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i think if i post a couple of decent sessions at a given level i'll sit the one above, if it goes all meh and pear shaped then just drop back down and rebuld for another shot. as long as i keep moving down with more than i move up with it should pan out.
billy served in the airforce during the war. billy's squadron was known as the 'suicide squad'. average flight-life of a man in the squadron: 11hours. if you lived to see 12 hours you were running well. more specifically he was a rear gunner on a halifax bomber. that meant he was in a little glass pod poking out near the tail section at the rear of the plane. - the most exposed part of the plane. to make matters worse the rear gunner marked the bullseye that the enemy planes would aim for: one if you take the tail out, then the plane cannot fly, two if you take out the rear gunner the plane cant fire back.
billy, however did run well, and was seen as lucky and was indeed known as 'goldenballs' by virtue of not having died in the course of doing his job. kinda puts some gripes into perspective. but his luck did run out and on a mission over germany the inevitable happened and his plane caught fire. his captain ordered him to bail out - the skipper would go down with the plane having kept it steady enough for his men to escape. billy had to bail out of his little pod, backwards. his parachute training amounted to being told: 'when you are clear of the plane... pull'
19, jumping out of a burning plane, no training, over germany... backwards.
[did i really get miffed when my sky+ missed the begginging of MOTD...]
it didn't end there for billy as he didn't just land in enemy land. billy had the misfortune to helplessly parachute right into the grounds of a POW camp. into the barracks, in fact. the germans had seen the plane do down and were all out in the barracks square as billy flopped right into their quarters. luckily it was a lufftewaffe camp - the german airforce - and billy was quicky informed "dont worry we are all airmen here". he was spared work and the horrors of a land-army ran POW camp and was allowed to pursue his art along with another airman who was captured in not dissimilar circumstances. they formed a close bond and did the most beautiful pen and ink sketches depicting POW life, and morale boosting caricatures of their 'hosts'.
what of the caterpillar, then. well the golden caterpillar was awarded to all airmen who had the trauma of having to bail out of a stricken plane and survive. the caterpillar represents the thin thread that their lives hung by. some decades later billy was working in the art department of a ladies catolouge, when a work mate noticed his caterpillar and informed him that another man wore one in another department. billy went to meet this man and found it was his old artist mate from the POW camp. two hero's renunited and best friends to this day. billy, by the way is an extremely mild mannered and modest chap. but he misses the excitement of those days. i guess the everyday 9-5 life we all lead must seem dull and yet so precious at the same time to him.
well played, billy. tis a pleasure to know you.
and if you see a fella with a caterpillar in his lapel, give him a nod as you go by...
Oh my word.
Not found time to read this (non) Diary before ("Skill & Go" Q & A has been a tad distracting), but what a cracking read, loved so much of it, & can't wait for the next instalment.
Or, as the kids say on grown up poker forums....
subscribed.
Thank you for a lovely read, which has quite cheered me up.
Not quite sure what parts I enjoyed most.
The Billy tale might just have been the best.
Can you even imagine? 19 years of age, sitting in the bomb turret of a flying incendiary bomb, with a life expectancy of 11 hours? It is beyond belief, such bravery & - a word I refuse to use in poker - what a hero.
I have no idea why the Billy story makes me think of a PM I received recently. A gentleman wrote an X,000 word ranty PM to me because........due to what he believed was a Sky Poker software glitch ( & for all I know, it was, I've no idea), he MISSED THE FIRST HAND OF A DEEPSTACK MTT. He described this as "outrageous", & included 7 exclamation marks in case I was in doubt. Because multi-exclamation marks really work. Not.
Times have changed, eh? In the greater schemer of things, the 70 years between Billy's heroics, & today, are nothing, but have people's expectations ever changed so much in such a short time-span?
I very much enjoyed your comments on Tony Benn, who passed away last week.
As you are clearly a fan of his, I hope you won't mind if I post some stuff I wrote elsewhere about Mr Benn after he died.
I apologise in advance for the mini-hijack of this wonderful (non) Diary, but these (non)Diaries ONLY work if you get interaction.
"......What terrible news, although of course he was closing in on 90 years of age, so not unexpected.
Despite disagreeing with his political views on almost every count, I adored listening to him speak on Radio & TV. Bit like listening to Enoch Powell, you don't need to agree with his views to enjoy the beautiful style of oratory.
He published his Diaries in several volumes, 5 or 6 I think, & they are the equal best Diaries I've ever read from a Politician, the other being from Alan Clark, who was at exactly the other end of the Political & social spectrum.
The most likeable aspect of him was that he was a thoroughly decent, good man. A really good man.
The world is a poorer place without him, but he'll be upstairs, in a better place, where he deserves to be.
I'm so saddened to learn of his passing.
RIP Mr Benn......."
"....When I was a (relatively) young man, Tony Benn - then Lord Wedgewood Benn* I think, but he later renounced his Peerage - was the "Postmaster General", a big position in those days.
In that role, he "closed down" the Pirate Radio Stations, moored off Frinton on Sea, Essex. We despised him for that, because until then, we never had "pop music" on the radio, but it was his idea to introduce Radio 1, & the rest, for better or worse, is history.
I might just have forgiven him for that eventually.
Simply a good man.
"This idea that politics is all about charisma and spin is rubbish," he said. " It is trust that matters."
Many of us disliked him, or his policies. I don't recall anyone disliking him though.
Do please try & read his Diaries, some of which were penned by his late wife, Caroline, I seem to recall. He was devestated when she passed away, some 15 years asgo.
Family life was very important to him, & he was incredibly proud of his children, all of whom are in Politics. A large part of his Diaries revolved around family life, & fine detail....."
* This was incorrect, it was later pointed out to me that he was previously Viscount Stansgate.
".....From Wiki.......
Benn met Caroline Middleton DeCamp (born 13 October 1926, Cincinnati, Ohio) over tea at Worcester College in 1949 and nine days later he proposed to her on a park bench in the city. Later, he bought the bench from Oxford City Council and installed it in the garden of their home in Holland Park
Benn is a first cousin once removed of the late actress Dame Margaret Rutherford
See.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn........."
Loved the story of the artist chap in "your" Residential home, too. Precious few folks can write nice stories.
Do write more, please.
I've always wanted to be able to play HU poker better, or even at all. I'm the world's worst.
After reading of your HU prowess, I decided I'd ask you if you could try & teach me, or help me, to understand how to play HU. Just a few lines of absolute basics, exactly as I've tried to in my little (Non) Diary thing with PLO8 & DYM's. Just utter basics.
And then I read your analysis of the J-10 v A-5 hand, & I decided HU is not for me. Strewth, that depth of knowledge is quite beyond me & always will be. "I'm all-in" is about the extent of my tactics.
(Non) Diary hijack over.
Please keep writing, or I'll have to arrange to have you shot, or even worse, miss the first hand of a Deepstack MTT. Which would be outrageous!!!!!!!
great words re tony benn: it is a measure of the man that even amongst those that did not admire what he stood for he was largely respected for the way and manner inn which he stood for it. i have read some of his diaries, such an erudite, passionate and tirelessly commited chap. a true british gent.
---
when and if you ever get round to typing up your memoirs, i propose that an appendix be added containing all the crank emails and private messages you have recieved over the years. they seem to range from baffling to downright disturbing.
----
i hope the JT v A5 hand didnt put you off, as i had hoped to encourage people to try HU poker in this thread. i just thought it was an interesting spot that showed that what we think we intuitively 'know' is cut and dry, has all kinds of nuance and possibility. and it illustrates the importance of stategy and range-warfare.
i've never played HU cash, but i imagine all HU poker boils down to a war between competing ranges and strategies: what you play and how you play it. the SNG element offers an endgame [which has a beauty of its own imo]. but a neat way of thinking about HU poker is: "i'll pick my ranges and strategies, you pick yours and we'll let the RNG do its thing for a few hundred hands and see who ends up winning".
now thats an incredibly simplistic reduction, but it illustrates a couple of important concepets: that it's how our strategy fares against our opponent's strategy that matters, and good fundementals go a long way.
in reality our ranges and strategies should always be adaptive v villains strategy and counter-strategies. part of the beauty of the format is this 'games-within-games' element. trying to exploit good players and avoid being exploited by better ones.
there's no magic behind it other than that.
anyone looking at HUSNG's would do well to understand NASH also.
----
exploitable and unexploitable are strange concepts, so i'll give a very basic explanation and apply them to a simple game:
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS [RPS].
suppose that you want to formulate an unexploitable strategy to RPS. what would that mean for starters, and what would that strategy be? an unexploitable strategy is one that cannont be 'beaten' by any other strategy that is no strat can 'cheat' and find a hole in your strategy to exploit. in RPS if you randomly throw the follwing ratios:
ROCK 33%
SCISSORS 33%
PAPER 33%
then no strategy can beat you. in fact no matter what stategy villains adopt they will win one third of games, lose one third of games and draw one third of games. this unexploitable strategy also guarentees you certain mimimum expected value [summat that applies to unexploitable play in poker].
what, however if we came across someone who only ever threw ROCK. never deviating from that strat. well our unexploitable strategy is still unbeatable and still means we will win lose and draw in equal measure. but it is not the BEST strategy to play. here we can play a maximally exploitative strategy of throwing PAPER 100% of the time. here we will win 100% of our games.
however we have now become extremely exploitable ourselves. our opponent can simply adjust and throw SCISSORS 100% and until we readapt it will be us that will be losing 100% of games.
we can see that:
exploitative strategies are strats that are also exploitable. the more exploitative we are, the more exploitable we become.
unexploitable stratagies are strats that cannot be exploited - you can't 'cheat' to gain ev against an unexploitable strategy
unexploitable strategies do not win the most money against exploitable strats. against exploitable opponents we should seek to maximnally exploit [until they adjust.]
----
in applying this to poker we can see that to win the most money v exploitable players we have to become unguarded. the more exploitable they are the more exploitative - and therefore exploitable - we should become. think kevin peterson's technique v geoff boycott's or barcelona's tika-taka v arsenal's late 80's back four. if you were coaching a batsman or football team of average ability who's technique / tactics would you advise them to adopt against:
a: top bowler / football team
b: an under 11's schoolboy bowler / football team
think how a boxer would approach a bout with tyson in his prime v audlyn harrison armed with a feather-duster.
the same applies to poker.
to be unexploitable means being hard to beat but not necessarily being able to destroy opponents. being exploitatative and going for the win means leaving the door open for counter attack: the caveat being that your opponent has to be canny and skilled enough to spot your explotation and work out how to counter. many people cannot do this, and you can be heavily weighted to bluffs v nits and heavily weighted to value v stations and until they catch on you can print money: seek to exploit bad players
against thinking players you do want to be more balanced. it does matter if you have too many bluffs or not enough value hands in certain spots: they will notice. try to be unexploitable as a default agaisnt good players, until you spot holes in their stratedgy that you can exploit. dont take exploitative lines v thinking players. bet sizing tells, repping hands that arent in your range etc all count as examples of things that dont matter against poor players but very much do against the good.
i've rambled on to much again, so will cut it short [edit, too late lol]. but i would encourage people to try the format, it's a fun and rewarding version of the game with tonnes of nuance and strategy available for those that want to go deeper into the rabbit hole. it's not all SHOVE/FOLD button mashing [although that does have it's place and has a strategy and drama of its own]. if i can play these games competently anyone can. i'm FAR from expert, and would firmly class myself as a poker player in general as slightly better than average. yet i have managed to beat the lower stakes quite comfortably.
I've not read it, but that looks a cracking post.
When Teddy joined TPT a few months ago I, along with a few others, had never heard of him. Within a few hours I'd come across a post by him in the poker chat section about poker theory that went totally over my head. What he knows about the theory of the game I suggest is way ahead of 99% of the players on this site. For someone who has only beeen playing the game for less than a year I think he's remarkable.
Either that or he's C and P'ing it all from David Slanskys Holdem Poker For Advanced Players
with regard to my interest in theory, when i was in my late teens / early twenties i'd devour all kinds of books on philosophy, science and mathematics: anything that had interesting and new ideas i loved to read for the sheer pleasure of learning. so i had read quite a bit on game theory long before poker interested me. names like von nuemman and nash and terms like equilibria, exploitative, GTO were familiar to me before i even knew what no limit holdem meant so when i learned that poker had a theoretical side to explore that didn't scare me, it just made the game more fascinating. i was then fortunate to stumble upon a format where that theory had very useful and practical applications.
in truth we ALL make game theory decisions in real life. i imagine most people have seen the show 'golden balls' where contestants are asked to SPLIT or STEAL [a poker player would intuitively play STEAL 100% imo]. well we are asked to make SPLIT or STEAL decisions all the time:
VACCINATIONS
I hate needles, nearly as much as spiders. luckily i can cheat the system if enough people SPLIT and go through the ordeal of being vaccinated, for if everyone around me is vaccinated who will infect me? here i can play the STEAL ball and freeload off others' cooperation
FILMS AND TV
these can cost millions of dollars to produce. fortunately producing them is profitable as lots of people spend money watching them. this allows opportunity for people to exploit this by playing their STEAL ball and watching streamed or pirtated copies. as long as there are enough cooperators to allow them to freeload there will be a supply of movies and tv shows to steal.
ELECTIONS
my ward overwhelmingly votes labour. its not even close. a labour supporter here can play their STEAL ball and not have to go through the effort of voting or even registering to vote. there are enough cooperators playing a SPLIT strategy and allowing them to freeload. if too many STEAL and dont vote then it means that the vote will be close and the freeloaders will have to start voting again, but that rarely happens. voting is for mugs, innit.
PENALTIES
the penalty in football is a zero-sum game invoolving two players. as such, as NASH proved, there exists a nash equilibrium solution to penalty taking.
most penalty takers strongly favour hitting penalties to one side. usually it is towards the side of their stranding foot. penalties to other side are not as successful as they are either not as accurate or have to be hit with less force to maintain accuracy. both things which mean less success from the spot.
one solution to this is to always hit to your favoured side. this is highly exploitable by goalkeepers who can just simply always dive to the kickers favoured side. this goalkeeper adjustment is itself exploitable as kickers now have an easy option of putting the ball to their now unguarded weakside.
so at the equilibrium there must be a mixed strategy. i cant remember the exact results but given certain success rates kickers should go to their strong side say 60% of the time and their weak side 40% of the time. keepers of course should follow the corrersponding ratios. if they deviate from the equilibrium strategies then they will sacrifice EV and score or save fewer penalties when facing a GTO taker/keeper.
the really interesting thing is that most penalty takers and keepers follow the nash equilibrium strategy to within a few percentage points, certainly the best do. now there may be conspiracy theorists who believe that frank lampard and peter cech are GTO bots programmed to beat penalty shoot-outs [ and the reality is when facing frank lampard you are facing a GTO penalty taker] but we all know it is just great players understanding their chosen sports so well that they intuitively follow the correct strategy.
i similarly would argue that both yourself and tikay understand theory much more deeply than you might be aware of.
i'd wager that your collective grasp of the theory stuff is much more ingrained, intuitive and practically useful than mine could ever hope to be.
She also stole my heart at the same time.
I can't remember if I won or lost the HU games or how well I did on your table in the MTT's
But I'd just like to say what a great thread this is, really enjoying it.
IF I can at least understand 10% of what you are saying it will no doubt improve my game.
BTW I'm from Eastham, what part of the Wirral are you from?
Regards Alan.
heads up versus.
essentially a four man HUSNG with two semi finals, then a winner takes all final.
you can find them in the low-stakes lobby, currently only running at the £2.10 level. nice roi for taking it down.
boss
king was a bit of a madcap genius. his interviews were riddled with nautical metaphors and strange ramblings. when he took over he announced to the fans: " i can't promise you success, but i can promise you a trip to the moon". when i see managers sacrificing potential cup-runs by fielding kids so they can scrap for mid-table mediocrity i often think back to that quote. a manager promising his supporters 'a trip to the moon'. glorious. he delivered, too.
king played a heroically unbalanced team. we had a sweeper system in the old division 3 in 1989. on THOSE pitches he decided that playing a charismatic former welsh league midfielder as sweeper would prove effective: it was. we then had two wing backs, two central midfielders [including jim harvey who could run a game without leaving the centre circle], two strikers and ONE winger, johnny morrissey. completely barmy, idealistic and destructive. we slayed teams at home on a regular basis, went to wembley 5 times in 4 years, and won two promotions. all whilst playing stylish, arrogant football. THEN he signed aldridge and nevin. a trip to the moon, indeed.
morrissey was a player you dont often see nowadays in the lower leagues. he was an old fashioned winger. he didnt have any mandate other than to humiliate defenders and create goals. you see the likes of dirk kuyt, james milner and jun si park employed out wide now. their mandate is simply to stop full backs from overlapping. morrissey wouldn't have made the cut. he was the type who could have played in his vintage sambas, nutmegged a few hapless fullbacks and created a goal or two whilst never breaking a sweat. aldridge said that no other player had provided him with such a consistent stream of chances. and he played with barnes, sheedy and beardsley.
there used to be lots of these lower-league beasts: players that were capable of flashes of genius rather than consistent brilliance, or bossed their level without being able to 'make it'. ricky otto [an armed robber with a machete scar on his chest], joey beachamp, clive mendonca, andy hessenhaler, ian bogie [halied as the new gazza, nomative determinism would ensure no-one named 'bogie' could ever be the new gascoigne] robin van der laan, paul peshisolido - derby had a holy-trinity of them: tommy johnson, paul simpson and marco gabbiadini. whenever i do get to see tranmere there are plenty of effecient, dilligent round pegs in round holes. but very few former bank robbers or dreamy wingers capable of doing summat electric.
a few of these type of player did infect the premiership, but whilst they dominated goal of the month, they rarely won ought. dalian actkinson, roy wregle, georgie kinkladze take a bow lads. le tiss would be the epitome of the type of player i mean.
i suppose ben arfa would be the modern day equivalent. any other lower league bosses out there at the moment / in the past?
I remember that Ian Bogie was the 'new' Gascoigne as well.
Derby had a few others that spring to mind as well.
In the 80's there was a lad called Jeff Chandler. Not an anorak or anything but we signed him for £38,000 after a tribunal
Remember tribunals? I digress, we also signed Ross McLaren at the same time for £67,000 on the same day at tribunal as well. We ran good at tribunals. Ross runs one of the local pubs these days. I wonder how many modern day footballers will end up running boozers?
We had Ted McMinn. He was fun to watch. His main trick was to knock it past someone and then climb all over them Got him a free kick everytime. He lost a foot a few years back. There was a testimonial for him pre season against Rangers. Their support was unbelievable. They took over Derby that day. Full house to watch the game. It was their 9 in a row? team.
The best player I have ever seen for Derby was Asanovic. He was signed just before Euro96 and was an incredible talent. The trouble was he didn't like playing in the winter. Most skilful player I've ever seen for Derby. Wore thick rimmed glasses and looked like a school teacher.
Can only be one - Steve Bull !
(and i'm a Villa fan).
Lower league bosses? Seen a few, but the who stands out is the guy who (to quote Joe Royle) ''dragged City kicking and screaming out of Division 2''....step forward Andy Morrison.
there are definately more regs at the level. but i've enjoyed those games the most. in certain spots you can range 'regs' pretty accurately. i had one interesting hand @ 20bb against a villain who 3bet liberally and flatted a reasonably tight range.
i raise AK, get flatted and see a T53r flop. i cbet and he jams. action?
what can we say about our relative ranges? usually the BB has a stronger range on most flops as being the caller he brings a stronger range to flop to begin with. but with two small cards present, our ranges our pretty even. certainly if he is jamming Ax, PPs, non all in 3 betting a balanced range and not flatting low unconnected cards then it means he cant have a set, 2pair or overpairs and that the best draw he has is a gut-shot 67. in fact the best hand he can possibly have is KT. we can have all sets, 2pairs, overpairs to both top and middle pair and the one open ended straight draw. the top of our range crushes his.
it's worth looking at how ranges can and cant hit certain flops as you can recognise not just the top of villains range, but your own also. if you have similar tendencies to villain and hold QT or KT on this type of flop then it is good to know you have the absolute top of your range, esp against regs. you shouldn't be folding KT on turns and rivers without sick reads here.
we cbet and get xraised all in. the dynamic between us was very laggy and he knows its hard for either of us to have a hand here. AK is one of the best hands we hold on this flop. what does his check-raise range look like? well his value range is small and weak. 7T-KT, T6s, 56, K3s, K5. maybe he has hands like 57s 85s, but some of those are sometimes 3bet bluffs. so lets add in 75s an 85s and assume other 5x are either folded or 3bet. note we are giving him credit for jamming all value hands; maybe he wouldnt jam 3x, but then again he can comfortably c/c KT and QT too. but lets say if he has a hand here he's jamming.
what of his bluffs then? well he might push his gut-shot, overcards and 78 which has two overs to middle pair and can turn equity with a 6 or 9. lets add J9 too. so we have a check rasing range of:
T7-KT, T6s, K3s, K5, 57s, 85s, 56, 67, J9, QJ, KJ
i feel this is conservative, in game it felt he was looking for an excuse to check raise.
we are calling 16bb to win a pot of 40 and so need 16/40 = 40% equity.
agaisnt the range above we have 45% equity. i call and cant suck-out on T7. but i'm happy with the call. obviously working out equities in-game isnt an option, but it's enough to recognise that his value range was small AND capped and balance that against the aggressive history on dry flops. i'm happy with the call. thoughts?
what if we had been 30bb and facing a check raise to 8bb?
can we ever flat the check raise? what about with 88?
we'd have exactly a potsized bet left on the turn.
AK fold, jam, flat?
88 fold, jam, flat?