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Midlife Crisis? What Midlife Crisis?

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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by Dendra
finding words or proving their existence via google is obviously not reliable :P I once had an argument with my college english teacher - I was trying to prove to her that homeworks exists, just like waters or fishes - since I was referring to multiple different types of homework which would require certain distinction in the word itself, which in singular form obviously wouldn't fit that role quite well.

Naturally, only an open-minded teacher would agree with me on that one and we dropped the whole case, sticking to the traditional "safe" choices. Anyway...point being, you can play two types of scrabble, traditional and wacky.

Traditional can be split into different versions, such as only regular nouns and what not, extended with some more freaky words which are still legitimate and so on (I'm not into scrabble so I don't know exactly the rules or anything)

Wacky version means you can entirely make up new words and provided you give a rational explanation of their meaning - you get the green light and voila, you've come up with a new word.

To make it more complex, you can pretty much flip the whole game upside down, aka you ban all the "normal" words and only non-existing words can be used. Because if you use both normal and these made up words, you will have too much of a choice in words to make the game fun (or at least I think so).

Obviously this would require further discussion and that I leave to you sir, and your kids :P

I love the way you do a complete brain dump in my blog. Seriously, it's cool. I will suggest the 'made up words only' option to my son, but I forsee some problems........


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Am currently in a hotel in London. Tried to play poker late last night, and the wireless connection dropped out killing off 8 tables for me! Am seriously unhappy, and will not be trying this again. :f_cry:

I'm never sure what to make of London when I come back, even though I grew up here. I reckon if you removed all the foreign students and mad people, there'd be hardly anyone left. Mind you, on the train down I was reading A Good Man in Africa, and it kept making me laugh out loud, so I suspect everyone thought I was the mad one. I remember when I was a kid sitting down on a tube train opposite a bloke who kept staring at me (hint: don't stare back). I stared back. He said, very loudly 'Do you like tea!'. I replied that I did, and then he stared silently at me for the rest of the journey. There are lots of people like this on the tube in London.


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hahaha... all ur RL stories are so hilarious. u shld make a book like Bridget Jones Diary or sth. and wat is a complete brain dump? yeah, dendra is unique this way... u shld see his blog, its complete diarrhea

i had planned to buy all the books u recommended but what if i dont like them? so maybe i'll try one first. plus i am holding u personally responsible for any mishaps that may occur during the reading of the said books.

btw ur math skills are uber amazing! i mean, i didnt really read it too closely for fear of straining my brain, but from what i saw, it was uh-mazing. i am jealous. u shld be pretty brilliant in poker.

and playing with crappy internet connection is just recipe for disaster.


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by purplefizz
hahaha... all ur RL stories are so hilarious. u shld make a book like Bridget Jones Diary or sth. and wat is a complete brain dump? yeah, dendra is unique this way... u shld see his blog, its complete diarrhea

i had planned to buy all the books u recommended but what if i dont like them? so maybe i'll try one first. plus i am holding u personally responsible for any mishaps that may occur during the reading of the said books.

btw ur math skills are uber amazing! i mean, i didnt really read it too closely for fear of straining my brain, but from what i saw, it was uh-mazing. i am jealous. u shld be pretty brilliant in poker.

and playing with crappy internet connection is just recipe for disaster.

Well, if you're computer does a memory dump, it saves all the stuff in RAM onto the HDD. Dendra takes all his thoughts and dumps them here in the same way. BTW, homeworks is not a word. Two pieces of homework!

If you don't like my book recommendations, we'll have to stop being friends I'm afraid. :f_cry:

For sure being good at maths is not a sufficient condition for being good at poker. Alan Turing basically invented the computer, and was a brilliant mathematician (way better than me) and he was laughably bad at chess. Don't have any poker examples, but you get the idea.


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Tim64
Joined: 03.11.2008
BlackMember

hey Jb, which bit of London was home? I'm an Islingtonian, myself. Agree re all the mad people (although one less since I left, ofc)


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by Tim64
hey Jb, which bit of London was home? I'm an Islingtonian, myself. Agree re all the mad people (although one less since I left, ofc)

I was just in Islington, and was also born there! They've demolished the hospital since though. I grew up in Enfield. Not lived there for 23 years though.


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

OK, so back from London. Really enjoyed the House of Lords thing. The Houses of Parliament are really impressive. You have to go in through something like airport security with lots of metal detectors, but once you're in you can wander around pretty freely. We went to one of the Committee Rooms for our meeting, which was actually pretty interesting. There were two screens showing text about who was speaking in each House at the time. Halfway through the meeting the Lords one flashed and, without a word the two Lords who were there hopped up and disappeared to vote, and when they came back the result came up on the screen. I think if a bell had rung they'd have started drooling down their chins!

The whole meeting was about using maths in decision making, and it was a very interesting contrast with poker. In poker, the rules are clear and simple, and there's a mathematically correct strategy (you may not ever be able to compute what it is, but it will exist, and it will usually be mixed). In politics and economics, a financial decision can be clear, but politically impossible. The guy hosting the meeting told a story about how Mrs Thatcher's economic advisor told her just before the Falklands' war that it would be massively cheaper to pay each of the 200 people living on the Falkland Islands a million pounds to leave than it would be to send the troops to liberate the island. Mrs T replied that it wasn't about money. And I guess she was right. Food for thought for anyone hoping to apply their poker skills in the real world (not that I'm thinking specifically of TwiceT. Be careful matey!).

Sadly missed the football, but glad the Dutch won. A friend of mine who's quite a senior figure in British maths actually passed on the House of Lords meeting so that he could get home in time to watch the football!

Mathematician Joke: How do you tell when a mathematician has good social skills? When he's talking to you, he'll be looking at your shoes instead of his own.


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by Gerv
You should play Shortstack because that is more mathematical than BSS.

Comparing with SNGs, I don't know but SSS is easy game with your talent :f_thumbsup:

You know, I'm really tempted by this. I think I'm going to read the strategy articles and (of course) watch Gerv's videos and give it a try. If I get the hang of it and 12 table, I reckon it might even not be boring. Or maybe giving up the SnGs makes me a quitter? Aaaargh! Can't decide. If only I was a student like most of you lot, I could try both. :f_cry:


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Everyone else seems to put random music videos in their blogs, so I thought I'd give it a try. This is a song that I didn't really like that much until my son and I saw it played live, and realized that it's about emo girlies getting squished by a train. Granted, this doesn't sound like promising subject matter for a good song, but my son is a bit of a failed emo, and was quite affected by it. There's a ferociously heavy bit in the middle that I never really understood, but of course it's the train! Doh! Anyway, here it is, and don't you dare listen to it through your poxy little laptop speakers, as it'll sound crap. Either wire this up to some fuck off huge speakers and play it loud, or get your headphones on! Also, if you're a drummer, don't try to play along unless you (a) have extra limbs, and quite possibly an extra brain, or (b) come from another planet like this chap. Enjoy!


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This. Best drummer ever imo.


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by goldchess

This. Best drummer ever imo.

Probably right. Sadly no longer with us though.


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Huseens
Joined: 03.07.2009
PokerStrategist

Travis Barker is good nowadays. :)


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by Huseens
Travis Barker is good nowadays. :)

I'm too old to appreciate Blink 182.


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Huseens
Joined: 03.07.2009
PokerStrategist

Just sayin'.
I don't like Blink182 too.


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Waiboy
Joined: 18.09.2008
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by goldchess

This. Best drummer ever imo.

How can you say this? He doesn't even have a double bass drum pedal.


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by Waiboy

Originally posted by goldchess

This. Best drummer ever imo.

How can you say this? He doesn't even have a double bass drum pedal.

But just think how he would have played if he had! He could have invented thrash in 1955.


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

As promised, here's the solution of the AKQJ game. Remember the deck contains just A, K, Q and J, the pot contains $2, players X and Y get one card each, X checks, then Y can either bet $1 or check. If Y bets, X can either call or fold. It turns out (details below for those interested) that there is a family of optimal solutions for X. Y bluffs 1/3 of his Js, checks with K and Q and bets A, but X calls with A and a proportion cK of his Ks and (1-cK) of his Qs, and folds J. The only restriction is that cK >= 1/3. This makes Y a profit of $1/12 per hand for any choice of cK, and neither player can exploit the other.

Remember that the solution of the AKQ game was for Y to bluff 1/3 of his Qs, check with K and bet with A, and X needed to call with A, call with 1/3 of his Ks and fold Q. This makes Y a profit of $1/18 per hand.

So we can see that the AKQJ game is more profitable for Y than the AKQ game. It's very interesting that X has a range of optimal strategies. He can even choose a nonmixed strategy if he wants to (call all Ks, fold all Qs)

There are two obvious questions now.

i) Can this analysis be generalized to a deck with N cards? We've done N=3 and N=4. This looks very hard to me, but I may be making the analysis harder than it should be.

ii) What happens in the limit N -> infinity? This seems like a silly question, but really, this should converge to another game analysed in Chen and Ankeman's book, where instead of discrete cards, each player has a random number (x and y) drawn from the uniform distribution on [0,1], with 0 being (perversely) the best hand and 1 the worst. The solution is indeed that Y should bet his best hands (0<y<y1), bluff his weakest hands (y2<y<1) and check his middling hands (y1<y<y2), whilst x should call with his best hands (0<x<x1) and fold the rest. The key point is that y2>x1>y1. X must bluff in order to get value from his best hands, making Y have some bluff catchers in his range. I can't remember the values of x1, y1 and y2, but they're in C and A's book.

Maybe I'll let one of my students take it from here! _evil:

********************************************
Analysis of the AKQJ game
---------------------------------
We are looking for the optimal values of Y's betting frequency with J, Q and K (bJ, bQ, bK) and X's calling frequency with Q and K (cQ and cK). Y always bets A and X always calls with A and folds J.

With X's hand given first and Y second, X's additional profit from the betting is:
JQ, JK, JA, zero since X folds
QJ, X wins an extra $1 if Y bluffs and he calls, but loses $2 if he folds, bJ(cQ-2(1-cQ))
QK, X loses an extra $1 if Y bets and he calls, -bK cQ
QA, X loses an extra $1 is he calls, -cQ
KJ, bJ(cK-2(1-cK))
KQ, bQ(cK-2(1-cK))
KA, -cK
AJ, bJ
AQ, bQ
AK, bK

Adding this all together, X's profit is
P = ((3bJ-bK-1) cQ + (3bJ+3bQ-1)cK -3bJ-bQ+bK)/12 = (3(cQ+cK-1)bJ + (3cK-1)bQ + (1-cQ)bK -cQ -cK)/12

This is rather more complicated than the AKQ game, not least because there are five unknowns instead of two! I sorted this out by going through the various cases systematically, but I can't help thinking that those clever game theorists have a better way of doing this!

Here goes! The optimal solution must satisfy the following five conditions
1) cQ+cK=1, or cQ+cK>1 and bJ=0, or cQ+cK<1 and bJ=1,
2) cK = 1/3, or cK>1/3 and bQ=0, or cK<1/3 and bQ=1,
3) cQ = 1, or cQ<1 and bK=0,
4) 3bJ-bK=1, or 3bJ-bK>1 and cQ=1, or 3bJ-bK<1 and cQ=0,
5) bJ+bQ=1/3 or bJ+bQ>1/3 and cK=1, or bJ+bQ<1/3 and cK=0.

Actually, the poker interpretations of these conditions are clear:
1) if X calls too much/too little, Y never/always bluffs J
2) if X calls too much/too little with K, Y never/always bluffs Q
3) if X calls too little with Q, Y never bets K
5) if Y bluffs too much/too little, X always/never calls with K

4) is similar, but kind of mixed up.

Now consider the three possibilities in case 1).
i) bJ=1, then 4) => cQ=1, 5) => cK=1, 2) => bQ=0 and 1) => bJ=0, which is a contradiction.

ii) bJ = 0, then 4) => cQ=0, 3) =>bK = 0. Then 2) and 5) become

2) cK = 1/3, or cK>1/3 and bQ=0, or cK<1/3 and bQ = 1
5) bQ = 1/3, or bQ>1/3 and cK=1, or bQ<1/3 and cK = 0

The only consistent solution of these is bQ = cK = 1/3. Then cQ+cK = 1/3 and 1) => bJ = 1, which is a contradiction.

iii) cQ+cK = 1, then we must consider two subcases from 3)
a) cQ = 1 => cK = 0, then 2) =>bQ = 1, => bJ + bQ = bJ+1 >1/3, so that 5) => cK = 1, which is a contradiction.

b) bK = 0, cQ<1. Next there are three subcases arising from 4)
I) bJ>1/3 => cQ = 1, a contradiction
II) bJ<1/3 => cQ = 0 => cK=1, then 2) => bQ = 0 and 5) => bJ + bQ > 1/3, a contradiction.
III) bJ = 1/3, then 5) => two subcases
A) bQ>0 and cK=1, when 2) gives bQ = 0, a contradiction
B) bQ = 0, and 2) => cK>1/3. And this is it. We can satisfy all the conditions provided that

bJ = 1/3, bQ = bK = 0, cQ+cK = 1, cK>1/3.

There MUST be an easier way to do this. There's no chance of this working for an N card deck, or at least I wouldn't have thought so. I may have to go away and learn some more game theory. It would be nice if this was new and I had to go and invent some new maths, but I doubt it! Or of course, I might have have made a complete bollocks of the whole thing. Any one fancy checking? :f_love:

********************************************


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Dendra
Joined: 28.01.2009
Oldschool Grinder

hmm, I'm surprised you didn't figure it out yet since it's so simple:

bj*1/3(n-cQ)+bQ/kQ>1=ck/0-e=mc2

this is sort of the universal approach by Langmann and Dietrich, but I doubt anyone came up with anything better or with less imperfections yet.


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jbpatzer Topic starter
jbpatzer
Joined: 23.11.2009
Oldschool Grinder

Originally posted by Dendra
hmm, I'm surprised you didn't figure it out yet since it's so simple:

bj*1/3(n-cQ)+bQ/kQ>1=ck/0-e=mc2

this is sort of the universal approach by Langmann and Dietrich, but I doubt anyone came up with anything better or with less imperfections yet.


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Gerv
Joined: 07.05.2008
Elite Grinder

Oei Mathematical brawlfight over here.

Popcorn is ready folks! _cool:


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