The transience of memory

Brought to you today with a full helping of digressions and a bonus serving of nostalgia.

Three p.m. yesterday found me in my office, searching for toothpicks to prop my eyelids open as I waited for a four p.m. examiners meeting. In my defense, I had been at work since before seven a.m., and was still suffering from the previously discussed "not really jet lag, but there's no better word for it". The prospect of an examiners meeting is hardly something to set the pulse racing either. Basically, these consist of discussions where we all agree that our colleagues have graded their exams correctly (based only on a list of marks) and they do likewise for us.

So, in search of diversion I fired up PokerStars and prepared to do a bit of kibitzing. Does one kibitz in poker? I suppose so, though I associate the term more closely with bridge. Pause to consult the interweb. Gosh, who knew -- here's a rather nice discussion of kibitz, which certainly indicates the wider sense, in fact the first example refers to poker. Anyhoo ...

I spotted Fuel at a short handed 5/10 table and dropped in to wish him luck at the WSOP Main Event as well as to watch the fireworks. And fireworks there certainly were. Chips were flying everywhere. Three way all ins seemed to be the norm. It got so crazy that at some point I felt compelled to remark: "Why am I thinking of Lewis Carroll: 'You don't have to be crazy to play here ...'".

And then that annoying little man in my head started clamouring for attention:

"Just what Lewis Carroll quote is that please?"

"Oh come on", I replied, "you know, the Cheshire cat says it to Alice before she goes off to the Mad Hatter's tea party."

"I think not. Would you care to have a little wager on it? If I'm right you have to blog this sordid little tale, if you're right I won't bother you for a week."

Those were certainly excellent pot odds, or so I thought. Thus, off to the interweb it was to prove that silly little fellow wrong. You'd think I'd know better by now. It pains me to admit it, but apparently the phrase "You don't have to be crazy to verb here, but it helps" is the sole province of stupid signs on desks and coffee mugs, and has nothing to do with Lewis Carroll. I did find one other similarly confused soul somewhere on a motorcycling discussion group (complete with the Cheshire cat reference) but the little fellow said that didn't count, and really I can't argue. It just seems to be a play it again Sam thing, though now I suppose that "quote" is more famous for being "not a quote" than otherwise.

For the record, the passage from Alice in Wonderland that I seemed to be thinking of comes from towards the end of Chapter 6:

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?'

`In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'



Tenniel's illustration of that scene featured on a much derided math freshman T-shirt in my second year at Waterloo (with the caption "We're all mad here" as I recall.) My frosh shirt just had a big empty set symbol on it. The highly commended next frosh shirt (I wonder who had a hand in its design) featured π to several hundred digits.

Bonus geek points for spotting either possible reference in the title.

And we're back

Paying due respect to my jet lagged state (but see below), I decided to minimize my financial risk at the poker tables last night, entering a $2.20 MTT and a $1.20 9-table SNG. I almost couldn't cope with the excitement ...

Discovered that I play passive when tired, and towards the end of the first hour (25/50 blinds) of the MTT was down to about 900 in chips. In late position I got 77 and decided to push over two limpers, just hoping to boost my stack a little. I hadn't been playing many pots, and I really didn't expect a call from either one of them. Unfortunately the BB woke up with AK and won the race. Hey it happens.

The exit from the SNG was a little more interesting. Still relatively early, I got JJ in the SB. Three limps (50 each) in front, so I (1285) raised to 300. Two of the limpers called, making a 1000 chip pot. The flop was a pretty dry T75 rainbow, and I simply pushed, hoping to pick up some money from a TPGK hand, and otherwise to avoid having to see the turn, while willing to take the chance that one of the other two had hit a set. After due reflection, the first of the limpers decided his T7 offsuit was worth a call. Welcome back to donkeytown. Let's just rewind a little ... oh never mind.

About jet lag. I actually don't think that the condition one suffers after crossing half the world's timezones should be called jet lag. Classic jet lag is when your body clock tries to stay on its "home" setting after crossing a few (three to six or so) time zones. It's hugely annoying, and can be nearly impossible to beat. After crossing twelve time zones, even your body clock realizes that something rather unusual has taken place and generally throws up its hands in the air and says "So all right, you tell me what time it is." But typically one gets about six hours of broken sleep in a 48 hour period during the trip, along with too much bad food, petty annoyances, stiff joints, etc. So it's not surprising to find that one is a little tired and grumpy for a few days after arrival. And I guess "jet lag" is as good a name as any for that.

The odyssey

I thought about doing this post as a retelling of the real thing, but that would be a bit lame and probably impossible in a state of incipient jet lag and besides, it's been done very well indeed, and that would be hard to live up to.

Statutory warning I: This is a thinly disguised bad beat story. But, like at least some of that genre, it contains amusing and/or instructive moments.

Statutory warning II: This post violates Rule 23.1 of blogdom, which requires that blog entries should fit on a single screen.

Non statutory warning: Proof reading facilities may be temporarily unavailable or unreliable owing to jet lag.

So, when we last heard from our hero (that would be me) he was contemplating a 40 hour journey from Scotland to New Zealand. Let the tale of that journey begin.

I'm an experienced traveler. But, until I've actually checked in for my flight(s) at the airport, I'm always nervous. After that, if anything goes wrong it's the airline's problem and they can deal with it. So I tend to arrive for my first flight early. Besides, I'm rather tall -- not basketball tall, but tall enough that when, perforce, I'm flying economy it's vital to be able to get an aisle seat and highly desirable to get bulkhead or exit rows. This explains at least in part why I was at Edinburgh Turnhouse airport at 1430 for a 1720 flight to London.

At Edinburgh I got boarding passes for the flights as far as Christchurch which I could see were aisle seats, and which, I was assured, were exit rows. I didn't trust the latter claim because the row numbers looked wrong for the 747's. But, I was hardly in any position to climb over the counter and investigate on the computer myself, much as I might have liked to.

Having supplemented my supply of reading materials with the Saturday Times, I proceeded through to the departures area. I glanced at the departures monitors, and noted that my flight was listed with a "15 minute" delay. Other experienced travelers will know how bad this is. If you have a 1720 flight, and the departure is listed as 1735, that's fine. It usually means that the incoming flight is in the air with a known arrival time and there's going to be a 15 minute delay. But, when they say "15 minute delay", it means one of two things. Either the incoming flight isn't off the ground at its origin yet or you already have a plane on the ground but there are technical problems. In either case it's more of a "don't say we didn't tell you it was going to be late" message, as opposed to any sort of reasoned judgment about an actual departure time.

A little detective work revealed that all flights coming from the southeast of England were experiencing delays. That suggested weather problems there (consistent with information from the newspaper, and the fact that Wimbledon would soon be starting.) Sure enough, a while later "15 minutes" was changed to "45 minutes", and some time after that to "1 hour 30 minutes".

That estimate almost held. The incoming flight arrived, we got on, and were told we had a runway slot at 1855. But, we had the classic "one checked in passenger not on board" situation. I've got every sympathy for people who are unavoidably detained by a late connection or whatever, but how can you fail to board a plane on time when said plane is already 90 minutes late? Anyhow, we missed that runway slot and as a result didn't take off until 1920. At least I had an exit row seat.

That had us on the ground at Heathrow around 2030 and amazingly at a gate by 2045. My Sydney flight was due to take off from terminal 4 at 2200. An hour and 15 minutes is ample time for a person, particularly one in reasonably good physical shape and experienced at Heathrow, to get between terminals 1 and 4, but I had a pretty strong feeling that my luggage would not be up to it.

I was not impressed to find that my Qantas flight to Sydney was actually being run by British Airways, with Qantas as a code share. The quality of service on BA has, in my experience, ahem, let's just say, not been of the highest standard. I'm actually still a bit perplexed by this, since my travel agent knows, and shares, my preferences, and there was a "real" Qantas flight at almost the same time. I'll have to check what happened.

Anyhow, BA decided to try an experiment: whether or not a full load of 747 passengers could be rendered more docile by cooking them prior to take off. Somehow, we got disconnected from the external air conditioning unit (or it broke down, it was never clear) and then with the inevitable "we're waiting for some cargo" delays got to sit in sweltering temperatures for over an hour. I'd not be surprised to be told that they got above 35C. An hour late at takeoff, not a big deal on the long hauls because it can usually be made up, and also because the scheduled ground time in Bangkok at almost 3 hours was far longer than actually needed to clean, refuel and restock the plane.

Oh yeah, I had an aisle all right, but not an exit row. Also it was in the poorest possible position relative to the food serving area -- that is, near it, meaning that I would be nearly last to be served and would likely have to take whatever menu item had been least possible (again, on long hauls, Qantas and Air New Zealand have frequently gone with the policy of serving the main meal on the second leg in the opposite direction to that on the first leg, but I've never run across this simple and admirable idea on other airlines.)

And then, the real fun began. In seat on demand entertainment systems are the greatest boon to long haul flights since, well, since ever. And like all such boons, they quickly set themselves in your mind as an indispensable part of the whole process. We took off, they turned the system on. I started to watch Eragon, just the right sort of mindless junk for the situation. A chorus of "dings" revealed that only about 1/3 of us actually had access to our systems. There followed a series of system shutdowns, waits, reboots, etc. Each had the effect of making the system available to about 1/3 of the passengers. Not always the same third, but always about 1/3. Eventually they gave up and switched over to the more robust scheduled programming mode. Sigh. I suspect that some vital part of the system hadn't responded well to being cooked prior to take off.

Bangkok was a pleasant surprise. It had slipped my mind that, when last I passed through what was then a rather dingy and unpleasant airport, there had been a great furore about the fact that a brand new one was due to open soon. So, it was the new one we were at. While not quite up to Singapore standards (more glass, which is nice, but which makes the climate control a bit unreliable), it's nice enough. If you're passing through, check whether you can reach your departure gate from Level 3 where most of the frequent flier clubs are, rather than Level 4, the main shopping concourse. There were long queues at Level 4, but you could just walk right up to security on Level 3.

Quite a few people on the flight, who were continuing to Sydney, got caught by the new security regulations there. They'd picked up duty free liquor in London (a poor decision in any case, since you can buy it more cheaply on landing in Sydney and then you don't have to carry it). The plane had to be cleared completely in Bangkok, but then the liquids couldn't come back on board since we had to clear security again and the 100ml rule applied. Much grumbling about not having been told about this in advance.

Off we go from Bangkok, back on schedule. The entertainment system continues to crap out and is essentially unusable for most of the flight. I managed to see about 20 minutes of Gangs of New York, which I was really enjoying, though it was a bit heavy for airline fare. Then I randomly got access to Men in Black which I thought had aged rather poorly. This time they gave us all "We apologize" forms to fill out. No doubt, any compensation offered will be completely useless to me.

Sydney was nothing much. I was fairly much in zombie mode by that point in any case. The gate staff were in an extremely grumpy mood and, in particular, were being gratuitously rude to various Asian passengers who were nervously checking whether their boarding passes were o.k. (they were), and then were having difficulties following quickly delivered instructions in broad Australian accents.

And on to Christchurch. Sure enough, no sign of my luggage. I did all the usual stuff at the baggage inquiry counter. Both pieces were already registered in the system as not having made it on to the flight (that was certainly news to me!) The system further indicated that one had been placed on the same flight the following day. The other, well, the other was apparently dispatched two weeks ago. Heathrow must be trying out a new time machine as a solution to the late luggage problem. We'll see where they get with that. I was a bit worried to be asked rather pointedly whether I had travel insurance (as it happens, I did, because I was traveling on university business).

The lost luggage had one unfortunate side effect. When I do need to check bags, I'm a strong believer in taking only the essentials in my carry on. So, in particular, my checked bags contained my sweatshirt, polar fleece coat, and GoreTex jacket. I'd been planning to pull all of these out in Christchurch prior to going on to Dunedin where rain, sleet and snow featured prominently in the forecast. Instead I would have to face it in a light shirt and suit jacket (I still dream of random upgrades.) Face it I did, especially as the shuttle driver had to drop me at the top end of my street owing to ice. Brr.

Switched the hot water heater on, and was looking forward to a nice shower after dinner, and catching up on the final two episodes of Heroes before an early bedtime (I got home about 1800 local time). So, at about 2030 I went to take a shower. No hot water. What??? And then I remembered ...

Hot water systems in NZ frequently feature ripple control. This means that for load balancing purposes, especially in cold weather, they're frequently shut off. Ooops.

Oh well, I got a good night's sleep and a hot shower this morning. Exams are graded, and I'm feeling remarkably chipper, despite, or perhaps because of, having had to walk to work as my street was an ice rink on an 8% grade. Now, we'll just have to see about the luggage.

Wish me luck ...

40+ hour journey ahead.

St Andrews - Leuchars (Car)
Leuchars - Edinburgh Haymarket (Train)
Edinburgh Haymarket - Edinburgh Turnhouse Airport (Bus)
Edinburgh Turnhouse - Heathrow (757-200)
Heathrow - Bangkok (747-400)
Bangkok - Sydney (747-400)
Sydney - Christchurch (767-300)
Christchurch - Dunedin Airport (Aerospatiale)
Dunedin Airport - Dunedin City (Shuttle)
Bed ...

In the "small things are the most annoying" category comes the fact that the train actually passes through Edinburgh Turnhouse, but when that airport was being developed none of the clever people involved thought it might be a good idea to include a train station.

And, oh yes, this is what I have to look forward to when I get home.

Quick update from St Andrews

Our conference last week went off well. I didn't see any of you in the audience at my talk, but rest assured that the jokes weren't that good. The temporary computer accounts that we were assigned worked only on student computer labs. In some fit of administrative overzealousness, these blocked all cookies and hence prevented blogging, or even submitting blog comments. Hence, an enforced silence.

Last week's weather here was more reminiscent of what I'd expect to see in Dunedin at this time of year -- cold, wet, and windy. Just the right sort of conditions for doing mathematics.

Four more sleeps before I head back to NZ, and the chance to play some poker!

Angels wept

I was lucky enough to be invited to dinner at High Table in Trinity College last night. The wines on the table were a sauvignon blanc from Touraine, a Loire appellation which I was not really familiar with; and a red (pinot noir of course) Chassagne-Montrachet. The latter was superb.

And why did the angels weep? At a guess about 1/4 of the wine on the table was drunk. I can only hope that the remainder was consumed in quiet appreciation by some of the staff.

Up, up and away

A few hours to go before the Brisbane-Heathrow flight. Over the last couple of weeks it's amused me occasionally to read bloggers (you know who you are) complaining about "long" flights within the continental USA. Well, let me tell you ... (Monty Python fans, feel free to imagine the "When I were a lad" sketch here).

There are three internationally recognized ways of measuring the length of a journey involving air travel(*). From shortest to longest these are: initial take off to final landing, door to door, time from waking up at start to going to sleep at destination. My trip "today" (which is actually relatively short by the Australasia-UK standards) comes in at: 25 hours, 29 hours (UK traffic willing), 48 hours (if I can manage to keep my eyes open until some sort of reasonable hour for going to bed).

So, don't come whining to me about your 6 hour flights. The "best" journey of this sort I ever had was a few years ago when I was traveling from Dunedin to Turku, Finland. Just before takeoff, I called my family who were about to start a day's skiing in Wanaka. From Copenhagen, with a 3 hour wait in the airport plus a short hop to Turku still to go I called them again as they were sitting down to dinner after skiing -- for the second time.

(*) I just made that up.

Getting paid with quads

Just another from the "$25NL files":

UTG limps. With J♥J♣ in the cutoff, I raise to $1. Everyone folds, except UTG who calls, and the flop comes a very promising A♥Q♦J♠. UTG checks. Fully expecting to be check raised, I bet $1.50 into the $2.35 pot. UTG disappoints me (a little) by just calling. On the check raise I'd have reraised of course, taking my chances on the immature feline.

The J♦ comes on the turn giving me quads. UTG checks again. I read him as extremely passive, and I don't expect a river bet if I check. So $2 goes into the $5.35 pot. He duly calls. The river is the K♥. He checks again (dancing with the girl who brought him), and, hoping against hope for a check raise (AK, AT ...) but basically resigned to a certain fold, I bet $5 into the $9.35 pot.

Which he calls again, in effect his fifth call of the hand (counting the initial limp), arguably even his eighth call (including the checks). I did mention that he was extremely passive didn't I?

His hand of course is more or less immaterial, but is in fact: A♣8♠. Well played sir, you're welcome at my table anytime.

Time to kill

Waiting for the airport shuttle ... so time for a little venting.

I ran across a post by Bill Rini, which referenced a New Scientist article, allegedly concerning a breakthrough in bot research. It seemed like exciting stuff, more so when you read the first paragraph of the article:

IMAGINE being up against a poker player who can calculate the exact odds of a hand being a winner, play it with a straight face, and if necessary bluff with the best of them. Such a player exists, but you won't find him wearing a Stetson or hiding behind a pair of dark glasses. This player lurks within a computer, created by a pair of academics who have succeeded in making a software agent that can bluff just like a human player can.

The body of the article contains the usual unsubstantiated claims from "experts" such as: "Given the current state of poker bots, if you are losing to them you should be ashamed". Aside from the fact that there seems to be lots of evidence that this is not true -- should one really expect that those people who might be in possession of winning bots would advertise the fact? That is, aside from academic groups like those at the University of Alberta. These groups are handicapped by not being able to test and develop their bots in real play, as it would violate the terms and conditions at most sites, which I have to add is fair enough (though I think they should be allowed to play freerolls, with some provision for not actually collecting prize money).

Anyhow, my olfactory sense was further offended by the smell of bullshit when I read a quote from one of the authors of the original academic paper on which the New Scientist article is based:

That's because the bots now playing poker can't bluff convincingly. "Computers are programmed to perform the best strategy, but bluffing is based on unexpected, illogical actions," says Evan Hurwitz, a computer scientist at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.

Now that's just so wrong. For most poker style games, bluffing is provably part of a "best strategy" (however you wish to interpret that phrase). The quote implies that incorporating "unexpected, illogical actions" is impossible in a program, when really it's simply a matter of making a few judiciously placed random number choices.

I was pleased that the original article was also referenced, so I went to have a look at it. Seriously underwhelming. The first point is that it has nothing to do with poker, contrary to the claims in the first paragraph of the New Scientist article. Then, the paper itself is just a train wreck. Here is a selection of a few of the things I found to disagree with or be annoyed by. Some are mere annoyances, but several are substantial:

• The abstract and introduction make out that the bluffing result is the main part of the paper, when in fact its mentioned in a short section at the end.


• The authors couldn't be bothered to learn how to incorporate graphics without nasty gray backgrounds.


• Even if they had, the only graph that can reasonably be interpreted contains no information. The ones which might contain information have differently coloured or shaded lines that can't be told apart (ye old paste from Excel bug), and don't support the claims made about them in the text. They have no legends, axis labels, nor explanatory captions. In a high school science project they'd be given a 0 for that part of the assessment.


• The game considered has absurd extra rules (it may well be a commonly played game in South Africa, but for an academic paper it could really be stripped to its essential form).


• The modeling ignores what would be a key feature in actual play (basically, in poker terms, that there would occasionally be "kill" pots).


• Finally, the example of bluffing behaviour would come down in poker terms to folding KK in the BB because of a late position raise. That is, it's an indication of the stupidity of the folding agent, not the cleverness of the bluffing one.
  

And one final point -- the description of the actual bluffing scenario in the New Scientist article is substantially different (and a better story) than that in the actual paper. Perhaps that's the way it actually happened, but an unpleasant odour lingers.

Toilet humour

England-Brazil friendly at Wembley. Everyones favourite stock Irishman Tommy Smyth says "Steve Gerrard is doing a great job of sticking to Kaka". Funny, usually the problem is to keep kaka from sticking to you.

Eh?

One doesn't expect much of the players at $25NL, but tonight, between bouts of packing, something happened, which left me scratching my head even at this level.

Three limpers to me on the button with A♠J♦. I just limp too. Flop is A♣8♦4♥. There are not many hands that I'm worried about, just A4, A8, 88 and 44. When everyone checks to me I bet the pot hoping to drag along a weak ace and avoid his kicker. Everyone folds except the last of the limpers who makes baby Jebus cry with a check min-raise. He's shown distinct maniacal tendencies in the time I've been here, so I'm not too worried. Nevertheless, I simply call.

The turn is the glorious J♠. He checks, I bet $4 into the $7.50 pot. Baby Jebus cries again, when he once again check min-raises to $8. I reraise to $16 which coincidentally is exactly enough to put him all in. He calls, and I resign myself to a split pot (or a loss to 88 or 44). The Q♦ on the river adds another bit of worry, until he turns over K♣6♥.

Eh?

Even if he thought the check min-raises were a clever way of pretending to be strong, what on earth is going on with the final call?