Cohenville

Phil Laak mentioned this on a recent episode of High Stakes Poker.  A good watch, Part 1 and 2 embedded.

Wired had a great article about a Canadian geological statistician who was able to crack the code on lottery scratch-off tickets.  After his analysis, he could get the winning tickets right 90% of the time.  Pretty amazing.

Read it here: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1

I’m glad to see GSN is making it available through the web.

Pretty cool show…well, I like it at least.

Watch Million Dollar Challenge, Episode 1 on PokerStars.tv

Of course there are all of the normal sites that have great poker information, like two plus two and cardplayer, but more recently I have found a few sites that are useful for different reasons:

• Good, real-time coverage of tournaments - http://www.pocketfiveslive.com/
• Great information on rakeback - http://www.raketherake.com/
• Coaching and lessons - http://www.cardrunners.com/ and http://www.leggopoker.com/ and http://www.stoxpoker.com/ and http://www.pokervt.com/
• Share your hands and get good analysis of play - http://weaktight.com/
• Full Tilt Poker’s preferred rake back site - http://www.rakebackpros.com/
• Information on high stakes online games - http://www.highstakesdb.com/

I have seen this on an interview before but an article at Full Tilt Poker provides some details as to his amazing run. Most of it is based on strong money management techniques which he details. His three guidelines are:

• He never buys into a cash game or a Sit & Go with more than 5 percent of his total bankroll (there is an exception for the lowest limits: he is allowed to buy into any game with a buy-in of $2.50 or less).
• He doesn’t buy into a multi-table tournament for more than 2 percent of his total bankroll, but he’s allowed to buy into any multi-table tournament that costs $1.
• If at any time during a No-Limit or Pot-Limit cash-game session the money on the table represents more than 10 percent of his total bankroll, he must leave the game when the blinds reach him.

Source: Full Tilt Poker

You’ll soon realize I like the work of the two gentlemen who wrote Freakonomics. I have a link to their blog on my site and I’m certain I’ll post many comments from it. In this post, Steven Levitt talks about betting on home underdogs in the NFL. An interesting read. He also refers back to a paper he talks about a paradox in sports betting, which is also an interesting read despite its age (2004).