How We Got Enron!

…a lot.

I have a bad tendency in poker tournaments to finish one off the money. For example, if 4 players are going to finish in the money, I’ll finish fifth more often than not. Once I break through I’m pretty dangerous; there’s a good chance I’ll win once I get in the money. But today I had another reminder why I find it difficult to get over that hurdle.

Event: $30 buy-in single table (10 players) at PartyPoker.com

Key hands:

• Early on, with all ten players still alive and the blinds at 15/30, I get a pair of queens on the small blind. Everyone folded to the player in ninth position who raised to 60, the dealer re-raised to 150 and I called. The original raiser re-raised all-in with his last 530 chips, the dealer re-raised all-in with 735 chips (which was unnecessary since both the original raiser and I had less chips) and I called with my last 505, hoping I was against smaller pairs like jacks or tens where I’d be a big favorite and/or AK which would have me at about a 55/45 advantage. So now we’ve got three players all-in before the flop and a pot of 2160 chips. The cards are turned over and I see AQ offsuit in ninth position (bad news for me since he has one of my queens) and a pair of aces on the button. It really could not have turned out much worse for me. The aces were about an 85% favorite with my queens a distant second at about 10% and the AQo in really bad shape at around a 5% chance to win. The flop brought little help to anyone: 7h, 8s, 5d and now the aces were about a 90% favorite. The turn (fourth) card was another 8 (diamonds) so I’m pretty sure I’m finished with only one out - the final queen in the deck. Then it happened - the case queen came on the river making a full house for me (queens full of eights) against the “dead man’s hand” of aces over eights. The miracle card saved me and allowed me to triple up my stack, taking the chip lead with 1930 chips (the player on the button got his 230 chip overbet back).
• With four players left I’m in pretty desperate shape, short-stacked with only 515 chips left after posting the big blind of 300. The button moves all-in with 2710 chips and I have little choice but to call with AJ offsuit. The player directly behind me and the small blind folded, leaving me a shot at 1780 heads-up against JT suited (hearts), making me a 2:1 (67/33) favorite to win. The flop was 2h, Kd, 5s and when the ace of hearts fell on the turn, I had made top pair, but now my opponent was left with a heart flush draw and my chances of winning actually went down about 7%, from 4:1 (80/20) after the flop to about 73% with one card to come. The river card was a harmless 2 of diamonds and I survived. Unfortunately, so did all the other players until the next key hand five hands later…
• At this point I’m on the button, third in chip count at 1480 with the leader a little less than double my stack at 2830 and second-place at 2595. The short stack was also on the small blind this hand(200/400) , leaving him with 895 chips after posting the blind. After a fold from the chip leader, I raised with KT suited to double the blind at 800, leaving me with 680 chips. The big blind re-raised all-in and now I have a decision to make. This is the same guy that earlier moved all-in with JT suited and now I’m wondering if he has something similar. I decide he’s probably holding either a small pair or a weak ace. In either case, he’s the favorite. But there’s still a chance that he’s holding smaller suited connectors or maybe he’s just trying to push me off the pot and pull in 1000 chips for free. I call. He has a pair of sevens which means we’re in a virtual dead heat with him holding a slight 51/49 advantage. The flop brings a seven, but also a nine and a king, leaving me in a huge hole but with some glimmer of hope. When the turn brought a jack, I had a little more life with four queens to make a straight and two kings left to give me a better three-of-a-kind. Alas, the river was unkind this time and brought only a lowly six, knocking me out of the tournament. One off the money. Again.

In hindsight, there are a lot of reasons that was a bad call on my part:

1. This guy hadn’t shown much of a propensity to bluff earlier, so the only real chance I had was that he was raising with weaker suited connectors like the jack-ten he played earlier. I should have placed this likelihood at about 20%.
2. My initial read was right: small pair or an overcard ace. I should have rated this at around 60% probability.
3. The worst case would have been a high pair (KK or AA) or AK. Given that tournament tables tend to tighten up at the end, in hindsight I should have judged this at around 20%.

If I had properly evaluated his likelihood to be bluffing or raising with a worse hand at 20%, that leaves me with an eighty percent chance that I was about to risk my tournament life on either a coin flip or as a significant underdog. A bad gamble no matter how you look at it. If I drop the hand, I’m in bad shape with only 680 chips left and the blinds at 200/400, but I’m still alive and maybe someone goes out in the next hand or two. Or maybe I catch a monster hand. Live to fight another day.

Since I’ve made the same mistakes several times in the past, I’m hoping that writing it down this time drills it into my thick skull. *sigh*

It’s been almost three weeks. What gives? Busy at work? Can’t think of anything interesting to write about? Working on something that will amaze and astound you when it is finally released - nay, unleashed upon the world?

We’ll continue to track this story and update you as events warrant.

In the course of asking how everyone’s day went, this is one of the responses I got from Mitch today. We have a cat (my wife Carol’s) that is about 16 years old who has decided over the last few months that the litter box is basically optional. Charming. So anyway, Carol had already told me about the unfortunate scooter incident (we keep Mitch’s scooter in the foyer near the front door for easy access to front yard scootering action) so I couldn’t help but laugh to hear a four-year-old’s righteous indignation summed up in those particular five words.

Mitch didn’t think it was funny at all. And really, why the hell would a cat - or any animal, for that matter - crap on a Batman scooter?! That just ain’t right

My apologies to any Phillie Phans who may have stumbled in here, but I keep going back to that Sept. 7 game and looking at what happened. Once again using the win expectancy finder, I was able to chart the game in terms of each team’s win probability after each discrete event:

Each event is shown in the table below along with the win probability calculated immediately after the event for the given game state (inning, number of outs, baserunners and run differential). The table also includes Win Probability Added (WPA) for each event, representing the relative value of the play from the Phillies’ perspective:

(click to enlarge)

In the space of an inning-and-a-half, the Phillies went from a 14.1% chance to win before Abreu’s home run to a 97.5% chance before the Bell error, which by itself only cost the Phillies a little less than 3% against their chances to win. After the Biggio home run, the Phillies chances dropped almost 80 points to 8.1% before Brad Lidge finished off the game.

Further proof that the 27th out is the hardest one to get. Just ask LaTroy Hawkins. Stuff like this happens all the time in baseball, which is part of what makes it the Great Game. And it’s also what makes it the Cruelest Game.

I rarely watch Leno, but my wife happened to notice that Liz Phair was on tonight, so I went ahead and set the Dish PVR to grab the show since I’d already planned to watch Rushmore - these are the exciting things that go on at our house at night.

So, yeah. Liz Phair is promoting her new album that comes out tomorrow. I’m still hoping to figure out a way to do trick-or-treating with the kids on Halloween and still have time to head down to the Gypsy Tea Room to see her at the end of the month. But just like her transition from indie darling to AAA pop star, we all gotta grow up some time. I’m glad she and Paul Westerberg are kinda pulling me along into middle age (or is the other way round?) Along with my kids and you people on the message boards where I spend too much time, it keeps me feeling young.

Same with Rushmore. I love Max Fischer and Herman Blume. Something about that movie really connects with me in a way that few others do. I guess it’s the fact that I see myself right in between a 15-year-old confused idealist like Max and the jaded, world-weary Herman who has a feeling that there’s still greatness to be had out there if he can just find his Rushmore. And there’s something about the closing scene at Max’s wrap party - the “Heaven and Hell Cotillion” that really gets to me. Part of that I guess is the fact that I saw that movie with two of the best friends I’ll ever have on the weekend of my bachelor party in Indianapolis. They’re divorced now and that makes me sad. But something about the dance scene and The Faces’ “Ooh La La” brings all the good memories flooding back.

Christ, the maudlin birthday introspection is hitting a little early this year. 37. Screw me. Well, at least there’s the Kevin Smith tie-in for comic relief.

I wish that I knew what I know now
when I was younger
I wish that I knew what I know now
when I was stronger

And I wish Liz played guitar more.
[fade to black]

One of the reasons I [heart] baseball is the fact that over a 162-game schedule, you never know when one game is going to make the difference between a post-season berth and just another season. 1993 was one of my favorite seasons when the San Francisco Giants won 103 games and missed the playoffs, losing the National League West title to Atlanta by a single game. I never went back and verified it - and I don’t feel like doing it right now - but I’m sure there was a late-inning melt-down that wound up costing the Giants dearly. Of course, 1993 was also the last year before the introduction of the wild card, a fact I’m sure is lamented among Bay Area baseball fans.

With this year’s playoff matchups set, we now know just how catastrophic the Phillies loss was against Houston on September 7. Holding on to a 6-5 lead gained after taking the lead in the bottom of the eighth inning, Phillies closer and former Astro Billy Wagner came out to put the cap on a Philadelphia win that would have kept them within a game-and-a-half of the wild card lead. With two outs, nobody on and a one-run lead in the top of the ninth, the win expectancy finder rated Houston’s chances of winning as one-in-40 (2.5%). After David Bell booted a potential game-ending grounder at third and Willy Tavares beat out an infield single, Craig Biggio hit a three-run homer, taking the Phillies chances to win from 97.5% to 7.6% in the space of three at bats, two of which came after the two-out error. Brad Lidge came in to pitch a perfect bottom of the ninth for the Astros, making Philadelphia’s chances to win approximately 0.0%.

The mlb.com account of the game noted at the time that “(t)he important thing to remember is that the Phillies weren’t eliminated from the playoff race Wednesday after a back-breaking 8-6 loss to the Astros…” but 3½ weeks later, the Phillies find themselves one win short of forcing a playoff game tomorrow at home against Houston.

And that’s just one reason I [heart] this game.

I’ve always had a bit of a melancholy feeling on the last day of the regular season. The last day of the season is a sure sign that winter is nigh upon us and that another year has come and gone. Yes, we still have the playoffs, but there’s something about the last game of 162 that bears a special kind of finality.

When the late Harry Caray was still doing ballgames for the Cubs on WGN, he’d do a little closing speech - a kind of benediction, really - at the end of the last game of the season that he always concluded with the words “God willing, we’ll see you all on Opening Day.” I still miss him.

Here’s to you, friends. God willing, we’ll be back for Opening Day 2006.

I was greeted this morning by a picture of a very morose Tom DeLay on the front page of The Dallas Morning News under the headline “Defiant DeLay indicted in election fund scheme.” Seems the Republican congressman from suburban Houston known as “The Hammer” has been doing a bit of money laundering.

This story brings me much glee which reached a crescendo when I was flipping around the new channel lineup on Sirius and landed on “Super Shuffle” (Ch. 12 or 6012 for Dish Network subscribers) where they were playing Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop.” This put me in mind of the raucous end to the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York after the unlikely Bill Clinton took the nomination and ran with it all the way to the White House, where the Quantum President both delivered and failed on the promise of a progressive renewal - but that’s for another post. Anyway, as Mick Fleetwood and Co. were working through their signature song, I couldn’t help but look over at the paper sitting on the passenger’s seat, point at the picture of DeLay and do my best Nelson Muntz “HA HA!”

ESPN.com ran a story yesterday on Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis granting a young boy’s dying wish. A kid named Montana Mazurkiewicz from Mishawaka was destined to be a Notre Dame fan, named after Joe Montana with a prototypical Northern Indiana surname. You’d expect to hear a name like that called over the PA system on a chilly Friday night at School Field: “Mazurkiewicz on the stop, loss of two yards.” That’s what makes a story like this so tough to read.

I’ve never been much of a Notre Dame fan myself, but it’s hard not to pull for a guy who says “we have no choice. We’re throwing it to the right.” The right thing to do is not always the same as the correct thing to do. Good on ya Coach Weis for knowing the difference, and Go Irish.

From a recent conversation I had with someone:

Someone: “Did you hear what Louis Farrakhan had to say about the flood in New Orleans?”
Me: “No.”
Someone: “He said that white people purposely blew up the levees to drown the black people.”
Me: “Huh.”
Someone: “Isn’t that scary?”

First off, I haven’t verified the accuracy of this account, though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that it was true, just another modern urban fable or, perhaps most likely, somewhere in between. I do know that some very frustrated residents of the Ninth Ward believed that the levees were purposely destroyed by the government to save the French Quarter and other more affluent neighborhoods in the city. Where they got that idea, I’m not sure.

In any case, this exchange launched me into full pontificating mode: “Scary? I suppose. Not as scary as Pat Robertson saying we should assassinate Hugo Chavez, though. The people that listen to Farrakhan are mostly powerless and disenfranchised which is why they’d be willing to listen to something like that. The people that listen to Robertson have power that reaches to the White House. You tell me which is more scary.” I’m paraphrasing my response there, and it’s probably better stated here than when it came out of my mouth, but the point was the same. Scary is as scary does. And as scary as fellows like Farrakhan can be, it’s a lot more worrisome to me when the loonies have influence over people who can actually do something about it.