December 26, 2006
FTP Software Thread
I've been playing on Full Tilt a bit lately. You guys seem to enjoy the poker software discussions, so let's talk about theirs a bit. Here's my take, and I'll list items in rough order of importance, ignoring the features that are common to almost every major site unless, of course, they are lacking.
The Good
Rakeback: Huge. If it wasn't for that I'd not play there at all. I don't blame Stars for not allowing it, I wouldn't either in their position, but without it Full Tilt would be lost.Stability: The site seems to work all of the time. I haven't played there a whole lot, but every time I've wanted to it was there. It isn't like Paradise (or Party for much of its history) which slowed down greatly or ceased to function during prime business hours.
Heads up tables: for some reason that I can't determine a lot of sites still don't spread these. Full Tilt does. Nice. Sometime when I'm in a better frame of mind I'll probably put in some serious time at those.
One click to join a wait list: On a lot of sites when you join a waiting list you first have to click "join" and then have to click "OK" to confirm. Why? What could possibly be the point of that particular failsafe? Without that, what's going to happen? It's not as if you ever heard anyone say "Well, I meant to sign up for $10/$20, but I accidentally put my name on the $100/$200 list instead. I didn't notice it so I didn't just unregister right away. And then when it was my turn I figured 'what the hell, I'm already on the list'. And that's why I'm homeless now."
I have to assume that 99% of all "Join List" clicks are intentional, and since nothing bad happens if you accidentally join the wrong one it's stupid to add an extra click to the process. Full Tilt doesn't, and I appreciate that.
The Bad
Tables don't resize: As I've said before, this is inexcusable. Every cheap piece of shareware and freeware since 1994 has had a resizable GUI. It's simply retarded to not have this feature. It's undoubtedly the biggest blemish on their user experience for frequent players. I won't even attempt to play there when I'm on my laptop since the resolution is too small, and when on my desktop, which has 2 24" monitors attached, I actually like to enlarge the screens on Stars. I've heard rumors that Full Tilt is working on this, but those began circulating months ago and still no evidence that they are true.Cashier: They offer payment methods but don't let you use anything other than Neteller to put in any reasonable amount of money. Then you call to try to get your limits raised for another method (ePassporte in my case) and they are rude to you, asking you personal questions and trying to talk you into using Neteller. Given that Neteller will almost assuredly be closing their service off to Americans in a few months, if I were in their shoes I would be encouraging people to use ePassporte now, so that when the time comes they don't have a serious lull in their action. Beyond the immediate money lost they might risk future injury should that happen. Poker players go where the action is, like sheep following the herd, and even a short period without it might cause a good number of them to flock elsewhere for good. One of the more intelligent things a site could do now is to encourage players to make the switch to other methods of payment processing.
Speed: the site is slow. Very slow. Playing two 6 max limit hold'em tables on Stars at a time you'll see about 300 hands per hour if you're at the speed tables. That number is undoubtedly less on Full Tilt, but I can't say how much for sure because of…
Lack of speed tables: Full Tilt has them, but for some reason limits them to one per game. For instance, there is never more than 1 $15/$30 6 max speed table. With most sites, the general rule is that they keep opening new tables so that there is always one table in a given game that has no players at it. Given the fact that the overhead involved in spreading a table is virtually zero, that makes a lot of sense. Full Tilt does that with regular tables, so you will always see, say, an empty $30/$60 6 max table. But they don't do that with speed tables. There's one, which is usually full, and that's it. That's idiotic. It costs them money and frustrates those of us who'd like to play faster.
Speed Tables Suck: they don't have a "wait for next blind" button when you first get into the game, so you have to manually wait until you're in the right spot. That's a pain in the ass. They also don't have a "sit out at next blind" box either which, as you guys pointed out a few days back, is essential.
Lobby: Clunky to say the least. I don't understand why everyone hasn't implemented one like Party's (except, ideally, it should actually update in real time) where you can sort by individual limits. On Full Tilt you can sort by high, medium, and low stakes, which is fine to have as an option in addition to individual stakes, but they include everything from $10/$20 to $1,000,000/$2,000,000 (or whatever the highest game they have is) in the "high stakes" category, which renders it useless for sorting.
Overview
Looking at Full Tilt's software makes you wonder if anyone at their site is actually using it. Or, if so, if they're actually using anyone else's too. I really get the feeling that the answer is no. That or they are and they just don't care.
So I'll probably be doing most of my playing on Stars for now. Their FPP program adds up to around 20% rakeback. It's nowhere near what I get at Full Tilt, but the 50% more hands per hour will easily make for a higher profit in the long run. And the added luxuries of table resizing and speed tables that don't suck will make the experience much more pleasurable. Not to mention that I have to play there when on my laptop, which is a good percentage of the time, and the pain of getting money in and out of Full Tilt makes me just want to play elsewhere. Rakeback is pretty nice though, so who knows.
Am I neglecting anything in my synopsis here?
Posted by themaroon at 2:24 PM | Comments (9)
December 18, 2006
David Sklansky Is A Douchebag, Part 2
Not to flog a dead horse here, but I find Sklansky's latest blowup pretty interesting. In the comments to my last post a reader wrote:
I think the point Sklansky is making is a bit more subtle than "Christian evangelicals are bad at math." I think the point he really wants to make is that anyone with a reasonable amount of logical ability doesn't truly believe in the resurrection and that belief in Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven.
I think it's actually even a bit more subtle than that. David has written a little bit before about a couple things known as the problem of Hell and the problem of evil, though I don't know if he's aware that these are ages old topics of debate. The second of his polygraph tests make me think that the real meat of his proposition is that nobody of sound logical ability could give any serious thought to the problem of Hell and come to the conclusion necessary to pass that part.
I will admit that I agree with David that the belief that an omnibenevolent being would consign people to hell for not believing in Christ is pretty hard to rationally justify, given that the vast majority of all humans who have ever lived, and even the majority of humans who have lived since Christ, have never even heard of him. It would make no sense to create people, give them no opportunity to save themselves, and then punish them, especially if you buy into the whole free will thing. How can you have free will if you are never introduced to Christ and therefore have no possible fate other than damnation? So I'll grant him that the belief is an absurd one for any intelligent person to have.
Still, his wager is very unsound. First of all, as many have pointed out, there are the technical issues. Polygraphs are notoriously unreliable and theoretically could be beaten. Even if nobody intentionally cheated there are enough people who've read that challenge that if all of them who excel at math took those polygraphs a decent number would pass just due to errors in the system.
Also the SAT and GRE math sections are both very, very easy. I'm pretty sure I could reliably ace them in half the allotted time. It would take me a little effort, my math skills are a little rusty, but neither of them has anything more advanced than what I studied in high school so I'm pretty sure that with a week or two of preparation I could do it.
And the best part is, I could find out if I'm correct about that or not. You can get all of the tests from the last decade and simply try it yourself in half the time. So anyone who thought they could pass the polygraphs, honestly or otherwise, would effectively know going in whether or not they could be beaten. I would be surprised if anyone who could actually lose would take the bet.
And even if you ignore the technical aspects of the wager, there's still the fact that plenty of intelligent people believe absurd things. Sometimes they simply haven't thought them through. Sometimes they simply choose to believe something absurd. David is assuming total objectivity, which is never the case, and even near-total objectivity is only rarely the case.
A lot of people simply want to believe what they are told. And a lot of people are told that anyone who doesn't believe in Christ goes to Hell. There are loads of people with Ph.D's in math, engineering, or science from prestigious universities like MIT who believe in creationism, and that we didn't evolve from another species. That's totally ridiculous, yet they're certainly capable of wrecking the SAT math section. And they undoubtedly have sound logical ability. They're the minority in the scientific community, and probably looked down upon (and rightly so) by the majority, but that doesn't change the fact that they're good at science and math. They simply choose (probably subconsciously) not to use their ability all of the time.
So I have no doubt that there are people who excel at math and logic (some moreso than Sklansky) who could pass those polygraphs honestly, and lots of them. If David sincerely believes otherwise he is a fool.
There are some other gems in that thread too. I mentioned that someone brought up Ken Jennings. A blogger named Elaine Vigneault (who appears to be Ed Miller's wife) said "If this is for real, I’m betting on the God guy." Me too, should he and Sklansky compete on an overall SAT or GRE score. A lot of people mention that Jeopardy is only a test of knowledge, but that isn't entirely true. But even if it were, and even if you missed his lightning-fast wit on his Jeopardy appearances, you can read Jennings (I enjoyed Braniac and read his blog daily) or listen to him speak and you'll realize instantly that he's a very smart guy.
Sklansky apparently read that quote from Elaine and replied with:
Makes me use every ounce of my willpower not to reissue the challenge to every non Asian American female.
Umm, wow. Should that last ounce of willpower evaporate and David ever actually does issue that challenge, I'm calling dibbs on the first 10 shots. I don't personally know any women I'd back, largely because I don't know many women at all, but I bet I can find them pretty easily. I have many friends who attend or attended prestigious math programs all around the country, and I guarantee I could dig up a few non-Asian American women who could ace that thing in half the allotted time with ease. And we all know how broke college students are. They'd gladly do it for $10k. I'll be more than ecstatic to put half a million together, escrow it, and line up ten challengers.
And also in that thread, well-known online poker player Sheets weighed in, offering to accept the challenge. I was hoping something would happen there, figuring he was a serious contender, but then he said this:
Let me share with you true genius....one of my best friends growing up became very successful at several businesses, one of them being 900 numbers and also long distance...At one point he hired a psychic and paid her 100k a year. Why? Because, according to him, it was worth it, in case he was wrong about all of it being bs. THIS is genius, because it accepts that there may be things that we DONT know, and it is THIS view that leads to scientific advances, NOT the view that...'OMFG IF THIS GUY REALLY BELIEVES THAT....I BET I CAN BEAT HIM IN A MATH TEST BWAHAHAHAHHA I AM SO SMART"
That may be the single dumbest thing I've ever heard. That's one of those statements that, as Lewis black would say, when you hear it, causes your left brain to look at your right brain and say "Fuck, it's dark in here. I'm going to take a nap."
Even if you ignore the abominable English (why do morons love the ellipsis and capitals so much? They all do, and I just don't get it.) there's the fact that that is still the most retarded thing anyone has ever said. I agree that there are things that we don't know, or as people with third grade writing skills would say, "things that we DONT know", but one of them is not whether or not psychics are phony. Spending money on them (for any purpose other than recreation) is retarded. It's not genius because there are things that we do know, and one of them is that spending $100k on a psychic because they might be real is fucking stupid. Period.
Unbeknownst to him, Sheets actually illustrates why Sklansky is wrong. Someone who excelled at business did something retarded. On a stupidity scale of 1-10, believing that everyone who isn't Christian is eternally punished by an omnibenevolent deity might be a 9, but paying a psychic $100k a year is undoubtedly a 10. If someone able to make enough money to waste $100k does something like that, I think it proves that anyone can believe something irrational if they try hard enough.
Posted by themaroon at 7:18 AM | Comments (16)
December 15, 2006
Poker Pundit Talks Trash To Trivia Champ
Could we have a showdown between Ken Jennings and David Sklansky? I hope so, but smart money, knowing Sklansky, is on no.
Earlier today I found this nugget in Google Reader seconds after posting it. All I can say is, wow. Dave makes so many logical errors in his arguments there. The most obvious is the idea that because those two beliefs are illogical (and I'll grant him that they are) anyone with a very strong logical ability could not possibly believe them. That's actually just absurd. If anything people who are smarter have more ability to convince themselves of things they want to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary.
There are actually a number of very well respected scientists who are quite religious. Newton was famous for saying that he spent more time studying the Bible than he did math or physics, and given his time period I would not be surprised if he could have passed David's polygraph. The church was far more fire-and-brimstone then than it is now.
If David had set the wager up better I'd probably take his side. For instance I'd be more than willing to bet that the average atheist would outscore the average non-atheist, and definitely the average person who believed those two things. But to assume that every believer has less logical capacity than him is just plain naïve. It overrates his own logical ability and underrates the power of self-delusion.
I think 2+2 poster HeavilyArmed summed up David's challenge perfectly by saying
It's pure ego with plenty of wiggle room and no point proven, win or lose (or much more likely never undertaken).Ni han sir. Ni han.From David I expect nothing less.
I like Ken's response. After having read a lot of his stuff and seeing his speed in his many Jeopardy appearances, I'd probably take him in a straight IQ test or GRE (verbal included) over Sklansky. I wouldn't put the whole bankroll on it, but I'd put up a chunk. He's obviously a very bright guy and very well-rounded, and David is definitely a one-trick pony.
Posted by themaroon at 11:43 PM | Comments (6)
December 11, 2006
The Legend Continues
So, I haven't been running too good lately, but I'm winning a little. And, most importantly, I've been playing. My daily jaunts to Panera and a couple other local restaurants have really been helping out. I'm thinking of getting an EVDO data plan from Verizon or Sprint to expand my dining options, but maybe I'll save the money and just look around for places with free WiFi. A lot of restaurants that don't have it themselves are close enough to a Best Buy or somewhere else that does.
So I haven't been making much money this month but I've gotten very good at eating a sandwich one-handed. It's one of those things that I hope never really benefits me, but if I ever somehow get my right arm stuck in a wood chipper, it's one less thing I'll have to deal with afterwards. That has to be worth something.
I am glad to be playing again. I don't know what inspired my recent surge in motivation, but I've really been on my best behavior lately. I've been working, exercising, and writing on a daily basis. It really makes me wonder what the hell I did for those 8 hours per day for the last few months. I would say I was wallowing in my own bad streak-induced self pity, but that took up 2 of them at most.
Also I think plans are firming up for my next book. I've got an idea, and I think it could be pretty solid. It's poker related, but not instructional in any way and not aimed specifically at poker players, though I think they'll enjoy it. I don't want to say too much about it until I'm sure I'm going to do it, it's still just a possibility at this point.
It's the sort of book one might shop for a major publisher for, so if I get a little bit into it and like where it's headed I will be in the market for an experienced literary agent, if anyone knows one. I've been told by some people who would know that having a fairly successful book under my belt means I could probably get good agents to talk to me which, in the publishing industry, is half of the battle. The agents that I dealt with last time were nice enough people, but I've found out since that I wasn't well-represented. Live and learn I guess.
Posted by themaroon at 10:17 AM | Comments (2)