Facebook Poker Experiences

I have been playing poker (Texas Hold Em) on Facebook for close to three months now and the experience has been a good one overall. If there is one good thing about playing poker online, it is the fact that a novice has many more opportunities to gain experience online than in a live scenario. Facebook poker is not played using real money, which makes it more attractive as a novice has nothing to lose.

The system in Facebook is that each player starts with about 400 chips and is supposed to play his way up the rankings and chip tallies. Facebook is very liberal with chip bonuses, giving each player either 200 or 500 chips (depending on player level) when they log in first time each day. There are also bonuses for passing certain landmarks (e.g., a 5000 bonus for crossing 50k chips, along with a 5 star ranking and the right to call yourself a shark :))

This post is starting to look like an endorsement for Facebook poker, which wasn't my original intention, so I'll get right to the point. I have felt my approach to poker change a lot after playing online for these three months. I had written about this in an earlier post, but I'll recap a few points. I feel that many people approach poker the wrong way. They simply treat it as another form of gambling, much like roulette or craps, and this attitude reflects in their gameplay. The truth is that poker is a game with a significant component of skill that goes with the luck. Some professional players (yes is it indeed possible to make a living playing poker, but is isn't the life of a gambling addict) say that it is 80% skill and 20% luck while others give different numbers, but the undeniable fact is that skill goes a long way in playing the game. Facebook poker is unfortunately filled with a large number of novices who play a very risky and amateur game where they simply throw in chips with crappy hands in the hope of getting lucky and striking gold. I don't expect everyone to play solidly and I know that unpredictability is a useful attribute in poker but there should always be a method to the madness. In some cases, the sheer stupidity of certain plays is so aggravating that it can get me steaming, which is the exact opposite of the way a good player should play.

A cursory google search for poker strategy will yield so many results that it isn't possible for me to compactly explain what it is about these novice gambling wannabes that gets me so riled up. Instead, I will try to illustrate my point by narrating a few bad beat stories. I know that most pros hate hearing such stories, but then again, a pro wouldn't be learning anything new from my post :).

My first bad beat story deals with a sit N go where I was short stacked with 490 chips. The guy to my left was an aggressive character who would put a lot of pressure on me by reraising every time I entered the pot. I had folded only three hands and I was suddenly down from 1000 to 490 chips with 5 players left. The guy to my left had abut 3000 chips. I got AK suited, which is a really strong hand and so I raised to 4X the big blind by putting in 200 chips. The guy to my left raises to 500 chips, which is puzzling to me because it is a move that indicates a monster hand like pocket aces. Surprisingly one other guy called the raise. At this stage I had to go all in as I knew my AK stood a good chance of winning. The aggressive guy managed to bully the other guy out of the pot and it turned out that he had 4 6 offsuit!!!. Of course, dame luck was her fickle self and he caught a 6 on the river to win all my chips and knock me out of the tournament.

My analysis here is simple. Even aggressive players need to respect raises by other players, especially with junk like 4 6 offsuit. This guy should have folded to my raise of 200 chips because
a) His cards were junk and b) he could not possibly bully me off the pot when I was short stacked. In short he was playing like a brainless schoolyard bully and deserved to give me his chips. While his play wasn't the most braindead play I had seen on facebook, it was a pretty stupid play. Unfortunately, he got lucky and got the better of me.

In poker parlance, people who play this way are referred to as either fish or donkeys, but a comparison to a wild gibbon randomly throwing fruit your way hoping to hit you is also apt. I had another such encounter in the gibbon infested habitat of facebook when a guy made it a point of raising and calling my reraises with clearly inferior hands. In one case, I had AQ and he and something like J4 and caught a 4 on the river after calling my all in bet on a flop which didn't help him. I had raised preflop with AQ to give others a chance to get away from the hand without any trouble, but this fellow was the kind of fish who falls in love with a picture card. Even the call preflop is tolerable, but not folding to a sizeable bet on the flop is something which puzzled me and further confirmed to me that the guy really had no clue. Of course, the moron got lucky and took over 1500 chips from me. This was not a tournament and so I restacked with the idea of making him pay the next time he blundered. Unfortunately, it was a similar situation five minutes later when I had AK and he had K6 and he caught a 6 on the river to win again.

My last story is a weird one because of the betting patterns of one of the players. I was playing a table where few people raised preflop, but almost everyone would call. I raised with AK in mid position, and had a lot of callers. The flop came A 8 9, which made me very happy. It was checked to me and I fired a good sized bet. Many guys folded but there were still two more guys who called and one guy was before me. The turn was a Q. First guy checks, I put in anther big bet, third guy folds and first guy calls. I feel that the first guy's behaviour is very suspicious because he was calling without any hesitation as if he was confident he was ahead. The river was a J. The first guy checks and I check as well because I had by now become more wary of the way these people played. I was expecting him to have two pair or trips.

Imagine my surprise and shock when the guy showed 10 7 offsuit. The guy had played like a drunk man, chased a draw in a highly suspect manner all the way to the river, made a straight on the river and did not bet on the river!!! I have seen bad poker players and worse, but that had to be one of the most braindead plays ever. The reason I am so harsh is because betting on the river was a win win for him. If I had called, he would have got more chips from me and if I had folded, he didn't have to show the table the junk that he was playing, which would have been to his advantage. Instead, by checking, he allowed me to get away scot free (although I was sorely tempted to fire a bet on the river).

Of course, the rest of the table congratulated the guy on his hand, which was proof that I was in gibbon central here. Still, it is always preferable not to berate inferior players at the poker table. I say this because by berating them, you will be educating them and making them play better, which automatically reduces your chances of extracting chips from them.

To sum up, poker isn't like chess, where the better player always wins. Sometimes making the right moves and decisions alone isn't enough. I am convinced that there will never be a Bobby Fischer of poker due to the sheer variance involved with amateur players who don't know when to fold. However, in the long run, patience and superior skill should catch enough luck to become profitable.

Back in India

I'm back in India and it feels wonderful.

I arrived here on the 18th, and it really surprises me how time just flies. I've been here for 11 days now and it still feels like I got off the plane just yesterday. I remember how it all felt the last time I landed in India after a year and a half in the US. It almost felt like I had never left. is time things are just a little bit different. Chennai has changed a lot since my last visit and it took me just a while to get things straight. Still, home always feels good and I'm glad I'm here. The last couple of months in grad school were a real grind and I was really looking forward t this break.

Now that I'm here, I realize that it is a lot harder to meet up with old friends face to face. Everyone is busy pursuing their dreams and careers and only a few people visit Chennai regularly. I hope to meet up with as many people as possible before I leave (on April 15th) but I also need to spend quality time with my family. My mother has been especially happy to see me, and has been spoiling me with nice home cooked food. My sister was writing her 10th board exams and she was very happy to get some help from me for the science exam (10th standard seems almost like a lifetime ago, but I still remembered enough to make a positive contribution).

Of course, now that my sister is done with her exams, there are vacation plans in the offing which will keep me busy the first week of April. I was toying around with the idea of a trip to Bangalore to visit a few friends who are there, but it looks like that plan will be shelved. However, one has to make the best use of one's time and I hope to completely soak up whatever I can of India before I leave for the grind of Grad school.

Poker @ Notre Dame

I first played poker (Texas Hold Em to be precise) about two years ago. That was my first year here at ND and it was one of those late night cards sessions with friends. We usually played simpler games during such sessions but then again, poker didn't look too complicated at first glance and so I gave it a shot.

I remember doing pretty badly in my first few attempts at the game (no surprise there). At any rate, I didn't get much practice because we were all rookies and it was rare for us to get enough people together and play poker anyway. Recently however, Facebook came up with an application for playing Texas Hold Em online and that renewed my enthusiasm for the game. I added the facebook application sometime in early January and it is the only thing that makes me log on to facebook these days. I must confess to being hooked on to poker right now and I've improved quite a lot in the last month or so.

If you are unfamiliar with poker, you can get a quick start with the rules of Texas Hold Em. The game has an interesting history as well.

When I first familiarized myself with the rules, I thought to myself that poker was just a game of luck. After all, there is a lot of uncertainty that the players deal with and things get messy when you try and predict what your opponent might have. It all looked like a lot of madness and almost no method. Besides, I had played Bridge when I was in IITM and that is one game that has almost zero luck associated with it. Bridge is like the chess of card games but poker seemed to be nothing like that.

If you feel the same way about poker after initially looking at the rules, you would be dead wrong just as I was. I won't deny that luck is an important and useful aspect of the game, but there is a lot going on in poker besides that. Your luck is something you have no control over and you accept that early on but the most important skill that I have learnt in the last month is patience. Think of it this way: You cannot be unlucky all the time. You must get decent hole cards at some stage. Your object should not be to try and play aggressive just to win the majority of the hands. You must instead attempt to maximize your profits when you have good cards and minimize losses when you have bad cards. You can do this only if you are patient. This is where a very fundamental maxim of poker comes in: a good poker player must know when to fold.

In the one month of online poker playing, I played a lot of hands, won many, lost many, folded a lot, bet a lot and ended up with a good stack of chips at the end of it. It was all very nice to be playing online but I wanted a chance to test myself in a live match against other players. I got a chance to do this recently in a poker tournament held at ND (in Legends). It was a free entry tournament, with each player starting with 300 chips and starting blinds of 5/10. The blinds were being increased periodically. An experienced player will see that such a format doesn't bode well for the patient and slow player because the blinds will themselves eat away at the chip stack unless you win something fast. I didn't have great luck that day and lasted about 45 minutes (the tournament itself was only 2 hours and 15 minutes long so I was there for 33% of it). Still, it was a good feeling to play live poker. I'm looking forward to more of that.

Today I played a nice poker game on Facebook. Unfortunately I just have to describe the game from memory. It was a nice tournament game because I changed playing style three times in the course of it and it pretty much proved how important timed aggression can be in poker. The following paragraphs have a lot of pokerspeak in them, so watch out!!

It was a starting table of 9 people, with 1000 starting chips. Blinds increased periodically and people who busted were eliminated from the table. I initially played slow and cautious, waiting for good hands and picking the time to push in forcefully. I was trying to be tight and showed aggression in limited bursts.

However, after there were only 4 of us left, I started getting a bit adventurous. I remember a couple of bluffs that worked out well. A good bluff is an amazing experience in poker, but it isn't easy to pull off against good players. I was quite pleased with myself for bluffing my opponents and getting a bit cocky. After the 4th guy was eliminated, I got even more aggressive with my betting. The other two guys were not too aggressive and I thought I could blow them away. Unfortunately, they called my bluff twice and nearly eliminated me. I was gone from chip leader to short stack in two bluffs.

An experienced poker player would have seen stuff like this too often to keep count. However, I decided to tone down and play safe and tight for a while. The other two guys could have used this situation to be more aggressive with me and try to force me out, but instead they were still very cautious in their gameplay. To give an analogy, I had dug myself into a deep hole and they were earlier providing me rope in the hope that I would hang myself. What they did not expect me to do was to wait for the right moment and actually climb out of the hole in one piece.

I must admit I was a bit lucky to not be eliminated because the blinds were pretty high at that stage. At one stage I had 320 chips and they had over 3k each. However, my opponents also did a couple of silly things like folding to me when I was in the big blind. That merely meant that even though I had a junk hand that only a madman would hope to win with, I still gained chips. They would sometimes have a go at each other when they got strong hands and I would get out of the way.

I had waited for some luck and soon enough I got a couple of good hands. When I got the good hands, I again tried to follow my usual bluffing pattern and made them call me, which resulted in me tripling up once. I then had to double up only one more time (which I was lucky enough to be able to do) and I was back in business. It was not long before I was calling the shots and eliminated the other two to finish first.

So, how did I win when both the other players had over 10 times my chips at one stage? Luck is only part of the answer. I feel that well timed aggression was the key because my opponents gave me life on more than two occasions by not pushing hard enough. In the long run, well timed aggression is a great weapon to bring to the poker table.

Overall, I must say I'm having fun playing poker and I'm improving slowly but surely. I hope to put a few poker updates whenever something exciting comes up.

Turning a Sphere Inside Out

Smale's Paradox is one of those mathematical results from differential geometry/topology that makes people do a double take when they first see it. In layman's terms, it says that it is possible to turn a sphere inside out in a 3-dimensional space with possible self-intersections but without creating any crease. I've heard of this result before and I initially thought of it as another reason why I'm glad I'm not doing a PhD in pure math. Some things in math are just too weird when viewed through the lens of common sense/everyday experience.

However, I saw a video on google that explains the paradox in slightly better than layman's terms (by precisely defining what kinds of transformations are allowed in order to bring about the sphere eversion). This is a top quality instructional video that just blew me away. It is the best demonstration of an advanced mathematical concept I have ever seen. Period. I think this would be a good video to show to students who are interested in advanced math because it explains a rather complicated topic in simple terms by providing a good way of visualizing the problem before diving headfirst into a bunch of equations. I hope you enjoy this video and the concepts it illustrates.




Incidentally, it seems Stephen Smale had proved the existence result in 1958 by using a nonconstructive proof (i.e., you could not have made any useful video based on the way he proved the result). The construction apparently came much later. This is not very unusual in modern mathematics, where people often prove the existence of things much before they can actually conjure it up for you.

Ray Bradbury's Coda

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that provokes a certain amount of thought when you read it at first. It is a dystopian novel, but not quite in the same mould as the other great dystopian novels of the 20th century. It is essentially a book about censorship, but not censorship as carried out by an organised government for the suppression of unpopular ideas, but censorship as an endemic practice within an anti intellectual society which in interested only in the most superficial things.

In my opinion, the book is a must read for everyone because one can clearly see how present day society is exhibiting some of symptoms that are described in the book. However, in recent editions of the book, Ray Bradbury has also included a small section called Coda, where he describes the exquisite irony of his book being subjected to the kind of censorship that he warns about within its pages. I recently saw the text of the Coda online.

I personally found the Coda to be a really inspirational piece of writing. It is short, precise and bluntly truthful in a way that is really refreshing. It captures not only the spirit and passion of a writer dedicated to his art, but also the way a writer needs his freedom to practice his art. As Bradbury says,

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist / Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse."

This statement unfortunately holds true even today. Writers are usually the ones who are best positioned to highlight uncommon and unpopular ideas and are therefore in the vanguard of all intellectual movements. Yet not all topics or points of view are open to a completely free and frank intellectual discussion in society today. To cripple writers in any way would be to cripple society as a whole and Ray Bradbury's Coda is a very poignant warning of this.

Finally, the last lines of the coda are simply brilliant.


"In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.

And no one can help me. Not even you."

Edit: Today I came across a "letter to the editor" in the ND newsletter (which is called The Observer) which shows that Bradbury's Coda isn't in danger of becoming irrelevant even within the confines of Notre Dame. It was about a suggestion by a mother daughter pair who apparently had a problem with the ND fight song (The Notre Dame Victory March). The song was written a long time back (the 1920s), when Notre Dame was a College for men only. Consequently, there is a gender specific reference to "Her Loyal Sons" in the song but these women wanted it to be changed (presumably to "her Loyal Sons and Daughters") to reflect the present scenario. Of course the University is itself referred to in the feminine gender throughout the song :). Talk about exquisite coincidence and irony.

Technology, Entertainment, Design

Today, I made a really interesting discovery. I discovered TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design).

Before you think I've flipped my lid, I must clarify that TED is an annual conference whose invited speakers are some really amazing people and whose talks are some of the most interesting ones I've ever heard. I happened to stumble upon their website today and I must say I was impressed with some of the talks. As an example, check out this talk by V. S. Ramachandran, who is a leading authority on brain and cognitive science research. I remember hearing about his work on "phantom limbs" a few years back. In this talk, he gives details about phantom limbs and a couple of other things. This is a must watch for all science enthusiasts/geeks.



Of course, not all talks are about science. For example, the following is a talk by Steven Pinker who argues that contrary to what most of us think, we actually live in a much less violent society than at any other time in human history. The talk is apltly titled "A Brief History of Violence".



As a finale (at least for this post), there is the talk by Steven Levitt, who presents some insightful analysis about crack cocaine dealers and the pressures they face in their day to day "business". It is one of the funniest talks I've ever heard.



These talks pretty much made my day. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. For more please visit their website.

Al Gore Wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

When I saw this headline today on google news, I had quite a mixture of thoughts going through my head. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. It made me wonder about the purpose served by the peace prize, and what the considerations are when people are considered for it.

Al Gore is a bit of a celebrity in the US. He is the face of the global movement to increase awareness of global warming. He is definitely a superstar activist who commands respect in liberal circles and controversy and disdain in conservative/neoconservative circles. However, I was still not sure if his work till date warranted a peace prize, and whether there was any other reason for the prize being given to him.

Somehow, a campaigner for global warming awareness doesn't really seem worthy of a peace prize. Firstly, for every attempt at creating awareness, there are at least ten smears by the slimeballs at Fox news, which naturally limits Gore's success. Secondly, the politicization of issues of a primarily scientific nature is so pervasive in the US that Al Gore's message regarding global warming is always interpreted with political overtones by "pundits" on TV. Consequently, I seriously doubt if his efforts are making any kind of difference in the average American's attitude to global warming (the administration certainly doesn't appear to be bothered in the least, with Bush putting on his usual act of paying lip service and doing nothing concrete). In essence, I thought that a Nobel prize required more than just good intentions and well meaning activism. I would have thought that the committee would want the recipient to have made more substantial progress. In that sense, the reasons for Al Gore winning the prize seem a bit unclear.

Of course, I am aware that climate change could affect the lives of people in ways most of us have trouble imagining. As an example, one important aspect of the conflict in Darfur is the control of precious water resources, which are scarce because of decades of drought. On June 16, 2007, the UN released a statement which proposed that the drought in Darfur was partly due to man made global warming. This is one example of how climate change and peace may be connected.

My view of the Nobel committee's decision is that they are making a statement here. In Norway, which is one of those "evil socialist european countries", global warming is taken seriously as an issue. By awarding the prize to Gore, they are indicating the importance of global warming as an issue affecting the future of mankind and trying to force it into the limelight a little more. It is both a recognition of Gore as well as a well crafted statement of what the Nobel committee feels should be in the spotlight.

I for one do not grudge Al Gore any of the success he has had recently. One could describe the past year as a second coming for the beleaguered ex-vice president. Although I wasn't here in the US in 2000 when he lost the presidential elections to Bush, I can still see the aftereffects of the media witch hunt that was as brutal as it was clinical in destroying Al Gore's credibility. I don't need to remind people of the sordid details of how the media ripped him to pieces back then, but let me just say that perhaps the media should have at least a bit of remorse for what they did. The reason I say this is because the benefit of hindsight seems to indicate that if Gore had won instead of Bush, he wouldn't have made any of the enormous blunders this present administration has committed. Unfortunately, the americans were suckered into rejecting a well qualified, sensible, mainstream candidate and it doesn't look like Gore will give them a second chance.

In fact, why should he consider running for president again? He has been enormously successful as the crusader against global warming. He is both an Oscar winner and a Nobel Laureate. Why would he want to get back to the mudslinging and vitriol of a presidential bid when he has everything going for him right now? Given the state of American politics right now, it makes sense for him to stay right out of it and put all his efforts into something where he at least has a small chance of making a change.