Variance

It's not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

--Gore Vidal

At the moment, I'm the "Others" that Mr. Vidal was referring to. Another way of putting it for those who have studied the math behind poker is, "Variance is a bitch". I'm on the backside of variance right now. It seems that every time I get my chips in with the best hand, someone playing a hand that they should have folded pre-flop catches a monster.

Here's an example: Last night in the practice round for the freeroll I was playing, I was holding A9 of spades. I raise $100 (blinds are 10/20) and get two callers. Flop comes 4-9-6. I push all in, having top pair, top kicker with the undercards being cards nobody in their right mind would call my raise with. I get a caller, and she turns over 8-4. Turn is a 4, and the river is a 4. She caught four of a kind, and I'm out. I then find out that she had never played before last night. Great, just my luck to go heads-up with someone oozing with beginners luck.

But it's called variance bacause it does just that -- it varies. So I know that if I stick it out, my luck will turn around. But it's hard to deal with the downswing. More to come as this story develops, as the newshounds say.

Atlanta Ice Storm

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

--John Ruskin

It's pretty obvious to me that Mr. Ruskin never had to weather an ice storm in Atlanta. We had a doozy about a week and a half ago, and between being iced in, working, and feeling like crap because of the wild swings in temperature (30* one day, 68* the next) I haven't done a very good job of keeping up with my blog. For the one reader I may have, I apologize. I'll try to do better, although it seems like the weather swings and workload aren't going away any time soon.

So there. That's my apology. Let's move on, shall we?