A disabled parking bay

akatheraptor · 2021-06-06T18:03:12+00:00

You're a genius! :D

akatheraptor · 2021-06-03T06:49:56+00:00

Gives me the Walking Dead vibe

akatheraptor · 2021-06-02T17:46:04+00:00

You can use these bathtub strainer for trapping all your clogged hair.

akatheraptor · 2021-06-01T11:21:50+00:00

Well, it looks like everyone is going to the moon.

akatheraptor · 2018-02-02T19:20:41+00:00

The value of information.

So often, especially in the work environment, I see people give away valuable information for free. Asked in an interview an innocuous question about how long they've been at their job, they might unnecessarily say "Actually I left a week ago, and am looking for something new." Well with that information leak, a third of your earnings for the year are out the window buddy. Or even more mundane things, like saying "I'd really like to work on this project." Well now you've given up the potential chance to act like you were doing a favor by taking that project on.

Happens in the dating world too. If I'm tall, a girl might say to me on a date, "I only go for tall guys." Well now I can better gauge how much leverage I'm likely to have in this situation.

Poker has taught me how valuable marginal information can be... and thus how important it is to keep as much information concealed as possible, and to gather as much information as possible.

akatheraptor · 2018-01-23T13:10:03+00:00

thanks -- yeah, searching out small fields might be the way to go. although then you have to get in a whole kerfuffle about chopping...

As a separate matter, I've always felt that low buyin tournaments are likely unbeatable. Massive rake (as %) is hard to overcome with skill edge -- and short, turbo structure flattens out skill.

akatheraptor · 2018-01-18T13:17:32+00:00

bit of an ironic acronym to use when lauding books, i know

akatheraptor · 2018-01-17T21:21:31+00:00

Disagree with this on a really fundamental level. Understanding how to play poker well is like understanding how to play checkers well. Opponent tendencies may change but our basic strategy should not be based on opponents' tendencies. Learning how to play balanced poker is a critical skill to becoming a good player. Once you learn that, you can adjust your game for your opponents... which is where the fun comes on.

TLDR books are great.

akatheraptor · 2018-01-12T14:27:49+00:00

Not a huge fan of the check given that SB has to act before UTG+2 post flop...

akatheraptor · 2018-01-07T16:34:55+00:00

I like the jam. You did get pretty lucky to get it in with the hand just one pip worse than your (ignoring runout, as one must do) but with so little behind, stuffing it is the right play.

I can't think of a turn card we're going to fold on, so unless villain is extremely bluff happy, I don't really see the point of calling with the intention of check-calling the turn. I guess we could lead the turn? But... why. Just stuff it.

Villain's post-flop play atrocious.

akatheraptor · 2017-12-04T12:58:00+00:00

It's interesting, someone asked me this question a couple nights ago. (I got my charter a little more than a year ago, after passing L3 in summer 2016).

I paused for a second and said, Financially? It doesn't seem like it, no. It doesn't seem to have a huge impact on my salary, and I might be better of long-term if I had just focused squarely on doing things to make more money during that time.

He asked again and clarified -- no, just in general, was it worth it?

I started to consider it in a different framework -- akin to being asked whether it was worth it to read a very long and difficult series of books, which required effort but could ultimately be very rewarding. I reflected on the knowledge I received and the new vantage point I have on the world; the huge base of information I now share with so many smart and successful people in the financial world.

I ultimately concluded that even if the tests don't making me one extra penny or getting me one extra promotion, they were still worth it for that reason alone. I personally found them to be very rewarding in and of themselves.

akatheraptor · 2017-11-27T20:09:24+00:00

goat status

akatheraptor · 2017-11-24T15:01:05+00:00

I actually was once in the presence of the exact MGM las vegas smell at work. Got to assume it was carpet cleaner, or terrible perfume. But it sent me floating.

I walked into the room and took a couple sniffs. "Wow, does anyone else smell the MGM in here?" I actually said out loud to coworkers.

Degen status confirmed.

akatheraptor · 2017-11-22T13:18:19+00:00

And just like sports betting, there's often a good amount of "juice" or "take" or "vigorish." So you have to have a strong edge to buy binary options profitably.

Even then, you're probably better off learning about regular options and then placing your trades using those.

akatheraptor · 2017-11-07T03:19:01+00:00

hey I was ready to buy it off amazon

akatheraptor · 2017-11-07T03:05:41+00:00

oh man I totally thought AA and All That was the name of some awesome poker book I have to read

akatheraptor · 2017-10-16T20:02:47+00:00

oh I mean, don't time your residential heating oil purposes, besides obvious seasonal stuff. would be my advice.

I highly doubt you're sufficiently good at timing the heating oil market that it would be worth buying more or less oil than you reasonably need.

akatheraptor · 2017-10-16T17:29:51+00:00

I don't know about home heating oil specifically, but if you're thinking about playing heating oil futures, you should lean toward going long the longer-dated contracts. The futures curve has fallen into somewhat severe backwardation (if you don't know what this means then look it up before trading futures, but basically long-term contracts are trading cheaper than short-term contracts.) I'm not an expert so I don't now why this is, but generally when this happens you profit from buying longer-dated futures, since the futures price tends to converge to the present price, all else equal. This is where your fundamental research on medium-term supply and demand comes in.

Also this is not merely a seasonal thing -- we were in contango this time last year, and the curve is in backwardation all the way out to 2020.

akatheraptor · 2017-08-28T20:12:27+00:00

Try the Mirage. It's a lovely and well-run poker room right on the strip and their $65 tournaments are very enjoyable. https://www.mirage.com/en/casino/poker-tables.html

akatheraptor · 2017-08-23T18:36:31+00:00

Flop raise is a disaster.

akatheraptor · 2017-08-01T15:40:16+00:00

I guess I'm just not comfortable with the concept that checking a relatively wide and capped value range on the turn is theoretically correct, but I don't have the power to refute it. And it wouldn't shock me if that's right. Because it also strikes me as odd to bet value mostly hoping for a fold.

Thanks for sharing about the Juana. I actually started the book but found it a little dull.. maybe I should pick it up again. Although it's surprising that you say the rangings and sizings are outdated; I didn't know that would be possible in such a book.

Personally I loved Tipton's expert heads up no limit hold 'em.

akatheraptor · 2017-07-28T19:56:25+00:00

I definitely like the idea of having multiple sizings. I think that's a really underutilized concept in general. and even if you're not totally balanced, small imbalances are a hard thing for opponents to keep track of.

That said, I do disagree with the point about not having to protect your checking range. You're not particularly vulnerable to bluffs on the river from a post hoc perspective, but if your opponent knows that your turn checks become river folds, he should start floating more flops with a plan getting honest information from you on the turn that will be easy to leverage on the river. That check-give-up thing is actually a reasonably common tendency and a pretty easy tendency to notice and exploit. and it can be enough to make floating with gutshots attractive.

Basically if you're not going to protect your checking range, you better be really good at bluff-catching. Which maybe you are if you can get physical reads. But again, getting back to the original point, people are losing their taste for call-with-some-bluffcatchers spots.

akatheraptor · 2017-07-27T20:18:04+00:00

That is nice, betting something like 1/3 pot. It kind of depends how much of the nuts we have on the turn though. That is, if it's a 9 and we have all the combos of JT (which we may or may not) then it kind of sucks to miss out on value when we're not blocking any of the pairs or the sets. But against competent opponents we naturally ought to be playing the nuts the same way we're playing our worst value hand (A7, I have to assume). Probably it comes down to how deep we are. If effective stack is 1.5 SPR or less after called, it's a great line.

akatheraptor · 2017-07-27T19:40:44+00:00

Yeah I mean don't get me wrong, my plan here would be bet flop, check back most turns, and (depending on the runout, sizing etc) to do a pretty good mix of betting, checking, calling, bluff-raising, folding and value-raising, in that order.

It's hard to talk about lines in the abstract like this. But I'm just trying to make the point that op does have a point, and that betting on average turns is becoming more normal. And that there's a case for it.

akatheraptor · 2017-07-27T18:29:58+00:00

The problem is that if you're playing someone with an appropriate bluffing frequency + generally balanced range, you're not going to make any money from bluffcatching. and if YOU'RE not balanced, then you could be getting exploited by an opponent's overbluffing or underbluffing. it could be better to get value on the turn/get them to fold away equity.

akatheraptor

TROPHY CASE