below are contained spoilers.

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I really loved the final episode with the exception of the angel-cameraderie of Boltar and Capirica Six at the end.  Tricia Helfer's dialogue sounded forced, and that's probably because it was unlike any of the other script she's been given the entire season.  Her timing and patter was off.

But I can't let that overshadow an excellent series.  Ron Moore spent several years showing us an onion, peeling away a layer and showing us the next one.  A vehicle for commenting on the pressing issues of the day during one of the darkest periods of American history in the last 40 years, it would have been almost too painful to continue.  I am thankful that Ron Moore didn't need to weave the economic crisis into the show's plot.

At times the layers of conspiracy became absurd, not the least of which was the discovery in the final episodes of a ginormous Cylon base that hadn't been mentioned at all during the series.  But the battle was an excellent chance for every character to define themselves in a very brief amount of time, and surprisingly few of them died (though Cavil's suicide surprised me)

Ultimately I loved it, and I loved how the show wrapped itself up in layers.

How do you end a show whose central technique has been to suggest that human machinations underlie so many mysteries?  You simply step off the treadmill and label it unknowable.

The same is true of the strategy by which the remaining people of the fleet decide to stop the war with the Cylons.  By giving up all technology and joining the indiginous peoples of the new Earth, they suddenly become a pointless conquer.  They have nothing but spears to capture, wouldn't put up much of a fight, and their conquest becomes pointless strategically.  When you realize the struggle is unwinnable and stop trying, you in fact win.

The obvious elements of the Christian symbolism I find a neat technique.  To just call Starbuck a ghost would be a copout.  To assign her a role in a larger mythology is entirely perfect, and quite a bit of work to make so perfectly fit at the end as if it was the plan all along.

I'm looking forward to the other series, "The Plan" and "Caprica".

Poker results for 2008 (last 5 years)

So after booking a big win playing live poker in 2007, I looked forward to making even more money by moving up stakes in 2008.  I didn't really move up in stakes, and played live for the first half of the year until through a combination of losing at the tables and the need to draw out my poker bankroll for life expenses, I basically busted out.

I continued to play only for pennies online, playing absolutely no online poker until the last half of the year after I'd spent or lost my poker bankroll, and never for more than $.50/$1 stakes.  Even still, I managed to lose about $200 online.  Here are the results for everything (and every game):

Now that's a bloody year. In comparison to the previous four years, it's a marked descent. It also puts me squarely into the red lifetime territory.

Starting last year after my bustout, and into this year I've been working with a coach and doing a great deal of away-from-table study. It's made my online poker game profitable, and will certainly help my live game as well.

LinkedIn vs Leadership Profiles

You know what's fascinating?  Leadership Profiles have been around a long time in print form, and now on the web, but they're hopelessly going to be out of date.  With an independent party trying to collect data, like this profile of one of my colleague Scott LaGanga, it will never be as accurate as his LinkedIn profile [See Scott LaGanga on LinkedIn].

I wonder how long until LinkedIn starts cutting vertical directories of their userbase and threatening businesses like Leadership Profiles?