On Variance

May 24, 2008 by Morgan Kan in Poker

Something every poker player has to learn is to cope with variance. At times, variance can be your best friend, but at other times it can be your villain that not only kicks you in the crotch, but then slams you with a baseball bat to the head while you're down. Case in point, my latest downswing. I had thought I had made a successful leap to $200nl. After all, I was up a couple grand and was feeling pretty good about how I was doing. Some of that was undoubtedly positive variance, but I figured I could sustain some bad luck.

Little did I know that the fates had it in for me and my bankroll plummetted over the course of just a few days. That's what provoked my previous post about taking an extended break.

I played a short session at 100nl today. I had some free time and thought I'd take a shot and see how I did. This session went a whole lot better, and despite running QQ into KK preflop for a stack, I won two stacks (the small blip at the right edge of the graph above). I don't know how much time I'll have to play over the next two weeks what with the wedding and all, but I'm gonna take it pretty easy still. There's lots of other things to do. Still, it's good to be able to get a nice winning session in after getting my ass handed to me the last time I played.

Heraldk

A Note on Gambling

January 16, 2008 by Morgan Kan in Games, Poker

I find it quite interesting noting the reactions of various people to gambling. As you probably know by now, I play a "little bit" of online poker, and have once in awhile been known to throw away some money playing blackjack or craps at a casino. I guess part of it is that my Dad's side of the family (which happens to be Chinese) is a group that loves to gamble. The other part of it is my love for any sort of game that involves some thought. There definitely is a bit of a thrill when you win at a gambling game. The more money at stake, the bigger the thrill when you win. I experienced this particular phenomena when I managed to get in on Mansion's $1000 free bet on the Pittsburgh Steelers at the start of last year's NFL football season. My friend Mike and I sat in front of the TV glued to it until the last play of the game and we were cheering like crazy throughout the game. When there's a fair amount of money on the line, it's exciting and fun.

So it's pretty easy to see how the gambling thing can be a problem. Fortunately for me, I know enough about the math behind the games that I know who has the edge most of the time. I would never slap down a $1K bet without first making sure that I was a) sure that my edge was there, and b) sure that I was okay with losing that money if worst came to worse.

So I don't really truly gamble in the same way that so many people get themselves in trouble do. I mostly play poker where I have definitely shown that I have an edge for the limits that I play. The couple of times I've done other gambling, I've either known I had an edge (like that $1K free bet at mansion where the edge was huge since it was free), or I've been willing to throw away $60 playing blackjack or craps for a couple hours.

Playing poker so much though has changed my outlook on a lot of things. One thing that is definitely different is my outlook on money is a little different. Once you've played poker for awhile, the face value of the currency you're playing with changes. It kind of loses its meaning in the sense that $100 is just a stack of chips you could lose or win at any given moment. It's kind of weird, but being able to sit down for a few hours and win a couple hundred dollars playing $100NL with .5/1 blinds makes it possible for me to add to my yearly revenue by a significant amount. It's only really bounded by the amount of time I have to play (which these days isn't that much, but I still get in a few sessions most weeks).

I kind of think that that effect of poker on my life has been a bit negative. It's hard to regain a respect for how much money is worth and how hard it is for most people to earn it after you've played online poker seriously for as long as I have (and I haven't really been playing that long really). The other negative aspect that is less severe for me is a bit of a crisis of conscience when you realize that the money you're winning is being taken from the wallets of people who may not have the self control to realize that they've lost next month's rent cheque. I deal with that thought with the following argument: "Will those players stop playing if I don't play? No. Well then I'm not changing anything by playing and being the one to take that money from them". Think that's faulty reasoning? Let me know. I'm curious about this issue. Without a doubt, it is a parasitic action, but I'm not sure what I can do about the other person's problem - particularly if they are an unknown person I'm facing through online poker (which is how I play the bulk of the time).

So there's some negative effects of playing poker, but there's a lot of reasons that I continue to play. The financial results certainly don't hurt, but it's not just that. I enjoy the competition. Playing these games lets me battle wits with other players and it can keep me sharp. When I'm playing my best, I'm seeing a lot of things happen in front of me and I can tell you a lot of what's going on.

Playing good poker also teaches patience and handling of tough times. The variance in poker is sky-high, and that means that to play well you have to be able to take the tough luck hands without letting them get to you or you'll start playing poorly (on tilt as it were). You need to be able to objectively back away from a particular situation and assess whether you indeed made the appropriate decisions regardless of the outcomes. This is a skill that helps a lot with life.

Poker contains a lot of mathematics, some of it simple, some of it quite a bit more complex. There is a lot you can do with math (despite people who will tell you that poker is primarily a psychological game), and learning to apply math to specific situations in poker is an essential skill to getting good at the game. Likewise, mathematics helps you with situations in life too. To tell you a quick story, my mom was telling me about some advice she heard some people were giving in a "learn what to do before retiring" seminar. The advice was that you should replace all your appliances a year before retiring, with the idea being that these appliances would then not likely need replacing throughout retirement saving a lot of stress. This advice struck me as pretty wrong considering that there was no part of this advice that took into consideration how old the existing appliances were. You might be replacing an appliance that is still working great and has an expected lifetime of 5 or 10 more years - effectively throwing away part of your existing investment in the appliances you currently own. And who's to say the appliances you buy aren't going to fail during your retirement? The proper solution here is to replace appliances that need replacing, and wait until your other appliances require replacing. Meanwhile, the money you didn't spend on new appliances gains interest. I fail to see why this is a worse solution.

My life has been affected drastically because of my time spent playing poker. For the most part, I think it has been for the better. I feel like I am able to keep myself sharper and more able to analyze situations objectively, and the monetary considerations certainly don't hurt.

Heraldk

Killer Session

January 07, 2008 by Morgan Kan in Poker

Things have been pretty busy in my camp these days. I keep meaning to post a more meaningful post concerning some things I've been thinking about lately, but I haven't had much time to sit down and update things here. Yesterday I had one of the best sessions of poker I've had in a long time. I rode a wave of spiking cards and stacking players for a glorious run of about 2 and a bit hours of play. I ended up with more than 5.5 stacks of profit, playing $100NL.

I know that a lot of that is just variance, but I can't keep myself from feeling good after a session like that. I'm still kind of amazed at just how well that session went.

Match Aftermath

July 26, 2007 by Morgan Kan in My Life

So the match is over, and I had a mere four and a half hours of sleep. Ouch. Still, it was a lot of fun. I got up and got some coffee and breakfast at Tim Hortons before heading up to the poker round table. I think people's tempers were short which meant that there was a bit of unhappiness amongst some of the team members. I hope things sorted themselves out, but it wasn't too pretty for awhile. Anyways, it was cool to meet up with some people who've started to gather and research computers playing poker. It should be cool to see what these guys come up with as they come up to speed. After the round table, I hung around to see the general games playing man-machine match. From what I'd heard, the generic game playing competition was poorly run this year, and it even ran with some controversy. The games that were selected for the playoffs were all very similar and were from a class of games that the best preliminary round player had trouble with. Ugh. Plus, the man-machine match they had was a little pathetic. The played a game that if the humans figured out how the rules work, it was trivial for them to win. So ... that's not a good thing to have in a "fair" match. Oh well. My friend Yngvi won the title, but that was partly due to an error by the other program. Yngvi himself knows the system for the games competition needs fixing, so hopefully changes are made soon.

After witnessing that, I worked on the man-machine web site for awhile as I spent my first session in a real AAAI talk. Heh - too much stuff for me to do. The man-machine web site needs a ton of work, but I'm gonna have to get to that slowly over the next few days. Lots of press articles to link to!

In the afternoon I got the video done that you see in the post before this. I felt that it needed to get done and uploaded since people needed to see what Ali and Phil said about the bots and the outcome of the match.

After that I hung around for awhile and ended up going to the poster session. That was really cool - there was a bunch of food, and I got to talk to a few people including Brett from the University of Minnesota who started working on poker. We talked for a long time about DIVAT and variance and vexbot, and ... how to calculate celcius from fahrenheit. Fun times.

After the poster session, we had found out that there was going to be a huge fireworks display in town. Apparently they do a fireworks contest and so Spain's turn was today and Canada's turn is Saturday. So we bustled down to river front and I borrowed Neil's tripod and I got a ton of photos. I hope some of them turned out! It was hard since people kept moving into my photo :P

So now I'm just waiting for my photos to finish copying and then I'm gonna crash for the night. G'nite all!

Heraldk

Card Dead

May 06, 2007 by Morgan Kan in Poker

Well this has been a busy weekend so I haven't had a chance to talk about my CPT experience yesterday. In a word ... frustrating. The level of play was definitely stronger than at the satellite, which was to be expected. That being said, I didn't feel all that uncomfortable. The trouble was, I just couldn't catch any cards. Fairly early in the tourney, I played KQo in early position, got a single caller from the player to my left. Flop is ten high and pretty dry. I continuation bet and get called. Turn is a queen giving me top pair. I make a pot sized bet and get called. River is a blank, but I'm not too happy with the call so I check intending to call a small bet. He checks behind and shows me ... KK?? Huh. He missed a value bet.

After winning a couple small pots (a raise collects the blinds and a walk in the big blind... weee!), I get dealt 85o in the big blind. There's a min-raise, followed by a couple callers so I call in the big blind getting 7 to 1 immediate pot odds. I flop 88Q. I check, to the aggressive player on my left who bets a small amount. The other players fold and I smooth call. I check the turn (a ten, if I remember correctly) intending to check raise (this was a mistake I think). He checks behind. The river is a deuce, finishing a 3-flush on the board. I make a pot size bet and get raised ... uhoh. I think for awhile, but call and he shows me ... 22. Hrm. I think I may have played that hand badly ...

The dinner break was almost upon us so I limped my way into dinner with 6600 in chips (after starting with 10K). The blinds after the break were going to be 150/300 with 25 antes. Not something to immediately be concerned about, but certainly getting significant for my stack. When I got back from dinner I just couldn't get any hands. The couple of times I picked up hands I didn't like the situation I was in - a raiser from early position seemed to be the rule when I looked at the couple decent hands I saw (and by decent, I mean KQo and QTo). Finally, with my chip stack dwindling to 5500 or so, I got moved from my initial table and got seated at another just in time to get the big blind again (now at 400 chips). A few hands later, I see an open limper, and folds around to me in the cutoff. I decided to push with A9s, hoping to just pick the pot up because I needed to try and reverse my downward trend. I didn't like being so tight as I'd been playing so far, but I didn't really want a lot of action with my shortstack. Anyways, I get called by the open limper who has JJ and I whiff on the flop. *sigh*.

So my day was pretty frustrating. The best hands I saw all day were: 44, ATs, and KQo (twice). Other than that, I certainly remember seeing Q2o, 93o, and 94o a lot more than I cared to. Sometimes, variance sucks.

Still, it was good to be back in the casino playing a big tournament. That was my 3rd big CPT event. Those of you who know me might recall that I finished 6th in the first $500 CPT event I played in. I entirely realize that that first time was a lot of luck combined with a little insight that Darse helped me with. But mostly the whole ride was a huge upswing in variance which is the only reason why I made it so far. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't put in a repeat performance this time. It would've been nice, the top prize at this tourney was $51K. Oh well - there'll be a next time I'm sure!

Heraldk

More Variance

December 21, 2006 by Morgan Kan in Poker

Thanks to CasinoOwnage, I learned about a Party poker reload bonus that I decided to try. So I made my deposit for the $200 bonus for which I need to play 2400 raked hands. Last night I played some 3-table 2/4 shorthanded and took away $230. I realized though that the 2/4 limit was going to take a long time to clear the raked hand requirement. Since I only have a week to clear it, I needed to make sure that I can clear it. So today I dropped down to 1/2 shorthanded where raked hands happen much more often. It didn't go nearly as well. After losing $140, I decided to stop and take a break. I did succeed at one thing ... I cleared a lot of hands. I'm over half way to clearing my $200 bonus. We'll see how the bonus clearing goes tomorrow I guess! I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable playing shorthanded. There are times that I really feel comfortable. Even when I'm losing, a lot of the time I feel like I know what's going on and when I make mistakes I can quickly identify them. So the shorthanded learning process continues ...

Heraldk

Poker Variance

December 16, 2006 by Morgan Kan in Poker

At the moment my poker game is in a swing. I'm trying to make the switch to shorthanded limit play at limits of 2/4 ... but I think I'm making a few too many mistakes and its costing me in variance. At times I feel pretty comfortable and then I start having problems and lose my comfort level. The problem I think I'm having is shorthanded involves far more close decisions. Stuff like what do you do with bottom pair facing a bet on the turn ... it can't be correct to throw that away every time. But I'm having trouble figuring out the right conditions to call there. The variance is causing my bankroll to fluctuate by a hundred dollars up/down ... and I know poker is high variance so I should expect this. I can't stop having the feeling that I'm making mistakes though ...

Heraldk

Foxwoods Casino

July 23, 2006 by Morgan Kan in My Life, Poker, Trips

Mike and I met in the lobby on Friday morning all set to take a bus to Foxwoods casino. This was to be my first live poker ring game experience, and I was pretty excited. The bus ride was about 2 hours long from Boston, and we arrived at Foxwoods sometime in the early afternoon. Foxwoods is an amazing sight - it is absolutely *huge*, with three buildings of hotel rooms, slot machines, poker tables, and other casino table games. Instead of heading to our hotel right away, Mike and I checked our bags and headed straight for the poker room. I sat down at a 2/4 limit table, and Mike joined a 1/2 no limit game. My first impression? These players were *terrible*. I got frustrated though because I couldn't get cards to take advantage of it! After about 4 hours of play, I was down about $60 or so.

Mike was really hungry, and I my stomach was fast to agree, so we left to get some food at the Hard Rock Cafe. We seriously had the best service at a restaurant so far this trip there, which was pretty cool so we left a pretty good tip. It helped that Mike was up almost $200 at that point!

Before returning to the poker room, we wandered around for a few minutes to take in some of the atmosphere. Really, it felt like any other casino I've ever been in ... just that it was ginormous. We stopped at a craps table and played a few rounds where I won about $25 ... not too shabby. Craps is one of the only casino games that I find fascinating because at a full table, there's so much going on. People placing bets like crazy, and yelling and cheering as the dice are rolled - there really isn't a game more fun that craps in a casino environment. Plus its a low house edge game if you know how to bet, so that's another advantage!

Anyways, after our brief break we returned to the poker room. This time, I got a rush of cards and pulled up about $50 at one point ... only to hit 3 bad hands for me in a row including twice running into pocket aces with a big pair of my own. I swung up and down quite a bit, but ended up only down $30 when Mike and I decided to head back around 3 in the morning.

We caught a cab back to our hotel which was just a few minutes away, and checked in. I got to sleep a little after 4:30 in the morning which is officially the latest I've been up all trip. I woke up around 10:20 to the alarm clock so we could catch the shuttle in after a bit of breakfast. The hotel had free breakfast before 11am, including these awesome belgian waffle makers that were all set up for the perfect one every time. So I rather enjoyed breakfast!

Mike and I caught the 11am shuttle back to the casino. We had about an hour and a half to kill before we caught the bus (so we thought) ... so we returned to the poker room for a little bit of play. I started up fast - with 3 hands in a row which I raised preflop (ATs, JJ and JJ again). I won the first two and lost the third, but was up for a decent amount of time. Not too much later though, I had a terrible beat. I had A6 of hearts and limped in. The guy in the blinds raised so 4 players and I all called. I flopped a flush draw with a Jh 4h 2s, so I check and called with lots of odds. The turn was a 2c, which looked a lot like a blank. Again I check and called with one lady also staying in. The river was the queen of hearts giving me the nut flush. Unfortunately, the preflop raiser had just made queens full. Ouch!

So I took another $25 hit, but all in all I don't think I played terribly. I should probably have laid down my Jacks to the Aces last night, but besides that, I felt really comfortable and the amount I lost was totally within reasonable statistical variance. Still, it would've been nice to come out of foxwoods ahead!

Mike is up about $100, which is nice for him. It pretty much pays for the sidetrip to foxwoods for him with a little on the side. Apparently I should've been playing no limit.

I typed up this post when I was waiting for the bus to show up at the bus terminal. Turns out that the bus was almost a full two hours late! So we waited for a long time for the bus to arrive and then were late arriving in new york to meet up with Mike and Nolan.

Up next? Adventures in New York! Our first visit is apparently the Museum of Natural History.

Heraldk

Why so busy?

May 03, 2006 by Morgan Kan in Poker, Sports

Why do I feel so busy? This weekend wasn't all that incredibly busy. I mean, I was at a couple of parties, and spent a day with my mom on her birthday on Sunday, but that's not all that busy. And even though I've got a lot on my plate for school, I still come home and don't do much on school. I'll keep working on the various poker and casino promos that have made me a tidy profit over the course of the last year and a bit. What inevitably happens though is I'll sit down and play poker for a bit and then I'll realize that its getting late, and I end up going to bed later than I really should have. I'm still getting between 6 and 7 hours of sleep a night usually, but I still feel like I really need to catch up on sleep. So what am I doing tonight? Blogging before bed. And I'm going to the gym tomorrow for 8am. Here we go again! Still, a number of exciting things are happening.

The Oilers took down game 6 last night and boy was I happy. So were many boisterous fans who took to Whyte ave last night. I'm told it was quite an experience to walk down Whyte ... crazy people everywhere! The Oilers played a so-so to downright terrible game right up to the third period. That was where they promptly woke up and slaughtered the redwings in dramatic fashion. Nope ... the Oilers don't do things the easy way.

I finished off another casino promo the other day. This one was at intercasino for a value of $150 profit. Hoorah! I am now up $340 in casino promos. I've also been playing 2/4 limit at full tilt clearing another deposit bonus. I'm over 2/3 of the way to getting a full tilt microsuede jacket with full tilt points! I like free stuff! Not only that, I made over $160 on one night of play last week. I had a couple of smaller losing sessions this week and then made another $60 tonight. There's a lot of variance, but I feel like I'm playing pretty well and I'm certainly profiting. I've cleared about $70 of my $300 deposit bonus there so far.

Heraldk

+EV blackjack!

April 11, 2006 by Morgan Kan in Poker

Well, this weekend was interesting on the gambling front. First of all, a guy on the PSO forums noticed that PokerNow has closed down permanently and offered players to transfer the remaining money that they had at PokerNow to an existing party poker account. The great part of this was that he and several people were transfering totals of less than a dollar to party poker and getting $25 and $50 bonuses! So I decided to try this to see if I had any money left in that account. I had $0.01, and transfered it. I got a $50 bonus! I've got to play 500 hands to clear it which shouldn't take long. I've already made $20 playing the super loose .5/1 games.

Second, I decided to try a second casino promotion. For those who don't know, these promotions can be positive EV if you get a large enough deposit bonus and the requirements don't require you to play too long. My first promotion didn't go so well ... I lost my $100 deposit ... and +EV or not, these promotions still have risk because the variance in a lot of these games are huge. I was still intrigued by the idea of +EV casino games, so this weekend I tried Golden Palace's 300% deposit bonus. This time, after a few hours of blackjack, my account reached $290 from my $100 deposit!

So I'm up $90 in casino promotions. It was pretty fun, and a nice break from poker. I really think I needed a break from poker since the past little while has been a tad frustrating.

Heraldk