Friday, May 15, 2009 - P0ker J0
Well hello UB Land
Wow – I just have to start with Celebrity Apprentice. It’s all over the net how appalled most people are that Joan Rivers walked away with the title. NBC even has a poll on their website. Check this out - some of the comments made me giggle. Well I can tell you it was even more dramatic to watch it all pan out live! I was lucky enough to be in the audience of the finale and what an experience that was. It was cool to actually stand by and see all these players that I have been watching on TV over the last few months. Clint Black is way shorter in real life than I thought and Donald’s hair is even worse close up! Wow he and I could surely have a long conversation about hair if given the chance. Melissa seemed as out of control in person as on the show and Joan’s face moved less in person. All in all – a great experience with a lot of money raised for charity, but I won’t lie – I think the Donald made a big mistake!
So Mr. Hellmuth has decided to grace the Canadians with his presence eh? He is currently up in Canada playing in the Canadian Poker Tour event in Calgary. He even was awarded the White Hat in Calgary. So you may be asking white hat eh? Well it is not just any white hat, it is almost like getting the key to the city. So I guess they must think he’s a big deal eh? He is doing well in the heads up and we are cheering him on from the sidelines. Go Phil go!
Rumor has it that Players Sports Bar will be a buzz this weekend with some of our favourite UBers in attendance for the annual poker party. I’m sure we will hear all about it from the Wisconsin networks. I hope you all have fun and don’t forget to have a merlot for Jo!
So I guess the WSOP is upon us. There will be drama, there will be entrances and I’m sure there will be laughter. Mr. Hellmuth will be making his big entrance on July 5th and Ms. Duke just may have a funky entrance of her own. Stay tuned for details. The UB party is at Studio 54 on June 29th so make sure you drop by if you are in Vegas. I will share more details with you next week but UB will have a presence there and there will be opportunities to come and meet Team UB in person. Hope to see you there.
Well as I close off here – I reflect on a busy week and wish I was on a beach somewhere like my buddy Ryan. Nothing better than looking out your window (even if you are working) and watching the ocean. A girl can dream right??
Until next week……
P0ker J0 out!
Tags: Annie Duke, Celebrity Apprentice, Clint Black, Donald Trump, Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers, Phil Hellmuth, Studio 54, ub, Vegas
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - Annie Duke
Okay…so you may have noticed a theme with my blogs on Ultimatebet.com that I am always relating my experience on The Apprentice to poker strategy and today’s blog is no exception. I think that my knowledge of poker really helped me on The Apprentice. But, also, I think what happens on the Celebrity Apprentice has a lot of offer us in terms of seeing strategies and thinking that just don’t work. Last blog I talked about tilt and how bad that is in any game you play, how it is completely counterproductive. This week the topic is resulting.
Resulting is a very particular poker term that means assuming that the outcome of a decision determines the quality of a decision. This is such an important concept that poker players came up with a singular term for it: resulting. Tilt is a similar word that is so important that poker players came up with a singular word to describe the concept because we talk about it so much. So Resulting. Why is this so bad?
Well, decisions and outcomes are not linked one to one in any game that involves a random element (this includes poker, Apprentice and life). We can make very poor decisions and have good outcomes, like driving home drunk but making it safely. The fact that you lived does not mean that driving drunk is a good decision. You can also make a very good decision and have a very bad outcome, like driving home safely, following all traffic laws while sober and getting hit by a drunk driver.
How does that relate to The Apprentice? Well, in episode 1 where we had to sell cupcakes for charity, there was a surprise taste test where each team was called and told to bring their best cupcake for a taste test worth $15K to the winner. Melissa was tasked with choosing which cupcake to bring and in choosing chose the cupcake on which one looked the best as opposed to which one tasted the best. I was highly critical of that decision because, clearly, if you are choosing for a taste test you need to pick based on taste. Melissa failed to consult any of the cooks. The players who had cooked had the chef who supervised the kitchen taste all the cupcakes so knew a professional’s opinion on which cupcake tasted best. Melissa had not done any cooking. To not consult the cooks, who were right there, is ludicrous in this decision making process. Melissa actually chose a cupcake that had failed because we had forgotten to add the correct leavening agent. She chose the worst cupcake we had!
Now, it turned out we won the challenge. Not because our cupcakes were so great but because the boys forgot to add sugar to their cupcakes. Obviously, we don’t know that when we go into the taste test so the fact that the boys’ cupcakes were so gross is meaningless in evaluating the quality of Melissa’s decision. So how is this for resulting? After the show, Joan Rivers tweeted the following:
Even though Annie was furious that Melissa presented the “wrong” cupcake, we won BECAUSE of it. Maybe she should shut up and learn
This is a classic case of resulting. Joan is making the mistake of using the result of the decision (that we won the taste test) as the criterion for evaluating the quality of the decision itself. It turns out that we could have chosen any cupcake since there was no sugar in our competitor’s cupcakes. But that doesn’t matter because we don’t know that in advance. We can make a reasonable assumption that there is sugar in the other cupcakes. So we have to decide which cupcake to bring based on that reasonable assumption. Given that, the cupcakes should have been chosen on taste. If taste was close you would then choose based on looks. But looks should not be number 1. And given that the whole part of the team that was in the kitchen was right there it would have been easy enough to consult the appropriate people about which cupcake to bring to the taste test.
In poker, players very often make the same mistake Joan does. They assume that because they are winning that they are playing well. But, very often, you can be playing very poorly and still win. You can get your money in bad and still get there. We all know this. The key to growing as a player is to avoid Joan’s mistake. It is to evaluate the decision making process without the assumption that a good result means a good decision. Being willing to acknowledge that you might be playing poorly when you are winning is a key step to improving as a player. And we all know we are willing to attribute losing to luck. In fact, we over attribute losing to luck. So be willing to do the same with winning. Be willing to attribute winning to getting lucky as well. We certainly got lucky in the cupcake challenge when the boys forgot the sugar.
Tags: Celebrity Apprentice, Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers
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Monday, April 13, 2009 - Annie Duke
Oh…no…not me. I don’t tilt when I am playing a game. I might walk away from the game and then get pissed off…but never during. Apparently, Melissa Rivers hasn’t played as much poker as I have because that girl is on tilt. And I want all the poker players watching Celebrity Apprentice to take note of Melissa’s completely tilty meltdown so they will stop freaking tilting at the tables. Melissa offers a great demonstration of how allowing emotions to rule your game decisions never results in anything good.
So, here is why Melissa is tilting. Melissa knows that if I am friends with Brande that it is bad for her. Jesse is a very strong player so it feels unlikely that Trump is going to fire him any time soon. I have been playing a strong game and I can raise money so ditto for me. That leaves Brande and Melissa as the vulnerable ones on our team. If I am unwilling to throw Brande under the bus, if I side with her, then Melissa is the likely person to go. That sent Melissa (and Joan) on a tilt like I have only ever seen from the likes of Phil!
The problem is that Joan and Melissa both directed their tilt at me. Now, first, they are spitting vitriol my way because apparently they think it is my job to save Melissa. But it is not my job to save her, that would be Melissa’s job to save Melissa. And Melissa’s reaction is counterproductive to playing the game well. She is now completely reacting (with her emotional, limbic brain) rather than planning how to stay in the game.
Every time she goes after Brande I see it. Every time she rolls her eyes or shrieks for attention I see it. Instead of settling down and working her ass off to make sure she is safe in the boardroom, she is going after Brande in a nasty, personal way (behind her back). And her attempts to be nice to Brande’s face are thinly veiled because she is too emotional to contain herself. Not a good strategy.
Compare that to Brande’s non-tilt. I was never going to recommend that Melissa go before Brande because I felt that Melissa was the stronger asset to the team. In the boardroom during the Lifelock task I made that clear. After I criticized Brande, though, she did not tilt. Instead she took a breath and realized the comments were valid (after all she had said she was drafting along behind the stronger personalities herself!). So when push came to shove she didn’t get pissed off, she didn’t tilt. Instead she just addressed the criticism and stopped doing the drafting. She started taking a leadership role, being proactive, being an asset to the team. I saw that and became her ally. Why? Because there is nothing that impresses me more than a person who admits their mistakes and learns from them. Go Brande!
So what a study in contrasts. Brande remained unemotional and redeveloped her strategy to great effect. Melissa tilted and flailed about, hurting her chances in the game because she was unable to calm down and stop letting the tilt drive her choices. Take note of this poker players. I am not sure you will see a better example in a game of why tilting is so dangerous to a successful outcome.
Play poker like Brande, not like Melissa.
Tags: Brande Roderick, Celebrity Apprentice, Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers
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