Fourth place in WPT (World Poker Tour)

Maybe I jinxed myself by creating this blog. But again I finished fourth in an important competition. This time, I was the third player eliminated from the TV final table at the Foxwoods World Poker Tour tournament. It will be shown on FSN whenever they show WPT season 9.

This was my biggest tournament poker success to date (although my fourth place in the WSOP event was against a much bigger field). Hopefully this won't be my last tournament cash this winter. I played the NAPT (North American Poker Tour) event in Los Angeles, but did not make the money. I don't intent on joining the "poker circuit," but I will be playing more tournament poker in the near future. Wish me luck.

I'll have more to say on my Foxwoods appearance once it's on TV and I will have a better chance to put my play in perspective. For now, here is one story.

On day four of the tournament, we had still not made the money! There were 27 players for 25 paid places, which was kind of absurd. I had a lot of chips though, so I did not mind. I could put pressure on all of my opponents, since any of their allin hands against me could bust them, sending them home with nothing after playing poker for four days.

My table mates included two of today's best young poker players, Jason Mercier and Sorel Mizzi. Neither was extremely short stacked, but I had both of their chip stacks covered. I used this to my extreme advantage.

Jason and Sorel are really really good tournament players. They have won many tournaments before, and they have supreme self-confidence in winning again, even without a huge chip stack. At any point in the tournament, but especially during the later stages, they think they have a better chance of winning than a strict count of their chips would indicate. What this means is that they will *never* put their chips allin preflop without a great hand.

This strategy can be very exploitable. Suppose that Jason or Sorel raises and it is folded to me. I can 3bet (reraise) with any hand, knowing that Jason or Sorel will not put the rest of their chips in without a great hand (and great hands are rare). Of course, I can not raise *every* time, but I can, and did, reraise them quite often. Usually, I had nothing and would have folded for an allin, but Jason and Sorel did not play back at me often. In fact, they only played back at me once, in maybe 30 times that I 3bet them over two days. That time, Jason had AK and I called with AQ. He doubled up, but I could afford it, having won so many chips from raising him and Sorel earlier. I wish that he or Sorel had played back at me one of the other times, as I did have AK, KK and QQ on several occasions. Mostly though, I had nothing, and they knew it. But there was nothing that Jason or Sorel could do, expect play their own cards.

There has to be something missing from this story. How can I 3bet with nothing, over and over, against good players and make money with no risk? This strategy only works if everyone else plays along. In particular, I have assumed that all other players at the table will fold. For the most part, this is true! Faced with a raise and reraise, tournament players fold everything except the very best hands. Even if they notice the game that me, Jason and Sorel are playing, how could any of them put all their chips in without a great hand? It's just too much risk! How embarrassing would it be to go allin with something like 88 or ATs into a bet and a raise, to be called and dominated! That is why most players don't do it. Especially having played for three or four days to get close to the money. Their play is rational, and I would do the same, even if the game theory said otherwise.

However, this 3bet strategy totally fails earlier in the tournament, especially against weaker players. Once player are willing to overcall or go all with 88 or ATs against an aggressive 3better, then the play loses much of its appeal. Some of that happened to me in LA at the NAPT. I had a lot of chips early in day 2, but I squandered a fair number of them raising and reraising preflop against players who were less cautions about putting their chips in the pot. What did work for me, however, was raising preflop and then taking down pots on the flop or the turn with more betting. After all, most tournament players don't know how to play so-so hands after the flop, even if they know how to call with them pre-flop.

Going forward, I will keep all of this in mind. My 3betting strategy worked brilliantly during the last three days of the Foxwoods tournament. But I over-valued it in early tournament play, and it cost me in LA. Next time, I will be better prepared. Watch out. I might break that fourth place ceiling yet!

Monkeys, handouts & third grade gangs

My TiVo series manager reads (excluding my girlfriend's shows):

1. Rebel Monkeys
2. Wild Russia
3. Equator
4. Hard Knocks '10: Training Camp
5. Jersey Shore
6. Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
7. ESPN 30 for 30
8. House of Saddam
9. Repossessed!
10. 2010 World Series of Poker
11. Gangland
12. Bad Girls Club

I love conflict. Especially real conflict. It makes for good TV. "Rebel Monkeys" on NatGeo Wild is the most dramatic show on television. Especially if you sympathize with the monkeys like I do.

I don't know why, but I've always loved monkeys. When I was a teenager, I'd go to the DC zoo (even though I generally objected to zoos) and held long staring contests with the simians. I told my girlfriend at the time that I was communicating with long lost relative. She thought is was cute. I've never read a story about a monkey or have seen a video about a monkey without eliciting some emotion.

I can relate to stories of monkey behavior much more so than to stories of human behavior. I think this is perfectly rational. Monkeys are more trustworthy examples of human behavior than are humans. Here is why:

Humans and simians are very similar. Both are social creatures, and both realize that there are cameras, scientist with lab coats, etc. However, monkeys do not need to be famous, and they don't espouse any ideology. 

Monkeys do not believe in anything. That is what separates them from humans. If I see an experiment where monkeys share a resource or cooperate toward a goal (see video here), then I can only conclude one of two things. The monkeys saw sharing to be in their best interests, or their instincts subconsciously pushed them to share. It doesn't matter whether the experiment was set up well. It doesn't matter if the one monkey threatens the other one into sharing. It doesn't matter if the scientist gave both monkeys a reward later. I know that the monkeys did not share their nuts because they have some ideology telling them that sharing is "the right thing to do." Also I know that the monkeys did not share in order to get face time on TV. Unless they were given an incentive to make the researchers look good...

If this experiment was carried out with humans, we would never know why they did nor did not share. Any debate about human behavior invariably leads to a discussion of morals, religion or other ideology. Any television show about humans has us watching a bunch of people who want to be famous. I love "Jersey Shore," "Bad Girls Club" and "Repossessed!" but it's hard to tell whether they represent real human behavior. "Rebel Monkeys" does not suffer from these deficiencies. 

Monkey Reality Show

The show follows several gangs of rhesus macaque monkeys living in and around the Indian city of Jaipur. These monkeys are native to the forests of northern India, and yet hundreds of monkeys live in the city itself. They feed off of unguarded food, garbage, and food offered to them by people.

Wild monkeys have lived in Indian cities for a very long time. However their number have taken off in the recent past. According to this report from 2007, monkeys in Delhi have become a major problem during the past decade, with their numbers increasing by over 10,000. Relocation to nearby forests have failed, and the problem culminated in the bizarre death of a monkey-chasing deputy mayor in 2007. The report claims that the monkeys rushed into the city because their natural habitat has been threatened. Perhaps. But there is something else going on.

Monkeys prefer living in the city. Every nature show waxes lyrically about how animals want to live in the wild. How they yearn to be free. How they love the fresh air. The rhesus macaques on Rebel Monkeys do not want to live in the woods.

One of the story lines is about "Zamir," a troublemaking macaque banished to the woods outside Jaipur by the city's monkey catcher. He quickly found a tribe living there, and learned their tricks of survival. These monkeys live in the woods, yet all they do is seek out humans to feed them, wittingly or not. The band of forest monkeys steal farmers' crops and drink their unguarded milk. But mostly, they sit by the side of the country road, and wait for drivers to throw them scraps.

Given a choice of picking fruit in the forest, picking crops from a farmer's garden, or sitting by the side of the road and waiting for handouts, the monkeys choose the later.

Humans are exactly the same. Given a choice of working for a living or getting paid to do nothing, we would choose to do nothing. Not to say that we would be idle. No, we would watch TV, go to the gym, buy things online, call our friends, talk about politics, and maybe even do something mildly creative. But none of us would work for a living if we did not feel like we had to. Although working hard makes us happier, healthier and wealthier, we'd choose not to do it. Some individuals might work on a farm, but collectively we would all live in the city and get by on handouts, if those provided us with sufficient food and shelter. The farmers would live longer, eat better, and generally be happier. But most of us would live in the city. That is just how we are wired.

Individual monkeys living in Jaipur are much worse off than their counterparts living in the forest. Their meals are irregular and often not nutritious. They are exposes to deadly diseases. Worst of all, they are subject constantly to the violence of other monkeys.

Simian Gangs

Monkeys are social creatures, and they live in tribes. There is violence within the tribe, but most confrontation is limited to threat barks and monkeys chasing each other. However when different tribes come in contact, violence is often inescapable. I don't need to explain this or find a study proving this. We immediately know this is true. Monkeys are just like us.

In cities, monkey tribes constantly trespass on each other's turf. There are many fights. Lots of monkey blood is shed. Monkeys living in the sparser populated countryside are better off. At least as individuals.

I won't argue about whether the monkeys living in the city are better off than their countryside counterparts in terms of genetic propagation. They must be. Why else would individuals choose the tough urban life over the fresh air of the country side? But that is beside the point.

What does the story of monkeys flowing to the inner cities and forming gangs tells us about urban decay? What does the monkeys' preference for handouts over foraging tell us about homelessness and welfare? Possibly nothing. But if we wanted to jump to conclusions, here are a few that I'd suggest.

The Beggars & The Homeless

We all know that giving money to beggars on the subway encourages more begging. Yet most of us give money to beggars anyhow. The homeless live off of the government, off of opportunistic pilfering, and occasionally by working. But they survive mostly from the handouts given to them by individuals. Just like the macaques of Jaipur. The television show shows macaques stealing fruit form the market, foraging through garbage cans, jumping in open windows, and (in several highly staged scenes) stealing the lunch of various citizens. However, the show makes it clear that the bedrock of the monkey diet is food given to them directly by people. If they did not feed the monkeys, the citizens of Jaipur would not have to live with hundreds of monkeys and a dozen violent monkey gangs. The people know this. They choose to live with the monkeys. Monkeys are well liked by many Hindus (and also by this humble New Yorker, who keeps a small bronze statue of Hanuman on his desk). Or at least enough citizens of Jaipur like monkey, so that the rest are forced with that choice.

I am not suggesting that the beggars and the homeless would all get jobs if we stopped giving them money and food. But we choose to have as many beggars as we have here in New York City. Maybe we think that they make our city more interesting. Generally they don't bother me. But I do not choose to support their numbers, so I never give money or food to beggars.

Urban Gangs

My TiVo priority for "Gangland" is low, but only because the show is so poorly made. Not all gang are sensational and commit shocking acts of violence. Some are interesting for other reasons. So I'm not sure why the producers of the show try to fit each gang into the same square peg. But the prevalence of gangs in America is fascinating. Every city and every well-represented local ethic group forms a gang. All gangs are made up mostly of younger single men, and they inspire a strong sense of fellowship amongst the members. Just about all gangs mark themselves with tattoos, throw gang signs and parol their territory. Policing sometimes breaks up gangs and often curbs gang-related violence. But they never stamps out gangs for good.

Given how prevalent and similar gangs seem to be, can we just admit that gangs are never going away? No social program, preacher or draconian punishment will prevent young men from forming and joining gangs.

Nor will young men join gang-like structures that society sets of for them. Some will, but not the ones who want to join an organization with turf, power (perceived or actual), and some form of self-selected leadership. Most teenage boys won't find that at their local Boys & Girls Club.

How many men walk around with Boy Scouts tattoos? To think that these organizations could provide the sort of kinship that gang members crave is crazy. Former gang members interviewed on Gangland often still have feelings for the gangs that they once ran with. Even those who gave up violence and got steady jobs or turned to Jesus Christ still feel a connection to their former brothers. The government can't create that kind of organization for all men. The Marine reject most applicants.

Restricts Gang Violence, not Gang Membership

The best we can do to prevent gang violence is to make it easier for gangs to form and to stay together, but to restrict the gangs that get too violent or intimidating. This is essentially what Japan does. Its government allows the Yakuza to function, but it does not officially condone their activities. The Japanese government monitors gangs, and goes after violent criminal activity. Some yakuza gangs (bōryokudan) have been around for decades. The government keeps them in check, but allows them to operate and does not pick winners.

In America, we stamp out gangs, even the non-criminal ones. By definition, gangs resist authority, seek to patrol turf, discipline their own members, and have conflicts with other gangs. If we consider these criminal acts, then all gangs are criminal organization. But lots of boys join gangs to be a part of a gang, not to commit greater crimes. By stamping out all of the harmless gangs, only the most violent and criminal gangs can survive. Narco-trafficking gangs serve two purposes: to facilitate the illegal drug trade, and to give their members a sense of belonging associated with gang life. Extortion gangs serve two purposes: to tax local businesses, and to provided an ethic-based hierarchical organization to local youths who crave it. The mid-1990's Russian Mafia in Brooklyn served two purposes: to make huge sums of money for their leadership, and to give newly arrived immigrants an outlet for their skills and a sense of belonging. A gang that exists purely for camaraderie and does not fund itself on crime has no chance of survival. The criminal gangs have more resources because of their illegal businesses, and the government restricts non-violent gangs, as well as violent criminal ones.

I recently read a book about the history of modern Turkey. The Turkish government suppressed all ethic-based organizations in the 1970's and 1980's. As a result, peaceful Kurdish organizations could not form in Kurdish areas of southern Turkey. The violent Marxist terrorist organization PKK was the only organization strong enough to survive. As a result, it was the only organization speaking on behalf of Kurdish rights. The government made the PKK what it is by restricting all of its competition. Kurds who do not support Marxism or violence were not given a voice, and the government radicalized the general Kurdish population of Southern Turkey.

Non-criminal gangs have no incentive to punish members who choose to leave the gang life. Macaques that leave their troops are not welcome back, but they are not killed. As long as they stay away, they can do as they please. Violent gangs punish those who leave, because those men often have the capacity to help bring the gang down. Gangs that distribute drugs can't just let their members walk away with their secrets. College students who quit their fraternity (or simply graduate) are not a threat to the other members, unless those are also cooking meth in the basement.

Gangs we Tolerate

Social fraternities are legalized gangs on campus. Although they are tolerated (and occasionally commended) by the universities they associate with, they are more tolerated than encouraged, and they are definitely not run by the colleges. In fact, they have all the classic marks of a gang. They have a loosely centralized national structure with local cliques, their own turf, use gang signs and handshakes, get tattoos or brands, and maintain a quasi-democratic leadership structure. They are often organized along religious or racial lines. They have a certain disdain for the university's authority, and they organize low-level illegal activity, such as beer sales to minors. They discipline members who violate their rules. And yet, we accept them as mostly benign organizations. Their members usually graduate, get normal jobs, and do not shun people from other fraternities that might have been rivals in their college years. I would never have been welcome at a hispanic or black fraternity on campus, but I would not hesitate to work with someone who was a member of such a fraternity.

Why is it that we allow young men in college to join fraternity gangs, and yet we don't allow their counterparts who don't go to college the same privilege?

Blame the Kids

When I was in the third grade, three gangs formed amongst the elementary school population (officially a middle school, grades three through six). Two were white gangs, and one was a Puerto Rican gang. Actually there were two gangs, the white gang and the Puerto Rican gang. Then a third group formed called the "playground patrol." I did the math, and joined the playground patrol. I was a gang member for a week, before the principal suspended a bunch of students and broke up the gang leadership.

Our gang had a kid named Tim with blonde hair and a bowl haircut. His father had a foul ball that he caught during the '61 World Series. Tim said he had never cried. Not even when he broke his arm. We also had a kid named Jonathan, whose father was the principal of the elementary school (grades K through second). Or maybe Jonathan joined the other white gang. I can't remember.

Both of them were suspended. The principal call a school meeting, one of the few with both halves of the circular auditorium open at the same time. During this joint session of the student congress, he told us how much we should be ashamed of ourselves. We came from good families (at least some of us did). One of us was the son of a principal. How could we form gangs, and along racial lines, at that? We should be ashamed of ourselves. The parents didn't like it, but he was going to send us a message with some long suspensions. Whenever Bug Selig or Roger Goodell hand out a suspension and give a press conference, I remember that principal. A lot of kids got short suspensions. A few kids got longer one. No one realized I joined a gang, so I got nothing. I wasn't very important in the third grade.

Tim's father was furious that his son was suspended. He told Tim so, and Tim told us. His father went to argue with the principal. Why were they sending his son home for two weeks? These were just kids. No one got hurt.

I think Tim's father had a point. And more importantly, the principal over-reacted. He got rid of gangs in our school. But I'm sure they just reformed a few years later. The Puerto Rican kids were different. They were new arrivals to the town. So were the Russians, but we were more or less accepted. Many of our town's residents descended from Russian Jews, or otherwise felt some kinship toward us Ruskis. We spoke Russian, but we quickly learned English, took classes with everyone else, excelled in math, and did not start our own gang. The Puerto Ricans seemingly refused to speak English, and most of them took the remedial classes together. They were all in the lowest math class. Gangs form all the time, and often along racial lines.

Whether you blame the parents, the school, or human nature, the students of Highland Park Middle School did not do anything out of the ordinary. I'm not saying that the principal should have let the gangs organize and build their membership. But all we were doing was a natural extension of everything else around us. Breaking up the gangs and suspending a bunch of kids taught us nothing. The principal did, however, succeed in getting us to fear the school's authority a little bit more. By punishing us rather than holding our hands and helping us resolve our differences, he encouraged a bunch of third graders to resent authority.

Young men will always form gangs. Let them. Don't pretend that social institutions can become a substitute for gang life. Just make sure that the gang are not violent, and that members can leave their gangs voluntarily when they are ready to move on with the rest of their lives.

Twitter

I'm up to seven followers. Stuck on four for a while...

Fourth place in WSOP

Maybe it's cruel irony that I named by bullshit blog "I am Number Four." I've gotten fourth place in many competitions where people like to get first and put on on their resumes.

This year I made the final table of a mixed games event at the World Series of Poker (WSOP). I finished fourth.

Stalin would have liked red light cameras

I was born in the Soviet Union. Like many others born there, I don't trust cops and generally despise authority. Naturally, I don't like red light cameras at traffic lights. But I could never explain exactly why, except to point out that the companies running those cameras make a fortune.

Fortunately, Bill James thought about this, and explainedwhy he hates red light cameras (behind the pay wall). I agree wholeheartedly:

We all know why the city councils want red light cameras, don’t we? Money. You set up a camera at the right intersection, you can print 200 tickets a day. $85 a ticket, processing costs of $15. . .what is that, a half-million a year?

The problem is, you’re trying to punish people into driving more carefully. It will not work. It will backfire, absolutely and without question. We don’t know how it will backfire, exactly, but it will. Punishment works through the mechanism of fear. Fear changes people. It makes them angrier. Fear makes people dislike those who cause them to fear.

From the 1930's through the 1950's, Stalin sent millions of people to the gulag. This served the join purpose of punishing his enemies, and also of building up Siberia in strategic places where people did not want to live or work.

I've heard Stalin apologists defend his policy, saying that "well, it was cruel, but how else would they have built those canals & run those Siberian lumber mills"? In "Gulag Archipelago", gulag veteran Alexandr Solzhenitsyn challenges those people:

• What purpose did those canals serve?
• What was the cost of employing gulag guards in Siberia?

The White Sea Canal was built by gulag prisoners between 1931 and 1933. According to Wikipedia, 8,700 people died building the canal. It was never used heavily, and nowadays it take a dozen or so boats a day. The government is good at monopolizing resources, but has not been very good at delivering value in return. Not surprisingly, gulag labor was not very efficient.

Neither was this labor free. Solzhenitsyn pointed out that gulag guards in Siberia were paid double the rate of guards in Moscow, and they could retire in half the time. Needless to say, even pampered guards in Moscow were paid better than normal workers. So even with meager rations, no medicine and insufficient clothing, gulag workers' labor was far from free. It would have been more cost efficient to hire local people for many of the projects assigned to the gulag. Of course, Stalin often did not trust local people. I have read some speculation that Khrushchev scaled down the gulag project in part because it was not delivering much economic value to the motherland.

Of course, the red light cameras are not quite like the gulag. But they do dole out steep punishments to lots of law-abiding citizens. If they did not raise large amounts of revenue, they cameras would not be installed or maintained. They punish large numbers of normal people for "crimes" that we all commit, taxing them $100 at a time. As Bill James points out, no one would object to red light cameras if they sent you a warning, or fined you $10. It's the draconian fines that cause fear and resentment. Stalin would have been proud.

Is that an optical mouse in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Na zdorovye!

Earlier this evening...

Ivan: This trip [to Paris] is gonna be great!
Hulk: Yes.
Ivan: What about our [Canadian] friend. Is he coming?
Hulk: Sadly no. His job is taking him to Rwanda.
Ivan: So he's moving from Bosnia to Rwanda. What's next, East Timor?

Hulk: (pause)

Ivan: He's following the genocide trail?
Hulk: I heard Pol Pot's got some business to sort out...
Ivan: Pol Pot is dead.

Hulk: (long pause)

Ivan: I'll drink to that!

Little Wing

This song brings back lots of memories. Or rather, it brings back a single, very rich memory of an October night a few years ago.

I was moving that weekend, from my post-college midtown apartment to a new place downtown. I was planning to get up early and complete the move the move with my mom next day. It must have been Friday night.

I got an unexpected email from my ex-girlfriend, inviting me to attend a piano recital that she was giving with the Bach Society at school. She was still in college. We had broken up a month earlier.

It was raining. She played a piece by a Cuban composer. The piece was short, very complicated, and she made many mistakes. But it was beautiful, and it's the only piece that I remember from that concert.

Afterward, we met up with a new friend I'd made at work, and his friend who was visiting from Boston. Or rather his ex-girlfriend whom he had left behind.

So there we were, dressed up, with our well-dressed ex-girlfriends, new to downtown Manhattan, looking for a place to get a get a drink. On a rainy Friday night in October. We walked around in the rain for at least half an hour. Downtown is dead on a Friday night. It was raining. The girls were beautiful in a way that tall women in heels are beautiful when it's raining.

Finally we got directions to a bar, somewhere near City Hall. I don't remember the name of the bar or the street, but I could find it on a map. It was an old bar. There were posters on the wall advertising musical acts from the 70's. Downstairs, a band was playing.

There were three musicians. None under 50. The sparse crowd was made up of similarly aged people, and a few regulars. I thought it was a jazz band. But they played this beautiful song. No words. It must have landed about 15 minutes.

After about 10 minutes, I asked someone what they were playing. I thought it might be a Marley cover. It was Hendrix.

I've long since broken up with the ex-girlfriend for the last time, and she moved half way across the world. I became close with the new friend for a while, but I haven't spoken to him now in over a year. But I still remember those old guys (who I think were Wall Street guys, and not full time musicians) playing their 15 minute rendition of 'Little Wing.' On a rainy October night. On a Friday in downtown Manhattan.

What I learned about startups.

These thought are based on my own experiences, especially those from the past year. They are not intended as advice for you, or anyone else. Although I’m curious to hear what you think.

The main thing I learned is that you need to have a good idea. Although no one will pay you just for having a good idea, you will likewise never get much mileage out of an idea that isn’t actually useful. Furthermore, you will not come up with such an idea until you have a good understanding of the area in which you are trying to operate.

I used to think that many people had good ideas. They didn’t implement these ideas due to lack of resources, etc, or they were unwilling to implement these ideas due to laziness, etc. That may be the case, but I think that most people who try to build startups fail because they really don’t have good ideas. They may have good concepts, but not really ideas that are worth much.

For example, take the sewing machine, circa 1850. You could have said “I want to build a better sewing machine.” That would be a concept. You could even have said “I want to build a sewing machine that will work more quickly & less clumsy.” That’s still a concept. You’ve really got nothing. However, if you deconstruct a sewing machine, tinker with the parts, try to replace components and see what happens, you might decide that the machine would be greatly improved by using a flying needle, instead of a rotary one. Now that’s an idea!

This is more or less what Isaac Singer did in 1850. It didn’t hurt that Mr. Singer was an engineer, or that he was extremely OCD. But it also didn’t matter that he hadn’t spent years using a sewing machine, either. Instead, he saw a sewing machine being repaired, became intrigued with the concept of making it better, and eventually stumbled on his idea.

I think this is a template for how many good ideas come about. You need someone with a good amount of knowledge in the relevant area, combined with that same person exploring a general concept by doing specific, unguided work. It doesn’t hurt to be OCD, either.

In order to come up with a great idea, it is necessary to have deep knowledge in an area like engineering, design, organization, etc. However I’m not sure it’s possible to have a great idea without investigating some other, less valuable ideas. That takes time.

I’ve had a few friends begin what they called “startups.” However none of them had really nailed down the idea that they were actually going to implement. In the process of building their original concepts, they all realized that they should have been doing something a little differently. They should have been happy! Their second version of their concepts were most likely more valuable than the first versions. However, making major adjustments midstream can be difficult and costly. Especially for those have raised money, recruited people, or build software that they now had a personal attachment to. In all cases, this process of change and improvement led to stagnation, or to spectacular collapse.

So the conclusion is simple: if you’ve got an idea, think of it more as a concept. You probably won’t have a truly great idea until you explore that concept with specific work. Work on your concept. The concept could be anything, but it helps if you have deep (and broad) knowledge of a closely related area. But do work on your concept, regardless of what you know. You don’t have to work very hard, or very often. But you do need to explore it for a while. Some things just take time, and lots thought.

Talking to other people about your concept can be helpful. However don’t do something stupid like raise money, hire someone, or quit a job that you like, in order to work on a concept that you have fooled yourself into thinking is a well formed idea.

Edison worked on many things. Usually, he worked alone. He took pride in his failures, as he thought trying out flawed ideas got him closer to good ideas.

However even Edison got married to ideas that did not survive the test of time. He did not accept that alternating current was a viable technology. Not only did he smear Westinghouse and his company publicly over the issue, he even invented the electric chair to prove how dangerous alternating current could be. Eventually, Edison accepted that alternating current was a good way to deliver power to home and businesses, and his company started providing it. The electric chair is no longer used in the United States, though a few states still allow it.

Don’t think you have it all figured out. Don’t be a slave to your own half-baked ideas. But do work on them. Eventually, you may discover something meaningful.

So my advice (to myself) is simple: work on you ideas. Work diligently, but be flexible. Some things take time to figure out. Sometimes you need to take time off from working on something, to let your mind make more sense of it. So work on several concepts, or at least a couple variants of a singlecocept. Take vacations. Have faith in yourself, but be objective about what you have actually come up with. Most of all, don’t put pressure on yourself to have that great idea. It will come. But if it doesn’t, you should not have to explain to your parents, investors, employees, girlfriends, and moreover, to yourself, why you have committed to a great idea that you now realize isn’t so great, or wasn’t an idea at all.

Just work on your idea. And talk about it, if you find that helpful and enjoyable. But don’t make irreversible decisions or sacrifices, if you can avoid them. Don’t quit your job to work on the idea. Just work on the idea. Don’t become committed, and don’t commit anyone else, unless you actually have something worth committing to. You might be surprised how far you can go, working without outside financing, during the time that your current employer doesn’t pay you for.

Anyway, that’s my take.

-------

After I left my job with Google over a year ago, I was briefly involved with a friend’s startup. Despite an intriguing concept and plenty of financing, the idea failed somewhat spectacularly. My friend wanted me to come in and fix it. We had disagreements and I ended up not being involved for very log. I spoke to him much later and apparently they’d made some major changes. I hope things work out for him.

That said, my experience showed me some ways of how not to develop a concept into a startup. My friend is a creative type, and a very successful businessman. He wanted to build an online virtual community around a theme that is very important to him. I still think he had a good concept.

He hired some guys to build the interface for his community. Unfortunately, they were not qualified to build anything of the sort. They were graphics guys, and had very little idea about engineering. They in turn hired some other guys, end the whole thing ended up as a mess.

Early on, someone decided that the community’s interface would be accessible via a web browser, using Flash. I’m not sure who made that decision, but it must have been made early on. Until I came on board, I don’t think anyone asked why the decision was made. I doubt they considered many alternatives.

I’m sure that if I spoke to my friend today, he wouldn’t agree that the use of Flash was the reason that his venture had so many problems. He’s right, of course.

However, using Flash meant that the company hired (and later fired) a bunch of Flash developers. It also meant that they hired a guy to build 3D objects in Flash. They hired a contractor to build a major component of the interface, also in Flash. All of these people were difficult, and very expensive.

In the end, they produced a prototype that crashed, loaded slowly, and didn’t size properly in different browsers. Some of the graphics were beautiful, but they didn’t look good in a web browser window. Any experienced engineer could have told you that this would happen. I’m not saying that Flash is garbage, but rather that it is not well suited for what they were trying to build.

They should have build a stand alone executable that accessed the web (in Java, for example, or anything else). Not only would this have succeeded easily where Flash proved difficult, but hiring would have been much less difficult. The guys running this venture were not qualified to interview and hire engineers. However, they were further handicapped by being forced to hire “Flash developer” engineers. If they’d searched for Java engineers instead, they would have had a much larger pool to choose candidates from.

Again, this is not the reason that my friend’s venture failed. But it does show how running with a concept (posing as a well-formulated idea) can be very expensive. The concept of “let’s build a beautiful virtual world for X” was a good concept. But to build a “multimedia virtual world for X using Flash” was never a good idea.

Increasing my observed sample space.

As some of you know (well probably no one that might actually read this blog), I am a huge proponent of the idea that randomness rules our lives. This is almost a religion to me. Rather, you can even argue that religion was born of the need for humans to make sense of the randomness of their lives. But that is neither here nor there.

Recently, I've thought about going to work as an analyst/programmer/quant on Wall St. I've had friends encourage me to look in this direction for a while, but only recently have I given it serious thought. Things quickly came together, and I had an interview at a place that had the resources to hire and train me, and in many other ways would have been a good fit. The only problem: I totally bombed the job interview.

The interviewer asked me a technical question about a C++ library that I used for several years, but haven't used for the past year. I totally forgot it. Nothing that a flip through the definitions couldn't solve, but still not good. Then he tried to make it into a more general question about design patterns, which I learned in college over the course of two A+ semesters. Fail. The funny thing was that I wasn't nervous. I didn't cave under pressure. He asked me easy warmup questions for which he expected quick answers and I didn't deliver. Simple as that.

Small sample size? Perhaps. Probably more to it than that, but since we are all (even statisticians*) so prone toward trying to find patterns from small samples, I will actively refrain from going down this road.

While I don't begrudge the fund I was interviewing with for rejecting my application based on a poor interview, I nevertheless do not think myself any less qualified for the job because of the same interview. Or at least so I tell myself.

In any case, it may be for the better. The fact is, I don't need this job, although I would probably have taken it. I'm happy with what I'm doing now.

I'm on my way to ski in Colorado for a few days, then off to Thailand, Bali and Australia. Not sure when I'll be back, but certainly not before January. Not sure how much time I will spend working on baseball stuff. I'm sure I'll be thinking about baseball, however. Also I've been learning a little about basketball (ie NBA & men's college). Maybe I'll find a problem in that universe that I think I can contribute toward solving. Or maybe not. Basketball stats are much more shallow and unreliable than baseball stats. So creating something meaningful based on currently recorded basketball statistics seems both hopeless, and kind of intriguing.

* I recently read an article by Bill James, where he tried to prove that the Royals can not possibly be even an average team, because they were blown out in 5 games in a row. His reasoning was mathematically sound, but the desire to prove that the Royals were a bad team based on 5 aweful games, rather than a 100 games where the team was bad on average, was very human.

The King of the Apes was Left Handed

This post is not related to the game of baseball, baseball strategy, or baseball research, although you can make these parallels if you want to.

My mother told me this story when I was a kid in Russia. Although my memory has changed the details, so please don't blame my mother for anything that follows.

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A long time ago in Africa, there was a great ape. He was recognized by the other apes as the greatest ape of them all, and he became known as the King of the Apes.

Unlike the apes before him, the King of the Apes ate his birds with his left hand. This was unusual, as apes had always eaten their birds with the right hand, for as long as any ape could remember.

As the King of the Apes grew old and eventually died, his legend grew. Ambitious apes sought to imitate the King of the Apes. They asked 'what made the King of the Apes so great?' Since none of the other apes ate their birds with the left hand, some of the ambitious apes seized on this characteristic, and sough to emulate it. Eating birds with the left hand was not natural to most of the apes. But neither it was it terribly difficult to learn. Soon, all of the ambitious apes were eating their birds with the left hand.

Some of the ambitious apes had their own achievements. Soon enough, eating birds with the left hand became ubiquitous among the apes in Africa.

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I was recently visiting San Francisco, and staying with a college buddy of mine. One of his room mates quit his job to work on a startup.

As a departure from working on his idea, he would attend "Startup School" in Berkeley. Sometimes the other room mates would join him. This 'school' is a speaker series, where successful web-based entrepreneurs share their experiences & give tips to the future go-getters of the internet business world.

I remember one of the room mates talking about a lecture he attended. The speaker was the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh. Zappos is an internet retailer known both for its excellent customer service, and also for the strong culture within its workplace.

My friend's room mate was impressed by the speaker. Apparently his speech was focused on Zappos's company culture, and how that culture had made Zappos into a great company. One of his points was that a small company has to be willing to let go of their best engineer early on, if the engineer does not acquiesce to the demands of the culture that the founder wants to instill upon his young company. This bold & original idea stuck in the mind of my friend's room mate.

But is that really such good advice for a startup? Did the Beatles succeed because John Lennon & George Harrison made Paul McCarthey acquiesce to the culture of The Quarrymen? Or did they find a way to get along with Sir Paul, and in the process, made the band take on some of his characteristics as well?

Moreover, why should we care so much when people that we admire say something that goes against conventional wisdom? Is it because we think that what they are saying makes sense and represents progress? Or is it because we want to 'Be Like Mike,' rather than to think for ourselves?

What are the odds that Malia or Sasha will be President?

Let's forget about politics for a moment, and look at this strictly as a probability problem.

How likely are Malia or Sasha to become one of our future presidents? Or rather, how much does the fact that their father is Barak Obama help them?

For an American chosen at random, his or her probability of becoming president is too tiny to imagine. But let's imagine it. The youngest president was Bill Clinton, elected at 42. The oldest would have been John McCain at 72. Throwing out those outliers, let's estimate that to have a shot at being elected President, you need to be between 45 and 65. According to the US census data, there were 62 million Americans in this age range in 2000, comprising 22.0% of the US population. So if we had no other information about a person other than his or her age and citizenship status, we could guess that there is a 1 in 65 million chance that he or she was elected President, if we guessed in 2000.

Now consider America in 1800. The free population of the United States was 4.3 million. The life expectancy in 1750 was 36. Well actually the life expectancy in the Northern States was 40. In 1950, that number was 68. So to be conservative, let's say that we can estimate the number of Americans over 45 in 1800 by looking at the number of Americans over 70, alive in 2000. By this generous measure, 9.0% of free Americans in 1800 had a hypothetical chance to be president, out of a population that was 50 times smaller. That amounts to a little better than 1 in 400,000.

I already factored in our country's ugly history of slavery. However one must also remember that in 1800, women were not eligible to be President. So if you picked a random free American man in 1800, you had a little better than 1 in 200,000 chance to pick the President of the United States.

Now those odds look a little better than 1 in 65 million! And I think I was being very generous with the age issues.

Presidents don't get elected randomly. However in 1800, if you got into politics early enough, stuck around, and lived long enough, you were a long shot to be President. At least statistically speaking.

As a kid, I always assumed that John Quincy Adams became president at least in part due to nepotism. Maybe it was so, but given the fact that his chance was 1 out of 200,000 before you even considered his qualifications, things are not so clear.

However, we are not looking at individual cases here. Instead, we are considering the probability of two presidents being close blood relatives, if selected at random. We've never had two Presidents who were brothers, first cousins or grandchildren of other Presidents. But if we had, I don't think that we would have though of this as any less nepotistic than father and son. Still, let's scratch cousin and brother. Although both RFK and Ted Kennedy had a non-trivial chance of becoming President, which is worth noting.

For the early years, there were too few former Presidents. But let's assume for now that there were always past Presidents, who each served either 4 or 8 years. Each President has on average 1 son, and on average 2 grandsons, who will live to be of Presidential age. Each of these men has a 45-65 window to be elected President. So he's got 3 shots at the top job. Thus each new President is contributing about 9 future nepotistic Presidential hopefuls over their lifetime. Thus in the long run, the average number of such hopefuls during a given Presidential race must be around 9. Let's make it 10, for a round number.

OK, so during every election cycle, there are 10 or so potentially nepotistic candidates (let's call them PNCs from now on).

If we lived in 1800, there would be a 1 in 20,000 chance that the electorate would choose a PNC, even if the election was a random drawing of free male citizens. (Not really, since there was not a full set of past Presidents to use as fathers and grandfathers, but bear with me.)

In 2000, there are still 10 PNC, but now that women have a real chance to be President, there is only a 1 in 6.5 million chance that we will elect a PNC by random drawing.

So far, I have not even mentioned one obvious fact: on average, the PNCs are much more qualified to be President than an average American of the correct age. Most people don't even want to be President. Even if we restrict eligibility to those who went to college (or the military), and score in the top 2/3 of Americans in IQ, public speaking and some measure of organizational skills, we would eliminate most people. Most people are not interested in a political career. Not all of those who are interested can pass the basic qualifications for election. However, it is probably safe to say that any PNC who wants to start a career in politics can do so. Not all PNCs will be interested in politics, but for now let's assume that they are at least as likely as an average American to be interested in a career in politics, but with perhaps a better chance to get started, because of their family connections.

So by the most conservative of measures, we can estimate that a PNC is about 10 times more likely to enter politics as an average American, given the same level of interest.

Therefore, we estimate that under the conditions of 1800, a PNC had a 1 in 2,000 chance of being elected President in a give election, even if the election consisted of a random drawing among all of the minimally qualified people. Let's review how we got here:

4.3 million Americans * 0.09 [aged 45-65] * 1/2 [men] = 200,000 eligible

200,000 eligible / 10 [estimated PNCs] = 1 in 20,000 to elect a PNC

1 in 20,000 chance / 10 [estimated advantage to a PNC] = 1 in 2,000 to elect a PNC

What this calculation actually suggests is that if there were 2,000 politicians on all levels of government in 1800, typically 1 of them might be a PNC. If we elected Presidents at random from all current politicians, then there is a 1 in 2,000 chance that we elect a PNC.

Given these odds, it is unsurprising that America elected a single PNC (John Quincy Adams) in its early days. You may say that his odds should have been much worse since he was 6th President, but I would argue any son of Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, or any other Founding Father could be considered a PNC.

In any case, I think that it's fair to say that during America's early history (ie before the 20th century), a PNC was not much more likely to reach a high political office than a similarly ambitious white male citizen, who was able to get a college education, or to become a reasonably high ranking officer in the army. This was simply because there were about the same number of high level posts as there are today, but with magnitudes fewer candidates.

Contrast this with today's conditions. There is still only one President. Only one Secretary of State. Only one Speaker of the House of Representatives. There are a few more lower ranking secretaries and a lot more advisors. However the pool of Americans aged 45-65 who are full citizens has increased by a factor of over 100. Let's consider the chance of America electing a PNC in 2000 purely by chance:

280 million Americans * 0.22 [aged 45-65] = 65,000,000 eligible

65,000,000 eligible / 10 [estimated PNCs] = 1 in 6,500,000 to elect a PNC

1 in 6,500,000 chance / 10 [estimated advantage to a PNC] = 1 in 650,000 to elect a PNC

So everything else being equal (except a 1ox advantage to a PNC for getting started in politics), America should only have elected a PNC with 1 in 650,000 chance in 2000. But we did in fact elect a PNC, George W. Bush. I don't think that anyone thinks that this occurred simply by chance. I think we all know that George W. Bush had a huge advantage in becoming President because his father was also President.

This in itself is not remarkable. What is remarkable is that this was not really the case in 1800.

In 1800, there were exponentially fewer candidates per high level post, so anyone who was qualified, ambitious, and had talent for politics had a non-trivial shot at a top job in his lifetime (provided that he lived long enough).

Nowadays, there are many many more candidates per top job, and as such, each qualified candidate's chances at a top job are much lower. Except for PNCs, that is!

By my estimates, if there were 2,000 politicians (and high level military brass) in 1800, about 1 of them would be a PNC, and all would have a roughly similar chance to become President. That is not all that inconsistent with what actually took place in the 1800's.

By these same estimates, if there were 650,000 politicians (as well as high level military, influential businessmen, and politically active preachers) in 2000, then about 1 of them would be a PNC, and all would have a roughly similar chance at the Presidency. All those numbers sound reasonably accurate for 2000, except that the one politically active PNC had a disproportionately large chance of being elected President.

Moreover, George W. Bush knew of his advantage from his first days in politics, if not earlier. Everyone else knew it too, which helped him on every step along the way to the top.

I am not suggesting that nepotism handed George W. Bush the Presidency. But nepotism gave George Bush a much better shot at the Presidency early in his political career. Also, I am suggesting that nepotism is stronger in American politics now than it was 200 years ago. And that it will get stronger still, simply as a result of our population growth.

I think we know intuitively that it is hard to rise up a hierarchy on merit alone. As the hierarchy becomes increasingly complex, or the pool of qualified candidates increases, this becomes even harder. To rise up a highly competitive hierarchy, one needs to be either really lucky, or to have some sort of advantage. The instant name recognition of a PNC helps him or her at every level. Even if the difference is small at the highest level of the hierarchy (ie national elections), it gives him or her enormous benefit in getting to that level in the first place.

One result of this phenomenon is that some of the best qualified candidates drop out of the hierarchy early on. Many others never even enter the fray, deciding to pursue promotion in smaller hierarchies, or avoiding hierarchies entirely. There are probably about 500,000 Americans today who are relatively young politicians, military types, or the right kind of businessman or preacher to break into politics. All have a relatively equal chance to become President. Except for the PNCs. Even a minor PNC like Mitt Romney has a better than equal chance because his father reached a second-tier position in the hierarchy of government. However his advantage is nowhere as big as that of George W Bush, or Hilary Clinton.

The fact that unconnected individual like Bill Clinton, Barak Obama, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and John Edwards all became President, or almost became President should not distract from the fact that individually, unconnected people have almost no chance to become President (even if their cumulative chances are good).

The old days had their fair share of strange, crazy and incompetent candidates, to be sure. America almost elected Aaron Burr over Thomas Jefferson, and neither Andrew Johnson nor Franklin Pierce were remotely the best man for the job. And yet, for a well qualified, ambitious and talented politician, his chances of reaching a top job in the old day wasn't bad.

In 1787, 55 of the most brightest political minds in the United States gathered in Philadelphia to write our greatest political document to date. Today, that would not be possible. Consider the mess in California, where no one can agree on how to select the delegates for a new constitutional convention.

Is this a problem, and what can be done about it? That is beyond the scope of this discussion.

However, I think we should consider the example of India. The world's largest democracy has had both many PNCs at the top job, and also some completely unconnected candidates, in a roughly 50-50 split. I think that this is where America is headed.

So how does this all relate to Malia and Sasha? If they want to become President one day, their chances are exceptionally good. Even if we say that their chances are 1 in 30 each (based on a rough historical average), those odds are much better than the 1 in 500,000 or so for a typical minimally qualified candidate.

I have argued that America is headed toward more nepotism at the top, so their chances of becoming President might be as much as 100,000 times higher than those of their Sidwell Friends classmates. This is even assuming that their classmates are likely to be wealthier, smarter, more educated, and better politically connected than your average American.

On top of that, Malia and Sasha are possibly the most qualified 9 and 11 year old future Presidents ever. They are incredibly young for Presidential children, giving them a head start in just about everything. By they time they are 45 years old, being black women will not hurt them in national elections, even if one argues that being a black woman is still a disadvantage today. Also, our country will be 30+ years removed from the first Obama Presidency. We always remember our Presidents well, given enough time. So their father's legacy, whatever that may be, will help them more than ever before for a PNC.

The biggest obstacle to a Obama 2050 (or so) coronation would be the chance that neither of the girls wants their father's old job. That could happen. But I would still be willing to place a 10 to 1 wager that one of the Obama daughters achieves a top 4 position in our country's government within her lifetime.

Given that our country will by then have 500 million other eligible citizens, such odds are truely remarkable.

WTF?

So here are my thoughts for this blog.

There are already some good places on the internet for me to share my thoughts with others. But I've got a lot of thoughts, and not all of them have a good home.

I have a blog where I write about my baseball research. I've got a Facebook profile that I try to avoid, but often fail. Heck, I've even got a Twitter account, but 140 words doesn't do it for me. I didn't leave Communist Russia to have the folks at Twitter tell me how long my thoughts have to be.

I'm not sure what kind of content I'll have here. But so much of the things I like to write about don't belong on Facebook, Twitter, or a nerdy baseball blog.

I use to write this kind of stuff in emails to friends. But no one reads long emails any more. Or if they do, they sure don't respond as often as they used to. Maybe Twitter and links to articles on Facebook is the future, and the future is now. And maybe proofreading emails is dead. And maybe I'm becoming a grumpy old man, but that doesn't mean I have to be like any of it, or that I have to be like anyone else.

So that's it. No 140 character haikus. No links to news articles. And absolutely nothing about statistics, baseball, money, poker, or anything like that.

Appendix number four.

Here is a partial list (off the top of my head) of significant competitions where I was number four (or so):

I once won 4th place in the school science fair.

I was the 4th highest rated chess player in my state among children.

I was then the 4th highest rated chess player in my college.

I finished 4th in a state-wide math competition when I was in high school.

I finished ranked 4th (or so) in my high school class.

I graduated college cum laude.

After a year as a graduate student, I was one of four (or so) students from my college's computer science department to go work for Google (at a time when everyone wanted to work for Google).

In poker... well I'm not gonna discuss poker on a public blog, so I guess that's it.

I am number four.

Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on my jet-lagged, sleep deprived body, but I've realized that when in comes to competitive things that I care about, I am usually number four.

Fourth out of hundred, and occasionally out of thousand, so fourth ain't bad. But never first, and hardly ever second.

Maybe it's because I've dabbled semi-seriously in a number of things. Although they are loosely related, I've never had that dedication to be really good at something, at the expense of everything else. Maybe I just never had that desire to be number one. Maybe I never found that one thing that my natural talents are uniquely suited for.

In any case, I'm not unhappy about this realization. I'm not an extremely competitive guy, and just being really good, rather than the best, is good enough for me.

I'm more interested in analyzing how my experiences subconsciously affect the things I like. As a result of being good, sometimes very good, but never the best at anything I took seriously, I wonder if I'm attracted to similar characteristics in people and organizations?

I've been a Yankees fan since I fell in love with baseball as a Russian immigrant in the early 90's. However as the team spends more money and wins more championships, it's become harder to be fan. Being a San Francisco Giants fan is much easier. My favorite year to be a Yankees fan was 1996. The team was good, but probably not the best team in the American League. The Atlanta Braves were easily the best team in baseball that year. Seeing the Yankees beat the Braves in a small sample of games was great. Seeing them win as favorites in the later years was much less gratifying.

My favorite Yankee was Andy Pettitte. But I could never really give a good reason why. I've always liked Derek Jeter, of course. Yet he never interested me all that much. Pettitte is not a terribly exciting personality either, but he's your quintessential number four. He's been one of the top pitchers in baseball throughout his career. Also he's a crafty pitcher, with a intense scowl and a great pickoff move. And yet he's never won a Cy Young (his one second-place finish in 1996 would not even rank that high in most other years). I was never unhappy to see Mariano overtake Pettitte as the most well-known Yankees pitcher, nor Clemens or Mussina after him.

I was never unhappy to see someone do better than me in a fair test, especially if that person was a friend or a team mate. I don't think this is because I'm a 'team player' or anything like that. I'm just happy to work pretty hard, be really good, let someone else be the best, and collect whatever you get for being number four.