Date: 2008-05-09 08:52 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

Looking at the WSOP schedule page I see:

$340 Nightly Tournaments, May 29 – July 15, 2008 @ 7:00 PM

and

$330 Mega Satellite Tournaments, Monday – Thursday May 28 – July 1, 2008 @ 3 P.M.
July 2 - 5, 2008 @ 6 P.M

Are either or both of these rebuy events? I'm guessing the satellites may be rebuy and the Nightly not?

I guess the $200+$25/rebuy supers are no longer offered.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2008-02-15 11:56 Subject: This sounds right to me Security: Public

Article at the CBS news web site about Condoleeza Rice as the Republican VP nominee. In a nutshell:

"Rice's presence on the ticket deprives the Democrats of the we-are-more-diverse-than-thou argument....With Rice on the ticket the Republicans are freed up to run a much stronger negative campaign against either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama because the Secretary of State provides them with cover against charges of sexism or racism."

Rice would steal votes from women and african-american voters, two groups the democrats are expecting to win overwhelmingly. It's pretty clear that McCain doesn't like Romney and has lost patience with Huckabee, so I don't expect to see either of them on the Ticket. The main issue is whether Condi is too tainted by her association with Bush, compounding McCain's problem in that regard.

Rice for VP is at 7.0 on InTrade.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2008-02-13 14:25 Subject: Summing up Roger's Steroid Testimony in Congress Security: Public Mood: irritated

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

Let’s see, we have the subprime mess, the housing crisis, a possible recession, the war in Iraq, health care, Social Security, terrorism and this is what takes up our time – worrying about whether Roger Clemens used steroids a decade ago?

It’s good to see we have our priorities in order. A daytime made-for-tv dog and pony show put on by a bunch of irrelevant old congresspeople so they can get their faces on television. It’s no wonder a guy like Barack Obama is gaining traction.

1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2008-01-06 09:00 Subject: Me Too Security: Public

Presidential preferences:
90% Bill Richardson
85% Chris Dodd
84% John Edwards
83% Barack Obama
82% Joe Biden
82% Hillary Clinton
78% Mike Gravel
74% Dennis Kucinich
44% Rudy Giuliani
41% John McCain
34% Mike Huckabee
30% Mitt Romney
29% Ron Paul
27% Tom Tancredo
24% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Many others have done this thing too. It's generally pretty interesting how cleanly the red and blue are separated (except for Jerrod). And, for mine at least, there is a huge drop between the bottom democrat and the top republican. I take this as evidence that there are clear differences between the parties, contrary to some opinions.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2007-11-12 16:41 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

The age I will be on my next birthday.


A place I'd like to travel to.

My favorite place.


My favorite object.


My favorite food .


My favorite animal



My favorite colors.


The town in which I was born



The town in which I live.




The name of a past pet.



The name of a past love. (she was actually hotter than the Chrissy in this picture this picture)



Nickname.



First name.



Middle name


Last name.



A bad habit of mine.


My first job.




My college major

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2007-10-19 15:06 Subject: Worried Security: Public

The Absolute Poker Scandal has seriously shaken my confidence in the integrity of online poker. Apparently the cheaters at AP were absolute idiots who made no attempt to conceal what they were doing. The fact that the cheaters had inside access to software tools, which allowed the cheating, is even more worrisome.

My question is, how can we be sure this isn't happening at larger sites, like PokerStars, Party, or Full Tilt? These sites also were created by programmers, and tested extensively prior to live play, so the same kind of special accounts might also have been created. What prevents an ex-employee, or even current employee, from pulling a similar scam? If a cheater was careful, and booked maybe 60%-70% winning days, with winning days consistently larger than losing days, a huge amount could be extracted over time without ever being noticed.

I don't play in big enough games or tournaments for this to scare me off, but it would certainly give me second thoughts before moving up to higher stakes.

3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2007-10-11 16:41 Subject: It's Official Security: Public

Ann Coulter is the dumbest person on the face of the earth.

3 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2007-10-02 21:07 Subject: Blogger Tournament Security: Public

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2007-09-06 06:50 Subject: Reception Bars Security: Public

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2007-07-26 17:03 Subject: Review of Two Books Security: Public

I just read two books by Cormac McCarthy, “No country for old men,” and “The Road.” Both excellent, but unusual. No spoilers below, but you might not want to read if you want to be totally surprised by the premise of the books.

“No country for old men” is an action-adventure story, with a number of twists. The protagonist finds $2+ million in drug money and the rest of the novel is about his efforts to escape from a Russian hit man and other parties trying to recover the money. Sounds like a familiar story, could have been written by Carl Hiaasen or Donald Westlake, but it is much, much darker. The story doesn’t turn out the way you expect. McCarthy is a great writer, and this novel might be described by the term “thriller as literature.” He has an odd style that takes some getting used to (shifting first and third person sections, an annoying lack of punctuation) but it is well worth the effort. Apparently this is being made into a movie that will be released in the fall.

“The Road” is completely different, aside from his writing style. It takes place in a post- apocalyptic nuclear winter type of setting, where a man and his son are on the road trying to reach…well, it’s never entirely clear what they are trying to reach. Life for them consists of a search for food of any kind, evading bands of cannibals, and providing comfort to each other. It is much more difficult because everything is dead (plants, animals, fish), the air is saturated with choking ash, and all the places you would think food would be (grocery stores, peoples' kitchens) have long since been stripped bare by the few survivors. I found this book to be compelling, but absolutely terrifying. If this doesn’t give you nightmares, nothing will. It was an Oprah Book club selection (which surprised the hell out of me after I read it) and also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and other national awards.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-12-13 18:53 Subject: How to Pretend You are George W. Bush Security: Public

I've figured out a way for a regular person to see how the Leader of the Free World feels as he tries to decide what to do in Iraq. First, drink five beers. Then, attend a graduate lecture on quantum electrodynamics (particle physics). You will understand exactly as much about particle physics as George Bush does about world politics and military strategy.

I almost feel sorry for him. He's under tremendous pressure to "do something" in Iraq to change course, and all he has available to him is different versions of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. No matter what decision he makes, it will turn out to be wrong. I say I almost feel sorry for him, but I don't really. He got himself into this mess.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-11-29 20:19 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

I started thinking about this after posts by tom_bayes and sabyl.

If you play tournaments with a large number of entrants, how can you tell if you're a good player or not? I think a way to model this is using the Poisson distribution, which "expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed period of time if these events occur with a known average rate, and are independent of the time since the last event." It is the usual way of modeling rare events. The nice thing about the distribution is that its variance is equal to its mean, which makes it easy to assess significance and construct confidence intervals.

( Statistics babble under here )

4 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-11-17 21:15 Subject: We have a new contender Security: Public

Two weeks ago, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were neck-and-neck for the title of Most Hated American. With Rumsfeld fired and Cheney apparently vanished, a new contender has emerged....OJ Simpson! Tradesports should create a contract on whether this guy survives till his 60th birthday, next July 7th.

1 Comment | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-11-10 21:38 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

From Time magazine:

The Republican National Committee has been pointing out that a small shift in votes would have made a big difference. A shift of 77,611 votes would have given Republicans control of the House, according to Bush's political team. And a shift of 2,847 votes in Montana, or 7,217 votes in Virginia, or 41,537 votes in Missouri would have given a Republicans control of the Senate. In addition, the party has calculated that the winner received 51 percent or less in 35 contests, and that 23 races were decided by two percentage points or fewer, 18 races were decided by fewer than 5,000 votes, 15 races were decided by fewer than 4,000 votes, 10 races were decided by fewer than 3,000 votes, eight were decided by fewer than 2,000 votes and five races were decided by fewer than 1,000 votes.

So the Republicans almost won! I think the saying is "Figures never lie. But liars sure can figure." This is from the same team that brought you "we are winning in Iraq."

2 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-11-10 18:05 Subject: Send out the subpoenas Security: Public

Since election day, gas prices are up $0.05 per gallon here in Tucson. Why? Two possibilities that I can think of:

(1) The democrats have somehow managed to screw things up already.
(2) Bush-Cheney cronies in the oil industry artificially depressed prices leading up to the election, hoping to bail out their freinds.

I hope some committee or other investigates this shizzle.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-11-08 07:10 Subject: Election thoughts Security: Public

It now appears that Democrats have won both the Senate and the House. The official line is that Virginia and Montana are too close to call, but the margins are big enough in both places that the only way they could be reversed is if there was a gross error of some kind. Counting provisionals or absentees shouldn’t make a difference unless there is some reason to think those subgroups are completely different than the overall population.

Major Disappointments:

• Harold Ford Jr., who lost in Tennessee mainly due to southern racism. Hide the white women.

• Rick Santorum gave a very nice concession speech. You would think he would be angry and mortified. I wanted to see pain.

• Over 1.5 million people in Florida voted for Katherine Harris. I was hoping she would be humiliated even more thoroughly. “God selects our leaders.” Thank god he didn’t select her.

One other note: I absolutely cannot stand Hillary. And I was very impressed with the interviews John McCain gave last night. This troubles me. I just hope the Democrats are able to find any other viable candidate.

2 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-11-02 09:56 Subject: At least we won't have John Kerry to kick around anymore Security: Public

There's a fairly good chance than John Kerry has cost Democrats at least a couple of house or senate seats that were in the "toss up" category. The good news is that this episode should put an end to any thoughts this jackass might have had about running for president again in 2008.

In other news, another Florida Republican heads off to rehab .

4 Comments | Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-10-21 11:19 Subject: If the election were today... Security: Public

According to the most recent trading on the University of Iowa political market, Democrats are about 70% to take control of the House:



Democrats are only about 30% to take control of the senate:



I think both of these might be a little optimistic (or pessimistic, if you're a red-stater). However, prices at Tradesports.com are very consistent: the GOP House Control contract is at 33.3 bid and 34.8 asked, implying about a 66% probability the Dems will get control. The GOP Senate Control contract is at 69 bid 70 asked, consistent with a 30% likelihood of a Dem win.

One more that's kind of interesting, relating to the 2008 presidential election. It's pretty close:



At Tradesports, the 2008 presidential election bid prices are 48.1 for Dem, 48.1 GOP and 2.7 for other. The top three individual contracts are for HClinton 24.0, McCain 23.1 and Guiliani 13.5. These numbers all correspond to the market's assessment of probabilities each will become president.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-10-20 08:02 Subject: What is Google Worth? Security: Public

Google just had a great earnings report, and the shares are up over $30 to above $450. But I think there are some reasons to be concerned about Google. True, net income is up over 90% from the 9 month period the prior year. But operating cash flows are up only 48%, and free cash flows (operating cash flows minus capital expenditures) are actually down 6%. The fact that operating cash flows are increasing slower than accounting earnings is a negative signal about quality of earnings (ie an increasing portion of earnings came from making accounting journal entries rather than from collecting cash) and the decrease in free cash flows indicates that it is pretty expensive to generate all this growth.

Maybe this is an anomaly and Google has spent enough on capex to put lots of excess capacity in place, so future capex will be much lower. But it really raises questions about value.

Having said that, it doesn’t take very many years of 50% growth to justify a high multiple. Right now, Google has free cash flow of $4.86 per share (annualized from the 9 month number). Google has a beta of 0.66. This is historical, and Merill Lynch (for example) adjusts it for mean reversion: (0.66 x 2/3)+0.33 = 0.77. So cost of capital is about 4%+(6% x 0.77)=8.6%, assuming a risk free rate of 4% and a market risk premium of 6%.

If free cash flows grow at 50% for the next 3 years, then at a geometric average of 10% for 20 more years, then at 5% in perpetuity, Google is worth about $800 per share (discounting the projected free cash flows at the 8.6% cost of capital). If the growth rate for the next three years is only 30%, the value drops to $525. If the geometric average is only 10% for the next 23 years, value is only $321. So the value (obviously) depends on how fast Google grows and for how long. And it’s very difficult to figure that out from data. As I said above, free cash flows are actually lower so far this year, so it’s hard to extrapolate the current growth rate.

My guess is that Google is overvalued, but not 1999 overvalued. I certainly wouldn’t buy it, but I’m not confident enough that its overvalued (or that the overvaluation will be corrected over a short time horizon) to sell it short.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link

Date: 2006-10-12 06:48 Subject: A Republican Wakes Up Security: Public

Christopher Buckley was a speechwriter for GHW Bush in the early 1980's. He doesn't seem too happy about the direction the "compassionate conservatives" have taken things and offers some voting recommendations.

Post A Comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend | Link