Bring a Deuce

Good Politics v. Good Economics

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 06:53:32 GMT

Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk, on current times at his blog Cafe Hayek:

Good politics requires action, constant proof that the politician is working tirelessly.

Good economics requires quiet consistency so people can plan for the future.

The times we live in are the greatest example in my lifetime of the tension between these two goals.

Pinball

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:49:30 GMT

An interview with Pat Lawlor, pinball creator of the Addams Family and others.

Few people have defined the modern era of pinball like Pat Lawlor has. In the late 1980s, he emerged as a leading designer in the industry with innovative Williams titles like Earthshaker and Whirlwind.

In 1990, Lawlor and Larry DeMar hit it big with FunHouse, a pinball game in which an animatronic head named Rudy taunted players and dominated the playfield. Lawlor and DeMar went on to create The Addams Family for Bally and watched as it became the best-selling pinball machine in history.

Don't Worry, Rickey, You're Still the Best

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 10:37:34 GMT

Rickey Henderson will be elected into the Hall of Fame this year. I found this list of the 25 Best Rickey Henderson Stories.

He called San Diego GM Kevin Towers and left the following message: “This is Rickey calling on behalf of Rickey. Rickey wants to play baseball.”

A reporter once asked Rickey if he talked to himself, “Do I talk to myself? No, I just remind myself of what I’m trying to do. You know, I never answer myself so how can I be talking to myself?”

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:45:41 GMT

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 876060

Escape From Sin City

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:12:22 GMT

A lovely weekend holiday. I must remember not to book a late Monday return after four nights of self-abuse. Especially on a short roll.

Congratulations to Princess, long may you reign.

Thanks to JC for coming down and sharing a dorm. Glad to spend some time hanging out. See you soon.

It was great to see all the folks.

Michael Lewis on the End of the Boom

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 06:18:00 GMT

Good read here by one of my favorite writers. Michael Lewis The End

That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. “They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford,” Eisman says. “They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that’s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?”

Sports Journalism

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:48:55 GMT

In a recent column, Bill Simmons mentioned his picks for best sports pieces ever written. The Millions Blog has collected several links, and I'm enjoying reading these classics.

David Foster Wallace and John McCain

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:56:24 GMT

David Foster Wallace was found dead in his home on Friday. Wallace covered McCain's 2000 presidential campaign for Rolling Stone.

Excerpt:

It's hard to get good answers to why Young Voters are so uninterested in politics. This is probably because it's next to impossible to get someone to think hard about why he's not interested in something. The boredom itself preempts inquiry; the fact of the feeling's enough. Surely one reason, though, is that politics is not cool. Or say rather that cool, interesting, alive people do not seem to be the ones who are drawn to the Political Process. Think back to the sort of kids in high school or college who were into running for student office: dweeby, overgroomed, obsequious to authority, ambitious in a sad way. Eager to play the Game. The kind of kids other kids would want to beat up if it didn't seem so pointless and dull. And now consider some of 2000's adult versions of these very same kids: Al Gore, best described by CNN sound tech Mark A. as "amazingly lifelike"; Steve Forbes, with his wet forehead and loony giggle; G.W. Bush's patrician smirk and mangled cant; even Clinton himself with his big red fake-friendly face and "I feel your pain." Men who aren't enough like human beings even to dislike — what one feels when they loom into view is just an overwhelming lack of interest, the sort of deep disengagement that is so often a defense against pain. Against sadness. In fact the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians make us sad, hurt us in ways that are hard even to name, much less to talk about. It's way easier to roll your eyes and not give a shit. You probably don't want to hear about all this, even.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:25:51 GMT

Get your game on over at Fantasy Sports Live where every week you can pick a new team! In addition to daily contests, they are running some cool promotions, including Sundays with Dr. Pauly.

Cloned Dogs and the Nutter

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 01:37:20 GMT

Missing years in Bernann McKinney's strange journey from Mormon sex case to clones called Booger

50/50

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:25:02 GMT

The Boston Phoenix has posted a listing of the best bands, new acts and solo acts from each of the 50 states.

FTW!

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:41:47 GMT

Gratz to Iggy and LJ for winning seats to the Main Event!

Mapping the Human "Diseaseome"

Fri, 30 May 2008 10:04:43 GMT

Fascinating chart at NYT that links diseases to the genes they have in common.

Basic Instructions

Thu, 22 May 2008 07:33:33 GMT

I was going through old links and found a comic worthy of my attention: Basic Instructions Enjoy!

June Vegas Trip

Tue, 20 May 2008 03:44:40 GMT

I will be joining some friends in Vegas June 6-9. I see that there is a NL shootout tournament downtown at Binion's on Saturday. This becomes a candidate for any possible "serious" tournament venture. I suspect the trip will feature very little in the way of seriousness, but youneverknow ...

Tyler Update

Mon, 12 May 2008 18:44:46 GMT

Tyler took 5th and won over 55K. He was "disappointed, but very happy".

Tyler is Chip Leader at Final Table of WPT Canada

Sun, 11 May 2008 23:39:49 GMT

My close friend Tyler is chip leader of the final table at River Rock for the inaugural WPT Canada . Play begins at 6 pm Pacific today (Sunday). Good luck!

Randomness

Fri, 09 May 2008 03:07:13 GMT

WSJ interview with Leonard Mlodinow discussing the role of randomness in our lives.

Excerpt:

Mr. Mlodinow: I believe there is true expertise in some endeavors, and not in others. There is obviously no such thing as expertise in predicting the results of coin tosses, but there is expertise in predicting the behavior of lasers. I feel that picking stocks or predicting Hollywood hits is more like the former. The process of building a company or making a film is more like the latter.
But there is a related question: Given that we are discussing an endeavor in which it is possible, how can you tell if someone has expertise? That is hard, because expertise plus bad luck can equal a failure, and lack of expertise plus good luck can equal success. The only way to tell the two apart is to observe the individual over a long time, which in statistics often means 100 or even 1,000 trials. This is obviously often not possible, so I recommend instead that we judge people by a thoughtful analysis of their intelligence, philosophy, work ethic, etc., rather than simply by their results.

Freakonomics - Phil Gordon Q & A

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:46:57 GMT

Phil Gordon

Here's a question & answer column from the angular Phil Gordon.

Excerpt:

Q: Is Phil Hellmuth really as unpleasant as he seems? Conversely, who are the top pros that are regarded as being the most fun to play with — not necessarily the ones you can clean up on, just the ones that you’d have a good time with? (I’m guessing Negreanu is at the top of this list.)

A: Hellmuth isn’t as bad in real life as he appears on T.V. I really like him. He’s a great family man, does lots of work for charity, and has a kind heart.

Unfortunately, he comes across like a complete a–hole on television. But, it’s great for ratings.

I really like playing at the table with Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari, and David Grey — they have excellent stories and are very entertaining. As for Negreanu — things aren’t always the way they appear on television.

Follow Up to Post on Baseball Series (Warning: Technical Content)

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:51:10 GMT

I wrote a brief program in C# to answer the question,

4. In baseball, suppose the American League champion is better than the National League champion, such that it has a 55% probability of winning each game against the NL champ. Then the NL champ nonetheless will win a best-of-seven-games series four in 10 times. What is the smallest odd number, X, for which a World Series between these two league champs that is best-of-X will ensure that there’s a 95% probability of a just result — the superior AL champ winning?

Consider a 5-game series. A team can sweep in three games. To win in four games, the victor can lose only one of the first three. That means there are three distinct win-loss sequences that result in a team winning in four games.

In general to choose k items (in this case wins) from a group of n (games):

n choose k = n!/(k! * (n - k)!) {Note: x! is the product of all the integers from x to 1, so 5! = 5*4*3*2*1 = 120}

Google will actually do this for you, typing 5 choose 3 in the search line returns the answer 10.

So I figured out the chances a team would win a series in each number of games, and then added them.

Here is my code:

namespace Project40708
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            int x = 3; //The shortest non-trivial series
            double prob;
            do
            {
                prob = 0;
                for (int i = (x - 1) / 2; i < x; i++)// This loop starts out at the earliest point which a team can win a series.
                {
                    prob = prob + step(i, (x - 1) / 2);// accumulates the chances of winning in exactly i games

                }
                Console.WriteLine("The AL team wins a best of {0} series with probability {1}", x, prob);
                x = x + 2;// The series are best of x, x is always odd.

            }
            while (prob < .950);
        }

        static double step (int x, int y)
        {
            if (y > x)
                return 0;
            double result = 0;
            if (y == x)
            {
                return Math.Pow(.55, y + 1);//This is a sweep!
            }
            result = step(x - 1, y) * x / (x - y) * .45;//I did this recursively.
            return result;
        }

    }
}

From WSJ: A Probability Quiz

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:24:39 GMT

A Probability Quiz

Carl Bialik, author of "The Numbers Guy" for the Wall Street Journal, has posted a reader quiz about probability. Question 4 is of particular interest to me.

4. In baseball, suppose the American League champion is better than the National League champion, such that it has a 55% probability of winning each game against the NL champ. Then the NL champ nonetheless will win a best-of-seven-games series four in 10 times. What is the smallest odd number, X, for which a World Series between these two league champs that is best-of-X will ensure that there’s a 95% probability of a just result — the superior AL champ winning?

I think I have successfully written a program that calculates the answer. My programming skills are suspect, but it seems to produce the right results for the simpler cases, if my rusty probability is correct. I am going to hold off giving my answer as to not post an answer key and skew the poll's results. (How's that for arrogance! Like my mom is going to read this and then start an avalanche of poll responses.)

I get for a 3-game series the AL champ wins 57.5% of the time. In a 7-game series that result rises to 60.8%. Any guesses as to what X is?

Funny Farm

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:41:44 GMT

Insomnia. Stress. So of course I find a huge time sink

http://shygypsy.com/farm/p.cgi

This looks really complex, for puzzle enthusiasts, with some poker themed material.

April

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 07:02:39 GMT

April , the new disc from Sun Kil Moon, is being streamed on myspace through March 20. I wore out their 1st disc a couple years ago and freaked out a home game when we were using my mp3 as "background" music and someone just set it to most played. You see it's not exactly party music to most people. Yet I am so super excited that I am actually using verbs here on B.a.D. So if you are so inclined, go get your slowcore on! Not sure why I like this artist when most in this vein i don't like at all, i guess it's mojo or sumthin...

Hopefully this musical opiate will help me wrap up my final projects for school, then Thursday morning off to Reno bitches! I will be slumming as much as I can, maybe $10 NCAA wagers and free coffee-like substance while my homie crushes the $1000 NL tourney that I'm too prudent to play. Or low limit omaha with the locals - no smiling please! you whippersnapper.

Reno, broke, and sober 5 great Nights! think how awesome my trip reports will be!

Jason Lives!

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:40:43 GMT

So after suffering a rough beat I was down to 55 chips in a SNG, 4 players left. I ended up winning the sucker. I think my opponents were a wee too tight defending their blinds...

I think the new disc by Brand New Heavies put me in a good mood, and helped me suck out!