Turing's demon (VII)
Al has assured me that we have reached the denouement of this little tale. Of course, trusting the word of a demon is a rather problematic issue. However, we shall see.
“Well you know, there's a certain appeal about having seven episodes here. Though some beings seem to need a rest by this point.”
Can we just get on with it?
Al sighed and continued, a shade reluctantly it seemed, “Right, so the short version of the story is you got your chips in with the best of it, and then lost. But, it's the side conditions that made this hand pretty much a perfect storm
for the scheme. You'd been in the tournament for long enough that you had a fair bit of emotional capital invested. Not actual capital of course -- you're such a cheapskate, but for our purposes emotional capital will do just as well, perhaps even better. Then to top it off, you made a whole sequence of good decisions, starting with the decision to complete from the small blind, and culminating in calling the all in bet. You were pretty proud of yourself weren't you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Well we all know what pride goeth before. Anyhow, the upshot is that I added a little packet to the upstream connection telling the Al (or rather one of them) on duty at UltimateBet to make sure that you came out on the wrong side of this one. The finishing touch was that you were left with a small but not ridiculously tiny stack of chips and had to sit there mulling over your ill fortune until they were gone too. One of my better efforts in your case.”
He continued, “The key to the whole scheme is 70:30 hands, or hands in that general range. They're common enough that we can influence a lot of hands without triggering too big a statistical anomaly. To be careful, we actually let you win a few extra, typically when the stakes aren't too big. And psychologically, you're conditioned to believe that you should be winning these -- you feel robbed when you don't. By contrast, losing to some stupid two outer provokes irritation for a moment but, precisely because it is such a ridiculous outcome, it doesn't really eat in to your soul the way repeatedly being knocked out of tournaments, or stacked in cash games does on the right side of 70:30 hands.”
“But couldn't these influences be picked up by suitable data mining?”
“Hey, we've got statisticians on staff too. They're not all incorruptible. We've arranged things so that to make a convincing argument you'd need access to a significant fraction of the database from one of the larger poker sites, and you'd need to ask exactly the right questions. The only people who have the access are employees. And, for obvious reasons, they have no incentive to be asking those questions.”
“So that's it? 70:30 hands?”
“Pretty much. Oh, there are a few other twists. You probably lose big coin flip hands a bit more often on the river than you should, and when you get aces in the big blind, everyone folds rather more frequently than you'd like. That sort of thing. Well, time for me to get back to work I suppose. Thanks for the Jameson's.
”
With that, he walked over to the computer and began to stuff himself feet first through the USB port again. He paused and looked up “That's an odd placement -- I thought ... oh very clever. It'll help, but not as much as you think.”
I grabbed at his torso. “Not so fast -- why should I let you back in?”
“Would you rather I made your life a living hell from out here?” he replied, rather less amiably than before. “Good point.” I said and released him.
Just before his head disappeared he paused, looked thoughtful, and said “Say, remember we speculated about Joe Hachem being the big guy? Didn't Joe say after he won the WSOP that he'd spent a lot of time playing online poker to get used to bad beats? That's exactly the sort of reverse propaganda that the big guy likes to use. And what about all those horrible and terribly public bad beats he took at the WSOP in 2006? Just the big guy's sort of humour. I think maybe we gave up on that idea too quickly.” And with that he was gone.
And it seems that, at last, our narrative has come to an end.
“Well you know, there's a certain appeal about having seven episodes here. Though some beings seem to need a rest by this point.”
Can we just get on with it?
Al sighed and continued, a shade reluctantly it seemed, “Right, so the short version of the story is you got your chips in with the best of it, and then lost. But, it's the side conditions that made this hand pretty much a perfect storm
for the scheme. You'd been in the tournament for long enough that you had a fair bit of emotional capital invested. Not actual capital of course -- you're such a cheapskate, but for our purposes emotional capital will do just as well, perhaps even better. Then to top it off, you made a whole sequence of good decisions, starting with the decision to complete from the small blind, and culminating in calling the all in bet. You were pretty proud of yourself weren't you?”“I suppose so.”
“Well we all know what pride goeth before. Anyhow, the upshot is that I added a little packet to the upstream connection telling the Al (or rather one of them) on duty at UltimateBet to make sure that you came out on the wrong side of this one. The finishing touch was that you were left with a small but not ridiculously tiny stack of chips and had to sit there mulling over your ill fortune until they were gone too. One of my better efforts in your case.”
He continued, “The key to the whole scheme is 70:30 hands, or hands in that general range. They're common enough that we can influence a lot of hands without triggering too big a statistical anomaly. To be careful, we actually let you win a few extra, typically when the stakes aren't too big. And psychologically, you're conditioned to believe that you should be winning these -- you feel robbed when you don't. By contrast, losing to some stupid two outer provokes irritation for a moment but, precisely because it is such a ridiculous outcome, it doesn't really eat in to your soul the way repeatedly being knocked out of tournaments, or stacked in cash games does on the right side of 70:30 hands.”
“But couldn't these influences be picked up by suitable data mining?”
“Hey, we've got statisticians on staff too. They're not all incorruptible. We've arranged things so that to make a convincing argument you'd need access to a significant fraction of the database from one of the larger poker sites, and you'd need to ask exactly the right questions. The only people who have the access are employees. And, for obvious reasons, they have no incentive to be asking those questions.”
“So that's it? 70:30 hands?”
“Pretty much. Oh, there are a few other twists. You probably lose big coin flip hands a bit more often on the river than you should, and when you get aces in the big blind, everyone folds rather more frequently than you'd like. That sort of thing. Well, time for me to get back to work I suppose. Thanks for the Jameson's.
”With that, he walked over to the computer and began to stuff himself feet first through the USB port again. He paused and looked up “That's an odd placement -- I thought ... oh very clever. It'll help, but not as much as you think.”
I grabbed at his torso. “Not so fast -- why should I let you back in?”
“Would you rather I made your life a living hell from out here?” he replied, rather less amiably than before. “Good point.” I said and released him.
Just before his head disappeared he paused, looked thoughtful, and said “Say, remember we speculated about Joe Hachem being the big guy? Didn't Joe say after he won the WSOP that he'd spent a lot of time playing online poker to get used to bad beats? That's exactly the sort of reverse propaganda that the big guy likes to use. And what about all those horrible and terribly public bad beats he took at the WSOP in 2006? Just the big guy's sort of humour. I think maybe we gave up on that idea too quickly.” And with that he was gone.
And it seems that, at last, our narrative has come to an end.
Labels: fiction
posted by Michael Albert at 11:00 am
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