MATT: 13. If you want to go ahead and try and lie. SAM: That's a 14, except negative three to performance. TALIESIN: I've been waiting for this for so long.
SAM: So 11. MATT: So, are you lying? SAM: I am lying. I am definitely on the run from someone. TRAVIS: Good to know. MARISHA: So. Mask. I'm just fascinated by the mask. Looks well-made. Did you make it? SAM: That's a good fucking question. Did I make it? (laughter) SAM: I don't make things. MATT: No, I presume-- and we discussed this a little bit-- we presume it may have been scavenged from a porcelain doll. SAM: Oh, that's cool. Cool and gross, cool and gross. LAURA: What's her name? The creepy doll? TRAVIS: Annabelle. (laughter) LAURA: No, don't say that. I don't want to see art with you with Annabelle's face. SAM: Too late. MATT: The internet's running with that now. SAM: Check your Twitter. TRAVIS: It seems we have all day. What were your plans? LIAM: Not much. We were going to sample the different Trosts, and I wanted to maybe do some book browsing. Nothing major. LAURA: What's a Trost? MARISHA: Brewery tour! SAM: It's ale. LAURA: We just can't go by the Baumbauch ale. SAM: What happened with the Baumbauchs? LIAM: There are two others to choose from, here. MARISHA: They're who we loaded crates for, and then we kind of swindled their employee. TRAVIS: Didn't leave on the best of terms. LIAM: DM, which one is the one that everybody knows has got the blessing of Fryda Langer? MATT: No, that is actually the Baumbauch. LIAM: Shit. MATT: Yeah, the Starosta is kind of tied with the Baumbauch family. TALIESIN: We're imaginary beer snobs now. LAURA: Is that the one you need? LIAM: No, I'm just saying the one that you swindled, it's got the blessing of the big cheese here. LAURA: Oh. Well. Why do you need it? LIAM: We don't need it. It's just pleasurable to have a Trost, is what they say. She kind of needs it. SAM: I need it a little bit. LAURA: You need a beer? SAM: Well, I prefer the harder stuff, but I'll take what I can get at this point. Yeah, I'm sticking with this fucking accent for the next two years. (laughter) TRAVIS: Laryngitis every Friday. (laughter) MARISHA: So beer tour, then circus? LAURA: I've got to say, I miss those two people we ran into at the carnival. TRAVIS: I might just wait for the carnival, actually. MARISHA: Well, if we just montage through a beer tour, we'll quickly get to the circus. To the carnival! MATT: You can totally do that. LIAM: Can we just bring my book-browsing down to a single roll to see if anything of use-- MATT: Yeah, we can do that. We'll say, if you guys decide to go ahead and travel, the five of you, you make your way through the town for the day, you coast around the Husseldorf family brewery, you meet Voss and June, who are the two very nice ladies who run the facility. The Husseldorf family. You avoid the Baumbauch, but can acquire Baumbauch ale from other taverns in the town, of course. And the von Brandt family brewery. All of them, as soon as you say 'Trost', they correct you and say the family name. They're very intent on getting rid of the name 'Trost' as an overall, discussion of Trost-brand brews, and trying to make it their family name. There's an offense, to the point where you're like, "Oh, Jesus. I didn't realize." TALIESIN: Like Kleenex and tissue paper? All right. MATT: But you manage to get nice and sauced throughout the day. LIAM: I take it easy. I have one more in the first half of the day, and one in the second half. MATT: Okay. LAURA: I don't have very much either. MATT: Okay. SAM: I'm going to have tons. MARISHA: I get sauced. MATT: All right, well, that being the case-- LIAM: --you are poisoned. MATT: No, make a constitution saving throw. SAM: Well, that was crazy. 12. MATT: 12, okay. You get a little woozy for a while, and as the sun begins to crawl towards the distant horizon, you do not manage to allow your meal to usurp your control. LAURA: Aw, it's like Ren Faire. MATT: Yeah. Don't remind me. MARISHA: Good times, good times. MATT: So as the day comes to a close, you're fairly tipsy, you're not fully intoxicated. For your trip, you wanted to head to the Hillsbrook Parchment and Binding. LIAM: Is that where I went the last time? Except not as myself. So I'll go as myself. MATT: Okay. Go ahead and make an investigation check. LIAM: All right. Don't fuck me, Vax. That is-- LAURA: That's Vax. That's Vax's dice. LIAM: Yeah, the thing about even a light German accent is that when you say "Vex" and "Vax", it's the same shit. (laughter) LIAM: That is a 12. MATT: 12. You take the better part of 30 minutes or so, and you find there's a lot of books on farming techniques. There's a lot of books about how to grow, care for different types of vegetation, plants, various beasts of burden. You find books on the different seasons and what's best for different types of grain and wheats. You manage to pull through and find a couple of books that deal with discussion of the Menagerie Coast that talk about what's called the Clovis Concord. It's more of a discussion of the political structure that maintains all the city-states there. LIAM: And the person who ran this place was an older man, right? Just sipping tea. MATT: Yeah, Sheenah, yeah. LIAM: I'm sorry. You have a nice selection here. Do you mind if I ask-- I haven't seen any other booksellers of any kind in town. I'm not really looking for anything on farming, so much. Is there anywhere else I could look into? MATT: "If you're looking for some sort of a library, your best bet is to go to Zadash up north." LIAM: Zadash. MATT: "That's where the Library of the Cobalt Soul resides. They have all the information you could "hope for. A bit pricey to peruse their interior, unless you have proper coverage, but unfortunately "if what we have isn't what you're looking for, I can't help you." LIAM: No, it's a fine selection. Sorry. How much for this book on hoe technique? MATT: "Oh! Jamieson's Hoedown, yes, quite. That will be two silver pieces." LIAM: Oh. I'm very embarrassed, I'm sorry, I gave away my last two silver pieces. LAURA: No, I gave it back to you, remember? LIAM: I gave away my last two silver pieces, so. Maybe I can earn it back and come back later this week. MATT: "Please do. Do you want me to hold it for you?" LIAM: Yes. MATT: "What's your name?" LIAM: My name is Caleb Widogast. MATT: "All right. I will keep it here under the shelf. Thank you so much." LIAM: Okay, good day, thank you. LAURA: Is this a big shop? MATT: It's a boutique. It's designed almost like a cross. There's two cross-sections of hallways that have books across the walls, and there's a window at the end of each and then a door at the far back. LAURA: While he was talking to the shopkeeper, I'm going to take out as many books as I can and move them around on the shelves, and then take some of them and turn them around to where their binding is facing the inside. MATT: Go ahead and make a sleight-of-hand check. LAURA: Natural 20! MATT: Over the period of him searching and distracting this man, you have completely rearranged the interior of this bookstore, to the point where even in the far corner, you Ghostbusters stack them in the center of the room, floor-to-ceiling, with him not even noticing it. LIAM: You little fucking poltergeist. MATT: You feel confident and happy and a sensation of approval washes over you. All right, so. LAURA: I skip out the door. MATT: Okay. You turn around from having this conversation and notice the interior is not as you last saw it, and a bit of nerves begin to brew up under you. LIAM: Frumpkin, come on. MATT: (meows) Frumpkin follows behind. LIAM: Oh yes! Matt's got to make cat sounds now! MATT: I didn't even think about that until now. God damn it. All right, so as you guys have gathered at this point, the oranges and the pinks of dusk begin to peek through the quite-cloudy sky, the chilled air of the coming night sky signalling the Crown's Guard to begin lighting the hanging lanterns that line the streets of Trostenwald. A renewed energy takes the streets as the sound of a fiddle seems to creep through the night air. SAM: My god, Ashley's a master fiddler, isn't she? ASHLEY: Beedle-deedle. (laughter) TRAVIS: I love how your fiddle noises were "beedle-deedle". ASHLEY: That's the sound for all instruments, right? SAM: Drums. LIAM: By the way, DM, can I ask-- sometime in the entire day, when Nott was getting wasted, could I have spent an hour using Arcane Recovery to gain back that one spell slot I used this morning? MATT: Sure, yeah. I'll allow that. All right.
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12/22/2018 0 Comments Decision Making and Chance Part2So you start out by betting $1, and if you lose you bet $2, and then if you lose again you bet $4, and eventually you'll win, thereby covering your losses. So that's an interesting strategy that people use in various types of investment situations, namely, you start losing, bet more. You can show that that's not a good thing to do. In fact, it's really not a good thing to do in a losing game. One of the reasons it's not a good thing to do is the house has a betting limit, and if you have an unlucky sequence of losses, you can't double your bet because they won't let you bet that much. Another problem is if you have a betting limit, if you have an unlucky sequence of losses, you might run out of money before you can double your bet and come out ahead.
Anyway, so that's sort of the quick tour roulette. Now, if you talk about roulette betters, you could say a roulette better who makes a profit after 10 bets would be lucky. But a long-run profit would be very weird. The math says that's really unlikely to happen. So a possible explanation where somebody makes a long-run profit in roulette, they're cheating. So they have some scheme worked out, and they're not really playing according to the regular roulette odds. On the other hand, you can also detect if a roulette better is losing more than he or she should https://casinoslots-sa.co.za/online-casinos. In fact, if a roulette better is losing after 10 bets, so what, they're unlucky. But if they lose in the long-run and repeated bets faster than they should, faster than chance predicts, 5.3 cents per bet, that would also be weird. That would be equally weird, as weird as the winner. And then possible explanation for that, the better is being cheated. So there are two different kinds of weird. Weird good and weird bad. But anyway, where do you draw the line between luck and something else is going on? So statisticians, that's sort of the basic question of statistical inference. Traditionally, 5% is a cut-off point, which is called statistically significant. If what you observe has less than a 5% chance of happening under ordinary circumstances, you conclude that something else is going on. So in roulette, it's simple, you can make probability calculations and answer this statistical question. Is what you've seen weird, or is it just within the bounds of chance? What about betting on football games? What's the chance that the 49ers will win next week? Well, 49ers started out looking pretty good in their first couple games, but what's going to happen next week? Well, football is not like roulette. The same experiment is not repeated under identical independent conditions, and so the law of averages and various probability models don't necessarily apply. So you can't make these cut and dried mathematical statements about the persistent football better goes broke, which you can say about roulette, or craps, or Keno, or any of the casino games of pure chance. Well, football betting is an interesting industry. It's about a $10 billion industry right now, almost entirely illegal. AUDIENCE: How are illegal industries such as this measured? How do you-- where does the $10 billion come from? DR. MICHAEL ORKIN: Surveys. There are trade organizations that do surveys and find out-- in fact, I'll give you a link in a minute. It's a good question. But they're illegal-- Well, here's one answer. Football betting is illegal in this country, except in Nevada. Football betting is legal just about everywhere else in the world. So internet gambling is very popular. And internet gambling is legal, except here. So that's sort of an interesting legal issue, as you probably know, because if you bet on a football game here, you're violating some Federal law, but if you're playing in an online casino, that's perfectly legal, that's located in Costa Rica, or Jamaica, or Canada. So legal is sort of this strange term in this world. But yeah, how do you come up with a number like? So there are trade organizations that do surveys and find out things like that. So a typical football bet, not all, but a typical football bet is done with a point spread. So a point spread is a handicap given to the inferior team. And who decides that it's an inferior team? Well, in some sense the bettors decide. So here's how it works. Let me go to the third bullet point. First week of the season, the 49ers played Arizona, and the Niners were nine point underdogs. So that means if you bet on the Niners in that first week, you get nine free points tacked on to their score. So it turns out San Francisco lost that first game, 37 to 27, but if you add nine points, the Niners win. So people who bet on the 49ers in that first game won their bets. And the people who bet on Arizona, even though Arizona won the game, lost. So that's fine. Now, the casino has to make a profit, so they pay 10:11 odds. So that means if you make an $11 bet with a point spread, and you win, you make a $10 profit. So now how does that ensure that the casino is going to make some money? 12/22/2018 0 Comments Decision Making and Chance Part1SADIK: We're very pleased to have Dr. Michael Orkin here to give us a talk today. Dr. Michael Orkin has a very distinguished career. He's currently Managing Scientist at the Exponent, a publicly traded center scientific consulting company here in Menlo Park. He's a well-known personality. He's been nationally quoted, CNN, NBC's Dateline and ABC World News.
He's written several books, including What are the Odds? : A Chance In Everyday Life. He's consulted for clients in both government and private sector, including the FBI, and Las Vegas odds makers. His software has also been featured in the January 2002 issue of Wired magazine. So here he is today. Let's give a Google welcome to Mike. Could I please ask that because this talk is being video recorded, any confidential Google questions should be left till after the cameras have been switched off. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] DR. MICHAEL ORKIN: Thanks, Sadik. So today-- well, the title of my talk-- and I'm happy to be here-- is Chance, Data Mining, and Sports Betting, and we'll see what those things have in common. I am currently located at Exponent. If you haven't heard of it, it's sometimes called Exponent Failure Analysis. It's located right on 101 North in Menlo Park. It's a publicly traded company that has about 800 employees, in 18 offices and three international offices. Consultants at Exponent, a majority of whom are engineers, have expertise in science, math, and engineering. And Exponent has been consulted on various problems and disasters, including some of the major ones you read about in the paper, such as the grounding of the Exxon Valdez, the walkway collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. By the way, in this talk, just stop me at any time if you have any questions, and we'll have more of a conversational tone. So I'm in what's called the data and risk analysis group. I'm trained as a statistician, and do stuff in probability theory, decision theory, game theory. And our group develops strategies for decision-making under uncertainty, and in a variety of contexts. One of the things our group specializes in is determining whether a particular activity or product poses an unreasonable risk, and if so, what to do about it. Many of our projects involve litigation involving such things as consumer product issues and recalls. Automotive lawsuits, and doing risk analyses and failure analyses to try to develop strategies for companies who have products. I can't really to go into too much detail about things that are in litigation right now. But that's not what I want to talk about anyway. I want to talk about one of my specialties, which is chance and gambling games. I'll actually be talking about actually a case that is an Exponent case, along with some software and things that are not Exponent things, just things I've done. So first, this a little primer on gambling. So roulette-- how many of you have been to a casino and have seen a roulette wheel. Most of you. So roulette's a pretty simple game to understand. There are 38 sections labeled from 1 to 36 along with a zero and a double zero. And half of the sections from 1 to 36 are red, half are black, zero and double zero are green. You can bet on a color, you can bet on a combination of numbers, you can make varieties of bets at the roulette table. One of the bets is number 17. In other words, you put some chips on number 17. The wheel is spun, the ball is dropped in, 17-- the ball lands in the slot marked 17. You win. Otherwise you lose. And since there are 38 sections on the wheel, your chance of winning is 1 in 38. If you bet on red, since there are 18 red sections out of 38, your chance of winning is 18 out of 38. So you're much more likely to win a red bet than you are a bet on number 17. So to get people to make this bet, what does the casino have to do? They have to offer higher payoff odds. So the payoff odds for this bet, a bet on a particular number, are 35:1. That means if you bet $1 and number 17 comes up, you'll make a $35 profit. You'll get your dollar chip back plus another 35. Well, there's a mathematical theorem called the law of averages. It's just called the law of large numbers by mathematicians. It says that if you repeat an experiment independently over and over again, the fraction of times that something comes up will be the same as the probability of it happening in one trial. So the probability of it happening in one trial on this bet is 1 in 38, so you don't know what's going to happen in one bet or two bets or a few bets, but in repeated bets you'll win an average of 1 in 38, and lose an average of 37 for a net loss of $2. So that's $2 and $38 bet, which becomes 5.3% profit for the house, the house being the casino. So that's called the house edge in roulette. And it's very straightforward, cut and dry math. This is what happens if you repeatedly make a bet in roulette. Like I said, you can get lucky, you can get unlucky and lose sooner than at this rate, or you can win and quit. But in repeated play, you will eventually lose and go broke at roughly the rate of 5.3 cents per dollar bet. Sooner if you have a losing streak. So that's sort of the facts on betting on number 17 in roulette, and in fact, in making just about any roulette bet, or a combination of roulette bets, or other betting strategy applied to roulette. So you can show mathematically that this is what happens, period. For instance, people use some sort of sophisticated strategies, like double your money if you lose, and keep going until you eventually win. You've heard that one, the doubld-up strategy. It is very hard to pin point your most favorite poker guide tips but right at the moment, I can think of the following poker tips which may help any player rake in some chips:
Mixing up your playing style It is hard to say if a player made a wrong decision about his hand. You might hear other players or commentators on television that one should have done this or that but poker is not like that. You really cannot say if what a player did was right or wrong. You can say it is a mistake if you play low quality hands too much, or fold too much, bet even with mediocre hands, or maybe not spot an obvious poker tell by an opponent. But remember at that specific moment you really cannot say what is the best decision to make. That is why you need to mix up your playing style especially when your opponents are quite alert and attentive with your style. Make the other players guess what your next move will be. Do not do one thing too much so that you will be predictable. You have to keep the other players wondering and keep your balance that you will not second guess your moves and so you are focused towards gaining some profits at the end of the day. Raising a bluffer A lot of players who has a strong hand with a high probability of winning commit the mistake of raising after a bet comes from a frequent bluffer. You can do this maybe once when you try to mix up your style of play but the best move acting after a bluffer is just to call. This move invites the next players to commit into the pot and put more money. Raise and you might just chase more chips away. A real poker genius knows how to give his guy a little rope! Do not be afraid to give up the stage If you play wild,aggressive, and unpredictable to drive the other players crazy and force the mistake, you might be used to have the spotlight on you. But what if you have other players who talk to much and also try to disrupt everyone around the table. In this scenario, do not be afraid to give up the stage and just focus on your game. Remember that your primary goal is to bring home some profits after the game and that trying to compete for the stage will not help you especially when you are already distracted by the antics of other players. If there are any addictions equally notorious as the drugs then it surely is gambling. Gambling has ruined the lives of thousands of compulsive gamblers and it still continues to do so. The addiction is so grave that people even being aware of this problem fail to quit this deadly game.
There are several cases where a man lost his money, his home, his car and even his wife and children because of gambling. Streaks of losses have turned a rich to rags. Gambling problem if not treated in time can lead to serious consequences. It has been noticed that people having gambling problem are not even aware of their problem. They end up spending thousands of dollars yet seem unsatisfied. One of the biggest hazards of this addiction is that gamblers not only recluse themselves from their loved ones and society but also develop a habit of lying and stealing money. One can however judge oneself whether he has turned into a gambling addict or not by asking some relevant questions to himself such as 1. Am I isolating myself from the world? 2. Am I gambling even when I do not have any money? 3. Am I stealing or telling lies? 4. Am I in debt because of gambling? 5. Are my loved ones moving away from me? If the answer to all these questions is yes then one has to immediately consult a psychologist. Gambling addiction is curable if one is supportive and brave enough to come forward and tackle his problem. There are several treatments such as “Gamblers Anonymous”, “Cognitive Behavioral therapy”, which will definitely help one overcome his problem. Tremendous psychological support is required from the family members and friends in order to over this addiction. While gambling one should make sure he enjoys his game to the fullest, yet, be aware of his limitations and should have the courage to quit the game when necessary. 7/29/2017 0 Comments Adapting While Playing PokerWhen it comes to poker, one skill is simply mandatory. That skill is the ability to adapt to your opponent's playing style. Every poker player has their own style of playing. Whether it is bluffing, premium hands only, or any other style. Your goal as a player is to identify your opponent’s style and catch it during their big plays. This is where you will win the most money from him.
1. Figure out who is the most dangerous player on the table. While there are other players on the table, for now your goal is to find who is the most dangerous. The most dangerous player will be busy taking people’s money away. Remember the most aggressive player is not necessarily the most dangerous player out. 2. Notice how he plays. If he is constantly bluffing, do not try to catch him during a bluff. Only call him when you have a good hand. The luck of the cards is very mysterious. Many have lost with premium hands to 2/7, so make sure your hand is good enough and do not go all-in before the flop. 3. If you have followed your opponent for a while now and it seems he has no gimmick, then play him straight on with the occasional bluff. Keep your bluffs to you. 4. You can figure out how a player plays by looking at his hands if he decides to show. If he never shows any of his hands, then you should start looking at his aggressiveness. If he is not an aggressive player, then play him slowly. If he is aggressive, catch him in his aggressiveness. Aggressive players will never last long and will knock out a few players, but at the end, they end up losing everything, simply because they are not patient with themselves and want to speed up a process that is simply not in their hands. 5. Once you figure out your opponents style of playing, simple abuse it all day until you become a winner. 6. If you are opponent is a complicated one that will play random hands, pull tons of bluffs, play aggressively towards everyone, you need to watch out for this player. This is the poker paradox. You can never tell if he is bluffing or whether he’s got the pocket rockets in his hand. The truth is these types of players are totally unpredictable and very dangerous to deal with. You should engage this players only when you have a premium hand, because eventually you will catch them in a bluff that will lead to their downfall. |
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