Tuesday May 10, 2005

hands reads are not that precise At the bottom of Page 16 in the print copy of Card Player Vol 18, No 9 there is a sidebar about a hand from day 2 of the 25K WPT championship. Its an interesgting hand that Chri Bigler appears to have played wrong. The blinds are 600-1200 with a 200 ante (3600) when he opens in late position for 4k with AsKs (a raise of 2800 into a 4800 pot). The blinds call. Post flop he is against middle and bottom set on a Kh Jh 7c flop. The blinds check to him, he fires and is raised and reraised. He then goes all in and is called. The interesting part of the analysis is made by whomever wrote the sidebar (authorship is not clear).

Andy, on the other hand, realized that Chris couldn't have a set of kings because he would have checked the flop.

I don't believe this is true assuming standard player tendencies. He was in late position and so didn't have to have a strong hand to open-raise with and his opponents didn't have to have strong hands to call. The flop is an action flop so he shouldn't "expect" to pick up the pot by betting a set on the flop. In fact I think with a late position open, that flop, and two opponents he should expect action on that flop. Firing top set on that flop both gets him action and information while not revealing a lot about his hand. There just isn't enough information from the blinds prespectives to think that a bet on the flop couldn't be from top set. No, the reason for the small blind to be happy getting all his money in is that the distribution of hands that Chris could have is wide. Thinking the big blind has probably over setted him made the proportion of that distribution that he could beat even larger. The real hand read here should have been made by Chris. He bet a scary flop and had two players came back at him. Top pair top kicker isn't any good and is a weak hand to draw to. ( May 10 2005, 08:37:08 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

The Future of Ideas

I just finished Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas. Coming days after the broadcast decision dispels some of the gloom of the final chapters of The Future of Ideas. But one of the fundamental concepts of the book is that the old will resist the new and often the old has more political power then the new. With more neocons (but not conservatives) headed for the courts the books repeated message should be heeded by all who think the freedom to innovate is important to our economy and way of life.

So thats all nice and activist in tenor. But what about the book. I think many of the concepts in the book are excellent. The explanation of the end to end concept and how it applies to the Internet and contrasting it with the phone network is very clear. Pushing forward and building a 3 layer model (physical, code, and content) of the 'net gives a model for talking about how data flows in our current world which is probably comprehensible by the non-techie. I strongly suggest the book to anybody interested in the control of IP in all of its various flavors. Many of the ideas, cases, and ad hoc examples provide fodder for continued battle with the "old" content community and with our lawmakers.

The downside to the book is that it seems repetitive. Many of the cases and examples travel similar ground over and over. I suspect most who have been involved in the software trade during the last decade would feel that way. But thats the price for developing a book that can be given to somebody who doesn't have the same depth of knowledge and wants to understand why napster isn't all the evil they have heard it was or that P2P isn't some sort of new drug that is killing the nations youth. Additionally the legal slant which abstracts away much of the technical haze makes for a clearer look at how various technologies should effect our countries policies. ( May 10 2005, 07:13:12 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]