Odds and Odd People

I love playing Poker. I don't like gambling. Poker is the only Casino game I know of where the house has to explicitly take a little bit of each pot because the game isn't rigged in their favour. 

With Roulette, whatever your strategy, every time you spin you lose (in the long run). With Blackjack, the really skilled players are able to get their odds close to the houses. In the very long run the house will win. The good players play because they enjoy it and might get lucky. I don't like either game. With Poker on the other hand, you are playing the other people at the table. 

People make crazy decisions. Emotions get involved. We do stuff that doesn't make sense, but is fun. We go on gut. We mix it up. Few games I have been involved in have tested my emotions as much as poker. You can lose big with two Aces. You can make lots of money with the worst cards you can get (2 and 7 off suit). Anything can happen with any one hand. A crazy decision can work out. In the long run, it is the people who are able to combine the facts and the fiction who do the best. The people who know the odds and understand the people. The people who understand themselves, their strengths, and their weaknesses, and who adjust accordingly.

Dogs (K9) and Poker Faces

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

Stuart points to this article in the Economist which discusses the latest TED conference. He tells me to look out for Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's TED talk. It is (as far as I can tell) not up on the site yet, but here is an interview with him on Al Jazerra by Riz Khan.

Game Theory fascinated me at university. I only did a brief introductory course which included rather than focused on it, and maybe it was just that I was more fascinated by the movie 'A Beautiful Mind'. I had heard that to a degree it had kind of run its course and become overly mathematical and impractical, but maybe Prof Bueno de Mesquita is on to something?

I am a little skeptical about anyone who claims to have a 90% success rate. I just don't buy it. Especially when they say that they can explain away a lot of the other 10%.

If you come to me and tell me you have a model that gets it right 60% or 70% of the time, I may listen. Skeptically, but I will listen. 90% and I start to smell something.

That being said, it is true that computers and models can be used to help us make decisions and narrow down likely outcomes. I do believe that stripping out biases and processing information can lead to better decisions.

I will delay judgement on Prof Nostradamus.