2015 World Series of Poker begins today 5/27/2015

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Holding 2♥ -2♦, how often do you flop a set?

There are a number of ways to figure this out.  Figure out how many possible combinations of cards there are on a flop and, of those, figure out how many of them contain the cards you are looking for.

You could make a list and start counting, but that would take a long time.  Better to use a little math to figure it out.  Of course, somebody has already figured this out, like some ancient mathematician trying to figure out how many color combinations you could weave into a rug with a given set of colored yarns.    If you let n be the number of cards left in the deck to choose from and let k be the number of cards you are choosing, then the number of possible combinations you can get (without regard to the order of the cards) can be represented by a formula that looks like n! / k!(n-k)!.   

Fortunately, we have Google.  We don't need to multiply out all of those factorials.  We don't even need to know the formula or call it the binomial coefficient.  We just need to know how many cards we are choosing from the deck and how many cards are in the deck.

Google built a tool right into their search engine to make it easy for us. Just type in "50 choose 3" where 50 is the number of cards in the deck and 3 is the number of cards.  It will return the number of possible combinations.

We can use this handy tool to help us figure out our solution

How many possible flop combinations are there?  There are 52 cards in the deck and we are holding two of them.  The flop contains 3 cards,chosen from the remaining 50 so:

50 Choose 3 = 19,600  The number of possible flop combinations

Seeking 2♣ plus any combination of any of the other 49 cards

49 choose 2 = 1176

Seeking 2♠ plus any combination of any of the other 49 cards

49 choose 2 = 1176

Note that 1176 contains flops that have both 2's and another card and 2♣-2♠-X is the same as 2♠-2♣-X so we need to pull out the duplicates.

Subtract out duplicates of 2♣-2♠ plus any of remaining 48 = 48

1176 + 1176 – 48 = 2304

So now we know that of a possible 19,600 flops, 2,304 of them contain one or two deuces and give us a very strong hand.

 2304 /19,600 = 11.755%

Of course, there is more than one way to skin a cat.  My old poker buddy who was a college professor and did a lot of research using statistics and probability didn't like my alternative method because it was subject to a tiny little bit of rounding error.  But it works.  It is a method of figuring out how many times you miss catching a deuce on the flop and simply subtracting that from 100% to see how often you hit it.

Alternate method:

2 of 50 is 4%, so 96% of the time, the first card misses.

Of the 96% of the time that the first card misses, 47 of 49 or 95.92% of the time second card also misses and 95.92% of 96% is 92.08% of the time.

Of the 92.08% of the time that the first two miss, 46 of 48 or 95.83% of the time the third card misses also. This means that 95.83% of the 92.08% or 88.24% of the time all three miss which means that 11.76% of the time, you flop three or four of a kind.

By either method, you will flop a set or quads about once every 8.5 times you see a flop or, saying it another way, the odds against flopping a set are 7 ½ to 1.

The Colossus of Poker

The WSOP begins on Wednesday, May 27th with the Casino Employees' No Limit Hold'Em Tournament. The event is limited to people who work in the industry. Even the dealers hired to work the WSOP are eligible to enter. In fact, upon being hired dealers are asked for their shift preference (Days, Swing, Graveyard) and if they plan to play in the employee event. It is a way to ease into the summer's biggest poker festival with a "soft opening" and test all the systems for registration as well as all of the support needed to put the entire event together. Despite the limited nature of the field, last year there were 876 players entered. 

While there are some smaller events scheduled for Thursday, the real kickoff is on Friday with the "Colossus". This tournament is projected to be the largest ever live poker tournament in the history of poker. To start with, the "Colossus" has a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million and an entry fee of only $565, the lowest entry fee of any WSOP Bracelet event. In order to clear the guarantee, the tournament will need 10,000 entrants.

 The tournament is set up with four starting flights to accommodate the anticipated crowds. The concept is that players may enter any flight and if they unfortunately get eliminated they will be allowed to re-enter in a subsequent flight. Pre-registration is open for all four flights, so a player wanting to make sure that they have every possible chance to get their share of that $5 million can register in advance for all four flights. Any unused entries are refunded. Flights will begin play at 10 AM and 6 PM on Friday and Saturday. Players remaining from the four flights will be combined on Sunday and play will continue through Monday with the final table of nine players on Tuesday.  According to a report from Card Player Magazine, The Colossus may already have enough entries to be the largest field of players in the history of poker.

Link to Card Player Magazine Article

WSOP 2015

Yes, it is getting to be that time of year again. WSOP 2015 is just around the corner. Got my invite back. It included a note that my driver's license on file had expired and I needed to visit Human Resources in person to update it and update the I-9 form that goes with it. This little visit to HR entails a 5 hour drive from Scottsdale as well as a return. I shouldn't complain. A couple years ago that was an airplane flight from Tampa which is a lot more expensive than the tank of gas or two I'll burn up. My sister, Terrie, who lives in Sun City volunteered to keep me company on the drive, so I booked a room at the Orleans for us (no rooms available that week at the Rio) and we headed up through the desert. I spent my 15 minutes in HR, they were quick and efficient, and headed out to find some discount show tickets. Tix 4 Tonight had some discounted seats available for "Showstoppers" at the Wynn. The show was entertaining. It should be. It was a compilation of great musical numbers from Broadway shows in the recent and the distant past. I really enjoyed the "Cell Block Tango" from Chicago. If you are one of those people that hates Broadway musicals, you would really detest this show. Me, on the other hand, I've had an interest in musical theatre ever since I saw my sister (yes, Terrie, my travel companion) in "West Side Story" when we were kids. So I have been "processed". Orientation is Sunday, May 24th, and the first tournament begins May 27th. Official link to the WSOP Schedule here.

Keystone XL Pipeline

Is the Keystone XL Pipeline good or bad? I looked at arguments from both sides. The Keystone pipeline already exists and the segment that transports oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico refineries has been in operation since January of this year. XL will roughly double the capacity of the pipeline. The industry wants to build XL while the environmentalists want to stop it. Building it would increase US imports of oil from Canada, specifically from the tar sands of Alberta. This oil is “dirtier” than imported oil from OPEC . The groups seeking to reduce greenhouse gases oppose this project on that basis along with other environmental concerns. The objective of the pipeline is to increase the capacity of the existing pipeline so that more crude oil from Canada (and also Montana, BTW) can be transported to the refineries on the Gulf Coast. Understand that the US gets about half of all the oil it needs from domestic sources and the other half from imports from other countries. Canada and Saudi Arabia are the two largest suppliers of oil to the US by a wide margin. The pipeline project will shift the supply of about 500,000 barrels per day of oil from other sources (including Saudi Arabia and OPEC) to Canada. Per US Energy Information Administration, Canada and OPEC each supply about 3.4 Million barrels of crude oil to the US per day. Shifting that market share from about 50:50 to 40:30 in favor of Canada is a big shift. I favor initiatives that reduce our need to import oil from the Mideast. Blocking the pipeline does not do anything to reduce the demand for oil in the US. We will refine just about the same amount of oil to meet our needs whether we buy it from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela or from Canada. I would rather see the money go to private companies in Canada than to governments in OPEC countries. Will it affect the price of gasoline in the US? Evidence suggests that it will. While there are arguments that it will cause the price to rise, recent developments in the world oil markets suggest otherwise. Recently the price of a barrel of oil has dropped from over $100 to around $75 and the price of gas locally has gone from near $4/gal to around $3. Most people agree that this is a good thing for our economy despite the fact that cheap gas reduces our incentive to lower our overall consumption. The cause of the reduction in price is twofold. There has been a worldwide reduction in the demand for oil and basic economics dictates that when demand slows for any product in a competitive marketplace, the price will fall. More pointedly, it has been widely reported in the financial media that the Saudis perceive the tar sands oil production to be a threat to their share of the world’s oil market. Because oil production from sources such as the tar sands has been increasing, the Saudis have decided to protect their share by reducing the price. Their intent is to reduce the incentive to produce oil from the tar sands by making it less profitable to do so. The Keystone Phase III which only opened in January is already having an effect reducing the amount of money we send to OPEC and we haven’t even started building XL yet. In my opinion, the people trying to block Keystone XL should redirect their efforts at reducing the US consumption of oil in our cars and trucks, in our factories and in our consumer products. That would be a more effective way to combat the expansion of greenhouse gases. If we did things like converting all semi-type trucks to natural gas and all local taxis and delivery vehicles like school buses and mail trucks to electric we could put a huge dent in oil imports while cleaning our air and preserving our environment. In the meantime, we should build the XL expansion to the Keystone Pipeline.

A Republican or Democrat Economy?

Republican or Democrat, which one is better for the economy? It is always an interesting question. Generally speaking, since the Republican party seems to represent “management” and the Democratic party, “labor” it seems logical to assume that the Republicans would be more pro-business and the economy would do better following their policies. That may or may not be the case. I think everyone will agree that when the economy is doing well, things are humming along and unemployment is low and jobs are plentiful. So the Unemployment Rate should be a good indicator. So how has the country done under the different administrations since the 1950’s? I start at the 1950’s because before that there are too many distortions such as World War II and the fact that the parties didn't really line up the same. For instance, Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, however, he was considered a “Progressive” and an “Environmentalist” busting up monopolies and establishing the National Park System to preserve natural habitats which today would likely be leaning more in the Democratic party camp. Since the 1950’s I wanted to look at where the unemployment rate stood during the periods of leadership of our two political parties. Since we are looking at the effect of the party in power, lets look at the unemployment rate at the time each party took office. Here are the results from US bureau Labor Statistics for January of years noted: Eisenhower (R) 1953 to 1961. Unemployment went from 2.9% to 6.6% Kennedy/Johnson (D) 1961 to 1969 Unemployment went from 6.6% to 3.4% Nixon/Ford (R) 1969 to 1977 Unemployment went from 3.4% to 7.5% Carter (D) 1977 to 1981 Unemployment went from 7.5% to 7.5% Reagan/Bush(R) 1981 to 1993 Unemployment went from 7.5% to 7.3% Clinton (D) 1993 to 2001 Unemployment went from 7.3% to 4.2% Bush (R) 2001 to 2009 Unemployment went from 4.2% to 7.8% Obama (D) 2009 to present Unemployment went from 7.8% to 5.9% Weird, huh? When the Democrats are in power, the employment picture gets better or stays the same. When the Republicans are in power, the employment picture either gets worse or stays about the same. You would think the opposite would be true. Oddly, it is a similar situation for the deficit: You would think that conservative minded Republicans would hold the line on spending while the tax-and-spend liberals in the Democratic party would run up the bill. Nope. Recently, during the administrations of Clinton and Obama, the deficits were reduced versus when Reagan, Bush and Bush were in power, deficits skyrocketed. It makes it tough to know who to vote for, doesn't it?

Some Highlights from WSOP 2014

Just a few work days left to clean up the Main Event. Probably some highlights to come, but here are some of the highlights of my WSOP experience so far:

Dealt H.O.R.S.E. Final Table in the Arena "Thunderdome" where there was prize pool over a million dollars, won by Tommy Hang.

Dealt $1500 Draw Lowball Final Table won by Steve Wolansky.

Dealt $10k Draw Lowball Final Table where Paul Volpe defeated a table of pros including Jason Mercier and Daniel Negreanu to put a cool quarter million dollars in his pocket. During play, when I dealt Daniel a winner, his rooting section starting cheering, "Go Buz! Go Buz!" Daniel remarked, "Wow! Dealer fans. Cool!"

I also dealt the Final Table of the $10k 7-Card Stud World Championship where I dealt the back to back hands that eliminated Phil Hellmuth in sixth place after starting the Final Table third in chips. Matt Grapenthien won it by overcoming Todd Brunson's huge initial chip lead in a marathon heads up battle that lasted long after the evening shift took over.

I know I represent all 1100 WSOP dealers when I do a final table, especially when it's being broadcast. I try to be smooth, precise and professional, and not look too nervous in front of the cameras. I hope I represented you well.

I want to thank the folks like Robbie and Bos who over the years have made suggestions to me on how to be a better, more professional dealer and also my friends, who among them are some of the best Poker dealers in the entire world. — feeling blessed.

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