According to various people in the poker world, two of the richest poker players in the world agreed to a $5 million dollar World Series of Poker bracelet bet earlier this month.

The two participants in the bet: Phil Ivey and Howard Lederer.

The bet: can Phil Ivey win two or more World Series of Poker bracelets over the next three years?

At stake: five million dollars.

Joe Beevers talks about the bet here.

Apparently the bet was made AFTER Ivey won his first bracelet this year, but before he won his second.

According to Beever's article on The Hendon Mob, if Ivey's second bracelet comes in a WSOPE event, then the bet is a push.

Based on everything that I have heard, if Ivey wins just one more World Series of Poker (Las Vegas) bracelet over the next three years, then he will win the bet. Some people have said that Ivey has to win two PER YEAR over each of the next three years (including 2009), but this isn't the case.

So Phil Ivey has 50 tournaments or so to win another bracelet. That's crazy! Many of those tournaments have 1000+ people.

I want Howard's side of the bet (but not for $5M). Anyone want Phil Ivey's side? I mean, he's really good, but I don't think anyone is that good.

I've got almost all my money in action, just a couple small orders still on the books. I got rid of 1/2 to 2/3 of my Huckabee exposure, at a small loss. I still think his chances are pretty low, he's probably gonna be a Howard Dean flash-in-the-pan, but I don't think his chances are zero, and so there are contracts with better risk-adjusted return (perhaps even better return).

I may wire in more money, as 2008.DEM.VP.GORE is still offering slow steady action in the low teens, so I think the ROI (since it'll close in 9 months) is something like 20%.

Anyway, here are my positions and margins (the margin screen indicates my upside and downside for each contract). Note that I'm definitely going to sell the party contracts before the election - I don't want the variance of the biased-coin flip of the election itself, I'm just betting on the odds getting closer to 50:50 before the election.
( Read more... )If anyone has compromising pictures of Hillary Clinton having sex with a female aid, or a horse, or something else scandalous like that, my portfolio would appreciate it if you'd publicize them :).

Getting out of Huckabee actually costs me margin, which I hadn't realized. I had been thinking that covering a short would always reduce your exposure. But in this case, I have multiple shorts in the same market. Worst case is that one of them hits, in which case the loss is offset by the profit from the others. Since I had them all approximately balanced (same downside risk), getting out of one reduces that offset. And since Huckabee is the highest the price, getting out of him reduces the offset the most. Hmm.

Stupid 100% margin requirements for primary contracts...at least I earn 3% on the margin, it could be worse.

I read some good analyses on the forums based on simulations suggesting HUCK has a chance. I'm getting out. I want to short sure things (aka sell variance to suckers), not take on risk. I'll take my $700 loss and put the money into better spots (of which there are several).

It looks like for every $2.30 I send InTrade, I will make $1 when Giuliani or Romney gets the presidential nomination. There is even decent volume and pretty narrow spreads (42.5/43.3 and 30.0 / 30.2), so it can take some cash. The contract will close in early September when the 2008 RNC chooses a winner, but Wikipedia tells me that the candidates are effectively chosen by March, and definitely chosen by June. So that's a 40% return in ~5-7 months.

That seems like a pretty good bet to me, and consistent with my general observation that these markets seem to overestimate the tails. Do any of you think there is a > 5% chance that someone other than those two will win? Note that if there is an untimely death of a candidate, all bets are unwound, so even a heart attack wouldn't do the trick. And 1/4 of the remaining probability is assigned by the market to Ron Paul, and of course if that happened I would be delighted to have lost, so that part is a hedge.

Wow, I hadn't checked out the InTrade democratic prices for awhile - Hilary is at 80% to Obama's 14%? That sucks! Obama is my least hated Democrat. My favored major candidates (Obama and Romney) are at 17% to win the Presidency...although Ron Paul is at an optimistic 3.5% as well. There's a contract to short. Although with InTrade's margin requirements, selling the tails requires tying up a lot of money, there is a sliding scale and by a few months beforehand you need to have your losses completely covered, so you'd have to put up $96.50 to make $3.50 from foolishly optimistic Ron Paul supporters.

I managed to get some money online through y'alls help awhile back, but ran badly. However, part of the wonderful nature of online poker is that you can just keep dropping limits as your bankroll decreases. So my occasional playing the last month or so has been at limits like 5c-10c and 10c-25c.

Which gets you into sweet situations like the one I just had - all in preflop w/ AA27 three-ways in PLO/8, and opponents turn over 9TJQ and K544 ?! I haven't seen PLO/8 played that badly since I saw George the Greek get all-in preflop w/ like a JJ72 in 100-200 PLO8 in Vegas a couple years back.

Anyway, since I'm playing for fun and not for money I really don't mind the microlimits. But I am looking forward to doing some serious gambling in Vegas next month.

I've long been a proponent of the Vulcan ethos - that emotions are devices to obscure our search for the truth. As I like to say: "I hate emotions. They make me mad." Emotions had their uses in the earl design of the brain, but many emotions are out-of-date, either because they predate the neo-cortex, or because they are hardwired responses which no longer fit the modern environment.

Which is not to say I believe in denying or repressing them. Given that we have these often random and irrational feelings, the best way to deal with them is full acknowledgement and understanding. Denying that they exist just prevents us from coming up with workarounds and patches or planning with our own flaws in mind.

But it's nice to see my general thesis that emotions tend to lead to poor decision-making confirmed, at least to some degree:

In a study of investors' behaviour 41 people with normal IQs were asked to play a simple investment game. Fifteen of the group had suffered lesions on the areas of the brain that affect emotions.

The result was those with brain damage outperformed those without.

The scientists found emotions led some of the group to avoid risks even when the potential benefits far outweighed the losses, a phenomenon known as myopic loss aversion.

One of the researchers, Antione Bechara, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Iowa, said the best stock market investors might plausibly be called "functional psychopaths."

Fellow author, Baba Shiv of Stanford Graduate School of Business said many company chiefs and top lawyers may also show they share the same trait.

"Emotions serve an adaptive role in speeding up the decision-making process," said Shiv.

"However, there are circumstances in which a naturally occurring emotional response must be inhibited, so that a deliberate and potentially wiser decision can be made."
[slightly longer story]