Confidence

I must have a gambling problem. I think I've watched a total of 4 complete college football games this year. And one of those was really just an excuse to hang out with some friends at bar as we watched the Illini get pounded by Iowa. Still, despite the fact that I know almost nothing about college football I've decided to enter a confidence pool at work.


For those of you unfamiliar with how a confidence pool works, it is as follows. You predict the winner of each of the 32 bowl games. You rank each game with a score of 1-30 corresponding to how confident you are that you picked the winner of the game. You can only use a number once, and you get two byes. For each game that you pick correctly you get a number of points equal to your confidence score. Most points at the end of the bowl season wins.


Confidence pools are even more biased in favor of those who actually know what they are doing, rather than those of us hoping to get lucky since you not only have to get lucky and pick the winner, you also have to be lucky enough to have assigned a high point value to that game.

Regardless of the fact that I have no idea what I am doing I am going to enter said pool with the following picks. No fair to my coworkers who may read this blog, submitting an entry with the exact opposite picks. Although I'm tempted to do that myself. There are probably a number of huge mismatches in some of the lesser known bowls that I'm just not aware of because I have never heard of half of these schools. Middle Tennessee vs Central Michigan? I bet my high school team playing against our cross town rival would generate more interest.

Anyways, here are my picks. Feel free to point out any obviously bad picks or to post your own for bragging rights. Winners are in bold, confidence to the right of the bowl name.

San Diego County Credit Union - 26

#24 TCU (10-2) vs. Northern Illinois (7-5)

Pioneer Pure Vision Las Vegas - 5

#20 Brigham Young (10-2) vs. Oregon (7-5)

R&L Carriers New Orleans bye

Rice (7-5) vs. Troy (7-5)

Papajohns.com - 2

South Florida (8-4) vs. East Carolina (7-5)

New Mexico - 1

New Mexico (6-6) vs. San Jose State (8-4)

Bell Helicopter Armed Force - bye

Tulsa (8-4) vs. Utah (7-5)

Sheraton Hawaii - 7

Arizona State (7-5) vs. Hawaii (10-3)

Motor City - 4

Middle Tennessee St (7-5) vs. Central Michigan (9-4)

Emerald - 10

Florida State (6-6) vs. UCLA (7-5)

PetroSun Independence - 11

Oklahoma State (6-6) vs. Alabama (6-6)

Pacific Life Holiday - 3

#19 California (9-3) vs. #21 Texas A&M (9-3)

Texas - 16

#17 Rutgers (10-2) vs. Kansas State (7-5)

Gaylord Hotels Music City - 15

Clemson (8-4) vs. Kentucky (7-5)

Brut Sun - 21

#25 Oregon State (9-4) vs. Missouri (8-4)

Autozone Liberty - 12

Houston (10-3) vs. South Carolina (7-5)

Insight - 18

Texas Tech (7-5) vs. Minnesota (6-6)

Champs Sports - 6

Purdue (8-5) vs. Maryland (8-4)

Meineke Car Care - 24

Navy (9-3) vs. #23 Boston College (9-3)

Alamo - 27

#16 Texas (9-3) vs. Iowa (6-6)

Chick-fil-A - 23

Georgia (8-4) vs. #14 Virginia Tech (10-2)

MPC Computers - 17

Miami (FL) (6-6) vs. Nevada (8-4)

Outback - 25

#18 Tennessee (9-3) vs. Penn State (8-4) 25

AT&T Cotton - 22

#10 Auburn (10-2) vs. #22 Nebraska (9-4)

Toyota Gator - 28

#12 West Virginia (10-2) vs. #25 Georgia Tech (9-4) 28

Capitol One - 19

#13 Arkansas (10-3) vs. #5 Wisconsin (11-1)

Rose - 20

#7 USC (10-2) vs. #3 Michigan (11-1)

Tostitos Fiesta - 9

#9 Boise State (12-0) vs. #8 Oklahoma (11-2)

FedEx Orange - 8

#6 Louisville (11-1) vs. #15 Wake Forest (11-2)

Allstate Sugar - 30

#11 Notre Dame (10-2) vs. #4 LSU (10-2)

International - 14

Cincinnati (7-5) vs. Western Michigan (8-4)

GMAC - 13

Ohio (9-4) vs. So. Mississippi (8-5)

BCS Championship - 29

#2 Florida (12-1) vs. #1 Ohio State (12-0)

Tie Breaker BCS Championship Game Total Points: 50

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

More SNG stuff

I played in two of the longest SNG's I've seen in quite a while this morning. I was two tabling a 6 handed SNG and a full table, and after an hour both were still on the bubble. Its rare that any SNG lasts that long, but two at the same time, and one of them shorthanded to begin with seems odd.

I ended up winning the short handed one, and bubbling out of the full table. I'm fairly certain that I could have one the full table SNG had I not been distracted by the heads up battle on the other table. I still can't understand how people can multitable 4+ tourneys at a time. When they are all in the early stages its fine, because you aren't playing as many hands, and the hands aren't going as fast, but when you get down to three or four players, you are making decisions every few seconds, and I can't believe you can play even close to optimal poker under those circumstances. Maybe my poor little brain just isn't meant to handle the fast paced world of online poker. Maybe I should take up bingo or slots. I don' t think there's much thought required for those.

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FYI I switched over to the new blogger beta. The interface seems better, and now I can tag my posts, which is nice. Maybe if I'm feeling ambitious later I'll go back and tag all the posts in my archives. That sounds like a lot of work though, and I'd have to go back and read all that crap I've written. Maybe not. I'm not sure if blogger will do anything special with the tags, so we'll see.


Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com

Turbo SNGs

I think I’ve found the key to renewing my interest in poker, and its turbo SNGs. I’ve always resisted playing in them because I was afraid they would be nothing but all-in fests where I could close my eyes and mash on the keyboard and have just as high an expectation for success than if I actually tried.

I gave them a try this weekend because I didn’t feel like waiting for a regular SNG to start, and I found that I rather enjoyed it. The fact that I was three for three ITM certainly helped. There also wasn’t as much random all-ins as I expected. The play wasn’t all that different from other SNGs at the same price level. My opponents just seem to get themselves eliminated earlier. I can’t complain about that.

I’ve given up on ring games for a while. I think my eyes closed keyboard mashing strategy would have yielded better results than my normal play. I don’t know if it was just that I was on the wrong side of variance, or if I was just playing like a donkey. I have a feeling the latter, but either way I needed to cut my losses. So I’m focusing what little poker time I have on tournaments.

I think my tournament play in general has improved considerably in the recent months. I’ve been ITM about 60% of the time. I’m defiantly more confident in my play and that alone makes a big difference. I feel like I’m making the right plays at the right times, and when I do bust out, I’m usually not upset with whatever play I made to end up that way.

So yeah. I guess I still play poker a bit. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com