That’s all well and good, but pictures tend to be really misleading - or at the very least, incomplete - when trying to show off a 3-dimensional space. With that in mind I tried my hand at creating a video tour of my new abode.

The camera work is pretty shaky, for obvious reasons, but I think this gets the idea across.

hmmm… and now that I have a YouTube account… let’s revisit this little gem…

Thank you, Northwestern, for being in the Big 10 but not being very good at football.

Thank you, Ohio State, for not being very good either… but at least being… okay.

Thank you, Las Vegas sports books, for setting a bad line.

Thank you, Lukas, for pointing that out to me… even though you didn’t have the balls to actually bet it yourself.

Thank you, Fates, for not smiting me in vengeance for betting against my alma mater.

And thank you, Walmart, for offering a randomly good deal on a product that is still over-priced.

Anyways, thanks guys for the free PS3, Little Big Planet, and Gears of War 2.

I do not dare to presume what the impact of this election will be, not for myself nor anyone else. The TV is currently overrun with various pundits hailing Barack’s success as a stunning victory against racism. Sure, I would like to believe that were true, but coming from me such claims would be empty. As a young boy just entering elementary school, one of my best neighborhood friends was black. Throughout middle school, high school, and beyond my best friends have mostly been Asian and Indian. I did not campaign for Senator Obama because he was black, nor did I do it because I was white.

For me racism is not a problem so serious that it requires stunning victories.

Still, I am not blind to the oft-veiled intolerance that this campaign managed to bring into the light. In truth I felt genuine confusion every time a stranger would say to me, “You know he’s a Muslim, right?” It took a very long time before I managed to alter my instinctive response from “So what?” to “No, he isn’t.”

The difference in the responses is profound; but while the second response became necessary, just giving it was to admit another kind of defeat. You see, by responding “So What?” the issue up for debate is racism itself. “Why should it matter that he is Muslim… or not?”

By responding, “No, he isn’t.” the issue up for debate is one of simple truth. “Is Barack Obama a Muslim?” I understand the political wisdom of reframing a question into those terms, but it always did bother me… and probably always will… that by phrasing the question as a yes/no we are implicitly agreeing that being a Muslim is bad. The biggest race issue of the campaign silently transformed from “Should we vote for a black man?” to “Is Barack Obama a Muslim?”

Barack Obama is black; sadly that was not something that his campaign staff could change. At some point during the campaign, however, whether intentionally or by accident, someone somewhere realized that being black in America isn’t the Worst Case Scenario.

No, sir.

In the America of 2008 it is far, far better to be black than to be Muslim.

Again, whether or not someone actually thought this out ahead of time is irrelevant because somewhere along the way the issue of racism was silently reframed. It became so obvious that we should never vote for a Muslim that the question of him being black became almost entirely irrelevant. The Obama Truth Squads apparently did a good job of convincing the public that he wasn’t Muslim (because he isn’t), and therefore he was safe.

Politically Brilliant? Yes.
A Logical Fallacy? For sure.
A Victory over Racism? Eh… not really.

This election is a tremendous milestone for Black America I have no doubt. But while African-American children go to sleep tonight newly believing that they can be anything they want in this country… consider what Arab-American children must now be left to think.

But I digress…

All of this was my strange and conspiracy-toned way of saying that what appears to be such a clear rejection of hate may not be quite so powerful as it seems. The world remains forever full of the ignorant and intolerant, always in the minority but never quiet. That so many of the remaining majority bothered to show up at the various polls and caucuses along the way is a testament to the candidate, not a referendum on human tolerance. If you happen to disagree with me here please allow me to now sadistically shatter your utopian dream balloon as I refer you to the results of the evening’s various state ballot initiatives.

At the same time our nation was standing up for equality and tolerance we were apparently also casting our ballots against the civil rights of millions of Americans. Various political analysts reported tonight that John McCain’s age was more important to voters than Barack Obama’s race. Perhaps the McCain campaign would have been well served to take a page from the Obama strategy and rephrase the question from being not, “Is John McCain too old?” but rather, “Is John McCain gay?”

Sorry, again I have digressed…

Despite what I believe to be a gross exaggeration of the idealism behind President-Elect Obama’s ultimate victory, I remain tremendously optimistic about the future that it might bring. More than that, though, I am utterly staggered to think about the absurd unlikelihood of this moment.

In 2004 I voted for Barack to fill our state’s (Illinois) empty Senate seat. I didn’t really know much of anything about him, but I knew that his opponent was a total fucking nut-bag. Lukas and I were talking tonight and I told him that Obama should have taken a moment in his victory speech to thank Alan Keyes for running for the Senate in Illinois four years ago. I then took that a step further and said Barack should also thank Jack Ryan for being such a massive perv that he would be forced to resign from that campaign in shame. Barack Obama would very likely not be a US Senator today… let alone the President-Elect… if it were not for the sexual fetishes and creationist socialism of those two men.

And yet… with such bizarre luck on his side Barack was still a distant long shot to even win the presidential nomination. When I started volunteering for the Obama campaign 15 months ago most people in this state had never even heard of him. I made countless campaign phone calls trying to talk about Barack only to be told, “Who?!… Bar-what?” Hillary had all the party machinery, all the party money, and all the public recognition. For several months the best we hoped for was a good showing in the caucuses… but somehow, somewhere along the way that all changed.

Long before he became the nominee, before the Iowa caucuses even, I actually got to meet the senator: shake his hand and say hello in a small room inside of a local high school. He came to Las Vegas to speak to a group of a few hundred of us and answer our questions, ask for our support and our votes. It is almost impossible for me now to reconcile the friendly man that I met one year ago among a group of six hundred dubious strangers with the man I watched on television tonight, speaking at Grant Park in front of 150,000 ardent followers. I know in my head that he is the same charismatic man who signed my book and apologetically tried to explain to our audience why our local schools have such little funding. But in my heart, as I watched the night unfold, it became clear that somewhere along the course of this impossible road he transformed into something more. I remember feeling unbelievably privileged to share a small cafeteria with the man last winter; tonight I felt even more so just to watch him on TV.

And to me that will probably be the true significance of this election. There is indeed a feeling of doing the impossible, reaching for the unattainable; but it is not because he’s black and it is not because I am a Democrat. The election tonight gives me, as I must believe it does for so many others, a renewed belief in the goodness and justice of our world. Barack Obama was never the man who was supposed to win, but he was always the man who you hoped could win, the man you thought should win. Tonight I go to sleep in a world where victories can be had without compromise, where the winner is no longer simply the lesser of two evils, where a worthy long shot is a bet worth making.

Barack’s journey speaks to each of our own. Our roads will be difficult and our destinations often clouded, but with hard work, intelligence, and a healthy dose of good luck we can indeed do anything; we can indeed be anything.

And isn’t that the American Dream?

One of my hands in particular was the subject of quite a bit of controversy. The table discussed it at length immediately after it ended, but I was told later on that the players continued to talk about it behind my back even after I had left for the night. Most of the table hated my play, one or two people thought it was borderline acceptable, and nobody (but me, of course) seemed to think I did the right thing. The word on the street is that after I had gone home a few of the players went so far as to call me a huge idiot.

Obviously I disagree.

But because it will keep me from falling asleep tonight I figure I will throw out the details here and see if any of you guys have an opinion. I did a brief topic search on a few different poker strategy forums but came up empty. That means that either a) this situation almost never comes up, or b) when it does the player involved is never dumb enough to do what I did.

So here is the setup:

I had been playing for about two hours and had a very strong feel for the table. I had pretty much figured out everybody’s game and had become the captain of the table through aggressive, solid play. The table was playing very tight passive (the players were folding most of their hands, and the ones they did play were usually limped) and I was working to counter that by raising a lot, and not necessarily with good (or even decent) cards. During the past two hours I had run up a good profit and then given it all back after running into a few really gross spots. At the time this hand took place I was sitting on $220, down eighty dollars on the night.

The lady to my right, a regular in the higher stakes $3-$5 NL game, kept nagging me to straddle her blinds. She realized that I was the only other player at the table who seemed willing to gamble and the two of us had basically assumed the task of loosening up the table. I obliged her request and put out a $4 straddle.

After the deal the player two to my left opened the pot by making a raise to $29, a huge raise by pretty much any standard (7x+ the straddle, 14.5x the big blind). Everyone else folded around to me in the straddle and I looked down and was legitimately upset to find Ace-King offsuit. The man who had raised me was a tight, solid regular who I had played with quite a lot and he seemed to almost always show up with a hand when he bet. The man was sitting on about $500 at the time, though it didn’t really matter because our effective stacks were limited to the $220 in front of me.

I hemmed and hawed aloud for about twenty seconds, actually admitting to the table, “I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here.” Then I told the table, “I am embarrassed to tell you guys what I have, but it probably doesn’t matter because even if I did… nobody would believe me.”

And then I folded.

The table quickly began to speculate over what hand I could have folded there and after about a minute of listening to their theories I admitted that I had folded Ace-King. At that point the general consensus turned to me being a total liar.

Although most of the table remained highly skeptical about what hand I had actually tossed, there was a very long discussion about the correct play with AK there. I make it a point to never attempt to educate the other players at my table, but for the sake of my sanity and a good night’s sleep here is my thinking on the situation. And while this is a post-game analysis I promise you that my thought process in the moment followed this exact same logic… whether it is correct or not.

Analysis

I have three choices when the action came back to me. I will list them in what I consider to be the order from Worst to Best.

Calling
The most common thing that I have heard about my play tonight is, “You have to at least call! Just see what the flop brings.” My brother is in this camp. I wholeheartedly disagree.

This is the very definition of Reverse Implied Odds. Specifically it is to say that I am running a negative free-roll by flat-calling the $25 raise heads-up and out of position (I am first to act on every street for the rest of the hand). To see what I mean try to imagine the various hands that my opponent could have, the various flops that could come, and what would happen in each situation.

Let’s pretend that I actually flop an ace or a king. If my opponent has Aces, Kings or another pocket-pair that flops a set I am definitely going to lose all of my money: an additional $200. If my opponent has a lower pocket pair he can easily escape the hand and I will definitely win $29 plus the blinds, but almost never win more. If my opponent somehow has a dominated Ace or King (AQ or KQ) I will probably double through him… but maybe not, he is a good player.

Most of the time I won’t flop anything. If my opponent has a better hand (any pair) he will win the pot with a continuation bet. If my opponent has a worse hand he will win with a bet too.

The only way for me to make ANY money on the hand is to both hit my hand AND have my opponent hit his hand… and have mine be better. Far more likely is that his position and established aggression will simply win the pot when I miss. Further, even if I do hit my hand, I might still be drawing almost dead against his. My brother and others have said that I should call and “take a coin flip for $30,” but AK is not a coin-flip when I don’t get to see the turn and river. By simply calling the raise I give my opponent the best chance to win the most money with the best hand and lose the least money with the worst hand.

Again, I refer you to the definition of reverse implied odds.

Reverse implied pot odds, or simply reverse implied odds, apply to situations where a player will win the minimum if he has the best hand but lose the maximum if he does not have the best hand.

That said, I understand why this was the most popular option among the other players. I consider it to be a massive mistake that just about everyone playing $1-$2 makes. The concept of reverse implied odds is somehow completely beyond the grasp of nearly all low stakes players and is a big reason that I feel like I have a good edge playing those games. And even though he doesn’t read this blog it is the reason that I continue to yell at my brother when I see him calling raises with K-10 and stacking off when the board brings him a pair.

Raising

Okay, if calling is the worst choice of the three then what about raising? Well, in this spot I guess it is ok if you feel like a pure gamble for $200+. Raising is probably the correct action most of the time given this general scenario, but in my mind there were a couple of massive factors pushing me in the opposite direction.

1. I know the player. He doesn’t mess around much at all. Yeah, he might be screwing around here… but I doubt it. That said I completely discount all random garbage hands. The worst he could have in this spot is A-J suited or a small pocket pair. I never, ever, ever expect to find this guy making a 14x raise with total air.

2. His raise size. This was the biggest problem for me… and I told him as much before I folded. “If I had less money this would be an easy decision. If I had more money this would be an easy decision.” See, because his raise was so overly huge it would then force my re-raise to be similarly gigantic. In order to make a fair raise in that spot I would have to push out at least $85. With only $220 to start with I would have then committed more than a third of my stack. If he re-re-raised I would be obligated to call off my last $140 and pray that he might roll over Queens instead of Aces. There is no in-between raise that I could make and still be able to fold to a four-bet.

3. My table dominance. Up to this point, despite behind down a little bit I had solid control of the entire table. I didn’t see the point in coin-flipping (at best) for stacks when I could just move on to the next hand and chip away relatively risk-free. I am not of the mind set that I should play a hand simply because I am dealt it. I prefer to play situations rather than cards, and this situation was awkward from the jump. Why not pass and wait for a better one?

4. You can do a simple hand analysis here too if you want (I obviously didn’t at the table, but I had a general sense of the result). Assume that any raise commits me to the hand (because it does) and therefore let’s just say that instead of making a smaller raise I simply move all-in. This guy is not a moron and he will fold 100% of the hands that I have beat 100% of the time. So, if he has a worse hand I win his $29. Now let’s say that he will call me with about 50% of the hands that beat me - he will call with pocket 9’s or better and fold pocket 8’s or worse (not an unreasonable estimate).

This means that I will:
a) NEVER get the money in when I am ahead.
b) sometimes get the money in as a small underdog
c) sometimes get the money in as a massive underdog (vs AA or KK).

To summarize, about 50% of the time I win $29 by forcing a fold, about 15% of the time I win $220 by having the worst hand and sucking out, and about 35% of the time I lose $220 when I don’t suck out.

So… (.5)(29) + (.15)(220) + (.35)(-220) = 2.9 + 33 - 77 = -41.1

Those percentages are approximations but the purely mathematical result of raising all-in is that over the long run I can expect the decision to LOSE more than $40 on average. I would expect that my approximations there are actually a bit generous to me too, meaning that the true net loss would be even greater.

Conclusion: I should FOLD

Following my train of thought, both now and in the heat of the moment, it seems pretty clear that by either calling or raising I am giving my opponent a fairly massive freeroll for my entire stack. At the very best I am giving him the ability to make a perfect decision against me. Alternatively, by folding I merely surrender the $4 straddle and move onto the next hand. Honestly, the fold seems pretty straight-forward to me… but then again, I can’t seem to find anyone else who agrees with me.

What am I missing here?

(In case you are curious my opponent eventually admitted that he had raised with pocket 4’s, and means that the correct play would have been to re-raise him. However, that hand is clearly at the very bottom of his range, and knowing the result doesn’t make my analysis any different.)

I plan on voting early this year, tomorrow if I can manage it. If any of you are interested in finding out where and when you can vote (early or otherwise) follow this link.

VoteForChange.com

And remember, if you are voting for McCain make sure to show up to your local polling place bright and early on Wednesday, November 5th!

Every vote counts.

Oh, and I spent the past two days putting together a brand new website!!!
(exclamations for effect - I’m not really THAT excited)

www.TotalSpite.com

This is a joint blogging (ad)venture between Lukas and myself. The two of us pass links back and forth all day through Gchat, and rather than just ignoring them like I usually do I figured that we might as well make our hyperlink exchanges a matter of public record. Plus, it gives us yet another forum to express our relentless, deep-rooted spite for one another.

Hence the name… Total Spite.

We are currently holding open auditions for additional contributors, so if you have something original to share… or have regular access to somebody else’s originality… fill out an application and send it my way. At the very least you should be bookmarking the site and filing it under your To-Check-Everyday folder. In fact, I’m going to end this post posthaste so that you can get on that bookmarking right away.

See you over there!!!

… and also here, too…

…I’m not moving or anything. It’s just a second home. I swear, you guys are still my favorite… that other site, well… it means nothing to me. I promise.

While I waited for her to turn around so I could verify her McCain-Palin-ness I debated whether I should say something to her or not. And, if not, would it be socially unacceptable to just push her a little? Not tackle or anything, just a semi-friendly shove. Enough to be noticed, but not enough that she would drop her pizza. I mean, when girls dress like that they are basically asking for it, right?

I hadn’t quite made up my mind by the time she turned around and revealed the front of her shirt.

I spent the next several moments debating whether I should say something to her or not. And, if not, would it be alright if I just high-fived her instead? By the time I had decided, she was already long gone and my pizza was ready.

A short while back I was driving in my car when I suddenly realized that I was hungry. Sitting there deep in thought over my new-found hunger I eventually came to realize that I didn’t want to spend more than three dollars on my lunch. The solution to my dual problems readily apparent I swung my car into the Taco Bell drive through. As I pulled up to the window and offered my credit card to pay for the two-dollars-and-some-change worth of tacos the window attendant ambushed me with an unexpected question.

“Would you like to donate a dollar to cure cancer today, sir?”

First off, please don’t call me sir, ma’am. You are older than I am.

Secondly, I really don’t want to give you another dollar. My lunch was going to cost me about two dollars, and now they are asking for another dollar more. That is a 50% increase in the price I was prepared to pay.

Still, it seemed like a pretty good deal. I could cure cancer. Today, no less. And it would only cost one dollar. How could I refuse?

But then I thought: this is a pretty clever fundraising move. A major step up from the change bucket near the register to be sure. It is easy to ignore a bucket, much more difficult to say no to a person who will judge you for your charity… or lack there of. I realized they did the same thing at the checkout counters of the local pet stores. “Give a dollar to help homeless animals?” Of course I always give that dollar. I mean, those animals have no homes! If I won’t fight for them who will?

And if me and my two dollar tacos won’t cure cancer… who then indeed?

Of course then I thought: this is all a devious trick. I was about to become the victim of a puppeteer’s manipulations. Manipulated towards a good cause, no doubt, but manipulated just the same.

“No Thanks.”

I paid my two-dollars-and-some-change, took my tacos, and drove away. My feelings during the drive home were mixed. I felt proud to have successfully evaded a trap, but at the same time I also felt like the world’s worst human.

Overall the competing moods were a push.

Pulling into my garage a part of me wondered what it would feel like to suddenly be arriving home to a taco-born cancer-free world. Another part of me… a much larger part of me… wondered whether I would have given up the anti-cancer dollar if the lady at the window hadn’t called me sir.

Plus, I have a pretty bad bacterial eye infection and can’t bear to write any content of my own right now. I will let her do the work for me.

As an attorney advising banks and mortgage lenders for the last 30 years, I know a fair amount about what has happened in the housing market. I have read many articles and heard John McCain repeatedly blame the GSE’s – (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) for today’s troubles. He is simply wrong. I am attaching a recent article written by the McGlatchy newspapers, the third largest newspaper in America, which publishes The Miami Herald, The Sacramento Bee, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Kansas City Star, the Charlotte Observer, and The (Raleigh) News & Observer which I think has the analysis right. While John McCain has criticized Fannie and Freddie for years, it is not for the reasons he states. He simply fundamentally believes (like the Wall Street Journal) that government should not be involved in housing policy. He argues that the big banks and free market do just fine on their own. There is no need for these entities in America. The fact that housing prices for conforming loans (loans eligible to be sold to Fannie Mae ) were .25 basis points to .60 bps cheaper than non-conforming loans, helping average Americans purchase homes less expensively was not persuasive to him. He didn’t want government competing with the free market banks.

The problem with that philosophy is that when times are good, everyone rushes into the market. When times are bad, they stop lending. Even the Wall Street Journal (and Hank Paulson) recognize today that Fannie and Freddie serve a fundamental and critical purpose. They (and FHA) are the only entities buying mortgage loans in today’s market. McCain recently stated that Fannie and Freddie should be privatized – their government charter taken away. This makes no sense to me. Fannie and Freddie are now buying 80% of the mortgages made in America today, with FHA buying the rest. If the government charter was removed and the companies privatized, somebody tell me who would be lending AT ALL in this market? If you think you have trouble selling your homes today with credit tight, imagine what would happen if 80% of the funds that are buying mortgages today were removed? If 80% of the money for mortgage lending was eliminated, what do you think that would do to housing values? DOWN, DOWN, DOWN.

I don’t know if McCain will continue in the debate tonight to blame Fannie and Freddie for today’s economic problems. but I wanted you to be aware of how poorly thought out his solution is of privatizing these companies. I have already lost a very substantial sum in my 401K, brokerage account, housing value, etc. I don’t think I can afford another 4 years of Republican economic policies, particularly if he continues his plan to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But then again, he keeps changing his position on the economy. Maybe he’s changed his view on this as well…..Read the article attached and make up your own mind.

(View the article)

Expect further details, news, and probably some pictures in the next few days… well, assuming that my ISP actually transfers service to the new address like I told them to.