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So i decided to start over and build a roll from 20. I cruised through NL2 and NL5 has been no different so far. I am using a 20 buy-in rule playing anywhere from 11-15 FR tables. I had been running at what seemed to be expectations, the usual bad beats, draws hitting but tonight variance finally started to catch up at the end of my session.

http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/6b14349da531785d40d2d892e72574d8.jpg

Still ended up but those beats were nasty and so quick, oh well.
Goodluck




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I watched some Loose-ish NL200 vids on Pokerstrategy and I decided to start altering my PF betsizing.

All positions but blinds: 3BB+XBB

I decided to tighten up UTG and UTG+1, mucking even ATo and mixing low sc only very very rarely or when the games get deep. I was playing way too many of them before and the KTo kind of hands cost me more than won me.

I am very confident in my flop play and I feel I have an edge over the vast majority of the limit, thus 3BB+X even on 9 tables.
LP I want to get called because of position and my edge.
EP I want to get called because I play only premiums.

Blinds
SB- I raise to 5BB if I am first in. I don't want people to be calling and when they do I want larger pot for C/bets

BB- 4BB+XBB with limpers. I am OOP so I throw in an extra bb
Standard- if sb completes

3Bets
I still play 10% 3bet, but I will alter bet sizing now.

-Standard exactly to 3X raise when I am in position

-3bet to 3.5X raise to 4X raise (0.75 Raise its 4X, bigger-3.5x) +match dead money.
Same as before, I don't like to be playing OOP and it makes me feel uncomfortable, hence the bigger raise.




Yesterday I made a retarded spew session with -7BI when I was completely exhausted from National Floorball Championship I was playing over the weekend (I am a goalkeeper, but I found out that Poker grinder and high speed sport career is hard to sustain at top notch for both ;o) NO thinking, robot poker with retarded play. I still have tendencies to spew like this when I lose stamina and concentration and it costs me huge amounts of profits.


Today was the first day with altering bet sizes.
I actually didn't run very good being -1.5BI Under EV and I can't recall any obvious heaters, but I did get sucked out a few times.

I pick up loads of pots and my red line floated to around +1BI, pretty decent score with 24/20 stats. I made a huge 150bb spew though at the end as always. I really really suck when I am tired and lose focus-.-

http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/866aa7826f2f51a214864819099a95d4.png




As for my learning progress, I am moving to the NL100-NL200 resources and hand evaluation at Pokerstrategy and I I will be more active in the medium stakes poker section here (well here its just about reading really, the spots posted are much tougher on average)

I feel I understand the broad micro stakes ABC quite well and I am attempting to move to the more precise range guessing thought processes.


As for NL25 I plan to hang around for the rest of this month. I hold 6BB/100 as the retarded spewfest session was balanced by a 13BB/100 heater and they both cancelled each other out so the general trend copies today's session (talk about a business cycle lolz) and I feel I can easily sustain it at 9tables.

I will take a shot at NL50 when both these conditions are met:

A) I will be able to sit at a reg only tables and beat them steadily at 4BB/100 or so, the move to NL50 will not be a shot but rather just an easy transition as was NL10 to NL25 this way. I hate to gamble, I like to own.

B) Standard BR requirement: 34BI with 4expected to lose to the initial doomswitch (Happened every single time I swapped a game or stakes ;o)





Thats it for now, Please comment on the PF bet sizing folks



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Ok so one of the most important aspects of poker is understanding where you are at in the hand. How players react to your bets is probably the #1 way of finding this out, when somebody isnt trying to be creative. I once stipulated that the only way to actually get any info out of a penny stakes villain is if you simply make the bets too big for him to call without having a legitimate hand, i.e. overbetting. Typical poker theory suggest betting the minimum possible to get this information, usually 75% of the pot for most people is enough to get them to give up if they dont really have good odds to hit anything. It also saves us money when we are wrong about our assessment of the situation. Betting less to get the same info is tactically smart. But I have long since believed this is simply not possible using normal poker theory at NL2. Villains calling cbet range is any PP, any pair, any draw, and AJ+. On the turn you can rule out AJ+ and thats it. This range is far too wide for us to ever be able to put villain on anything, since thats like half the deck (somebody do the math for me). This is why it's always said to be imperative that you have showdown value, because too often you cant really put villain on something without the insurance that your hand can win at the same time, in which case it doesnt really matter b/c youre already playing the best hand. As soon as villain calls your strong holding THEN you can start to put him on a range. I.E you have AA and he calls 2 streets on a King high board, villain almost always has the king.

So what kind of leverage must we use to curb villains into playing like you expect at higher limits? Well, if you play hard, and i mean HARD against them, it seems they WILL fold out all but top pair, and OESFD's, and the nuts. They also seem to interpret your strength as a hand you are willing to stack off with, so they frequently shove with TPNK and the nuts, giving you an easy fold, albeit you paid a lot to find out in the process. But so long as you stick to a relatively strong starting range of hands you arent going to be frequently behind on the flop spewing away with "information gathering bets". So now the question becomes how much money are we winning in the long run risking so much to achieve a certain result pending villain will fold. Is our FE through overbetting really worth not playing the top 5% starting hands. Can we ever play a LAG game at NL2 if we simply make it near to impossible for villains to play their rag hands? Well, I think the answer is yes.

I am going to attempt to really fight villains by hitting the POT button every single time I intend to bet. TPTK, OESD, FD, multi-way pots, IP/OOP, etc etc. In fact, I will probably only value bet less when I have the absolute nuts and I dont think villains will notice that my bet size has suddenly decreased (as I have been folding too many people on the turn/river when I hit and they donk out for .20 and I raise to $1.50)

I expect variance will be higher than normal, but nothing that I cant outlast with enough BR to cover the swings when someone is crazy and stacks off with bottom pair. It WILL happen, but not as much as I originally thought.


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Hi, I have a car now.

If anyone knows anything about AWD cars and using off-set wheels or anything in general about wheels and AWD cars, please PM me. I got myself in a little pickle here.


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Just beat the LOST video game last night. took me forever cause I kept playing while I was high or drunk and unable to concentrate. Overall it was a really short game that wasn't very good, which is what I expected when I bought it. Well, i expected it to not be very good but I thought it would be longer. Also the ending is really fucking weird and I don't see how it mixes in with the show. If you've played/beat the game then check the spoiler.

+ Show Spoiler +

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http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/b014144e51703c043f5764f99b4ee2e5.jpg

didn't even get 10k hands in. Lots of refocusing to do.

Jesus christ i'm in a whirlwind of disappointment right now. all you need to overcome in this whole game is yourself.

NL50 until I'm back at $2500.


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Not so well. The very next day(or yesterday in common speak) after I made the promise in my last blog(which yall should definitely check out- it's quiet epic, mostly thanks to Ryan) my computer got fucked. Surely it seems like not a big deal but I am a man of principles and breaking a promise tilts me to no end. This seems to be the latest of the negative things I had to face in the last couple of months. I can only hope that the brutal life-downswing will come to an end soon. An upswing is definitely in order.

Also if somebody didn't notice Krantz has posted a new Duel video on DC, against some Russian called Durrrra1000. Which is quiet epic, like everything Krantz.

Also while trying to find out who durrrra1000 was i stumbled upon russian mirror of PTR which is titled vigorish which in RUssian means "Burn out" or, go bust, as opposed to vyigrish which means money won. Just an interesting tid bit i thought.

To finish up this blog im gonna post a video that always helps me keep on going.



Good like at the tables, friends.


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My last blog I talked about moving up to PLO25 from PLO10 because I was running terribly at PLO10. I decided not to "move up" but I did take a couple shots over the last few days. I think it's possible that people at PLO25 play worse than people at PLO10. They play so incredibly bad it's hard to imagine. I'm up like 5 buy ins in 200 hands compared to down 10 buyins over the last 2 weeks in PLO10. Of course I'm running extremely good in PLO25 and extremely poor in PLO10, but the skill of my opponents still seems much lower at PLO25.

For example..

+ Show Spoiler +

+ Show Spoiler +

Hand 1 - How on earth do you flat on the turn with the nuts out of position! WTF

Hand 2 - How do you not raise that flop with the nuts with all that action in front of you? Letting 2 other people see the turn on that board without a raise is pretty ridiculous. Even if you're trying to pot control to give yourself fold equity, that's only useful if you actually fold when you get outdrawn.




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I find the game interesting but it seems like I cant get it right when I decide to play. maybe Im a hugh fish who should stay away fom it but it just feels like everyone is soo bad and that I actually have an edge on PLO50..

what I do know is that everytime I play I loose a bunch of BI.. stupid omaha! cant the rig be with me for once?

guess its back to the school books for now...


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Just took my first shot at nl100, played 300 hand session 4tabling and was lucky enough to have position on an uberfish (he bought in 4 1/2BI everytime and lost like 250$ in 40hands I think :d). So i'm up 1BI so far on 100NL. I think the fish are pretty much the same as on 50nl however the good players seem to be better and I feel somewhat uncomfortable dealing with people 3betting a lot.

What do you guys do when getting 3bet a lot? Just call lighter/4bet lighter? what hands do you call with IP/OOP? at the moment I mix in some SCs when I'm OOp with my big hands and check/raise a ton with them and also call with KQ and other broadways depending on how much they 3bet/what sort of hands I've seen them have before. IP i'll do the same but reduce my % of speculative hands and increase% of broadways.

Good gameplan or should I get Deucescracked asap?


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So i really like to watch stuff like gom and 4-6 table poker and i was watching tv with my dad tonight which almost never happens i rarely watch tv. I felt sick and wanted to spend some time with my pops so we watched his favorite tv show, 2 and a half men and then he went to exercise. House came on next after it and i gotta say i really enjoyed it. I've been watching season 5 on hulu but im curious if i should start at the first season???


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excited to finally get coached and try to improve my winrate, and hopefully beat 200nl for a decent amount, im happy now


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The female response to "Jizz In My Pants" is out and it's pretty fucking funny (if you haven't seen jizz in my pants watch that first, it's below):


lyrics in spoiler + Show Spoiler +

Andy and crew crack me up... I totally share their sense of humor. I just got sidetracked while making this post and started watching all of their shit on youtube. On a boat is so awesome =)

Props to the people who put together the puke in my mouth video, it was pretty damn funny too. The one thing that the original had over them was the way they dressed up as euro rave guys, haha.


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i can't hit a pair to save my life

WWSF 39% over 2.6k hands at NL10

regrind fail

i'm going to set aside 8 buyins for 1/2 live and grind that instead

fuck me


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I just played an 1,800 hand session at NL100 without a single pot of 25BB. Not one! I also lost 2BI! How does this happen? FML!

http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/6000b75c46e6d953f5f16a6bfdcbb39e.png


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FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU goddamnit I hate fucking minraises so goddamn fucking much. Someone please tell me I should just fold every single time. It's like I always have some massive overpair on a drawy board and some cocksucker check minraises me when the draw hits, or just minraises me flat out at some point in the hand. I CANNOT FOLD TO THIS. I am priced in to calling every single fucking time. But goddamnit all it does is price me into calling river shoves and shit b/c the pot is always structured in such a manner where I have to fucking call. But these fags ALWAYS FUCKING HAVE IT.

Right? Do I have to fold to minraises? Jesus christ wtf can I do to combat this, it's like the only fucking big bet fish know how to make. Just fuckin spaz out and throw their mouse to the corner of the table and hit RAISE. Dont even think about adjusting that slider or typing in a number, just hit RAISE. HOLY SHIT OMFG I HAVE SUCH A GOOD HAND I CANT EVEN BEGIN TO KNOW WHAT TO DO........CLICK RAISE, whatever it says CLICK RAISE!!!!!



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God it tilts me so hard when I'm watching a yankee game at a bar and some retard talks about how good jeter's defense is. Beware, the following is a wall of text that will interest only the most hardcore baseball fans.

Jeter vs. Everett

Bill James

We are well aware that we are not the first statistical analysts to question Derek Jeter’s defense at shortstop. Others before us have argued that Jeter was not a good shortstop, and yet he has won the Gold Glove the last couple of years, the Yankees certainly have won several baseball games with Jeter at short, and he is among the biggest stars in baseball.

Asked about Derek Jeter’s defense on a radio show in New York one year ago, I answered as honestly as I could: I don’t know. I know that there are Yankee fans and network TV analysts who believe that he is a brilliant defensive shortstop; I know that there are statistical analysts who think he’s an awful shortstop. I don’t know what the truth is. You’ve seen him more than I have; you know more about it than I do.

I am instinctively skeptical. I don’t tend to believe what the experts tell me, just because they are experts; I don’t tend to believe what the statistical analysts tell me, just because they are statistical analysts. I take a perverse pride in being the last person to be convinced that Pete Rose bet on baseball, and I fully intend to be the last person to be convinced that Barry Bonds uses Rogaine. I am willing to listen, I am willing to be convinced, but I want to see the evidence.

So John Dewan brought me the printouts from his defensive analysis, and he explained what he had done. John’s henchmen at Baseball Info Solutions had watched video from every major league game, and had recorded every ball off the bat by the direction in which it was hit (the vector) the type of hit (groundball, flyball, line-drive, popup, mob hit, etc.) and by how hard the ball was hit (softly hit, medium, hard hit). Given every vector and every type of hit, they assigned a percentage probability that the ball would result in an out, and then they had analyzed the outcomes to determine who was best at turning hit balls into outs. One of their conclusions was that Derek Jeter was probably the least effective defensive player in the major leagues, at any position.

So I said, “Well, maybe, but how do I know? How do I know this isn’t just some glitch in the analysis that we don’t understand yet?”

“I knew you would say that,” said John. “So I brought this DVD.” The DVD contained video of 80 defensive plays:”

The 20 best defensive plays made by Derek Jeter.

The 20 worst defensive plays of Derek Jeter, not including errors.

The 20 best defensive plays of Adam Everett, who the analysis had concluded was the best shortstop in baseball.

The 20 worst plays of Adam Everett, not including errors.

How do we define “best” and “worst”? It’s up to the computer. Every play is entered into the computer at Baseball Info Solutions. The computer then computes the totals, and decides that a softly hit groundball on Vector 17 is converted into an out by the shortstop only 26% of the time. Therefore, if, on this occasion, the shortstop converts a slowly hit ball on Vector 17 into an out, that’s a heck of a play, and it scores at +.74. The credit for the play made, 1.00, minus the expectation that it should be made, which is 0.26. If the play isn’t made—by anybody—it’s -.26 for the shortstop.

The best plays are the plays made by shortstops on balls on which shortstops hardly ever make plays, and the worst plays are No Plays made on balls grounded right at the shortstop at medium speed. Sometimes these actually don’t look like bad plays when you watch them. Sometimes the ball takes a little bit of a high hop and Ichiro is running, and he beats the play on something the computer thinks should be a routine out—but it’s still a legitimate analysis, because the shortstop didn’t have to play Ichiro that deep. He could have pulled in two steps; he could have charged the ball. He weighed the risks, he used his best judgment, and he lost. That happens.

Anyway, this business of looking at Derek Jeter’s 20 best and 20 worst plays and Adam
Everett’s.. .logically, this would appear to be an ineffective way to see the difference between the two of them. Suppose that you took the video of A-Rod’s 20 best at-bats of the season, and his 20 worst, and then you took the video of Casey Blake’s 20 best at-bats of the season, and his worst. The video of A-Rod’s 20 best at-bats would show him getting 20 extra-base hits in game situations, and the 20 worst would show him striking out or grounding into double plays 20 times in game situations. The video for Casey Blake would show Casey Blake doing exactly the same things. This isn’t designed to reveal the differences between them; this is designed to make them look the same.

That being said, watching Derek Jeter make 40 defensive plays and then watching Adam Everett make 40 defensive plays at the same position is sort of like watching video of Barbara Bush dancing at the White House, and then watching Demi Moore dancing in Striptease. The two men could not possibly be more different in the style and manner in which they run the office. Jeter, in 40 plays, had maybe three plays in which he threw with his feet set. He threw on the run about 20-25 times; he jumped and threw about 10-15 times, he threw from his knees once. He threw from a stable position only when the ball, by the way it was hit, pinned him back on his heels.

Everett set his feet with almost unbelievable quickness and reliability, and threw off of his back foot on almost every play, good or bad. Jeter played much, much more shallow than Everett, cheated to his left more, and shifted his position from left to right much, much more than Everett did (with the exception of three plays on which Everett was shifted over behind second in a Ted Williams shift. Jeter had none of those.)

Jeter gambled constantly on forceouts, leading to good plays when he beat the runner, bad plays when he didn’t. Everett gambled on a forceout only a couple of times, taking the out at first base unless the forceout was a safe play.

Many or most of the good plays made by Jeter were plays made in the infield grass, slow rollers that could easily have died in the infield, but plays on which Jeter, playing shallow and charging the ball aggressively, was able to get the man at first. These were plays that would have been infield hits with most shortstops, and which almost certainly would have been infield hits with Adam Everett at short.

For Everett, those type of plays were the bad plays, the plays he failed to make. The good plays for Everett were mostly hard hit groundballs in the hole or behind second base, on which Everett, playing deep and firing rockets, was able to make an out. These, conversely, were the bad plays for Jeter—hard-hit or not-too-hard-hit groundballs fairly near the shortstop’s home base which Jeter, playing shallow and often positioning himself near second, was unable to convert. And there was literally not one play in the collection of his 20 best plays in which Jeter planted his feet in the outfield grass and threw. There were only three plays in the 40 in which Jeter made the play from the outfield grass, two of those were forceouts at third base, and all three of them occurred just inches into the outfield grass.

Now, I want to stress this: I don’t know anything about playing shortstop. I don’t have any idea whether the shortstop should play shallow or deep, when he should gamble and when he should play it safe, how he should make a throw or whether it is smart for him to shift left and right in playing the hitters. The professional players know these kind of things; I don’t.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not suggesting that Jeter is a bad shortstop because he plays shallow and throws on the run and gambles on forceouts and shifts his position. What I am saying is this: that watching that video, it was very, very easy to believe that, if Adam Everett was on one end of a spectrum of shortstops, Derek Jeter was going to be on the other end of it. But that video is in no way, shape or form the basis on which we argue that Derek Jeter is not a successful shortstop.

OK then, what is that basis?

First of all, there is the summary of Jeter’s plays made and plays not made. Both Jeter and Everett had plays that they made on the types of balls a shortstop does not usually make a play on, and both Jeter and Everett had plays they didn’t make on balls a shortstop should make the play on. But, as in the case of A-Rod and Casey Blake at the bat, the numbers are quite a bit different.

Adam Everett had 41 No Plays in 2005 on which, given the vector, velocity and type of play, the expectation that the shortstop would make the play was greater than or equal to 50%. Derek Jeter had 93 such plays. 93 plays you would expect the shortstop to make, Jeter didn’t make—52 more than Everett.

On the other side of the ledger, Derek Jeter had 19 plays that he did make that one would NOT expect a shortstop to make (less than 50% probability). Adam Everett had 59. Calling these, colloquially, Plus Plays and Missed Plays:

Plus Plays Missed Plays
Derek Jeter 19 93
Adam Everett 59 41


Brief accounting problem. . .Our charts show Adam Everett as being 73 plays better (on groundballs) than Derek Jeter—+34 as opposed to -39. The totals here are 92 plays (40 + 52). Why the difference?

The 93 plays that Jeter missed were not plays on which there was a 100% expectation that the shortstop would make a play. Some of them were plays on which there was a 55% expectation the shortstop would make a play; some of them were 95%. He probably should have made about 75% of them, so the 52-play difference between them on those plays leads to something more like a 40-play separation in the data.

The low defensive rating for Derek Jeter is not based on computers, it is not based on statistics, and it is not based on math. It is based on a specific observation that there are balls going through the shortstop hole against the Yankees that might very well have been fielded. Lots of them—93 of them last year, not counting the ones that might have gone through when somebody else was playing short for the Yankees. Yes, there are computers between the original observation and the conclusion; we use computers to summarize our observations, and we do state the summary as a statistic. But, at its base, it is simply a highly organized and systematic observation based on watching the games very carefully and taking notes about what happens.

Jeter, given the balls he was challenged with, had an expectation of recording 439 groundball outs. He actually recorded 400. He missed by 39. Everett, given the balls hit to him, had an expectation of 340 groundball outs. He actually recorded 374. He over-achieved by 33-point-something.

This is an analysis of groundballs. Shortstops also have to field balls hit in the air—not as many of them, but they still have to field them. That part of the analysis helps Jeter a little bit. Jeter is +5 on balls hit in the air; Everett is -1. That cuts the difference between them from 72 plays to 66.

Could these observations be wrong? It’s hard to see how, but. . .I’m a skeptic; I’m always looking for ways we could be wrong.

This is not the only basis for our conclusion; actually, this is one of four. Another way of looking at this problem is to make a count of the number of hits, and where those hits land on the field.

Against the Yankees last year there were 196 hits that went up the middle, over the pitcher’s mound, over second base and into center field for a hit (more or less. . .near second, and some of them may have been knocked down behind second base by the second baseman, the shortstop, or a passing streaker). That is the most common place where hits go, and an average team gives up 177 hits to that hole. Against Houston, there were 169—27 fewer than against the Pinstripers.

Against the Yankees in 2005 there were 131 hits in the hole between third and short, as opposed to a major league average of 115. Against the Astros, there were 83.

Against the Yankees in 2005 there were 110 hits that fell into short left field, over the shortstop but in front of the ugly Asian left fielder. The major league average is 106. Against the Astros, there were 94.

The Yankees did have an advantage vs. the average team in terms of infield hits allowed; they allowed 85, whereas the average team allowed 89. (The Astros, 79.) But taking all four of the holes which are guarded in part by the shortstop, the Yankees allowed 35 hits more than an average major league team, and 97 more than the Astros.

Yanks Average Astros
Infield Hits 85 89 79
Up the Middle 196 177 169
In the SS/3B Hole 131 115 83
In short left 110 106 94
Totals 522 487 425


So there is a separate method, relying on a different set of facts, which gives us essentially the same conclusion: that Everett is an outstanding shortstop, and Jeter not so much.

There is a third method, Relative Range Factor, which is explained in a different article. Relative Range Factor is an entirely different method, relying not on Baseball Info Solutions’ careful and systematic original observation of the games, but on a thorough and detailed analysis of the traditional fielding statistics. It’s just plays made per nine innings in the field, but with adjustments put in for the strikeout and groundball tendencies of the team, the left/right bias of the pitching staff, and whether the player was surrounded by good fielders who took plays away from him or bad fielders who stretched out the innings and created more opportunities. That method is explained on page 199.

In that article, the Relative Range Factor article, I scrupulously avoided any mention of Derek Jeter, which turned out to be more difficult than you might expect. In 2005, Jeter’s Relative Range Factor actually is OK. . .it’s middle-of-the-pack, not really noteworthy. But the Relative Range Factor is not a precise method; there is some bounce in it from year to year. I believe it is more than accurate enough in one year to make it highly reliable over a period of three years, but it is probably not highly reliable in one year.

Jeter’s “OK” performance in Relative Range Factor in 2005 is an aberration in his career. It was only the second time in his career that his Relative Range Factor hasn’t been absolutely horrible. In fact, although I haven’t figured enough Relative Range Factors yet to say for certain, I will be absolutely astonished if there is any other shortstop in major league history whose Relative Range Factors are anywhere near as bad as Jeter’s. I’ll be amazed.

In one part of that article, to illustrate the method, I wanted to contrast Ozzie Smith with some player who would be easily recognized and generally understood by modern readers to be a not-very-good defensive shortstop. I started with a list of team assists by shortstops relative to expectation. . .several of Ozzie’s seasons were near the top end of the list, and I chose one, and then I went to the bottom of the list to try to find a “bad example.”

I was looking for modern seasons, because I wanted modern readers to recognize the player, and I was looking for teams that had shortstops you might remember. Of course, 80% of the teams at the bottom of the list were 25 years ago or more, and most of the other “classically bad” shortstops were guys who were just regulars for one year, so people wouldn’t necessarily remember them.

Eventually I found the player I needed—Wilfredo Cordero in 1995. Everybody remembers Wilfredo; everybody knows he wasn’t much of a shortstop. I found him after walking past six separate seasons of Derek Jeter. While virtually no other recognizable name at shortstop had had even one season in which his team had 40 fewer assists by shortstops than expected, Jeter had season after season after season in that category.

We have, then, a third independent method which confirms that Jeter’s range, in terms of his ability to get to a groundball, is substantially below average. All three methods suggest essentially the same shortfall. We have one more method.

Our fourth method is zone ratings. The concept of zone ratings was invented by John Dewan—the primary author of this book—in the 1980s. Over the years zone ratings have proliferated, some of them better than others. The zone ratings presented here are not exactly the same as the originals. They’re better. . .better thought out, better designed, with access to better accounts of the game.

Zone ratings and the plus/minus system are actually very similar concepts. . .what the zone rating actually is is a simpler and less precise statement of the same original observations that make up the fielding plus/minus. What we do in zone ratings is, we take the data from each of the 262 vectors into which the field is divided, and we identify those at which the shortstop records an out more than 50% of the time. Those are the shortstop’s “responsible vectors”. . .the vectors for which he is held accountable. The zone rating is a percentage of all the plays the shortstop makes in those vectors for which he is accountable.

Derek Jeter’s zone rating is .792, and he made 26 plays outside his zone. Adam Everett’s zone rating .860, and he made 78 plays outside his zone.

We can’t really count this as a fourth indicator that Derek Jeter’s range is limited, because the underlying data is redundant of our first indicator, the +/- system (-39 for Jeter, +33 for Everett). Still, setting that aside, we have three independent systems evaluating Jeter’s defense (as well as the defense of every other major league shortstop). One system—Relative Range Factor—looks at traditional fielding stats, which is to say it looks at outs made. One system looks at where hits landed, which is to say it looks at hits. One system looks at balls in play, and evaluates the fielder by the rate at which balls in play are divided between outs and hits.

All three systems agree that Jeter has extremely limited range in terms of getting to groundballs—and all three systems provide essentially the same statement of the cost of that limitation. It is very, very difficult for me to understand how all three systems can be reaching the same conclusion, unless that conclusion is true. It’s sort of like if you have a videotape of the suspect holding up a bank and shooting the clerk, and you have his fingerprints on the murder weapon, and you recover items taken in the robbery from his garage. Maybe the videotape is not clear; it could be somebody who looks a lot like him. Maybe there is some other explanation for his fingerprints on the murder weapon. Maybe there is some other explanation for the bags of money in his garage. It is REALLY difficult to accept that there is some other explanation for all three.

Those Yankee fans with a one-switch mind will demand to know, “How come we won 95 games, then? If Derek Jeter is such a lousy shortstop, how is it that we were able to win all of these games?”

But first, no one is saying that Derek Jeter is a lousy player. Let’s assume that the difference between Derek Jeter and Adam Everett is 72 plays on defense. That’s huge, obviously; that’s not a little thing that you blow off lightly. But almost all of those 72 plays are singles. What’s the value of a single, in runs? It’s a little less than half a run. 72 plays have a value of 30, 35 runs.

That’s huge—but it is still less than the difference between them as hitters. Derek Jeter is still a better player than Adam Everett, even if Everett is 72 plays better than Jeter as a shortstop. (Jeter created about 105 runs in 2005; Everett, 61.)

In one way of looking at it, it makes intuitive sense that Derek Jeter could be the worst defensive shortstop of all time. Unusual weaknesses in sports can only survive in the presence of unusual strengths. I don’t know who was the worst free throw shooter in NBA history—but I’ll guarantee you, whoever he was, he could play. If he couldn’t play, he wouldn’t have been given a chance to miss all those free throws. If a player is simply bad, he is quickly driven out of the game. To be the worst defensive shortstop ever, the player would have to have unusual strengths in other areas, which Jeter certainly has. It would help if he were surrounded by teammates who also have unusual strengths, which Jeter certainly is. The worst defensive shortstop in baseball history would have to be someone like Jeter who is unusually good at other aspects of the game.

Second, we have not exhausted the issue of defense. There are other elements of defense which could still be considered—turning the double play, and helping out other fielders, and defending against base advancement, I suppose. The defensive ratings that we have produced, while they are derived from meticulous research, might still be subject to park illusions, to influences of playing on different types of teams, and from influences by teammates. There is still a vast amount of research that needs to be done about fielding.

But at the same time, I have to say that the case for Jeter as a Gold Glove quality shortstop is a dead argument in my mind. There is a lot we don’t know, and Derek Jeter could be a better shortstop than we have measured him as being for any of a dozen reasons. He is not a Gold Glove quality shortstop. He isn’t an average defensive shortstop. Giving him every possible break on the unknowns, he is still going to emerge as a below average defensive shortstop.


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Yeha
Pokerwise all fine

didnt play much in may so far due to university stuff
still nice results for only 5h of play
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/1922/4mai.jpg

+ 283$

I like this one call that i made today

http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/683502

was the most exciting thing that happend in may so far
Did hardly do any MMA nor any Partying due to University responsibilities ...

btw i turned 24 few days ago and i recieved an overwhelming total 215€ of money (parents + uncle + my 2 granies and some rnd people) Dont really konw what to do with it ^^
Its too low to make a big difference on anything i want to buy the next months...
So I guess i will spend most of it on buying a shisha
http://www.shisha.de/images/products/n302s-shisha-g.jpg

not sure how this affects my MMA performance though ( maybe i have to train a little harder now ^^)


Doing lots of university stuff is the opposite of a sick life ...
But i am a whiney biatch ...
All day i cry how boring and unsatisfying University is to me for the last 16 months ...
I should probably just quit or shut the fuck up

since i dont have the balls to quit after 3 years of energy put into university.
I will shut up from now on.

Just wondering how Twisted enjoys his new Life after he quit poker.
I would be curious if he one day realizes that a normal life without printing money is totaly not the shizzle and pretty boring

To make this blogpost a little better quality here are some pics
Rachel and Arianne and some other from UFC girls

http://carsandgirls.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/3.jpg
http://www.mmaplayground.com/forums/i/pi/209542_1.jpg
http://www.fightchat.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/amber-nichole-miller.jpg
http://www.kickassmma.com/images/ufc-87-edith-1.jpg

GL All

Enjoy the sick life !


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