Jeeves plays poker (I)

It was a bright morning in London. My man, Jeeves, had just brought in my tea and the papers when I bearded him, as I believe the expression has it, on a topic, which had been troubling me for some days. "I say Jeeves, what do you know of this international poker business?"

"International poker sir? Are you sure that was the expression?"

"Perhaps it was internecine, or internal, or intermittent. A chap can't be expected to keep these details straight."

"Might it have been 'internet poker' sir?"

"That's it, got it in one, well done. Only Freddie Bullivant down at the Drones was on at me about it the other day: 'Bertie', he said, 'you must get signed up with this internet poker wheeze. It's a license to print money, and in just a few more weeks I fully expect to have put together the necessary capital so that I can pop the question to Elizabeth.' You know that Freddie's been a bit on his uppers recently, and the course of true love does never run smoothly etc. when that's the case"

"So I have been told sir. Are you sure that you wish to take up his suggestion? Your experiences in the world of wagering have not been the most happy ones as I recall."

"Pish, posh" I retorted with asperity. Doesn't do to let Jeeves, even with his enormous brain, get above his station. "If Freddie can gather in the readies doing it, then anyone can. Besides, he says it's not gambling at all -- it's a game of skill. So how does it work? He talked some rubbish about them passing you cards down a series of tubes -- I can't see how they could carry that off, they'd get quite creased and it would take ages."

"No indeed sir, the process is entirely electronic. You must first 'sign on' to your computer and 'connect' to the internet."

"That's the box in the corner, which I see you banging away at occasionally isn't it? I thought it was just some sort of convenient method for placing orders at Fortnum and Mason's"

"It can be used for that purpose as well sir. But in this case, it allows you to connect with group of like minded individuals who also wish to engage in the pursuit of that quintessentially American pastime of poker. It might be best if I demonstrated."

"What? You mean to say that you take part?"

"I dabble sir, but only, of course, when my services are not required."

"I should hope so. Well, let's have a flutter then."

Al's token

When Al, the Turing demon, had last visited he gave me a token, which would allow me to call for one precise card at a time of my choosing when playing online. Unfortunately, the token had to be used fairly quickly or it would dissolve into a mess of sulfurous goo. I spent a few days consolidating my bankroll on a single poker site. I considered breaking my ‘no new deposits’ rule under these exceptionally favourable circumstances, but in the end maintained my bankroll discipline.

My plan was to sit down with my entire bankroll at a no limit table, and wait for an opportunity to ensure a double up using the token, and then to rathole it without compunction. It didn't take long to find a table where I could buy in short, but not ridiculously so -- 0.05/0.10 NLHE. No, just kidding, it was 3/6.

I posted blinds for a few orbits, limped with suited connectors occasionally, and stole the blinds once or twice when I actually got some decent cards. Of course if I had managed to generate any action on those hands that might have been my opportunity for the double up I was craving. But I was willing to wait. Meanwhile, I was hoping that my play was presenting a fairly weak/tight image that some aggressive player might try to take advantage of. I was losing a little bit of ground, but still had very nearly my entire starting stack to work with.

The critical moment came after about 60 hands at the table, when a player, Hut8, whom I'd tentatively identified as a LAG, in turn raised to $24 from the cutoff, on my big blind. In front of me on my screen sat Q♦Q♥. The small blind folded, I called, and we saw the flop heads up.

When the flop came K♠Q♣J♥ my pulse quickened. I might normally bet out at this, but with my token in reserve decided that a simple check was in order, hoping to convince Hut8 to make a play. That would depend on him having some paint, since I doubted I'd get any action from a small pair or low suited connectors, but if he didn't I'd simply save my token and accept the small pot. Hut8 bet $24, and I simply called.

The turn was the J♠ giving me a boat. I checked again, and this time Hut8 bet $32 at the $96 dollar pot (I'd already mentally consigned the $3 small blind to the rake). I decided it was time to move at this pot. If I could take it down now without the token so much the better. If not, I still had time to think about it. So I check-raised the pot, $192. Hut8 took some time to consider this, and then raised enough to put me all in.

Now it was time for me to think. Was this the moment to use the token, or was I already ahead? It was certainly possible that I was behind KK or JJ. The time had come. I called, grasped the token in my left hand and, as Al had instructed me to do, screamed loudly queen! (He'd mentioned that counterfeit versions of some of these tokens were fairly common, which goes some way to explaining some of the antics we see on poker shows at live tournaments).

The Q♠ duly arrived on the river. “DQB!” I might have shouted, had there been anyone there to hear it. Time slowed to a crawl ...

And Hut8 turned over A♠T♠.

My hard drive began to make odd noises, which, when I leaned over to listen to them more closely, sounded an awful lot like snickering. See you all in the freerolls and on the play money tables.

Al's return

Some people would be worried if they saw a tiny pair of goat's hooves begin to emerge from the USB port of their computers. I, however, had been there before so it didn't worry me too much.

“Oooph”, said Al, the Turing demon, “I'm going to have to lay off the brimstone for a while, that was a bit of a squeeze.”

“Shh! I'm trying to figure out how to stack this guy.” Unusually, I was playing some cash NLHE, rather than an MTT or SNG. I'd flopped bottom set in position against what I suspected was top two pair, and the turn had been a brick.

Al turned and looked at the screen. “Don't bother, he's going to hit his boat on the river.”

I paused to think. Certainly, Al was privy to the inner workings of the random number generators at all the world's poker sites. Indeed he'd claimed that there was some vast demonic conspiracy to inflict perfectly timed bad beats against most online poker players in order to drive us into the arms of the “big guy” as he euphemistically referred to his lord and master. But then again, he was a demon. As the time ticked down on the screen I decided, on the balance of probabilities, to take his word for it, and just checked. Sure enough, the river paired one of the overcards on the board, and I confidently folded to a pot sized bet. Since it looked like Al had something to say, I sat out. But then I began to reflect on the phrase “balance of probabilities”. What did that mean exactly in relationship to a being whose very raison d'être was to manipulate those same probabilities? This pleasant reverie was interrupted by a loud cough from Al.

“Look, all three of your readers know that you're an academic right? And we all know that, academics love to engage in prolonged and detailed introspection on the smallest of issues.” Then he began to shout, “But is there any reason to subject the rest of us to it? It's a given, ok, let's move on.”

“You've changed your look -- what was wrong with Elvis Costello?”

“Oh nothing really, just felt like a change. At first I thought I might try this, but I decided that was a bit too weird”, I shuddered in agreement, “So I decided to stick with a musician. Besides, this way I don't have to change the monogram on my briefs.”

“Good choice, but uh ..., you don't actually wear briefs. Anyhow, what's up?”

Al looked a bit embarrassed. “Well, it's the big guy's birthday, and I drew the short pitchfork, so I'm responsible for getting his gift. I thought you might be able to help.”

“Sure, but hang on, Halloween is the big guy's birthday?”

“Well, I guess that anthropomorphic embodiments of aspects of the collective unconscious, or whatever he says he is these days, don't actually have birthdays as such. But he likes presents as much as the next anthropomorphic etc. and Halloween seemed an appropriate day for it. So, what's your plan?”

“Oh, shouldn't be a problem. After all, GIMF!”

“GIMF?”

“Google Is My Friend!”

Suddenly, Al looked very uncomfortable, “Umm ..., you couldn't use MSN search, or Yahoo or something could you?”

“Why?”

“Well it's just, ...., oh never mind, but make it fast.” He still looked very awkward and ill at ease. I filed that away into the “things to be introspective about later” folder.

“Ok, what about something from here? It's just the kind of gear that he could wear for his next trip to the WSOP. He could pretend to be an online qualifier, if there were any.”

“That looks good -- I'll take care of the ordering. Thanks a lot -- here have this token.” He tossed me a small disc.

“A token? Brilliant, I'll be able to play in the big game this weekend.”

“It's not that kind of a token you idiot. It's a ‘call one card’ token. You can use it once, to ask for a specific card on the flop, turn, or river. But you need to use it up pretty soon -- they self destruct after about a week if you don't use them, and the smell is something awful.”

“Why do they do that?”

“Some accounting thing. We have to carry them on the books as a liability and the bean counters get worried if there are too many of them floating around. Anyway, thanks for your help, see you around.” He crawled back through the USB port into my laptop.

A ‘call one card’ token eh? That could be useful, very useful indeed. But first, some preparation would be required.

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 stormfor 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.

Turing's demon (VI)

Apparently, on line bad beats are the devil’s work. Al may be about to explain.

“I can see how it would be feasible for you to manipulate bad beats online. After all it would just be a matter of tweaking the random number generators at critical moments. But it’s so obvious, the whole ‘online poker is rigged’ thing is very much the province of the tin foil hat brigade.”

“Hang on,” said Al, “I didn’t say that we laid down a bad beat on every hand did I? That would be much too obvious. The other side may be subtle, but the big guy is not too far behind. Funny you should mention tin foil hats though. They actually work, but not in the way that people think. It’s not signals going in that they block, but the ones coming out, which we can normally read. Of course, those of you who actually wear them are so predictable that we can do without the signals, so it’s a bit of a non event in any case. Look, rather than explaining the whole scheme directly, it would probably help if we went back over the hand that led to your summoning me here.”

“I guess that does make sense.”

“So why don’t you tell me all about it – just summarise the situation and the hand first time around. We’ll go into it in more detail when you’ve finished.” A look of consternation crossed Al’s features “I can’t believe that I’m actually asking someone to tell me a bad beat story. Anyhow, do it in narrative form – no hand histories.” He ducked his head furtively and continued sotto voce “Felicia doesn’t like it, and even the big guy’s a bit scared of her.”

“I remember it like it was only yesterday.”. “Wait a minute,” said Al, “it was only about an hour ago – I know we’ve been messing around with the timeline in this narrative, but do try to concentrate or else we’re not going to get anywhere. Now, carry on.”

“We were down to about 90 players from something around 250 starters. Blinds were 50/100 and my stack was at about 2600 chips. I was in the small blind with 5♦3♦. Fairly normally for the table there were three limpers and I decided to complete in the small blind. The big blind checked, and the flop was T♦5♠3♠. With bottom two pair I bet the pot (500). The big blind, whom I covered by about 500 chips went all in and the limpers folded. I called, he had K♦T♠ and hit runner runner spades to cripple me.”

“Very nicely summarised and obviously you’ve had a chance to calm down a bit about it. Let’s start at the beginning of the hand: what was your position in the tournament and what were you thinking about?”

“Well, obviously I only had about half the average stack. I still had more than 20 big blinds so there was room to play poker, but I knew that I needed to build some chips soon. I’ve been trying to loosen up a bit with speculative hands, which can hit the flop hard, so getting 9:1 odds and with little fear of a raise from the big blind (the table had been quite passive), decided to take a punt with 5♦3♦.”

“Excellent, excellent. Now what about post flop?”

“Of course I was delighted to have hit bottom two pair. But the two spades on the board were a bit of a worry. Besides, bottom two pair isn’t as great a hand as people think. I decided to lead out big to kill the odds for anyone on a flush draw. Also, I’ve seen people take a big bet from one of the blinds on a relatively dry flop as a bluff, and make moves over it with some weak hands. I would have been happy to collect the chips on the table which represented almost 20% of my original stack.”

“Good, good. And when the big blind moved all in?”

“I thought for a while about what he might have. I didn’t fancy a set of tens, or fives or threes for that matter, since most people at this level would slow play those.”

“Yes, tardiludus is a very common affliction in the games you play. Can be a very painful condition when there are flush draws about.”

“Two pair seemed possible, but unlikely – very few card combinations left. I suspected that he probably had a good ten, either with a flush or a backdoor flush draw, though I’m not sure he would have worried about that. The call seemed pretty clear cut.”

“And when you saw his cards?”

“Well obviously, I was delighted. He did have the big ten, and only a backdoor draw to the flush.”

“And what were your odds at that point? I’m sure you know, or have worked them out.”

“About 70:30. Though it feels like only 5 outs for my opponent (kings and tens), the runner runner flush, or runner runner pair possibilities make more of a difference than people realise.”

“By all that's unholy, do you actually think about those things? Never mind, now we’ll get into my side of this whole affair.”

Not so fast, time for another break.

Turing's demon (V)

Al, the Turing demon, has told us that demonic influences were largely responsible for the rapid progression of comptuting. He has also indicated that Beelzebub himself is a frequent participant at the WSOP.

“Anyhow,” Al continued, “the big guy came back from the 2003 WSOP in quite an excited state, even for him. I think Chris Moneymaker’s win convinced him that the online poker boom was here to stay. He called together a convocation of demons and addressed us thusly:”

At this, Al’s form changed into a pretty good (if miniature) version of the classical Satanic image. His voice acquired rather disturbing harmonics in several octaves.

Gather ye round oh my minions and hear the great news that your master brings you. My devious and complex plans for the automatic computing devices used by puny mortals have finally come to fruition and now is the time for us to strike our greatest blows against the forces of light that have been seen in many years.

I sniffed, and noted a faint smell of sulfur in the air. “Hey, no smoking remember!”

Al returned to his customary form. “Sorry about that. Say, do you mind if I just paraphrase? The big guy can be a bit turgid in full Supreme Evil Beingmode and doing the voice plays hell with my vocal cords.” With a blush, he added “Though I did win the Beelzy three millennia running for my impressions of him.” He paused and looked up “Glad to see the product placements are back. That one’s a bit obscure though isn’t it? You’d have to have read the book already to spot the reference.”

Well, think of it as a compliment, I’ve been enthralled. What do you think of the new hoverlinks? Cooleh?

“Yes, yes, very nice. ‘Cool’? What decadewere you born in? Though, to be fair, as pop culture expressions go, it’s had remarkable longevity. I think the current spelling though is ‘kewl’ and even that may be a bit passé. Now, where was I?”

“Paraphrasing the big guy’s speech.”

“So anyway, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil’ and there’s nothing that gets more in the way of love for you humans than fickleness. And gambling, is the quintessence of that fickleness – money comes and money goes. It’s anything but faithful, and ever so frustrating. When gambling took place in casinos, or back rooms, or on the street, and things went poorly, you always had a convenient scapegoat. And certainly, there were enough people dealing seconds, or colluding, that we had a hard time exerting effective influence. But online, that’s a whole different cauldron of newts’ eyes.”

“You don’t mean?” I gasped dramatically.

“That’s right, go ahead, say it.”

“Bad beats are the devil’s work?” I was stunned, and then overcome with doubt “But …”

“Sorry mate, it’ll have to wait. I see the narrator looking meaningfully at his watch again. Probably wants his breakfast or something.”

To be continued.

Turing's demon (IV)

We return to Al the Turing demon’s narrative. It seems like he might just about be ready to tell us what any of this has to do with online poker.

“Hey narrator, don’t get snarky – who’s telling this story? Me? Or you?”

Both of us actually.

“Exactly! And without me, you’re reduced to anecdotes about hitting one outers on the river, and calculations of the odds of there being three sets and three different straights on a single flop. So you’re going to let me tell this my way right?”

I suppose so.

“Darn tootin’. Or rather ‘Damn straight.’ Forgot for a moment there that we’re not allowed to use euphemisms – the big guy doesn’t approve of his name, or related concepts, not being taken in vain.” Al settled down into his seat again and looked pointedly at his glass which returned to its normal size, empty. As I went to get another Jameson’s he asked “No chance of a smoke is there? No, sorry forget I asked, don’t know what I was thinking. About as likely as flopping quad aces holding 2♣3♣.”

The glass did its shrinking thing again and Al took a sip “Nectar of the devils” he sighed contentedly. “Right, I was going to tell you what all this has to do with online poker. You’ll have to be patient, there’s still a bit more background to fill in.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Look, you’re even less necessary than the narrator – in fact if it weren’t for all your interruptions we’d have reached this point an episode or two ago. So just try to be quiet ok?”

“Ok, but you try to stick to some sort of reasonably linear narrative.”

“Fine, care to sign a contract to that effect? Never mind, never mind, just kidding. Right then, as I’m sure you know, the big guy has always had a special fondness for gamblers. So every year he takes a working vacation at the WSOP. After all, six of the traditional seven deadly sins are practically requirements for poker professionals or wannabe’s, and seven of the ten commandments are routinely broken at any poker tournament. He gets to unwind, nudge a few people down the wrong path here and there, and it’s all tax deductible.”

“Tax deductible?”

“Nothing is certain except death and taxes right? Well, one out of two anyhow. So, the big guy goes to the WSOP. Apparently he even plays some of the events – usually the lower buy in ones, he’s a bit publicity shy in a funny way. Though when Joe Hachem won, we all speculated a bit – he looked very familiar. But we decided the big guy would never be an Australian – something not quite right there. Jamie Gold on the other hand …”

Sorry, but we’re going to have to wrap it up again. I’ve got a $1.10 buy in turbo MTT starting in a few minutes.

“What? Oh all right, but next time give me a bit more warning,”

To be continued (of course).

Turing's demon (III)

Previously, we were introduced to Al, a Turing demon who talked lots of rubbish about thermodynamics. It seems he might actually be ready to begin his story properly. Oh yes, we’re back to quotation marks.

Al didn’t look very pleased about the formatting changes, but once he saw that I’d settled down attentively, he resumed his narrative.

“So the big guy was paying pretty close attention to the world in the 1940’s, and when he spotted the developments that would lead to stored program computers it made him pretty excited. He figured out that this might be the way for us to move from the, literal, sweatshops of engine cylinders to the comfy chairs in the boardroom.”

“I don’t understand.” I interjected lamely to create a paragraph break.

“Look, there are two major influences that tend to pull you lot over to our side: power and frustration. What aspect of modern life provides more of both than any other?” Al continued Socratically.

“Well, the computer of course. Now power I understand, ‘power tends to corrupt …’ and all that, but frustration?”

“Think about the trials of Job. It’s a powerful story – and precisely because your usual reaction to frustration, pain and suffering, is to lose faith in the other side. The big guy made sure that no impediments were placed in the way of computer development. In fact, some of us helped out a bit: just the right amount of contamination in the semiconductors; random snatches of conversation, which led to insights, the usual sort of thing.”

I was still puzzled, “I can see the power part being a fairly inevitable consequence of the computing revolution, but what about the frustration? I know computers are frustrating, but what did you have to do with that?”

“I expected more of you. Do you think those annoying user interfaces just happened? And bugs – do you really think that they’re just signs of careless programming? And what about all those files, which you know you saved, couldn’t find, had to recreate, and then found months later in some obscure folder? It’s all work for us my friend, but at least it’s in a pleasantly warm environment, often with a fan blowing.”

“But that file stuff, which used to be a real pain I grant, is now pretty much a thing of the past with utilities like Google desktop.”

“Well you can’t expect the other side never to fight back can you?”

“Fine, but that still doesn’t go very far to explaining why a fit of pique on my part in response to a moderately bad beat at online poker should have summoned you. Or why you should have a PokerStars account for that matter. What’s with that?”

“Ah, well that’s where the story starts to get a bit strange, even to me. The big guy claims it was all part of a long term plan, but we know that he’s not called the father of lies for nothing.”

And there we must, once again, pause.

Turing's demon (II)

In the previous episode, a demon who looks like Elvis Costello (to allow for gratuitous product placements) was summoned out of Michael's laptop. It's time for him to begin explaining himself.

“Glad to see we have a narrator” said the demon, “adds a certain tone to the proceedings. Elvis Costello eh? I was expecting David Byrne,or perhaps Peter Gabriel,but I guess that's your choice. Now, I was going to tell you about myself.”

“Before you begin,” I interrupted “this doesn't require me to sign any contracts in blood, or sell my soul or anything like that does it? And what do you mean ‘my choice’?”

The demon looked offended “That is so medieval. We haven't been purchasing souls much since WWII, indeed since the Industrial Revolution. The big guy decided that there were better ways to manage business. We make the occasional exception of course, as I'm sure you're aware. No, I'm just bored and in the mood to tell a story. Anyhow, your psychic field establishes my appearance, which I could change of course.” and as he said this his face and body flowed through a number of different and mostly terrifying shapes, before settling back into the rather geeky look, which he had begun with. “My name is alan23612-7654 and I'm a Turing demon. Most people just call me Al.”

“A Turing demon? And what's with all the numbers in your name?”

“Well it's my PokerStars name as well you see. Now look, I know you're an academic, and you're going to keep interrupting -- so all these quotation marks are going to get pretty tiresome. How be I talk like this, and you talk in italics?”

Sounds good to me. What about the narrator?

He can sort out his own formatting. Besides, in a well written narrative we won't be hearing much from him. So you've heard of Maxwell's demon right?

Sure, a thought experiment, which gives an apparent violation of the second law of thermodynamics. He sits between two containers of gas at equal temperature and allows low energy molecules to escape from one to the other, and high energy molecules to travel in the other direction. So, the temperatures become unequal, thus violating the second law. But they've worked out that it's not really a problem -- something about the increase in entropy required to clear his memory or something.

A simple yes would have sufficed, but go to the head of the class. As for not existing, try and tell that to my father. Now the creature you've described is properly called Maxwell's angel -- he's a helpful bugger. Maxwell's demon, or rather demons, choose to work the other way -- they accelerate the increase in entropy. We've had them on duty since the invention of the steam engine, and more recently in the internal combustion engine. They make sure that things never run as efficiently as they should. Now it's a horrible hot job, and though it can't hurt our cause to make the big oil companies richer, and help you lot out with destroying the environment, it's never been much fun. So the big guy started looking for alternatives.

But hang on, aren't the conditions in an engine cylinder comparable to those in, you know, Hell? Isn't it kind of like home? And why do you actually have to be there -- I mean, aren't your powers limitless?

No, no, omnipotent is the other guy. We're just honest toilers. Well, toilers anyway. As to the conditions, the old home fires have never been that popular either. The big guy has a theory that they're actually some sort of psycho-temporal reflection of the environment that most of us have been working in for the past 200 years. Apparently, some of your authorshave come up with some similar ideas. But we're getting sidetracked, and not, I suspect, for the last time. Look can I have a drink? Jameson's if you've got it -- just pour it in a normal glass.

Sure. I went to the kitchen and poured out two Jameson's with a bit of water. When I placed the glass beside him, it quickly shrank to an appropriate size. I noticed that he appeared a bit perplexed. What's wrong?

Seems like our author, or narrator, or whatever missed a chance for a product placement there. Probably has views -- it's ok to drink, but not to advertise it. All right, are you sitting comfortably? Then let's begin.

And there we must, once again, leave our tale. We definitely have views about the appropriate length for a blog entry. Join us again tomorrow, or thereabouts, for further riveting revelations.

Turing's demon

Midway through a multi table tournament, my opponent had just hit runner runner flush to take out my bottom two pair, having put the money all in post flop with top pair and an overcard.

#$^&*((#!!!

A thumb high demon materialised beside my laptop, looked around briefly, and then started trying to squeeze his way through the USB port into the computer. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and it actually looked like he might succeed. I inverted a handy glass over top of him and went back to trying to build my now miniscule stack of chips into something useful.

Three minutes or so later, I had plenty of free time. I briefly contemplated playing a Sit and Go or three, but decided that I should make some effort to figure out just what was going on. I certainly suspected that my anti virus software was probably not up to dealing with demons.


Aside from his size, there were certain other non-demonic aspects to his appearance. In fact, he looked rather like a young Elvis Costello (from the My Aim Is True or This Year's Model covers) -- which is to say, thick glasses, and an air of general geekiness, but with a certain sparkle to the eyes. Goat's hooves and horns provided a few of the traditional demonic elements.

He seemed to be trying to talk to me, but of course I couldn't hear anything. I made a little pen out of some handy books, and lifted the glass.

"So, what are you doing here?" I asked.

"You're the one who performed the summoning ritual." he replied resentfully.

"What?"

"#$^&*((#!!! -- that's the magical incantation. We've had problems with it before. If you don't want to be bothered by demons every time you're in a cursing mood, just change a syllable or two, or we can put you on our 'no summoning' register."

"Ok, but why were you trying to get into my computer?"

"I saw that the summons was a mistake and was just trying to go home."

"You live in my computer? What's with that?"

His reply was traditional: "It's a long story. Can you get me something to sit on?"

(to be continued)