Poker Talk

Last week was the annual World Series of Poker "Big One" in Las Vegas, and while the tournament won't be shown on ESPN until later this year, a lot internet sites have been reporting some or all of the action that's taken place.

I happened to read about one hand which really blew my mind:

Two guys have about the same amount of chips, one has pocket 5's and the other pocket 9's. On the flop comes two 5's and another low card, giving the one guy 4-of-a-kind, and the other guy an overpair with his 9's. So they both go all in (I don't know in what order, but it doesn't really matter), and you gotta think, the guy with the four-of-a-kind pretty much has the hand locked up, going against a measly one-pair with his four-of-a-kind and only 2 cards to go. Nope, the turn and river were both 9's, which gave the second guy four 9's to beat four 5's.

All of us who play poker have plenty of bad beat stories to tell, but it really doesn't get any worse than that. Literally, it's the worst bad beat possible if you do the math. It's one thing for a guy to hit running cards against you (like hitting a running straight or flush), cause even then, you have a bunch of possible combinations out there. But with 2 cards left to flip in that hand, the guy needed those two exact cards in the deck to win, and he got them. Something like 0.05% probability. So the next time anyone feels like complaining about bad luck in our $10 home games, think about the guy who flopped four-of-a-kind against one pair, and still ended up losing, in what was probably the biggest tournament of his life.

I was thinking about the math of no-limit tournaments and decided to do some calculations, just for kicks and giggles. Let's say that you only go all in pre-flop with the best possible starting hands (A-A, K-K, A-K, Q-Q). Usually, your winning percentage if you play these hands out is gonna come out to somewhere between 70-80% on average. For the sake of my math, I just estimated that you will win 75% of the time with these hands if you go all-in pre-flop.

By the way, 75% is pretty damn good odds. Consider for example:

- A-A is at best about 90% against certain hands (including 2-7 offsuit, the worst possible hand), and about 80% against any underpair
- K-K is also about 80% against underpairs and then about 70% against any hand with an Ace (except pocket Aces of course)
- Q-Q is pretty much the same as K-K, except you are only around 55% against A-K.
- A-K is about a 70% winner against any hand except pocket pairs and A-K. Believe it or not, whether you're up against A-Q suited or 2-7 offsuit, you are never much more than a 70% favorite.

These are all assuming that you're not going against another top hand (which is usually the case if you are called on an all-in bet). So even if you are the tightest player ever, or even if you make all the right reads, the best you can realistically hope for is to average 75% pre-flop odds for all the times you go all-in.

Anyways, in a tournament like the WSOP, say you decide to go all-in for all your chips, only in those situations where you have the top hands I listed. If you have A-Q, J-J, 10-10, A-J, etc., you fold if someone bets you for all your chips. Using the 75% number, if you risk all in:

3 times - You'll survive the tournament 42% of the time (0.75^3)
5 times - You have a 24% survival rate (0.75^5)
10 times - You have a 5% chance of staying in the tournament (0.75^10)

Think about that: even if you get your money in with the best odds every single time for only 3 times throughout the entire tournament, the numbers are still against you winning in the end (you have a 58% probability of losing at least one of those 3 times and getting eliminated). True, this is also assuming the other guy has more chips than you all 3 times, but if you've been playing that tight, you'll definitely be going against larger stacks more often than not. And if you ask me, 3 times is a very low estimate for that situation to come up in a tournament (I think even 5 or 10 would be a conservative number).

Moral of the story: it's better to be lucky than good in a poker game.

Of course, that doesn't mean that skill is worthless - pros will still win more money in the same game than amateurs in the long run. But these calculations tell us that if you want to win a tournament, you definitely can't win it on skill alone.

* If any of you are interested in how I got the numbers for those odds, www.cardplayer.com has an applet that lets you calculate odds in Hold'em. The rest of the calculations are high school math.

Old Pics

I was looking through pictures a few days ago and thought I'd post some here. (Warning: lots of pictures, may load very slowly)

*Mom and Dad*

My dad's graduation picture


Dad and his homies when he was about my age


My mom in high school.


Mom when she was about my age


Mom and Dad on Engagement Day


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*Me*

Me in diapers


Me in a girly outfit in a stroller


Studio picture - check out those rolls


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*Me and my sis*

Just chillin


Man was she one ugly baby


Doing math - notice me looking all cocky, I was born to multiply baby


I love this picture, cracks me up every time


Brother and sister picture in the studio


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*Modern Day*

Dad in his current office


Family minus me last Christmas


Me and Sis in college


9/12ths of the Dudo League in college (if you count "Rod")


Me and my favorite P_ongbunkors in college

Happy birthday to my sister. I can't believe my little sis is all grown up now - graduating college, turning 22, and soon to become a career woman.

Congrats to everyone else who graduated recently. Welcome to post-college life, it's awesome.

Happy anniversary to Olivia (actually a few days ago). It really feels like 3 years went by in the blink of an eye.

I think I am the guy in the School Spirit track (14) on Kanye West's CD:

"When a lady walks up to me and says 'hey, you know what's sexy?' I say 'No I don't know what it is, but I bet I can add up all the change in your purse, very fast.'"

When I heard that, I was like hey, that's me! Might as well be me talking right there. Yeah, you all wonder how someone can grow up in this country without ever seeing a single one of the movies I listed, but you know what the reason for that is? A four-letter word: Math.

Yes, while everyone else was watching all those movies, I was doing math. Parties in high school? I was doing math. Lose Yourself video? I was doing math.

That's ok, I'm not bitter or anything. Math is cool. It's just a part of what I like to call "growing up Chinese".

Here's some more movies to add to my list:

- National Lampoon's (anything)
- Sixth Sense
- Friday (except scattered parts of it)
- Police Academy (any of them)
- Beverly Hills Cop
- Reservoir Dogs
- Green Mile
- L.A. Confidential
- Goonies
- Men In Black

The NBA playoffs suck, except maybe for Kevin Garnett.

What would you rather have pre-flop: Q-Q or A-K suited?

As I signed on to post this, Blogger invited me to try Gmail because I am an "active user" of Blogger. I don't know how it works, I remember a few weeks ago I got the same invite, but I figured I'd just do it later. Then it disappeared, and then I heard that the invite was some exclusive thing and people were actually selling it on eBay for money. So I was pissed for missing my chance. Anyways, I guess all is good now that I got invited again and I finally got my Gmail account. I don't think they're giving me the opportunity to invite other people now though, so I can't be making any cash off it on eBay. Oh well.

I just saw a commercial on TV (I think by Michigan's tourism agency Michigan.org that showed a couple walking on the beach at sunset, with the caption: "Suddenly, yard work doesn't seem as important anymore". What a terrible ad, I was filled with rage to see how ignorant people can be, dissing my beloved hobby of yard work.

Finally, I saw Last Samurai as a rental. I thought it was a pretty good movie, not awesome though. A lot of parts of the story were not very realistic, and some scenes were flat out corny at times, but you know what, since the last movie I saw was Van Helsing, no amount of corniness can compare. In my opinion, the best thing about the movie was the scenery and the battle scenes, especially the ninjas vs. samurai.

Also, I didn't really see the movie as being "condescending" or "racist" against Asians as I've heard. I can see how some people could get mad about certain things, but that's only if you're looking for stuff to get mad about. I mean, if it were up to me, every movie would portray the yellow man as more complete, 3-dimensional characters. I don't expect every Asian in every movie to be shown in a positive light, but at least put some thought into developing the characters is what I ask. Anyways, while the makers of Last Samurai could have done a lot better in terms of promoting racial awareness and understanding, I don't think this movie was that bad enough for people to call it "racist". There are definitely bigger fish for you Asian American activists out there to fry.

It seems like at least once a week, people will be talking about old movies when I'll say "I've never seen that movie", which leads to me getting some looks of disbelief. This leads me to conclude that there's a lot of supposedly good movies that I haven't seen. So I've decided to keep a running list of titles that fit into this category here. Here's what I have so far:

- Godfather (any of them)
- Field of Dreams
- The Natural
- Major League (I think there's more than one, I haven't seen any)
- Top Gun
- Desperado
- Romeo & Juliet
- Apollo 13
- The Wedding Singer
- Seven
- Die Hard (any of them)
- Caddyshack
- Freaky Friday

Also, happy bday to Rich. And belated to Paul (sorry I missed your bashes).

Some Pictures

Me and Grandma Chen on Mother's Day. She's not looking at the camera because she's pretty much blind.


My new 2-monitor setup in my room. Starcraft on one screen, baseball scoreboard on the other. Doesn't get much better than that.


Apprentice Bill Rancic at the Sox game. I was a fan of him before I saw him run out to the mound and throw out the first pitch. The guy runs and throws like a girl.


White Sox 15, Orioles 0. Thanks to Dennis, free tickets, free parking, awesome weather, 3 brats and 2 beers... life is good.


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Also, happy birthday to Vira.