[jjbrr]

 Antrax, on 2012-March-08, 03:04, said:

JLOGIC, did you enjoy grinding in real life? I found it terribly depressing.
Also, do you mean to say that low stakes over the weekend no longer have 95% drunken idiots?

live low stakes is still soft but not nearly as soft as it was in the mid 2000s. there are a lot more resources available to help low stakes players and the theory and such is much more advanced than it was just a few years ago. if you can find a table of drunken idiots, obv you can make bank, but even tables with drunken idiots generally have some competent players nowadays.

[blackshoe]

I haven't been to Vegas in 30 years, but I do remember one incident. I was sitting at a $2 BJ table where I could see the front desk of the hotel (no, I don't remember which one). Some guy walks in to the front desk, checks in, hands his suitcase to the bell captain, and comes and sits down at a nearby $100 table. Signs a chit, gets a stack of black chips. Over the next 15 minutes or so, loses the entire stack. Signs another chit, and loses the stack again. Gets up, walks out to the desk, checks out, gets his suitcase from the bell captain, and leaves. "WTF?" I ask my dealer. She says "oh, that's so-and-so, from New York. He comes out every six months or so, plays, and when he loses $100,000, goes home".

[neilkaz]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-March-08, 01:36, said:

Anyways I'll be happy to trade backgammon lessons for poker lessons at some point if you want!

This can certainly be arranged, and hopefully we can talk about bridge a little bit, too. I might even find a way to learn something .

There's big BG tourney at the Flamingo from Apr 18-22 and I'll be there if anyone wants to stop by.

The option game is dead and won't improve due to too many computers running the show with too many exchanges for people to trade it, meaning extremely narrow markets. I really will watch something to do when I stop trading (few months to a couple years from now) and BG, Poker, and Bridge would seem to be it.

If poker becomes legal online again in this US, there will be a huge resurgance that I hope to be able to take advantage of and yeah, this time I'll put BG on the back burner if this happens.

As for BG, there are far fewer pigeons that there used to be. Some of this is due to the several very strong computer programs have resulted in an increase in general skill level and also have let other players realize that their game stinks.
Some of this, like in poker is economy related and few people can spare a losing a few hundo a week just to have fun and gamble. BG lost a lot of pigeons to poker a few years ago.

.. neilkaz ..

[Antrax]

This is an aside but we're in the Water Cooler: so in Bridge we're bunnies, in poker fish and in BG apparently pigeons. Are there any other such animals?

[JLOGIC]

 Antrax, on 2012-March-10, 00:45, said:

This is an aside but we're in the Water Cooler: so in Bridge we're bunnies, in poker fish and in BG apparently pigeons. Are there any other such animals?

heeeeeeeee hawwwwww (donk and donkey are used frequently in poker). Pigeon is used by rubber bridge players also afaik (but most of the rubber bridge players seem to play backgammon).

[cherdano]

Actually - I am not sure I know of someone who is better than me at bridge and better than me at go. (I am EGF 4d, roughly US 5d.)
I am not saying there isn't anyone, I am sure there are some, though I would have no guess how many.

[JLOGIC]

*insert obligatory I am better than you at bridge/go without playing go joke*

JK I love you arend. I think scott waldron may be able to give you a run for your money. Though I'm not sure how good he is at go now, he quit bridge s a promising junior and focused on go and got to a higher level than you I believe. Though I'm sure you're a better bridge player than him these days since he hasn't played in a long time and you are better now than he was at his peak anyways so you probably have him beat overall. He was a former jdonn partner and was top 10 in the world junior pairs with him when jdonn was a nobody I believe, also played with me quite a bit back in the day. Damn, I miss him

He was also quite good at chess and a very good violinist.

[Cyberyeti]

I should probably mention an old partner of mine, one of these desperately clever mathematicians who will solve high order differential equations in his head, but has issues with things like clocks and shoelaces (slight exaggeration may be involved here, but only slight ).

He was a county standard bridge player, ex British national Go champion, and gave up a career as an IT consultant because he was making more money at internet poker.

[mgoetze]

Rumors have it the real reason Yi Se-tol stopped playing Go in 2009 was to secretly study bridge. But when he realised he would never become as good as Cherdano, he gave up and started playing Go again.

[mgoetze]

Oh wow, I didn't know Piers Shepperson plays Poker now. I once played a game of Bridge with him during the London Open Go Tournament.

[cherdano]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-March-13, 00:26, said:

JK I love you arend. I think scott waldron may be able to give you a run for your money. Though I'm not sure how good he is at go now, he quit bridge s a promising junior and focused on go and got to a higher level than you I believe. Though I'm sure you're a better bridge player than him these days since he hasn't played in a long time and you are better now than he was at his peak anyways so you probably have him beat overall. He was a former jdonn partner and was top 10 in the world junior pairs with him when jdonn was a nobody I believe, also played with me quite a bit back in the day. Damn, I miss him

http://agagd.usgo.or...d.php?key=13272 - seems like we have fairly similar ratings, if I remember the EGF-US conversion rate; however, I haven't played much go in a while. Seems quite close either way.

(Anyway, the "noone is better than me at both"-metric is ridiculous anyway. Also, I am terrible at go by Asian standards, so I am sure there are some Asian bridge pro who also played a bit of go and who would have to give me a handicap at either game. I was recently thinking of this metric because, as some of you may know, my employer is also running a fairly successful basketball program. So it made me wonder whether it could make the claim that there is no school that's better at both basketball _and_ academics; but that's so obviously false--unless you add "and less hated".)

[benlessard]

What is the USG/EGF go rating compared to KGS/IGS ratings ?

[mgoetze]

 benlessard, on 2012-March-14, 06:04, said:

What is the USG/EGF go rating compared to KGS/IGS ratings ?

I think this subject may be a bit too controversial even for the water cooler, so I will simply point you to http://senseis.xmp.n...dwideComparison and notably http://senseis.xmp.n...on%2Fdiscussion

[Lobowolf]

I'm a bit over 2100 USCF at chess. Used to be NSA member (Scrabble); I'm a hack by touranment player standards and good by non-tourney standards. Played a fair amount of poker before the boom, mostly 7-stud & 7-stud split. Backgammon hack.

For all-around names, Dan Harrington is certainly worth mentioning. Master at chess, won the WSOP (and final tabled the next year, I believe, when entries were already up there). Neil can speak to this more authoritatively than I, but I used to play in backgammon chouettes with him, and I wouldn't be surprised if poker wasn't his best game.

And on the all-time multi-game list, even if it's just 2 games, Stu Ungar was just sick. It would be like if chess wasn't Bobby Fischer's best game.

[jjbrr]

this is a totally random, probably off topic post so dont take it in any context with the rest of the thread, but i know jlall went on a chess streak for a while and lobowolf is obv baller, and maybe others might find it interesting.

i once was ok at chess, but i never studied it or put any work into it or anything. my story is a friend taught me chess in 5th grade during lunch break, a few weeks later i could consistently beat him, and throughout middle school i would qualify for the state tournament and finish like ~7th or so. i was never great or even good by any serious player's standards, but i appreciated the theory and understood what was necessary to get to the "next level" though i never will get there.

this was all before i understood bridge, obv.

anyway, i just recently saw this study:

and it really seemed awesome to me. many of you have probably seen it, but jfc, if you cant appreciate how awesome chess is after seeing this, i feel like there are a lot of things in life that you're missing.

[JLOGIC]

Fournier is baller at fast time controls fwiw.

[benlessard]

Im was about 2100 at chess but ive stop playing chess after discovering shogi, problems in shogi are simply crazy, this is a 1525 ply (713 moves) problems. Note that in shogi problems all the moves must be checks ! So the enemy moves are mostly king move (or blocking with a piece).



But more impressive are Musou and Zukou problems, wich are 200 problems composed around 1730 by 2 brothers, each of these problems are still unsovable with today best programs, they are are about 25 to 300 moves each (50-600 ply), for an amateur like me (ive played shogi for more than 10 years) it will take me more than 25 hours to solve the easiest problems of the bunch. As far as i remember ive rarely saw a chess problems or studies that took me more than 2 hours to solve (moving/replacing the piece is allowed).

[jjbrr]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-March-17, 02:23, said:

Fournier was baller at fast time controls fwiw.

.

[Zelandakh]

My game was always chess and I am probably still better at it although the difference would be small now. Anyway, my partner and I were recently playing at a bridge congress on a holiday island and decided to have a mess around with one of the large "by the beach" chess sets. During the game one of the locals decided to give my partner some unsolicited advice so we immediately stopped and moved to the side to chat to someone we had made friends with at the congress (he kibitzed us).

The local then played another local and won. At the end of their game I asked my partner if they would like me to beat him. After a nod I asked for a game and we played. I had seen from the first game that he was a decent player but a Woodpusher, so I just played to exploit him. Once his centre crumbled he made mistakes. We were satisfied and afterwards just went back to chatting with the other man, who it turns out is a world class card player, just not in bridge.

Sometimes being a gamer can be useful. Of course, it would be nice if I could be sure of giving the same lesson to bridge players offering unsolicited advice too. It is lucky that most of those that do are of the weaker variety.

[Antrax]

What's a Woodpusher? It sounds dirty.