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

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