The Post Office

F**king Freedom Passes!

Now that might not mean a lot to you if you don’t often visit the Post Office, but as I am currently enjoying the life of a ‘home trader’ (i.e. I’m so skint I am having to sell most of my personal belongings to pay the mortgage) I spend a lot of time in the Post Office waiting to weigh and flog my old games, books, guitars, clothes, pride, etc.

Pretty much every day since the new year has been shite thanks to the oldies renewing their Freedom Passes (Just WALK or STAY INDOORS love!) but today was particularly crap for some reason, and I had a book AND an Evel Kneivel toy to sell (I shit you not).

Matt walks into the Post Office. It is VERY busy. After a 10 minute wait…

OLD INDIAN TELLER IN WINDOW 6: Anyone NOT renewing their Freedom Pass?
MATT: YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Matt approaches the counter and plops a heavy book on the scales.

MATT: I want to send this in the UK. Just the cheapest method please.
TELLER: It will be £4.41 or £4.45
MATT: What’s the difference?
TELLER: 4p
MATT: No, I meant the difference in the services?
TELLER: One is standard post, one is Parcel Force
MATT: Umm… Just which ever is the cheapest one then please
TELLER: Well I’m just worried that that might take a long time
MATT: Well that’s why I asked what the difference was
TELLER: It’s 4p
MATT: No, I understand the monatery difference, I meant the difference in the service – i.e. if one was faster than the other…
TELLER: Well if you want a faster service…
MATT: NO! The speed isn’t important to me, I’m just trying to explain why I asked!

Matt is clearly becoming somewhat flaberghasted and appears to be getting ’slightly’ louder. A nearby teller has twigged…

WINDOW #5 TELLER: Is there a problem?
MATT (through gritted teeth): NO! Just a misunderstanding. It’s fine now.

Matt’s teller passes him a postage sticker for the book. Matt now produces a HUGE box and places it on the scales.

MATT: Same again please.

The teller looks at Matt and opens his mouth to ask what service he wants. However, before he can say a word…

MATT (loudly): JUST THE SAME AS THE LAST ONE PLEASE!

Matt manages to pull a smile out of the bag so the authorities aren’t called for. The elderly teller passes another sticker to Matt. Matt applies the label, pays the man, thanks the man, walks to his car, turns the radio on VERY loud and BLOWS HIS BRAINS OUT WITH A SAWN-OFF SHOTGUN.

The last bit didn’t happen, but you can understand why people just turn up in Post Offices with guns sometimes.

I’m not saying I’d do it… but I understand.

That’s all.

PCA …. A ….. Ayyyyyy

So I’m at the PCA which is pretty awesome.

Don’t know how many of you listen to the EPT live broadcasts but I just love doing them. One of my favourite work jobs of all the ones I’m lucky enough to do – hope that comes across. We’ve got 5 days of broadcasts out here and I enjoy them more than the days off…..which having just written in out loud probably makes me slightly odd.

Writing this as the final table goes on and I’m on a break from commentary and the play is spectacularly good. I’ve said this before but it’s great to watch and talk about players that are so much better than I am – it makes it super tough to analyse and makes you think about what they’re doing and I’m not. Hope it’s the same for you guys watching – I’ve got no doubt watching cards down poker either on ept live or railing high stakes on line can help your game.

Bizarrely – to make you feel better if you’re struggling through the long snowy winter – it’s cold here. Still a cool place to be but it’s literally cool. I went out for a walk last night and wore the same coat I wear at home in London. … I know boo hoo right?!

Anyway I’ve been thinking a lot about expected value and value generally. I heard this pod talk about value in life and pricing. And the guy was talking about how people are terrible at estimating the value and also estimating their odds of reward

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness.html

Some of it is very basic for poker players but you might enjoy thinking about Value in real life

I’m going to write a column about it soon where I’ll rip off some of this talk – but don’t tell anyone….

I was thinking about this as I stood in the queue at Heathrow to check in.

I had a 9 hour flight to Miami and about a 16 or 17 hour journey in total ahead of me. I was also exhausted and wanted to sleep on the flight so I started thinking – upgrade. As the queue went down I decided to try and put a value on the ‘premium economy’ my high maintenance ass so desperately craved.

This dilemma backs up the problem we humans have with assessing value in our day to day lives. The main thing being I’ll only ever take the trip once. I can’t compare how I’ll feel taking it in economy vs taking it in premium economy.

I settled on a figure of £200 – which I figured is the price I’d pay for arriving with some sleep and stretched out legs. As I type this I realise that 22.50 an hour for a comfy seat is a bit much – maybe 150 is the number.

Anyway I got to the desk and asked and the number was £239. I knew I was going to do it as soon as I heard the number. Maybe it was worth more to me than I thought, maybe I was always going to do it regardless of the number, or maybe the cash desk assistant was just fit. The point is I didn’t abide by my initial value assessment.

After the event I still can’t say whether it was good value or not. I had a comfy flight – in economy I may have had a huge person or screaming baby next to me in which case I’d have paid 239 to get out but I also could have had 3 empty seats next to me in which case I wouldn’t.

I’m aware this might be the dullest blog I’ve ever written but the whole idea and challenge of assessing value in life fascinates me. It also fasicantes me how bad we are at removing emotion from decisions…. Anyway I’ve already started thinking about whether to do it on the way back…. My journey to geekdom is complete  I think

Hmmmm

I seem to have missed out November and December in my blogging and for that I’m very sorry! It’s been a crazy busy time with moving to the USA so that’s my excuse. How long can I use it for?

I’ve been out of the UK for a couple of months now and although I’m really happy with the southern California sunshine I definitely have withdrawal for the British shores. To keep my mind OFF of the moping I’ve been trying to stay occupied with work. While in the UK in September and October I was lucky enough to be asked to present the WSOPE for ESPN, then I hosted the PKR Heads Up Grand Slam followed by an awesome week working with Party Poker on their World Open V. Upon settling in the USA I played on Poker After Dark – the commentators edition and then hosted the new season of High Stakes Poker. I have a sneaking suspicion that people are going to be seeing rather a lot of me in the near future!

Poker After Dark is airing on NBC this week and truthfully, I’ve been petrified about watching it. I’m far more comfortable with my ‘hosting’ duties than I am having people watch me play poker. It’s not been too terrible so far although I can see glaring examples of where my nerves definitely affected my play. It’s funny, I really didn’t expect to feel so intimidated but sitting down at that famous table and seeing all the cameras…. definitely sweaty palms time.

Anyhow, things are cracking on and it looks like 2010 is going to be a busy one so I’m getting a bit of rest while I can. While much of the poker population is fighting lost baggage, food poisoning and poor weather (if all of the twittering is to be believed) I’m sitting in a cozy cabin in Tahoe getting my relax on.

Happy New Years Everyone!!

On The Rail Podcast #29 Released

Dear On The Rail Member,

Happy New Year! For a limited time you’ll have exclusive access to the newest edition of the On The Rail podcast.

On The Rail 29 is the 2009 end of year show. Much loved co-host Kara Scott dials in from a mystery location in America to give her 12 monthly progress report. The show also features an interview with Karl Marenholz one of the UK’s fastest rising poker stars.

You’ll need a password access it on the site, this month it’s : riverside

Click here to listen:

http://www.ontherail.co.uk/podcasts/on-the-rail/on-the-rail-29/

This podcast was made possible by Virgin Poker and they have some great promotions at the moment. Their 2 billionth hand will be played sometime in January and they’re giving away a total of €250,000 in prizes with the cash rolling in from hand 1,970,000. Also their bad beat jackpots need winning and are up to over €400,000!

If you want to join Virgin Poker, On The Rail has an exclusive deal you won’t find anywhere else, for more details go here:

http://www.ontherail.co.uk/poker-rooms/virgin-poker-review/

As mentioned in the last newsletter, Nick is the host of the Poker Stars UK and Ireland Poker Tour and the next event is in Manchester on 11th February and it’d be great to see you there. You can qualify for it on Stars right now and if you don’t have an account you can join here:

http://www.ontherail.co.uk/links/pokerstars

That’s it for this edition of the newsletter, we hope 2010 is a winning year for you!

Best,

Nick and the team @

www.ontherail.co.uk

On The Rail #29

This is the 2009 end of year show. Much loved co-host Kara Scott dials in from a mystery location in America to give her 12 monthly progress report. The show also features an interview with Karl Marenholz one of the UK’s fastest rising poker stars.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (55.5MB)

End of year report

End of term report

I thought for my benefit and maybe for your interest I should analyse my poker playing in 2009.

The exercise has actually been beneficial for my state of mind as it’s made me realise I’ve done a little better than I thought. Our perspectives often interfere with the truth and its important to see thing as they really are good and bad. At the end of October and the beginning of November I had a big downswing playing in games I know I can beat. Funnily enough this was the point at which the main tracking site started following Omaha so after 4 weeks of losing I was confronted by a big downward graph on this site and anyone who knew my screen name and looked me up would see me as a big loser in a game that’s relatively easy to beat. This was a low point in the year but I’m happy to say I took a week off refocused and won it all back by the end of December. The point is this downswing knocked my confidence and halted my moving up limits so I was feeling a little down about my year until I stepped back and remembered where I was.

At the start of the year I’d been playing Omaha seriously for 3 or 4 months and was just about breaking even at .5/1 – through luck rather than judgment. 12 months later I’m winning at 1/2 though I’ve yo-yoed between limits and endured some downswings I’m certain that when I play well and focussed I’m beating 1/ 2 and ready to seriously tackle higher.

In addition I’ve had an amazing year in PLO tournaments – running extremely hot in the few events I’ve played. I finished 10^th in an ftops, very deep in a wcoop, 13^th in one of only 2 live plo tourneys to date. Also – when playing for fun – I’ve final tabled 4 or 5 low stakes plo tourneys online and won one (the amount of dead money in these events is ludicrous).

In total this year I’ve won a little over $22k in cash and tournaments playing almost entirely PLO.

The truth is I have to be pleased with that result. Looking back I realise how little I understood the game at the beginning of the year and the exciting thing is there’s still a long way to go.

My frustration is that I thought I’d be playing 2 / 4 regularly by now but I have to recognise several things. First of all I simply don’t play enough. My other work and commitments mean I play on average 15k hands a month which is okay but nowhere near what a pro would play if he was trying to beat a new game.

The second thing is Omaha plays so much bigger than holdem. 1/2 or .5/1 with an ante are games where you can win or lose 2 or 3 thousand in a night on a lucky or unlucky day. It’s impossible to avoid big swings in your bankroll and it’s a mental and money management adjustment that takes a while to make. The biggest thing for me has been increasing my patience with the game and realising there are spells when you never make a hand or where you constantly run into the nuts and these are just a part of the game. Omaha is a much more enjoyable exciting game but it’s also a harder game because it’s a much bigger test of character. At times I’ve failed and losses have made me play worse and created big downswings – however I feel like I’m ending the year a much stronger player in terms of my self management and overall playing ability.

Out of interest you might like to know I now have a stop loss when I play a session of 5 buyins. I’ve never had one before believing the old mantra that if you have an edge in the games you should keep playing however you can lose so fast at Omaha and its so hard to play badly when you’re behind I think a stop loss limit for a session is essential.

I need to credit Brian for helping me so much this year. I know how lucky I am to have such a good player as a friend and someone I can talk to about the game and hands. If I took his advice and quit all my work and played plo with him as my coach I’m sure I’d be killing the 5/10 in no time. Sadly that’s not going to happen but I know I wouldn’t have made the money I made without his help so I am lucky. As a side note I should mention how awesome it’s been to watch him kill the big games this year – no one works harder at their game or deserves the success more.

I also played the main event this year. As I’m sure you know I had quite a dull event in terms of my play and the cards and result but the experience was great and I’m glad I won’t shuffle off this mortal chaffinch without having played it.

And so for this year I have a couple of clear goals.

Firstly I want to continue to improve my Omaha cash game. Its tough to set definitive targets as it’s dependent on how much time I have to play but by the end of the year I want to be a winning 2/4 player taking shots at higher. I think it will take most of the year to get my game to that point as I need to do the work – if I can do it faster I’ll be delighted. I hope to win more than this year but I’m not setting a target instead I’m going to set a target number of hands and hopefully the money will follow.

I’ll also be playing more live tournaments this year (which means more than the 3 I usually play each year). With the UKIPT job I’m playing some events Stars are kindly putting me into (which is super lucky for me) and I’ll also play a few more off my own back. Being sponsored for a few events is an opportunity for me to work on my tournament game and get the monkey off my back of not really having many live tourney results. It’ll be interesting to see how this goes and if I can keep my focus in the long live events!

Right longest blog ever so better end it.

Hope your poker was great in 2009 and 2010 is even better – if not I hope you run like the little baby Jesus.