So I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to get just two little things and was left in awe of the checkout girl. First of all, for the 17th time in a row when I started reading off the phone number for our rewards cards (those things are such a freaking scam...can't you figure out a better way to track what I buy?) I was asked, after the first three digits, "is that the area code?" You see, both Danielle and I have "not from here" numbers because we got our cell phones "not here", but the checkout persons at the store somehow think that here, in 2013, we are going to try and give them seven digits and call it a day. I was going to ask her "when's the last time someone said "oh my mistake" and corrected it? does anyone EVER screw this up?" not so much to be a jerk but really because I was curious. Are there people out there that just say "867-5309" and walk away? I realize it's almost certainly not her fault; they do this so regularly that it has to be some sort of mandate or training they get that management has decided makes things run more smoothly. Just as my mind settled on "you should ask, but do so in a funny, joking way" I was hit with another whammy. My total was $12.xx you see, and when I dove into my wallet I found only 20s and a slew (but non 13) of 1s. I say to myself "Self, you can solve this problem with gusto and flourish!. You have been educated at arguably the finest university in all the land. What you must do is hand her the twenty dollar bill (which alone will cover the sum of your purchases), AND ALSO hand her not one, not two, but three of the Washingtons. You will receive a single $10 bill as change and everyone will be happier; your wallet will have fewer bills (always desirable) and her drawer will have more (always desirable). Self, you are a master of efficiency!"
My coup is met not merely with a vacant stare. If only that were the case! But not here, no no, here my efforts are met with open disdain bordering on hostility! "I don't need these...just the twenty" are the words I hear as my chin grows heavy, seeking desperately the floor, and the Washingtons are thrust back across the divider. As the change rattles out of the dispenser two feet further down the line (those things should be against the law I forget to grab it half the time) she goes for the death blow. Her drawer? Out of 5s. So what do I get right behind the three washingtons she just handed back to me to add to the six were patiently waiting in my wallet? Seven. More. She practically shoves the flowers and diet pepsi (serious business here) at me straight away, without even attempting any sort of bagging procedure, as I'm still stuffing the additional washingtons into my billfold. Ambling towards my car I am left with the distinct tingling sensation that I have just witnessed something magical.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Patience and Apathy
I seem to be on a bit of a kick here. Confidence is good; overconfidence is usually bad. It's ok to be ignorant; it's definitely not ok to be a bigot or evil. As I was swimming I realized something else today, and that's that having the correct amount of patience in your life is something that a lot of people THINK they know, but in truth haven't really ever thought about (just like all the stuff in How to Win Friends and Influence People which by the way if you have not read you should). It occurred as I was slowing down during a set of 10 150s (on 2:30, my progress has been just great the last two weeks) and decided to try the 5th rep making sure I took as few strokes as possible. You see the tendency when you swim (and are out of shape like I am) and want to go faster is to take more strokes. Strokes are the thing that make you go forward, right? If you take more, you'll go forward more, right? Nope. So what happened? My fifth rep was actually faster than my 2nd (usually the fastest for me), AND I expended less energy because I had drastically increased my efficiency (for the record I was trying to keep these under 2:00) while it absolutely felt like I was moving more slowly. Neat stuff that patience and discipline. If I'm going to make it 26.2 miles in 7 days I'm going to need every trick I can muster; this has been the closest development to a silver bullet I could possibly have hoped for.
Then I got to thinking on the drive home that while most people suffer from a lack of patience in many endeavors (their relationships, their jobs, poker, etc), if one were to have an excess of patience it could manifest itself outwardly as a sense of apathy. The analogy isn't perfect, but you can probably see where I am going with this. If you're too patient waiting for some good result to happen, but aren't actively pursuing it, what you're actually doing is being apathetic. Sometimes the only thing you can do is wait, and when that's the case taking action can actually get you into trouble. Letting your partner cool off after an argument is a great example. It's fucking HARD to go to your corner and think about how on Earth you just got into a heated discussion over something that silly and just let it be for a little while. But most of the time in that spot that's the exact right thing to do. But waiting patiently for the situation to change, without taking action, being the correct course of action is likely the exception, not the norm (thank goodness, as I am horrendous at actively pursuing the course of action of "just wait for it"). There is a balance that needs to be struck. If you want to affect change in your life you need to be working towards it, but at the same time you need to have patience and not get frustrated when you don't see those changes immediately.
Now it is time for a hand that I sweated!
The SK opens stone cold UTG in a pretty full game and hero three bets a few spots later with the ace and the jack of spades. SK calls, they see a flop hu
964ssc
Or something like that. There is no straight. SK checks and calls.
5r
Again, I think that was the card. Maybe it was a 3, but it was pretty much a blank regardless. SK checks and hero..checks it back! My immediate thought at the time is that he needs to be betting that card because he is at the stone cold bottom of his range in terms of showdown strength (I think....maybe he wasn't but I sure would have been) and has a flush draw. Ergo he must bet. But the more I think about it thinking about GTO stuff here is pretty silly. He has the ace and the jack high, and we are in a decidedly narrow range spot. The SK is going to be super good (even better than you know) against his specific holding in this specific spot, so maybe he does need to be checking. I just don't know.
He rivers the 6 of spades because "that's the second best sweater in the business back there SK" and gets to raise and snap off two of the three remaining aces (whoopsie) and we all have a good laugh. But I thought the turn spot was kind of interesting I guess.
Then I got to thinking on the drive home that while most people suffer from a lack of patience in many endeavors (their relationships, their jobs, poker, etc), if one were to have an excess of patience it could manifest itself outwardly as a sense of apathy. The analogy isn't perfect, but you can probably see where I am going with this. If you're too patient waiting for some good result to happen, but aren't actively pursuing it, what you're actually doing is being apathetic. Sometimes the only thing you can do is wait, and when that's the case taking action can actually get you into trouble. Letting your partner cool off after an argument is a great example. It's fucking HARD to go to your corner and think about how on Earth you just got into a heated discussion over something that silly and just let it be for a little while. But most of the time in that spot that's the exact right thing to do. But waiting patiently for the situation to change, without taking action, being the correct course of action is likely the exception, not the norm (thank goodness, as I am horrendous at actively pursuing the course of action of "just wait for it"). There is a balance that needs to be struck. If you want to affect change in your life you need to be working towards it, but at the same time you need to have patience and not get frustrated when you don't see those changes immediately.
Now it is time for a hand that I sweated!
The SK opens stone cold UTG in a pretty full game and hero three bets a few spots later with the ace and the jack of spades. SK calls, they see a flop hu
964ssc
Or something like that. There is no straight. SK checks and calls.
5r
Again, I think that was the card. Maybe it was a 3, but it was pretty much a blank regardless. SK checks and hero..checks it back! My immediate thought at the time is that he needs to be betting that card because he is at the stone cold bottom of his range in terms of showdown strength (I think....maybe he wasn't but I sure would have been) and has a flush draw. Ergo he must bet. But the more I think about it thinking about GTO stuff here is pretty silly. He has the ace and the jack high, and we are in a decidedly narrow range spot. The SK is going to be super good (even better than you know) against his specific holding in this specific spot, so maybe he does need to be checking. I just don't know.
He rivers the 6 of spades because "that's the second best sweater in the business back there SK" and gets to raise and snap off two of the three remaining aces (whoopsie) and we all have a good laugh. But I thought the turn spot was kind of interesting I guess.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Swimming Report
One thing I hadn't really taken into account was just big of a pain in the ass it is to try and swim a legitimate workout in the pool in our community. The 24h fitness pools can be crowded (and one time I even got kicked out by a water aerobics class) but at least there are lane lines, pace clocks, and no little kids splashing around trying to get themselves clobbered (except that one time). Seriously, a lot of people don't realize this but collisions with someone of mass actually swimming at a reasonable rate of speed can be rather violent, especially because their pointy parts are flailing all about in every which direction. Growing up I saw not one but two foot bones broken during swim practice, just from a simple breast stroke kick. I guess the point is that I weigh 170 pounds and even if I'm only going 2 miles per hour if my head slams into your head it's not gonna be good for anybody. The last time I tried to swim down there there must have been 10 kids running around, and they just don't get the picture. I'm trying to swim in the three feet of pool next to the wall and well...yeesh. And no pace clock...not cool. Also very sunny; I'm getting a nice tan that I don't really want.
But it's good. I should be able to make the 26.2 miles physically, and am now just sweating the mental side of things. Conservatively I need to be in the water for an hour twice a day all 7 days to get this thing done; and that's a lot of boredom, a lot of driving, and an awful lot of patience.
Life otherwise is pretty good I guess. I had more to say but I don't seem to have any idea where it went :)
But it's good. I should be able to make the 26.2 miles physically, and am now just sweating the mental side of things. Conservatively I need to be in the water for an hour twice a day all 7 days to get this thing done; and that's a lot of boredom, a lot of driving, and an awful lot of patience.
Life otherwise is pretty good I guess. I had more to say but I don't seem to have any idea where it went :)
Thursday, May 2, 2013
You Learn Something Every Day
If you're not careful, that is. If you are too careful, or even in many cases reasonably careful, you will go through a day and not learn a single god damn thing. But if you do something stupid or silly you're almost certainly going to learn something. Today I had to meet a friend in town who wanted to meet up for lunch; he didn't have much time, not even really lunch, more like coffee and brunch you see, so I suggested we just go to Starbucks and catch up for a bit. He countered with "have you ever had Vietnamese coffee?" to which I responded "just what they serve at Commerce." He insisted that I try the real thing and gave me directions to a place he said was really good. I say to myself "self, why not? this is a good friend, he must know something you do not know. Vietnamese coffee it is!"
So I roll up to the place and am immediately struck by how...hidden...it is. Like, it's way back sorta behind a restaurant in this weird corner of of strip mall, there is construction blocking one and a half of the ways in, it's just kind of strange you know? Then the building itself just has some nearly indecipherable characters on the front (that spell some Vietnamese words) and big, giant, tinted one way glass on the front. Immediately memories start rushing into my brain, memories of Kevin and Walter talking about just such a place, where they serve coffee, no drinks, but the atmosphere is...visually pleasing. Sure enough I walk into the place and three things strike me instantly. First, I am the only white person in the entire building. Second, at least 25% of the patrons are smoking. And last, the servers are wearing lingerie. I don't really dig Asian girls that much, but even I had to admit that the talent level was...considerable.
So it turns out that this is just sort of what my friend (and a lot of Asian dudes, actually) does with some of his spare time. Sit in a coffee shop, flirt with girls in lingerie, and order expensive and overly caffeinated non-alcoholic beverages. It was...well...it was an experience, let's just leave it at that. We had three "rounds" of drinks (regular Vietnamese coffee, super strong super cold with condensed milk just delicious), weak un-sweatened iced tea which we didn't actually order but was presented sort of as water, and fantastic avocado milk shakes. It was almost too loud to talk, almost too dark to see, and almost too smokey to breath, but we caught up and I excused myself after about an hour. He was sort of disappointed I didn't want to stay longer; I felt like my effort had already been herculean. So today...we learned something :)
So I roll up to the place and am immediately struck by how...hidden...it is. Like, it's way back sorta behind a restaurant in this weird corner of of strip mall, there is construction blocking one and a half of the ways in, it's just kind of strange you know? Then the building itself just has some nearly indecipherable characters on the front (that spell some Vietnamese words) and big, giant, tinted one way glass on the front. Immediately memories start rushing into my brain, memories of Kevin and Walter talking about just such a place, where they serve coffee, no drinks, but the atmosphere is...visually pleasing. Sure enough I walk into the place and three things strike me instantly. First, I am the only white person in the entire building. Second, at least 25% of the patrons are smoking. And last, the servers are wearing lingerie. I don't really dig Asian girls that much, but even I had to admit that the talent level was...considerable.
So it turns out that this is just sort of what my friend (and a lot of Asian dudes, actually) does with some of his spare time. Sit in a coffee shop, flirt with girls in lingerie, and order expensive and overly caffeinated non-alcoholic beverages. It was...well...it was an experience, let's just leave it at that. We had three "rounds" of drinks (regular Vietnamese coffee, super strong super cold with condensed milk just delicious), weak un-sweatened iced tea which we didn't actually order but was presented sort of as water, and fantastic avocado milk shakes. It was almost too loud to talk, almost too dark to see, and almost too smokey to breath, but we caught up and I excused myself after about an hour. He was sort of disappointed I didn't want to stay longer; I felt like my effort had already been herculean. So today...we learned something :)
Monday, April 29, 2013
Delusion and Arrogance
The world really does run on delusion. We have all heard that something like 90% of drivers think that they are above average, and we can all see that obviously this is completely ridiculous. At a minimum 40% of people are getting the answer to a true false question incorrect here (and that's if 100% of the people who actually say they are below average actually do suck at driving). There should be a little bit more signal, or so you'd think, but that wouldn't take into account the fact that most of the human population is completely delusional when it comes to rating their own competency. I read somewhere that only the clinically depressed do well when it comes to accurately assessing one's strengths and weaknesses. That's pretty absurd, if you think about it, but it kind of makes sense from an evolutionary point of view if you make the simple assumption that confidence helps us survive. And while I'm not necessarily sure that was true millions or even thousands of years ago (you can make cases both ways, obviously. being confident that you can catch the prey or win the fight helps, if you're right...), it is definitely true in modern society. Confidence in men is most certainly sexually selected for by the finer sex, and therefore it stands to reason that as we go down through the generations we should end up with more confident people and fewer with low self esteem; those guys just have a harder time getting laid, right? Or at least that's what women's magazines would have you believe.
None of that is really the point that I'm trying to make, though, so if you disagree as usual I'd say you could well be right and read on anyway. What I want to talk about here is how our society, and particularly the segment of it that I wade through day in and day out, is set up to take advantage of this chronic over-confidence. For an easy example let's take the housing boom. What fueled that? Well OK a lot of shit fueled that but one of the primary problems was that confident, aggressive people were SURE housing had nowhere to go but up (despite the fact that since our population was not sky rocketing it made no sense that "space to live" was doubling in value) and therefore made not just an effort to become more exposed, but rather a herculean one. And what happens when people make a herculean effort to buy something they probably shouldn't? Businessmen bend over backward to sell it to them, that's what! Bang...housing bubble!
What about poker? It's sort of the same thing as the preposterous driving statistic from above (for the record I believe that my "A" driving game is probably in the 75th percentile across all humans, perhaps slightly lower if you account for the fact that good drives drive more miles...My "B" game, however, degrades rapidly). I have never done a study on this, but I'd be willing to bet that something like 90% of poker players over-estimate their skill (and edge) in a given situation. There are lots of reasons for this. People who run poorly to start their careers tend to quit; those who run hot tend to stick around and then assume they are running badly for the next 15 years. People who think they are losing players don't have much fun and therefore quit. People who think they are winning players enjoy their time at the club and come back again and again. Pros don't realize that they are in tough games where people just aren't making idiotic mistakes. People get drunk and don't realize how bad they play when they do (except Medium Bob....that dude plays SOLID when he's drunk. And honestly 8 mile too....props guys). I mean just run the numbers on how much money is going down the hole in your average 40/80 game at Commerce and it'll make you cry. 40 hands per hour, almost no chops, 5+1+ tip that's something like $250-$280/hour. That's $30 EACH! You have to win about 1 bet per hundred hands just to break even; what percentage of the population is capable of that? 10? 20 seems absurd. And yet there are routinely 4, 5, 6 games at that level, not to mention a 60 or two, and a half dozen other games. And let's not even talk about 8/16 and below which I am close to convinced is completely unbeatable. The point is that people think they can win, they really do, and the owners of the casino are very, very happy to just let them try their hardest and wonder why they never seem to catch that big hot streak. Good lord I can't imagine how badly some fish can run, given that in theory I am one of the people who does win and I have taken 300 bet downers. Imagine if my "true win rate" was actually -1 instead of +.5 for those 150 hours! I'd have lost another 225 bets!
I was planning to pick some more things to talk about but honestly this post is probably long enough. Make sure you assess your own skills (and your ranking among your peers) accurately. Confidence is probably a good thing, but when it creeps towards arrogance or delusion it can really get expensive.
None of that is really the point that I'm trying to make, though, so if you disagree as usual I'd say you could well be right and read on anyway. What I want to talk about here is how our society, and particularly the segment of it that I wade through day in and day out, is set up to take advantage of this chronic over-confidence. For an easy example let's take the housing boom. What fueled that? Well OK a lot of shit fueled that but one of the primary problems was that confident, aggressive people were SURE housing had nowhere to go but up (despite the fact that since our population was not sky rocketing it made no sense that "space to live" was doubling in value) and therefore made not just an effort to become more exposed, but rather a herculean one. And what happens when people make a herculean effort to buy something they probably shouldn't? Businessmen bend over backward to sell it to them, that's what! Bang...housing bubble!
What about poker? It's sort of the same thing as the preposterous driving statistic from above (for the record I believe that my "A" driving game is probably in the 75th percentile across all humans, perhaps slightly lower if you account for the fact that good drives drive more miles...My "B" game, however, degrades rapidly). I have never done a study on this, but I'd be willing to bet that something like 90% of poker players over-estimate their skill (and edge) in a given situation. There are lots of reasons for this. People who run poorly to start their careers tend to quit; those who run hot tend to stick around and then assume they are running badly for the next 15 years. People who think they are losing players don't have much fun and therefore quit. People who think they are winning players enjoy their time at the club and come back again and again. Pros don't realize that they are in tough games where people just aren't making idiotic mistakes. People get drunk and don't realize how bad they play when they do (except Medium Bob....that dude plays SOLID when he's drunk. And honestly 8 mile too....props guys). I mean just run the numbers on how much money is going down the hole in your average 40/80 game at Commerce and it'll make you cry. 40 hands per hour, almost no chops, 5+1+ tip that's something like $250-$280/hour. That's $30 EACH! You have to win about 1 bet per hundred hands just to break even; what percentage of the population is capable of that? 10? 20 seems absurd. And yet there are routinely 4, 5, 6 games at that level, not to mention a 60 or two, and a half dozen other games. And let's not even talk about 8/16 and below which I am close to convinced is completely unbeatable. The point is that people think they can win, they really do, and the owners of the casino are very, very happy to just let them try their hardest and wonder why they never seem to catch that big hot streak. Good lord I can't imagine how badly some fish can run, given that in theory I am one of the people who does win and I have taken 300 bet downers. Imagine if my "true win rate" was actually -1 instead of +.5 for those 150 hours! I'd have lost another 225 bets!
I was planning to pick some more things to talk about but honestly this post is probably long enough. Make sure you assess your own skills (and your ranking among your peers) accurately. Confidence is probably a good thing, but when it creeps towards arrogance or delusion it can really get expensive.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
