Blinders

Week 12 Fantasy Football Results

2009-12-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

It was an interesting week over at "site x". They decided to run thanksgiving only leagues (we are so flattered that they copy everything we do), as well as there usual assortment of offerings. Most of my solid picks for the week were playing on Thanksgiving, so I tried out a Thanksgiving only league, and found out that my perfect team was well under the generous (unadjusted for the lack of games) salary cap. This basically made the thanksgiving leagues "no cap", and with only three games on the schedule, the risk of identical fantasy teams is too high, so I decided to pass. So to get my Thursday picks in play, I would need to enter the Thu-Mon leagues. The problem with a Thursday through Monday Fantasy Football League is that there are a bunch of injury game time decisions on Sunday, and you will not have access to that info on Thursday. Also, I would be in Vegas for the Thanksgiving holiday, so I decided to skip the Sun-Mon leagues.

Ultimately, I just entered (10) $5 leagues this week. I was only matched in 6 leagues, so I guess they only ran (6) $5 leagues that included all games for the week. The risk of setting a fantasy football team too early is very real, and I paid the price when Warner did not play (I did not have him, but did have Fitz and Boldin), and the Arizona receivers had a poor week as a result. I ended up going 0-5-1 for the week which is a big disappointment, but I think I learned an inexpensive lesson. I will now only enter the Sun only leagues or possible the Sun-Mon leagues, so I can have complete injury info. I will probably go all-in in week 13, because week 16/17 are not good for fantasy football, and I have just three weeks left before I quit until next season.

Profiting From Fantasy Sports

2009-11-23T14:13:00.000-08:00

There has been a ton of competition out there since we launched FantasySportsLive.com in June 2007. Daily Fantasy Sports is very beatable long-term just like online poker is, but I can't play on my site, and the competitive sites just really have not been there yet. I mean, it would have to be worth my while to get my fantasy game up to top level, and unless I am going to get paid for that, why bother? Well in a way there is a dream come true out there. There is a new site, that was specifically designed for daily fantasy sports contest hogs. A site where there can only be one top of the food chain, and that one player gets to take ALL of the website's action. I would drop a link right now, but I am not sure if I can actually recommend it. I mean if you play there at the lowest stakes you will get randomly matched with either me, or the other two current contest hogs on the site. Since all three are pretty good, it probably would not be worth bothering, unless you have some cash to contribute. Just head over to Fantasy Sports Live where you can a least chose your competition and not get stuck against one of the top three daily fantasy players in the world every time.

Top of the Food Chain

So I decided to start this grand experiment last weekend for Fantasy Football. The contest hog ability of this new site is flawless. They only offer one Salary Cap Structure that is way too loose, and makes for much less fiddling with your team. I built up some fantasy football player projections for Daily on the FSL blog, and used them to build my team. I found out immediately that I could get 5 to 6 of the top choices easy. So I spent about an hour agonizing over the last 3 to 4 picks. I deposited $50, got a $10 bonus and entered (12) $5 Heads Up leagues. Contest hogging is a breeze on this site, as with two mouse clicks you can enter the same team over and over (you could enter 1000s of $5 leagues in less than 10 minutes). Sunday morning I tweaked my team just a bit, but left it as is in two of the 12 leagues. I ended up going 9-3, and would have gone 10-2 had I fixed all of my fantasy teams. In these 12 leagues, I was matched up against the number one player from FSL and beat him 3 out of 4 times, only losing in a league that I did not update (Could have been 4/4). So far so good, but am I ready to take a stab at the top of the food chain yet? My projections seem pretty solid, and better than most for daily. They are also purely statistical projections, and a bunch of projections out there are not statistical, and are less accurate as a resut. So I entered (18) $5 leagues that included Thursdays game. I was matched with the top player from FSL again a bunch, and I beat him again. I also noticed that his QB selection was interesting. Looking again at the cap levels, I found that Warner was grossly undervalued, and that even though he was not projected as the top QB, I would be forced to pick him up for value. I adjusted my team accordingly, and figured that for the Sun/Mon leagues I would get him as my matchup again in most leagues, and that 6 of our players would be the same. For the three different picks, mine would each be better. I basically had what I felt was the best possible team anyone could possibly make under the cap. I deposited $300 more, and entered a shit load of $5 and even a few $10 leagues. Top my surprise, the top player from FSL did not show up at all on Sunday. It was the top player from this new site, and he must have entered 85% of the leagues that they were running, as I was matched with him in like 85% of my leagues. Oh, shit! Well I looked at his team, and though different then what I had expected to be up against, I still had the better team. 6 identical picks, and I am still better in the odd 3 choices. Well I had a pretty good run on Sunday, and all I need is 6 fantasy points out of Chris Johnson tonight to sweep the top player and continue my god like running. Johnson has scored at least twice that in every game this year, so I am not very worried. I will post a screen shot of my win loss record in HU tomorrow and it is going to be ridiculous. Based on how strong I feel my team is next week, I will probably just let it all ride again, and try to get to the top of the food chain. Once you can beat the top player on the site, he should back off, and let you get the easy match-ups. I may be just a week away.

Edit: Win Loss Record Through Two Weekends Shown Below

Week 10 Results

9-3

Week 11 Results

62-7

Week 11 Sun/Mon League Results

50-1

Note: All results are for Heads-Up Leagues

Global Warming Finally Exposed as Scientific Fraud

2009-11-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

It's been a bad few months for the Global Warming Alarmist community. They were recently forced to release data relating to a peer reviewed 10-year old paper that created the original "hockeystick". The data showed how a single cherry picked tree in Yamal Russia was used to show a hockey stick for Global Temperatures where none existed. In normal science, you must release all data at the time of publication for replication purposes. Climate science is not normal science. It is simply a massive fraud. The main and most well known players have actually been fudging the data, using "tricks" to make temperature graphs go up when they should go down, blocking all skeptical arguments from publication, and claiming with solidarity that the science is settled when they don't even believe that internally. A whistle blower has finally exposed all this to light, by providing access to 1000s of internal emails among the climate science community. They expose what I have always suspected, massive scientific fraud.

If the scientific community wants to regain the public trust, this must be taken seriously and the offenders seriously punished. Many of the emails show outright criminal activity, where requests for data under the Freedom of Information Act were thwarted by destroying the data, or any emails relating to it's existence. The various peer reviewed authors who have now been shown to fudge data and graphs to present a preconceived point of view rather than actual science need to be stripped of their scientific credentials. All papers that use data in question from these authors should no longer be cited and should be marked as scientific fraud in some way in the journals that published them. Scientific Journals need to get their act together and do a much better job of peer review, and insist on full replication of any statistical study, and all data, code and methods for any scientific paper.

The response from the Climate Science community to the released emails is pretty much typical. Rather than acknowledge what they reveal, they are busy making there illogical arguments. Stealing the emails is illegal, how do we know they have not been edited, there is nothing wrong in any of the emails..... Sorry, but this is your normal playbook. Never actually acknowledge anything wrong with the science, and just try to move on. If the climate science community has any credibility left, they need to use this opportunity to clean up their act. Admit that the people in question have actually committed scientific fraud, and start putting together a way to prevent this going forward. How about actually releasing all data and code required for replication? How about letting actual statisticians review statistical studies before they are published? How about acknowledging that the science is in fact not settled, not even close? If you want the public to believe in Global Warming tell us what the equation is. Be honest about the uncertainties. Most importantly, quit being political, and try to do real science.

All of this would have been exposed eventually. You can try to argue the earth is flat or whatever for 100s of years, but if it actually is not somebody will figure this out and prove it, and it only takes one. The original person who claimed flat earth may have looked good while he was alive, but 100s of years later he looks like an idiot. If you do good, replicable science you will never look like an idiot. Seek scientific truth, not an agenda, and the truth you will find. This will go down as one of the biggest setbacks for science to date, and you can basically thank the progressive left for funding this massive fraud.

WSOP ME Backing is for Suckers?

2009-11-10T19:57:00.000-08:00

Backing somebody in the WSOP ME has got to be the worst investment you could possibly make. I am saying this now, as once again we have a backed winner making it look like easy money to the ill informed. Lets look at it from a pure economic perspective. Poker is not a zero-sum game. There is a significant rake in the ME that will need to be overcome. Most backing agreements are not 100% either. For example this year's winner is paying out 50% based on 100% backing from what I understand. So you need to overcome the rake and then double your money on top of that to break even. Now lets look at who is entering the ME. Sure we have a bunch of donks that lucksacked through an online donkalite, or rich/celeb types who don't care about the 10k. Then you got your part timers, pros, wannabe pros and the like. Most real pros can probably cover themselves. So the part-timers and wannabes should be decent winners to even take a stab at a 10k MTT. So a good portion probably saved some winnings up from cash games or whatever they play to cover their entry. Other breezed their way through a satellite on in. Out of the remaining players not in with their own winnings or a satellite win, you get your players seeking backing. Tons of losers are already in, but nobody from this group. So out of this group you pick out your gem and look for a double up plus to break even, in a marathon where anything can happen and you you will need to get a week deep for any kind of payback.

Variance is an issue in big MTTs. I get that. The problem is that backing can't possibly help. You need to run 1000s of trials to get long-term in the WSOP ME. Sorry, but you are not going to get there backing a handful of players each year. Not even close. It's just another way to gamble, and if you have 1ok to waste and you are in to that type of thing go for it. Just don't argue backing players is some long-term profitable strategy.

"Its the Economy Stupid"

2009-11-06T08:47:00.000-08:00

Obama continues to fiddle while America burns to the ground. Has he forgot the number one issue during elections is the economy? "It's the economy , stupid". Fiddling with health care and climate change while your house burns to the ground is what Obama has chosen to do. As a result the fire is spreading. Drop health care and the environment and fix the economy now by incentivizing hard work, or we will throw your cronies out next year. Without your yes men in congress you will be impotent and worthless during your last 2 years. You are setting yourself up to be the worst president of all time, and you deserve the title because you are truly a joke Mr. Obama.

Is the Treasury Department a Giant Ponzi Scheme?

2009-10-30T13:06:00.000-07:00

Think about this one for a second. If you replaced the U.S. Government with a giant multinational corporation, and the Treasure Department with it's financing arm it seems like all you are left with is a giant Ponzi scheme. Lets say you have this big company, and it raises cash to invest through its financing arm by issuing short and long term bonds at market interest rates. These bonds are given the highest ratings allowable due to the strength and stability of the underlying big company. They get favorable low interest rates as a result. The business that the company is in does not matter, but lets just say they have a natural monopoly. It is believed that they can raise their prices across the board or for certain higher end customers at any time they would like, and this would increase their revenues. This has never been proven, yet it remains a widespread belief. This is a pretty good thing because the underlying business of the company has been losing money for over 30 years now with huge losses in the most recent years, and massive losses project into the future. But this does not matter much, as the financing arm just issues more bonds to cover the losses. So rather than the funds from the bonds issued going into some tangible investment that could earn the returns required to cover the interest and pay back the principle, it goes to pay for the companies operational losses, and for interest and redemptions on previously issued bonds. So now after 30+ years of this, and a huge downturn in the economy that has crippled it's revenue it is left with 12 trillion in outstanding bonds, and not a penny left to pay any of it back. In fact the company is projected to lose an additional trillion+ dollars a year for the next ten years, and will have to issue more bonds to cover that. So pretty soon we are going to be looking at 2o trillion dollars owed, with none of it invested in anything tangible, and still no prospects to pay any of it back. Is this a Ponzi scheme? If this was the U.S. Government and Department of Treasury does that make it not a Ponzi Scheme?

Fantasy Sports - Art vs. Science

2009-10-27T13:08:00.000-07:00

In the classic post Art vs. Science, back when I used to post about poker, I made the case that a different set of skills were emphasized when playing cash games vs. tournament poker. Cash games were more science than art, and tournament poker was more art than science. Ultimately, to be successful at poker you should be good at both, but the arty types tend to prefer MTTs, and the math nerds cash games, all else being equal. So what about Fantasy Sports, and specifically Daily Fantasy Sports (most similar to poker) like we run at FantasySportsLive.com?

It turns out that success at fantasy sports requires the same two skills sets. People use both art and science (or one or the other) to try to beat Fantasy Sports for a profit. Lets say that art is your sports knowledge and feel for who will do well in a given match-up. You have watched a ton of games, and followed a ton of teams, and as a result you just know who to pick each day for your fantasy team. You found out that some rookie will be getting a start, or just remember a favorable match up from the past and adjust your team accordingly. You are playing based on feel for the game, and don't need to run any numbers to confirm your selections. If you have a good depth of sports knowledge, and a good understanding of specific match-ups, that is all you should need to make money at fantasy sports. The poker player who plays like this has never studied pot odds, and does not give a crap about outs. He/she has played enough hands to get a feel for what is the correct move, and they simply go with there instincts.

Next there is the science approach. Lets say that you don't have any sports knowledge at all, but wanted to earn a few extra dollars playing fantasy sports. You learn the fantasy scoring system for a given site, and start crunching the numbers. You take a pure statistical approach to the game. While the art guy may know a hitter does pretty good against left handed pitching, the stat guy knows exactly how well every player in the league does against left handed pitching. The Art guy may make a pretty good choice here, but the science guy has the numbers to see if any other possible choices are better. The science guy simply uses historical statistics to forecast what will happen in the game that will be played today. He does not need to know a thing about any individual player, just that player x is the best statistical selection for position y in today's match-ups.

Now for the blended approach. Statistics can lie, and unless you keep going to deeper levels you may not be able to get the results that you want. For example lets say that a certain rookie has been coming off the bench all year, but due to an injury will be starting going forward. The Art guy is all over this. He has the rookie in his line-up immediately, because his sports knowledge tells him that's a good choice. The Science guy does not see this. Historical stats are still crap for this player. Now if the Science guy is weighting recent performance (going to a deeper level), he will start to see after a few games, that this rookie has become the best selection. So the science guy eventually gets it right if he digs deep enough into the stats. If this same thing happens, but this time on an obscure team the Art guy does not follow closely, the Science guy catches it way before the Art guy. So just like with poker you should use both approaches for the highest level of success.

There is a key difference between poker and fantasy sports though that I have left out. When people play by feel at poker, they are often pushing people around at the table. For example lets say you are drawing to a flush with one card to go, and you need to call a bet to continue. The science guy runs the numbers, and knows if he has "pot/implied odds" to chase the draw, and makes a decision based on that. The art guy also runs though all the similar situations he has been in in the past and probably comes to a similar conclusion. Now lets say the draw was missed, and you are bet into again and are holding top pair or something weak. The science guy may call based on the odds of having the best hand, but will probably not get out of line here. The feel guy, may shove all-in on the missed draw, and force a better hand to fold. The key difference here is that you can't be pushed off your fantasy sports team like you can a poker hand. A maniac, that may be hard to deal with mathematically, and force you to play by feel, can't exist in fantasy sports. They can only do what you are doing, and pick the best possible fantasy team. For this reason I think the Art edge can be substantially reduced, and Fantasy Sports could be played effectively with a nearly pure Science approach. The maniac in poker can be dealt with scientifically, but it requires game theory, which is tough to solve for complex situations like a poker game. You don't ever need game theory in fantasy sports, so success in fantasy sports could be as simple as determining proper drawing odds, and making sure that you get them when drawing.

Longtime No Online Poker

2009-10-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

OK, I realize poker content has been lacking over here at BlindersPoker. It would help if I played more, but I can't seem to get myself motivated. Since the last BBT, I went on a cash game binge for a while to clear a FTP bonus. I won some cash, but never played enough to completely clear it out. That was about a month ago, and I have not been online since. There is a local cash game every weekend that I finally dragged myself to last weekend. It is .10/.20 NL with straddles welcome. Playing live with friends is about as fun as poker can get. Flopping quad 8s for a pretty massive pot (considering the blinds) helped as well. So all in all, I still appear to have the skillz to beat poker for a profit (live or online), but not the motivation to actually play. The online games appear soft again, so I don't really have any excuses. Just wondering what it will take to get me back in the game.

So, I have been writing a bit about politics instead lately, which I would guess most readers here do not like. I think we are in some pretty crazy times right now, with the American Dream getting trampled all over by our wealth redistributionist leader. It is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. His policies are not popular, and make no sense, yet he continues to push for them. I see a bloodbath coming in the midterm elections, and the end of Obama's unrestricted power. The ObamaCare bill is a complete disaster. It was pitched as a way to bend the cost curve down for all Americans. What we have is a bill that will increase costs for all Americans (unless you are poor enough for free health insurance), at a faster rate than if we did nothing. ObamaCare is just a new massive entitlement for the poor, at the expense of everyone else and the economy, pushed through at a time when our country could least afford it. The economy will never improve until Obama stops intervening. Drop the health care, and climate change bills if you want the economy to improve. Until all this needless uncertainty is removed, rich people and businesses are going to sit on their hands and not take risks. If the Democrats can somehow get this pile of shit passed against the will of the American people, they are going to get tossed out on the street next year, and a new congress can start undoing Obama's damage.

The latest talking point that drives me nuts is the notion that Obama saved us from the brink of a depression. First off, I am still in the depression camp. Until the economy starts to actually recover, you can't say that we have averted a depression. These talking points will come back to bite if the economy never improves under Obama which is very likely. Secondly, what exactly did Obama do to save us from the brink? TARP was passed by Bush, and 1/2 of the money went out to the banks long before Obama took office. Most of the Bush TARP funds have been paid back at this point. Obama requested the second half of TARP and pissed it completely away by bailing out GM and Chrysler, sending more money that will never be repaid to AIG, and by converting Preferred shares at that carry interest and must be paid back to common stock that gets no interest, and will never be paid back. Obama did pass the stimulus bill that has been a complete failure, and has done little to stimulate the economy (not a thing for small businesses) despite a near trillion dollars in borrowing to pay for it. So again I ask, what exactly did Obama do to avert a depression? I see a bunch of things he is doing to cause a depression, like pushing through a massive entitlement that we can't afford (ObamaCare), or pushing for an end to U.S. manufacturing as we know it, by unilaterally increasing energy costs in the United States (Cap and Trade).

The politics stuff I guess is more interesting to me than poker right now, so until I can drag myself back to the felt, you might find me bitching about U.S. Politics here more than some douche who check raised me on the turn with a naked draw.

ObamaCare Donkey Math

2009-10-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

Leave it to congress to use the donkiest of math when trying to justify a new massive entitlement at a time of massive federal deficits. The latest bill comes in at an $825 billion dollar price tag, and reduces the deficit by $80 billion over the first 10 years. Donkey math at its finest. We are going to spend $825 billion in order to save $80 billion. I knew the government was inefficient, but come on. The $825 billion will be a combination of about $500 billion in cuts to Medicare payments, and $325 billion in tax increases. So what if we went ahead and cut the Medicare and raised the taxes, but did not do ObamaCare? Then we could use the $825 billion to pay down the debt, and would forgo the $80 billion in savings. So the actual ObamaCare bill is a negative $745 billion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years, not the donkey math result of positive $80 billion. If the politicians were honest with us, they would admit that this is just a new healthcare entitlement for the poor, that we are rolling out at a time when we can least afford it.

Pay As You Go

Pay as you go simply does not work when you are running a massive budget deficit. Pay Down The F-ing Deficit should be the policy. If they keep raising taxes and cutting programs to "Pay As They Go" for new spending and entitlements, they are completely ignoring the debt problem. There are only so many programs that can be cut, and taxes that can be raised. If you dedicate all of your new taxes and program cuts to new programs and spending, we will never make a dent in historically massive deficit we are running. Pay As You Go needs to be redefined as operating under a yearly balanced budget, and not in the perverted way it is now, or America is toast.

Random Brand Thoughts

2009-09-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

Below are some random personal brand impressions I have had lately.

Toyota:

I have had a highlander for 8 years and put about 145k on it before I blew the tranny recently. I was kind of expecting 2ook before a major problem like this with a Toyota, so their quality image is a bit tarnished. Customer Service was not impressive either. I will say that a Jeep would probably be on its third transmission by 145k, so its not like Toyota is horrible quality. I bought a new car recently and it was not a Toyota/Lexus.

Bose:

I have never really been a fan of Bose. I used to sell Stereos long, long ago, and was not impressed by Bose when compared to a "real" speaker. The saying went "no highs, no lows, must be Bose". In my new car I had the option of upgrading to a package that included a Bose 277w 10 speaker stereo upgrade, Sirius, CD changer, and Moonroof for about 1.2k more. I figured I would do it even if the Bose did not make it much better. I have to say that I am totally impressed with what Bose can do in a car. The technology they use is ideal for optimizing the sound quality in a small confined area like a car. The system sounds much better than I thought, and better in some ways than the $1,500 upgraded stereo I had in my highlander with much more power.

Sirius:

I got 6 free months with the car, and figured I would not use it much, and definitely not renew it after 6. After just two week, I don't think I have used anything else, and plan on extending it for sure.

Apple:

I love Apple products, though I was a late adopter on the mac and ipod side. I bought a new 24 inch iMac the day they came out earlier this year for work. It had worked out great until it popped off while I was using it the other day and would never boot back up completely. I have never had a PC completely die like that in the 1st year before. So much for mac quality? I have not dealt with their service before, but you basically need to make an appointment to bring it in to an Apple store. So three days later, I lugged the 24" mac into an Apple store and they were able to fix it at the genius bar in about 45 minutes. Software issues I guess.

Microsoft:

I found the first MS commercial with the 6-ish year old Asian girl a bit misleading. She put together a quick slide show, and sent it out to the grandparents or something. It seemed a bit easier to do in the commercial than it actually is, but it was at least plausible the 6 year old could figure it out and do what the commercial showed her doing.

Well now we have this new commercial with the same girl. Except now she is building up a Widows 7 hype presentation by "chance", because she "happened" to see these "happy" words on her daddy's computer screen. The words chosen were obviously hand picked by Microsoft, and the production value and music chosen (though not the pics), make this one completely implausible. So we are left with Microsoft using a lying 6 year old as a shill to sell their latest operating system. Its some pretty sick stuff IMO.

I love me a good marketing campaign, and you can't fault what they are trying to do, but could this one possibly work? You have the new CEO of GM walking around the design studio and saying that he was just as concerned as you might be about the quality of cars at GM. Well, he has taking a quick peek, and it turns out GM cars are the best in the world. May the best car win, and GM it turns out has the best cars. Well let me ask you this, if you have the best cars, why did you literally just go bankrupt? And, if we can be honest enough that you did not have the best cars prior to bankruptcy, are we expected to believe that in just a couple of months you have turned everything around, and are now putting out the best cars in the world? Well good luck with that one. If they pull it off though, this could go down as an important model for re-branding going forward. Just dust off the old Joe Isuzu technique.

RIP DraftMix Part 2

2009-09-14T19:40:00.000-07:00

Despite all of the fanboy denials that you can see as a result of my original RIP Draftmix post, Draftmix has in fact officially thrown in the towel on daily/weekly fantasy sports. Checkout their facebook application if you are in to that sort of thing.

Blue Frog Gaming is sorry to announce that Draftmix.com will not be running fantasy football drafts for the 2009-2010 season.

You can check on the BF website for any future updates and to try out our sports related applications on Facebook.

Thank you for your patronage,

Blue Frog Gaming

2009 Blogger Fantasy Football Battle

2009-09-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

For 2009 we decided to roll the Blogger Fantasy Football Battle into the Sundays with Dr. Pauly promotion at FantasySportsLive.com. An extra $250 in bonus cash for bloggers only will be added to the existing $500 in bonus cash available to everyone. Last year you could enter both the Blogger Battle and Sundays with Dr. Pauly for $11 each and compete for $1,000 in extra cash. This year you just need to enter the one $11 Sunday's with Dr Pauly league to become eligible for up to $750 in added bonus cash in addition to our standard 91%+ payouts. There were several reasons for the change this year. The blogger battle had become less exclusive in it's second year with more non-bloggers than bloggers competing. There are also a bunch of bloggers who regularly compete in Sunday's with Dr. Pauly, but not in the blogger battle. This way we actually get more bloggers competing for the title, while reducing the work required to run and track both promos. The blogger battle payouts are set up so that bonus cash can be won by entering a SWDP league any weekend. Bloggers can get $75/$50/$25 in bonus cash for the highest weekly score of the series and this can be won in a single weekend. In addition if it is the highest score overall (including non-bloggers) $100/$50/$25 can also be won. A lucky blogger who played just one weekend and nailed the high score would win $175 in bonus cash, and gain entry into the blogger TOC. A bonus cash summary is shown below. See the FSL blog for complete details.

$500 added for all users

$100/$50/$25 - Top three weekly scores of series

$125 - Added to TOC (Beat Pauly's score three straight weeks)

$125 - Added to Super TOC (Win a 5 week series)

$75 - $25 prize for each 5 week series winner.

$250 added for sports or gaming bloggers

$75/$50/$25 - Top three weekly blogger scores of series
$100 - Added to Blogger TOC* ($75 for 1st, $25 for second)

*Bloggers can gain entry into the TOC by having the highest blogger score in a 5 week series, having the highest individual blogger fantasy score during the series, having a top 5 blogger overall fantasy total over the 15 weeks, or by beating Pauly's score for three straight weeks.

Wake Up and Smell the Roses Obama

2009-09-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

It is getting pretty interesting watching this train wreck of a presidency. Obama is quite the campaigner, but leadership is not one of his strong points. He is still in campaign mode, but if he does not wake up, he may go down as the worst president in American history. His popularity is dropping off of a cliff, because he is pushing polices and bills that the the vast majority of Americans do not want. Don't you realize that if you ram through unpopular policies, it makes you unpopular? Obama should know better. Lets look at three foolish things that he is currently trying to push through against the will of the American people.

ObamaCare

67% of Americans surveyed do not like this bill, and do not want it to go through. Keep pushing this one at your own peril.

Torture of Terrorists

71% of Americans surveyed support full on torture of terrorists if it will reveal information that saves American lives. I am not talking about water boarding which by the way is still not torture in the U.S.A. (Just cause Obama calls it that does not make it so). If Obama wants to prosecute the interrogators that got actionable intelligence that saved American lives via legally water boarding three high value terrorists, he is simply going to piss off the vast majority of Americans. Obama's initial stance was that no actionable intelligence was obtained, but it is clear now that that is not true, and hundreds if not thousands of American lives were saved. Going after these guys is a huge blow to the CIA which kept us safe for the 8 years since 9/11, and makes America much more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. Obama's stance that he would rather see thousands of innocent Americans die, vs. water boarding a captured terrorist who planned the 9/11 attacks, has got to be one of the worst political calculations ever.

The Afghanistan War

57% of Americans (including me) want the war in Afghanistan to end. Obama really likes the Afghanistan war for some reason, and has already sent in a "surge" of troops with more planned. We went in there originally to displace the Taliban that was allowing Al-Qaeda to train on their lands. This has already happened, and Al-Qaeda has moved on to Pakistan and elsewhere. I am not sure what we are currently trying to accomplish now, or how we will know when the war is won. The whole thing just seems pointless, and it is puzzling that a passivist like Obama continues to push this policy. We could simply pull out right now, and leave behind a bunch of predator drones to drop bombs on the bad guys risk free.

Vegas Run for the Super Draft

2009-08-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

I am heading out to Vegas in a few hours for the first ever Las Vegas Fantasy Football Super Draft. It looks to be a pretty crazy weekend with 6 or so VIP parties and a live draft at the Hard Rock Hotel over just three nights. We are bringing out tons of FSL swag with the plan of signing up hundreds of new Fantasy Football users at FantasySportsLive.com with a top secret special offer. If you happen to be in Vegas, I should be reachable on the FSL support number through Sunday.

The Expectation Value of Health Insurance

2009-08-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

Two key concepts bubbled to the top for me over the last few weeks on this overly complex health care reform issue. These may be the two most important points of all, and until congress grasps these two items, any health care reform will do more harm then good. Let’s call these two concepts, the expectation value of health insurance, and the probability of success with a communist Russia type economy.

Let’s start with the first one. 46 million uninsured is the number that Obama loves to throw out there, but it is simply a lie. There are 36 million uninsured Americans (2007 census report), the rest are illegal aliens. Assuming that Obama knows the difference between the two of them, he is lying to help his cause with that number, but that is not what’s important now. Out of the remaining 36 million you have about 25 million called “indestructibles”. They are 18-28 year olds who could probably afford health insurance, but choose to not take it because they feel they are indestructible. After that you have about 10 million poor, who could qualify today for Medicaid, and say about 1 million others. So let’s forget about the 1 million others, and the poor who could already have coverage. That leaves us with the simple task of getting the indestructibles on health insurance to solve the alleged problem. So let’s ask ourselves a very simple question. Why do the “indestructibles” choose to not carry health insurance, and is this a rational economic choice for them as consumers. If you start to think about it at all, you can see that the system is set up to simply rip off indestructibles, and that their choice to stay out of the system is a +EV choice. You need to understand that the health insurance market is not free. It is highly regulated, and is the only insurance where the premiums can’t be set based on the individual policy risk. Think about that for a second. When you buy car insurance, your individual cost is based on numerous risk factors (value of the car, your driving record, how many miles you drive, where you live…). When you buy home/fire insurance, again it is based on individual risk factors (value of the home, type of roofing material, location of home). When you buy life insurance it is based on risk factors (your age and your health history). Health insurance could also use a multitude of risk factors as well (your age, your health history, pre-existing conditions, if you smoke, if you are overweight, if you are a heavy drinker, the size of your family...). The government simply does not allow this for heath insurance, and forces companies to “pool” people together to spread the risk, while charging each similar policy the exact same amount. So now we get back to our “indestructibles”. These guys are the lowest possible health insurance risk, but get charged exactly the same as a 75 year old with a history of heart disease and diabetes. They would have to pay 7-10k per year for health insurance they will likely not need for many years, unless they break a bone or something like that. Even if they can get the same coverage for 3k through there employer, it is still not worth it to them. The expectation value of buying insurance for them is -$3,000 (subsidized) or up to -$10,000 without employer help. The expectation value of not carrying insurance is much larger (less negative). Their only issue is variance. If you wanted this class of uninsured to choose to take insurance, you need to stop ripping them off, and make them pay what it actually costs to insure them. Yes, costs for high risk groups would have to go up, but it should for them. Take the car insurance analogy. A very bad driver who totals his car every other year, and has multiple speeding tickets, pays the exact same rate as a perfect driver with no accidents and no tickets. And if you allow pre-existing conditions, the bad driver can stay off insurance until he totals his car, and then sign-up to get all the good drivers to subsidize his risk and repair bill. The worst thing about the health care bill is it appears to make health insurance mandatory by law. The people most harmed by the bill are the 25 million uninsured (the problem according to Obama), who will be forced to take health insurance at complete rip-off rates for their individual level of risk.

Now on to the second concept. The argument that I hear over and over again is that the government can create a public, government run, option that can compete effectively with the health insurance industry to lower costs. The argument goes like this. The evil insurance companies are wasting marketing dollars advertising against each other, are inefficient because they can’t get economies of scale in processing claims, and on top of all of that make a profit that comes directly out of the care provided. If the government were to take over the entire system, they would not have to advertise or make a profit, and could set up one efficient system to process all claims. On the surface this seems to make sense to the average person, and I think that’s why this claim is repeated over and over by the many talking heads out there. There is a big problem with this argument though. The health insurance industry is really no different than any other competitive industry. So you really can make the same argument anywhere. Let’s look at personal computers for a second. We have Apple and all of the various Microsoft windows based PC vendors. There is tons of advertising going on and efficiencies that could be gained if we went to a single manufacturer. So the government should just take over the entire computer industry, because if they did we would get better and less expensive computers as a result. After they get done taking over the computer industry, they should do the automotive industry (already ½ way there), the banking industry, consumer electronics, clothing, the airlines and more. Doing all of this will save Americans money because the U.S. Government is a beacon of efficiency in a highly inefficient free market system. It starts to become absurd at this point, right? The government is simply not efficient at anything they do, and can’t compete on a level playing field with a profit motivated company. The profit motivated company will find ways to reduce costs, and improve their offering until they eventually displace the government competitor while still earning a profit. For an example of a country where everything was run by the state, look at communist Russia. Not exactly an economic powerhouse. If the government is really capable of out competing private industry, Russia would still be around, and the American economy would be near the back of the pack of all developed countries. The fact that after all of these years we are still an economic powerhouse under a free market system, and all other countries with more state ownership of the economy lag us economically, is simple proof that our system is the most efficient. Going to a government run health care system can only raise costs, and kill all innovation. The only way the government can compete with private industry is cheating by using tax payers to subsidize losses, or by changing the rules to the benefit of the government competitor. You can already see this with GM. Now that we own them, we start pushing their products with Cash for Clunkers and electric car subsidies, and then rewrite the EPA mileage standards so that a hybrid, plug-in car (The GM Volt), can get an absurd 250ish MPG rating when the gas engine on board will probably get less that 40 MPG.

Photo Dump and Contest

2009-08-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

A was out on vacation for a while, so sorry about the lack of posts. I thought I would do another photo contest so here we go. Whoever is the first to answer all of the questions about the below photos gets a $10 transfer to the online poker, or daily fantasy sports site of their choice (limited to FullTilt, PokerStars, or FantasySportsLive). If nobody gets them all in two weeks, whoever has the most correct answers wins.

Name This Surf Contest

Name This Lake

Name This Building

Name the "Avenue" where this Tree House is Located

Name The Place Where This Guy Hangs Out At

Name This Building

Cash for Clunkers Donkey Math

2009-08-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

Well congress thinks they finally have a winner with the “cash for clunkers” program, and are looking to extend it for another 2 billion tax payer dollars. Let’s just take a peak at the donkey math and see if this makes any sense to the taxpayers that are paying for the program. First off, not all of the 1 billion (soon to be 3 billion) will be distributed as rebates. The government has to administrate the program, and that costs money. Out of the first billion spent the costs averaged $6000 per rebate. As with all government programs, they get to skim some off the top for themselves. Next, we do not actually have the money to pay for the program, so we will need to borrow it. So we will need to pay back the 6k per car with interest. So let’s try to calculate the amount of interest we will end up paying by the time it is paid back. Interest rates are pretty low right now, but there is also no plan to pay off the deficit anytime soon. Obama’s budget plans for 1 trillion dollar deficits for the next ten years. We can’t start paying off the 3 billion for cash for clunkers until all of the subsequent borrowing after the program is paid back with interest. Since we know that we will be borrowing at least an additional 10 trillion over the next ten years, and we will have to pay that back first with interest, I think you can see that it is going to be at least another 30 years or more before we start to pay off the 3 billion. Even worse is that we are borrowing most of the money in short term T-bills that will need to be continually rolled over at market rates over the 30+ years. So it is basically just like putting the program on a maxed out credit card with a risky adjustable rate, and no plan to pay it back. Under these assumptions, we will pay somewhere around $12,000 in interest in addition to the $6,000 in principle for a total taxpayer expense of $18,000 per $4500 clunker rebate. Genius!

Well it even gets worse from here. People will argue that we are saving the earth by getting the bad gas mileage cars off the streets and getting people into better mileage cars. That’s the whole point, right? That’s some pretty simplistic thinking. The program is actually worse for the environment than no program at all would be. Lets me explain. It costs energy to make a car. Lots of energy. You have to melt and form all that steel. You have to make and ship all of the parts. You have to assemble it by moving large items around the assembly floor. You have to ship the car from the assembly line to the dealership. Making a car is an energy intensive activity. If we are going to take a car that is still running, and may have 2 to 4 more years left, and throw it in the trash for a better mileage new car, then the energy cost to make a new car needs to be low, or you don’t actually save any energy. With the energy cost of a new car being so high, saving 4 to 10 miles per gallon over the 2 to 4 years the clunker would have continued to run, simply does not pay for the extra energy required to build a car that was not needed yet.

So in summary, the cash for clunkers plan costs $18,000 per car to taxpayers over a 30+ year payment schedule, and actually increases United States energy consumption, even with a 4 to 10 MPG improvement per car.

Warning! Poker Content

2009-08-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

Post #500 on this blog

For some reason I am back to playing cash games at FullTilt. It’s been a couple of years. I played for a while after the UIGEA, but eventually the games felt and were measurably tougher IMO. I switched over to beginner S&Gs at Bodog (still easy to crush), and the occasional blogger or other MTTs mainly on FullTilt. Realizing that it would be a long time before I would be playing cash at FullTilt, I removed most of my funds. I also tend to transfer funds to friends out of the FT account. This steady drain of funds can easily outweigh the meager blogger and MTT winnings I get at FullTilt. Lately, I have not even been playing MTTs and S&Gs. It’s too much of an open ended time commitment. I like the idea of playing as long or short as you would like to, and online cash games are the only way to go for that. When I found out they were doing a $100 no deposit bonus, I figured it was time to get my feet wet again over at FullTilt. The last time I played cash I was 4 tabling $1/$2 NL. Looking at just over four hundo in the FT account, that level would not be possible. I like to have 10x the buy-in for multi-tabling. So I started off at .25/.50, and then started mixing in some .50/1.

I switched to the new lobby from the software upgrade, and sorted for low stakes NL cash by percentage seeing the flop, and then added filters for 8+ players and $7 min. average pot (to filter out the lowest “Low’ stakes). To my surprise, an amazing number of tables were meeting my table selection criteria. When I have wanted to dabble in the past, it seemed like it was way too hard to get on multiple tables that met my basic criteria. Now, with what appears to be increased traffic on FullTilt, and the advanced sorting and filtering it was easy to find juicy tables. After about 500 hands mixing up the stakes and moving the roll closer to $500, I decided to just commit to .50/1, even though I was under rolled. I play a very low variance playing style, and that allows me to play under rolled to some extent. With the $100 bonus clearing quickly while 4 tabling .50/1, I should be able to offset running bad, and if I started running good, I might get quickly to a safe bankroll.

After committing to 4 tabling .50/1, I was able to play about 1000 more hands, and ran my bankroll up to $675 (about $250 up total), while clearing about $40 in bonus funds. I am feeling pretty good about my game, and it feels like most of the cash game rust is already gone. I have not been stacked or even gotten very low on any table yet. I also seem to have a pretty steady positive accumulation that makes me a winner in nearly every session. I like to play against short stacks, and it seems like there are way more people playing with 1/5th of a full stack lately. I even had the pleasure of holding court at a .50/1 table where I had a full stack and the rest of the table had $30 or less for over an hour. I can’t really remember that ever happening before. For some reason I tend to beat up on shorties. I think it is my squeaky tight preflop, hyper aggressive post flop play. I am so tight preflop, that when I do play, I am often good enough to call down a shorties preflop push. Post flop, because of my aggression and their lack of stack, I am putting them to the test a bunch for their whole stack. If I raise preflop, and then fire $5 on the flop, the shorty is forced to commit right there. So my $5 bet is almost leveraged like a $20 all-in. I had grinded up nicely before the gift hand below.

I pick up AA UTG and limp it. This was my first UTG limp with rockets in a cash game in forever. A late position player with $100 behind raised it to $5.50, and the button with $130 called. I reraised it to $15 to try to kill the set mining odds, and get it down to one player. The initial raiser folded, and the button called. The flop was T high rainbow. I continuation bet $25 into about a $35 pot. I was reraised to $50. I figured based on the preflop action, the only hand I needed to worry about here was TT. Hands like JJ, QQ, KK, and ATs were much more likely and could have been bet the same way. I decided to just jam right there, and was gift called pretty quickly with AKo. A blank on the turn, and the $260+ pot was mine. Not sure what this guy is thinking there, but I will take his money.

I have another $60 in bonus to clear, and will probably knock that out this week. If I can get the roll north of $1K, I may start moving back up to $1/$2, and posting about poker more often.

It's Just Seasonality Stupid

2009-07-28T14:36:00.000-07:00

The economic headlines continue to distort reality to my amusement. If you can't find any actual real growth out there in the economy, you can just try to find a seasonal signal and then claim that it is real growth. Simply forget the fact that year over year something is down 20%, when you report a 2% month over month gain. Forget the fact that housing starts tend to improve in the summer (when the weather is seasonally better), that housing sales tend to spike in the summer (when families prefer to move to minimize disruption), and that housing prices tend to rise in the summer as well (because of the increased demand). Call it Dennis Kneale accounting or whatever you want. So we get a couple of normal, seasonal, month to month gains in housing prices, housing starts, and houses sold, and every douchebag, idiot on TV claims the recession is over and we have a housing bottom. Sorry, but it does not quite work that way. All three measures continue to be around 20% down year over year. Until that number shrinks down to closer to flat, you can't really be calling a bottom.

If you look at that past two major recessions (early 80s and 90s), housing prices did not rise until 2 to 4 years after the unemployment rate peaked. Both of those recessions may end up being milder and have quicker recoveries than this one. Unemployment is not expected to peak until sometime next year, so realistically we are looking at 3-5 years or more before housing prices start to improve. Between now and then we will find a bottom, but we are not there yet by any real measure. A bottom would mean that year over year prices are flattening, which they are not doing now.

I have been playing the market a bit lately, because it really wants to rally, but has no where to go. It is pretty easy to ride it up until it exhausts itself (where it is about now), and then get out and wait for it to drift back down and catch it's breath. I think the latest rally is the market pricing in the positive of health care not passing. Any negative shock, or sign that the health care package may still have legs should send the market right back down at this point. Q2 GDP numbers are due Friday, and its hard for me to imagine that they will not surprise to the negative side. Tax revenues are down about 25% this year, but GDP only about 4% officially so far. Seems like the GDP numbers have some catching up to do with the horrible economy as indicated by tax receipts, and that may include some negative revisions to earlier quarters. Be prepared to get out quick when things go south.

BlindersCare

2009-07-21T14:23:00.001-07:00

Rather then just bashing Obama’a approach to healthcare, I would like to offer up a few suggestions that could make the system better, and not cost the government or taxpayers any extra money.

Health Care Fee Reform

I think there is a fundamental problem with the way fees for services are determined. The way the system works now different patients are charged wildly different amounts for the exact same services. This is completely unfair and a huge problem with the current system. If you are a Medicare/Medicaid patient a small amount is charged. If you have health insurance, you will be charged different larger amounts based on what brand/type of insurance. Lastly, if you are uninsured you will be charged way more (sometimes 5x) what the same insured person would pay. This last part artificially inflates the “cost” of the uninsured on the system, and makes it prohibitively expensive to not have health insurance. Fees should be mandated to be identical for all patients, and should be set by the provider at a competitive rate of their choice. Medicare, Medicaid, and Private Insurance can say what the maximum fee they will cover per procedure is, and the patient can pay the difference if any. This allows for higher levels of service for patients willing to pay for it, and can allow for low levels of service for Medicare/Medicaid patients. It also allows for people to forgo health insurance altogether, and just pay as they go without getting completely ripped off by the provider on the same exact services. If people had a reasonable option of not getting insurance, it would help to keep a lid on insurance prices. Also insurance prices could be held in check on some policies by not increasing the payout amounts, and forcing the patient to pay a larger difference amount over time.

Tort Reform

Part of the increasing cost of health insurance is due to the many expensive lawsuits that are lost and defended every year. I would fix this, by having a two-tier fee schedule. The low base fee would come with an agreement to settle all claims in arbitration with a 2 million dollar cap. For an extra fee of $10 to $20 per procedure, you could waive the arbitration requirement, and waive the max. settlement cap. The extra fees would pay for the insurance to cover the extra liability. This way all patients do not have to pay for the costs associated with massive lawsuits.

Emergency Room Reform

Nobody should be turned away from an emergency room with an immediate life threatening condition or after a serious accident. However, if you show up at an emergency room for a regular doctor visit of some sort, and not with a life threatening condition, hospitals should be required to deny emergency room care. They simply should be refer the patient to the nearest walk-in clinic, and face no penalty from the government for doing so.

Health Insurance Reform

Government regulations on health insurance need to be greatly reduced. If we simplify the fees as stated above and go with a transparent/identical fee structure for everyone, insurance plans should be able to just state what they pay per procedure, and offer whatever coverage they want to. There should not be any minimum level of coverage mandated by the government. Where government regulation should exist, is in denial of claims. Once you are accepted for insurance, and have paid your bills you should never be denied coverage for any reason. Pre-existing conditions may get an exception here, but that is it. You apply for health insurance and unless you are outright lying about a major pre-existing condition, you can’t be denied coverage once accepted. This would eliminate tons of headaches and lawsuits from the system. Insurance providers may need to beef up their prequalification process, but that’s the correct way to do it.

Pre-existing Condition Reform

I am totally against allowing someone to go without insurance until some major problem happens and then apply for insurance to cover it. That is simply not fair, but seems to be what the liberals are after. I think that as long as you have had “continuous coverage” of health insurance, pre-existing condition requirements should be waived. If you are laid off at work, and are going to lose your existing policy you should be able to roll your insurance over to a new carrier with no penalties or pre-existing condition checks. If you have not had “continuous coverage” you should have to pay a much higher premium or simply be denied for health insurance coverage. Currently, many people are trapped in their jobs due to a medical condition that would be pre-existing if they switched insurance, but that is really not fair. Denial for pre-existing conditions should only be used against those who do not have current coverage.

Health Care Record Reform

I actually think there is some cost savings to be had here. If privacy concerns, can be addressed electronic health records could be a real cost saver, and help to reduce medical errors. How many times have you filled out the same medical form when visiting different doctors? They should standardize on electronic medical forms, and they should be filled out once, and updated on an ongoing basis. This eliminates the cost of obtaining and entering the same information over and over again in different computer systems. This can be entirely paid for by fees charged to doctors. Charge a $5 fee per medical record pulled for a while to cover the costs. The doctor’s office saves the time and money to print out paper records, and enter them into the computer offsetting the $5 cost.

Dealing with the Uninsured

Well I have not said a thing about what I would do here, or if it is even an issue. I think this is a small issue that is overblown, but I have a solution. The fee reform ideas will allow many to safely go without insurance, and not sacrifice on care. There should be some type of supplemental insurance that only covers major issues (say 10k or higher in bills), that pay as you go types could get. What’s left are illegal immigrants that should not get insurance, and those who simply can’t afford it. For those that can’t afford it, we need to come up with a bare bones policy that has high deductibles, co-pays, and low levels of coverage. No optical or dental should be included and only generic drugs where possible. The monthly cost of such a plan could be kept small, but it would be pretty shitty coverage. When the uninsured show up for treatment, they should be required to apply for the low cost plan, and pay all co-pays, deductibles, and fee differences when seeking treatment. They can ask for assistance there as well. The government then determines if they have the ability to pay all or part of the premiums, and deducts from a paycheck as required for the barebones coverage, and supplements the rest. This way the uninsured get some low level, bare bones coverage at some government expense, but would still need to shell out cash when receiving services. The poor coverage is a great incentive to go out and get a job and get better employer health insurance, or to afford a better private insurance policy.

I think all of the above are good logical steps to take to contain health care costs and get more people covered. The best thing is that none of them include a competing government plan, or require large amounts of government outlays to put the reforms in place. It’s more about writing some new regulations to address the issues rather than creating a costly government run mess to do the same. We simply can’t afford to raise taxes in anyway in the current economic situation. An approach like the one above is all that is currently possible with today’s budget deficit, yet it will still go much farther in reducing cost growth long-term than an expensive government run option.

Economy at the Bottom of Obama’s Priorities

2009-07-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

I think by now it is becoming obvious that Obama has no intention of fixing the economy. Fixing the economy appears to be at the bottom of his agenda. You need to judge a president by his policies, and not what he says in speeches. His policies are all devastating to the economy, and will prevent any kind of recovery unless they fail to pass or are over turned at a later date. He talks a bunch about everything he is doing to fix the economy, but let’s look at what has actually been done so far, and what he is planning to do to fix the economy.

The Stimulus Bill

This was nothing but a pork-barrel liberal wish list with a massive welfare plan thrown in for good measure. It has nothing to do with stimulus, and as a result is an over all negative to the economy. All of the wasted money will need to be paid back with interest in the future. Obama claims that the stimulus is working as planned. We have spent about 10% of it in the first 5 months. Most of it will be spent in 2010, and 2011. If we were planning to stimulate the economy in 2011, than we were planning on the economy not recovering until then. With the recession (soon to be depression) starting in late 2007, it is already about as long as any recession since the great depression. Planning on it continuing until 2011 is like planning on a depression, and doing pretty much nothing about it for a year or two. As you can see there is no actual intention of fixing the economy with the stimulus bill. If you really wanted to stimulate the economy in the short term you need to drastically reduce business and personal tax rates (i.e. Regan). That puts all of the money directly into the economy at a pretty fast rate (depending on how low you go with rates). Having the government spend the money wastes at least half of the actual stimulus portion of the money, and allows them to spend the rest of it on stuff that does not even stimulate the economy. A bunch of the money went to extending and increasing unemployment benefits. If you would have lowered taxes instead of raising unemployment pay, it would have provided for a much larger incentive to go out and get a job, and for employers to stop laying off people. There is no way I would go for additional stimulus offered by the architects of the first bill. However, if you want to actually stimulate the economy, you could cancel what has not been spent, and redo it now as a massive tax cut. That would only happen if Obama’s priority was to fix the economy.

The Health Care Bill

Trying to push a massive heath care bill though right now is laughable. It’s like the guy who has been living beyond his means on credit cards for 40+ years, is at major risk of losing his job and has taken a recent massive pay cut, and yet goes ahead and shops for that luxury yacht he has always wanted. You would call that person insane. No sane person or responsible lender would lend that person the money for the yacht. It works differently though when you can print your own money I guess. So let’s see what situation the United States is currently in. We have been running a budget deficit for 40+ years (living off credit cards). The few Clinton year surpluses were not surpluses net of Social Security, so they do not count. The U.S. tax income is down 22% this year and dropping fast. That’s like taking a huge pay cut with the threat of more cuts or unemployment to come. So now Obama is out shopping for the luxury yacht called “Universal Health Care” that we simply can’t afford. The responsible individual would wait for his job situation to stabilize and pay down some his debt, before even thinking about a yacht. Obama is simply not responsible with America’s money. Now this is being sold as a way to lower costs long term while adding health insurance for all uninsured. Those two things simply can’t happen at the same time. Insuring tens of millions is going to cost hundres of billions extra on an ongoing basis. The cost savings are not really explained. Adding demand to the existing supply of health care will raise the cost according to the law of supply and demand. So not only do we need to pay for all the new people covered, but the cost for everyone will also go up as well because of increased demand. The government simply can’t mandate new lower payout amounts. Doctors and other providers will simply leave the system if it is not worth it any more, causing further downward pressure on supply. Rationing health care will be the only solution to the supply and demand imbalance caused by the bill. Because of the ongoing expenses required to cover this bill, taxes will be going up on top earners. Also, there will be a penalty for individuals and businesses that do not provide or take out health insurance. This is where the economy gets destroyed by this bill. About 60% of the high income individuals own or run small businesses. Small businesses are also the most likely to be hit with penalties for not providing health insurance. This is a double whammy that will continue to depress the opportunities for small businesses that create the vast majority of new jobs in this country. As long as this bill is hanging over the U.S. economy, there will be no recovery. Nobody will be starting new small businesses now unsure of how high taxes are going or if health insurance will be mandated. If it actually passes, small business job creation will crawl to a near stand still, and the economy will not recover. If, Obama’s priority was to fix the economy, he would put this bill on hold until the economy has recovered and the budget deficit has been removed (i.e. indefinitely). Continuing to push for this bill now is a major headwind against economic recovery. Obama could step up and lead, by saying that we can’t currently afford the healthcare bill, and need to focus on economic recovery, but I doubt that happens.

The Cap and Trade Bill

This is just a feel good enviro-nazi bill that addresses a problem that does not even exist at massive expense to U.S. jobs and the economy. The heart of the bill is something like this. We want to double the price of gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, and electricity (from natural gas and coal), so that the cost of electricity produced from solar and wind becomes more competitive. The bill ignores several key facts. Solar and wind by themselves for example, simply can’t replace the electricity that we get from coal and natural gas no matter how hard we try. If electric cars are going to replace gas powered cars, we are going to need more electricity not less. But wait! If the cost of electricity doubles, that makes electric cars less competitive. No problem. Lets triple or quadruple the cost of energy until wind, solar, and electric cars are competitive. Ultimately, this is just a massive energy tax that does not even lower the amount of CO2 produced in the United States since we still will need the energy and baseline energy alternatives do not exist. Nuclear Energy is the only source that could meet the U.S. needs without producing CO2, but nothing in the bill promotes Nuclear. Another problem is that the world is not signed up to do the same. So energy costs go up drastically for U.S. businesses and individuals, while they do not change at all in the rest of the world. This will simply ship jobs over seas where energy and environmental costs are lower. I would love to see how the union manufacturing shops with vastly higher labor costs, will continue to compete when energy costs become vastly higher as well. To get this bill through the House it was watered down a ton, and is not even supported by the top Global Warming advocates anymore. Most of the costs are delayed for about ten years, but it must make energy prices go way up at some point in the future to actually work. The economy is in no shape to take on the uncertainty of a massive energy tax plan, or the effects of a massive new energy tax. This is a job and economy killing bill, and if Obama had the economy as a top priority he would put this one on hold for a while. It would also be nice to see the science behind Global Warming actually debated before taking on these massive expenses. The globe has been cooling for 8 years now, and the current June 2009 temperature anomaly against the 1979-2009 satellite measurement record is zero, meaning that today we are not above the average temperature of the last 30 years. This bill can wait for Global Warming to be confirmed scientifically before we purposely add more headwinds to the economy.

The Government Meddling in the Private Sector.

This simply needs to stop. Anything the government does to help the economy in the private sector hurts the economy. Bailing out weak companies hurts the strong. Recently CIT which is a major small business lender started teetering on bankruptcy and is looking for a bailout. The argument goes that they are the top small business lender and must be saved. Let’s imagine for a second that they became the top small business lender by under cutting their competitions fees and taking on more risk than there competition would. So this business model fails, and the government comes in with a bailout that props up the failed model at the expense of the successful ones. Had CIT failed, the competition would have picked up a good portion of the business with the exception of the loans that should never have been made. This is how capitalism works. Bailouts distort and destroy the free market. The same is true for the car makers. Had we just let them go unassisted into bankruptcy they would have either been liquidated or emerged as much smaller and profitable companies. Ford would have likely picked up significant market share because people do like to buy American. The additional market share would have allowed them to hire a good portion of the employees from GM and Chrysler, and get them working on cars that people actually want. By propping up GM and Chrysler post bankruptcy like we are doing, we are allowing the weaker companies to compete unfairly against Ford. They don’t need to turn a profit because the government is there to backstop their losses. So to move their crappy cars they undercut the competition on price, even if that means no profitability ever. So we are just hurting Ford at taxpayer expense by propping up the weak competition. All these government interventions in the private economy are delaying the recovery and hurting the economy. We need to stop all of it, and support capitalism and free markets as the way out of this mess. The economy may go a bit deeper short-term, but it will find its bottom much faster and set the stage for a natural, unforced recovery. If, Obama wanted the economy to recover, he would get the government out of the private sectors business.

Quit Destroying Americas Job Engine

Small business is the growth engine of the American economy. They have led us out of all of the recent recessions through massive hiring. We will not get out of this recession/depression until small businesses are comfortable hiring again. Enacting policy after policy that hurt small businesses is no way to fix the economy, but that’s what Obama is doing. How about throwing these guys a bone rather than choking them to death. Below are the many ways that Obama is killing job creation in small businesses.

1) Increased or planned increased tax rates on small business owners (Bush Cuts expire, and top 5% pay for health care)
a. Less incentive to start a new business
b. Less incentive to expand or take risks if reward is reduced

2) Mandatory health insurance coverage with penalties.
a. Less incentive to start a new business
b. Less incentive to grow business to where coverage is mandatory
c. Increased costs if penalties apply

3) Increased or planned increases of energy costs
a. Increased costs to all businesses
b. Increased competition from low energy cost countries

4) Increase to Minimum Wage
a. Increased labor costs
b. Less incentive to hire entry level employees

5) Increased regulation and red tape (equal pay laws…)
a. More regulations to follow
b. More lawsuits to defend

6) Bailouts to big businesses only
a. Unlevel playing field that favors the big over the small

So Obama’s many policies are all huge negatives on the economy, while he continues to talk about all that he is doing to fix the economy. He either does not understand economics enough to see the effects on the economy from his proposals, or he is actually proactively trying to depress economic activity to help push through a wealth redistribution agenda. He may be successful in shifting some wealth from the top to the bottom, but he will also be successful in shrinking the overall wealth of the nation. When you take away all incentive to create wealth, and incentivize those who are unemployed or underemployed, you are going a long way to destroy the economy and overall wealth. Let’s just hope somebody can stop this nonsense.

The System

2009-07-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

I have been a pretty big sports better most of my life. Most of the time, I analyze the match-ups, and come to a solid decision on what side to bet based on my sports knowledge. I have also employed betting "systems" in the past. One of the betting systems that I used in the past was for baseball, and it worked really well. I have not used this system in about 15 years, but I see no reason why it would not continue to work. Since IMO the system continues to work, yet I have not chosen to use it in a long time I have no problem revealing it here in detail, for someone who wants to take advantage of it. The system is basically an arbitrage system that takes advantage of the fact that Baseball is thinly bet compared to other sports, and has a very low house edge. The edge from arbitrage can easily out way the house edge, and lead to long term profits for the user of the system. Once you have convinced yourself statistically that the system works, you can ramp up the amounts you are betting and make some significant money on it. When I was last using the system I was betting between 2k to 5k a day as an unemployed UNLV student.

Baseball Betting

There are three main ways to bet on baseball. There is the money line which is a bet on who will win the game. There is the over/under line on what the total combined score will be. There is also a line called the "Run Line" which is a line with the favorite -1/2 run (The favorite to win by 2 runs or more). The system exploits the information from the over/under to find arbitrage opportunities between the Run Line and the Money Line. Arbitrage is simply a way of exploiting inefficient markets. The baseball betting market is inefficient because it is thinly traded. An example of arbitrage would be buying goods in the United States, transporting them to Europe and reselling at higher European prices. If the market is inefficient allowing for price disparity between two markets, and the cost of transport is less than the price disparity, guaranteed profits can be made. Guaranteed profits can be made betting baseball using arbitrage.

The System

So lets take a hypothetical game like the Yankees vs. the Red Sox. Lets say that Beckett is pitching for Boston and Boston is the favorite. The money line might be -145 (bet $145 to win $100) for Boston, and +140 (bet $100 to win $140) for the New York. If the house can get equal money laid on both sides they make a small profit by taking in $145 for every $140 that they pay out. The run line for this same game would be something like -145 for N.Y., and +140 for Boston. While Boston is favored to win the game outright, they are not favored to win the game by two or more runs. In this case, they are the underdog on the run line. Lets also say that the over under for this game is 10 runs. In nearly all cases the favorite on the money line is the dog on the run line unless they are huge favorites. The system is based on the fact that Boston will not win this game by exactly one run more than one in five times. I take $100 and bet it on Boston to win the game by two or more runs (run line), and $100 and bet it on N.Y. to win the game (money line). So I am betting $200 and will get back $240 if Boston does not win by exactly one run. As long as this happens less that one in five times I will collect $200 in profit before I lose both sides, and lose $200. I am looking for an average win of at least $40 in this case, so you shop sports books for lines like this. You also shop multiple sports books to find the best possible lines for each side. Because baseball is thinly bet, the lines are often different at different sports books. You identify the games you are interested in, and find the best lines to make your bets against. A lot of the time you will be able to do better than a $40 average win on a $200 in total bets if you shop around, but that is the minimum acceptable amount.

Before I started the using the system, I studied it against past games for several months to verify that it worked. What I found is that it works for American League games and was close to break even for National League games. Rockies home games were an exception to the rule for the National league. I also looked at the correlation between the over/under line, and the success of the system. I found that the higher the over/under on the games selected, the more successful and profitable the system is. All of this makes perfect sense. High scoring American League games are less likely to be decided by one run, while low scoring National league games, where they like to manufacture runs, are more likely to be one run affairs. So you can use the over/under line as a first screen to select American League games, and then make sure you can earn at least $40 on average based on a $200 successful bet. The higher the over/under, and the higher you can make on average per success helps to increase your profitability. In practice I like to use the system on about 5 games each day. That way you either made a nice chunk of change if everything works out, or you will break even if one of the five games is a one run game won by the favorite. The disaster scenario is losing two of the games, but I think that was so rare it only happened to me once or twice as long as I used it.

You will end up making huge bets with the system, and winning smaller amounts, but that is fine. You will be a high volume player, so you may be able to get rakeback or deposit bonuses at online sportsbooks while using the system. Back before the UIGEA when I was sports book bonus whoring it was not baseball season, so I was using football. This system would have cleared bonus requirements faster than you could blink, so there is some additional money to made there as well. Another great thing about this system, is it is purely analytic. You don't need to know anything about baseball to profit from it. Let me know if you have any questions or plan on trying it out.

Vegas Trip Report

2009-06-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

I'm back from a quick trip to Vegas over the weekend. It was a interesting weekend that went something like this. I rolled into town Friday night, and headed over to the Rio. I found Dr. Pauly in the press area, and we had a nice chat about Fantasy Sports Live's plans for the next year including a new and improved Sunday's with Dr. Pauly coming this September. I also asked him about his 30 day break from the WSOP to travel the country following a concert tour. To me a nice break from the grind of the WSOP would be several weeks in Maui, vs. a travel heavy concert fest, but to each his own. I like Pauly's idea of coming back fresh for the 50k horse and Main Event, vs being burned out by the time the biggies roll around. I don't know how some of the bloggers can get through the grind of an ever longer WSOP schedule. I watched a bit of the 50k HORSE which is always cool because the field is small and the tables are star-studded. Phil Helmuth was not in the HORSE event, as he was still playing in an earlier event that was down to the last few tables. After that I headed over to Slots-a-Fun for a quick $3 craps session and off to the MGM for poker.

I put my name on the list, and was looking around the poker room, when I noticed Hoyazo, Chad and CK playing at a $1/$2 NL Holdem table. I asked to get moved over there, and after about 20 minutes I was seated. Hoy said the table was tight and they could use me to liven up the action a bit, lol. I played a pretty long session with them, and watched Chad put on his usual cash game clinic, and CK accumulate over 1k in chips. I was horribly card dead, and did not get my first pot until about three hours into the session. A couple interesting plays from Chad were as follows. Someone opened to $13 preflop and there were a couple of callers, so Chad raised to $152. I said something like "Don't you think that is a bit excessive?". It folded around until a guy with QTo stated he wanted to gamble and made the call. Chad's JJ held up. There was also this really young looking guy who thought he was some sort of poker genius. Chad and him were going at it constantly. At one point he opened to $17 preflop, and I said "that's one dollar for every year he is old." Chad called with a low suited 5 gapper, and after hitting the flop slightly took down a massive pot from the child prodigy. I love watching Chad play cash, because he plays pretty much exactly opposite of how I play, and still has success. I was folding away with bad cards and not catching any flops as well. At one point, I had K9o and had limped from a blind in a four way pot. It checked through to the river, and I had nothing, but took a $5 stab at the small pot. I don't mind taking down the orphan pot, but I also don't mind getting called down for image purposes. As tight as I play preflop, I like to get caught bluffing once and a while so that people will think I am a bluffer in the back of their minds. Hoy made the call and dragged the pot with a 3 for bottom pair. I said "you better not make a play like that tomorrow (in the WSOP)". Eventually, I would win my first pot with a Jack high hand, and then shortly later, I would call a $13 open in a four way pot with KQo, and spike two kings on the flop. Hoy would stab at the flop, and I called. On the turn Hoy check folded to my bet. It was getting close to three in the AM at this point, and Hoy, CK, and Chad called it a night. The table got much easier immediately so I hung around for a while. Sometime after 4 AM I packed it up myself, and quit a 5 hour + session where I won just two pots and was down $150.

I slept in till about 1PM the next day, and got back the the MGM shortly after 3PM for another session. It was another card dead nightmare. Two hours into another session, and I had not won a pot yet. I had not seen a single hand like AK, AQ, AA, KK, QQ, or JJ in over eight hours of poker. It really starts to wear on you after a while, and I was even starting to make some bad plays which is not acceptable. I ran into Russ Fox and Weak Player who were at the MGM for the Clapton concert that night. Later on Chad would show up, and commented that I looked depressed. I pretty much was. I came out to Vegas to play a bunch of live poker, and was simply getting crushed. In this session, I finally started to catch some middle pairs like JJ, TT, and 99. I would raise preflop, and get a bunch of callers. The flop would come with one over, and it would check to me. I would stab at the pot and get pushed off by an immediate reraise. Basically, the medium pairs were just accelerating my losses. Eventually, I would just get up to clear my head after a three hour+ session with just a single small pot won and loss of $190. I knew things would turn around eventually, but I was not in the right mental state. I split the MGM and headed over to the RIO were I ran into Mr. Al Can't Hang. We talked for a while in the press booth, and then I headed over to a Final Table with Lee Watkinson.

I then headed over to Casino Royal for a $3 Craps session, and ended up back at the MGM around midnight. I could not find any bloggers (Hoy was off making a big score at the Venetian), so I sat down for some more $1/$2 NL and started running like a God. Second orbit I picked up KK and dragged a $320 pot. I would also pick up AA, QQ (2x), and AK (2x) during the session, and run my $200 buy-in up to about $530 over 3 1/2 hours. The session would come close to squaring my losses from the previous two horrible sessions. I called it a night. Sunday morning, I was feeling a bit burned out and decided to head home earlier than planned.

Fed Can't Have It Both Ways

2009-06-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Fed just completed their recent meeting with a statement that they are seeing signs of the economy improving, and are going to leave overnight rates at 0%-0.25% for the indefinite future. On one hand they are saying the economy is improving. On the other hand they are saying the economy is crap because they need to keep rates at historic lows for an extended period of time. Many people do not understand how fiscal policy works, but the Fed. should. When the Fed. adjusts their rates there is a 9-12 month lag before the rate change takes full effect in the economy. Because of this huge lag, the Fed. needs to stay ahead of the curve, and try to anticipate where the economy will be in a year. Keeping rates too low in a recovering economy leads to inflation, and was a big cause of the current financial crisis. Had the Fed. kept rates higher prior to 2008, it would have helped to prevent, and/or deflate the housing bubble. It would have been harder for people to qualify for even the sub-prime type loans if rates were higher, and if less sub-prime loans were made, the housing bubble would have been less severe. The Fed. was essentially enabling the housing bubble through fiscal policy. If the Fed. really thought the economy would be recovering in the next 12 months, they would need to start moving rates up now. How about just moving the rate to 0.25%, instead of a range that includes borrowing money for free? The fact is that there are no green shoots, and the Fed. is well aware that Obama's policies, if enacted, will crush the economy for many years to come. They want to be a team player so they are talking the economy up, but their interest rate policy speaks for itself. Holding rates at historic lows for an indefinite amount of time, means that in their opinion, the economy will not be improving for an indefinite amount of time plus 9 to 12 months.

Last Minute Vegas Run

2009-06-25T08:40:00.000-07:00

It does not appear that there will be an organized blogger gathering this summer. That's no reason for me to not make a Vegas run though, is it? I got a bit of business to attend to, and the WSOP is a great place to promote Fantasy Sports Live, so I am going to pack up and head out this weekend. My only plans are to spend some time in the Amazon Room promoting FSL and meeting with some of the bloggers reporting on the event. Also, I am going to play as much live poker as possible (probably at MGM). I don't believe there are any organized blogger events Friday-Sunday, so I am going to play it by ear I guess. I don't plan on playing in the WSOP, but that could change if I go on a heater Friday night. Good luck me.