Saturday, December 18, 2010

Make Sense Damn It!

Not much to report from the poker front as I'm barely playing during my "time off" month, though I did have a modestly successful 5k hand session on Friday. The games have definitely reached typical December level awfulness. Another 6k VPPs to go until my milestone hits and I'm done for 2010.

Regarding the title, I had a couple "wtf?" moments this week where I encountered things that just didn't make a whole lot of sense. The type of things that leave you wondering why the people responsible for the decision making at hand would possibly have thought it was a good idea. The first had to do with the Flames/Leafs game on Thursday, where the Flames played their best game of the year and utterly dominated Toronto. The game was great, but what I couldn't figure out was why it was being on aired on Sportsnet One, which is a new local specific sports channel which launched this year. This is the team with the largest fanbase in the league (Leafs) playing a fellow Canadian team they rarely see. To make matters more mind boggling, Hockey Night in Canada has recently taken a page from the NFL playbook and added Thursday games to their schedule for the latter half of the season. How CBC decided to show a different game I'll never know. To clarify, there isn't anything wrong at all with the SN1 broadcast, I'm actually quite partial to their commentators - but from a business standpoint it is burning money all around.

The second "wtf" moment came as I was playing through the Severnaya snow base level of the Goldeneye 007 remake for the Wii. At the very end of the level you come upon some bunker doors, and you need to jam two buttons quickly to successfully open them. My button jamming skills are formidable to say the least - I managed to drink the maximum number of soda cans back in Chrono Trigger after all. But the damn door just wouldn't open. I confirmed there was no specific sequence necessary (ie. alternating), it was a pure jam. I switched controllers with no luck. Finally, by mashing a classic controller against the ground I was able to get the doors open. Who playtested this thing and thought it was tuned properly?

Finally, some fairly discouraging news on the hockey front. It seems very likely that Flames center Daymond Langkow has played his last game in the NHL. Late last season he went down to a neck injury after taking a fluke slapshot his spinal cord, and it appears that almost a year later that the injury will turn out to be career ending. A very underrated player who was as tough as he was skilled, it's really sad to see a career end this way.

2 comments:

Tilt said...

Hey Ronfar, I'm currently watching your new cr vid. It has brought up some details that I hadn't gone into detail in my plan far enough. I will be making the sne chase next year for sure.

I had 140k fpp going into this month and I am at 160k fpp right now and have given up 200k vpp chase now because I'm lazy and love sweating football action.

I've never grinded more than 20k vpp per month and think I've had one month of over 150k hands in my lifetime.

I currently play 100nl fr and 6m, but am hoping to move up to 200nl in due time. I can multitable 20ish.

Most important fact is probably that I'm a degenerate gambler whose life revolves around action and more action.

What are some odds based on what I've written from above or whatver information you can glean from my blog, http://tiltmonster.blogspot.com/, for making sne?

I've played against you a few times, but I'm probably not good enough for you to have noticed.

Ronfar3 said...

I'm glad the video got you thinking more about what it takes to grind out SNE.

Your question is very difficult to answer. In one sense, given enough time commitment anyone can reach SNE if money is no object. To do so profitably enough for it to be worth one's while however, (or profitably at all for that matter) requires a great deal more. As I talked about in the video, if you haven't already put in the effort to prove the concept and effectively answer the question for yourself in advance, it is very difficult for anyone to be able to tell you if you stand a fighting chance.

Going from playing low volume to high volume can easily take a huge toll on one's winrate, not to mention one's ability to move up in stakes and play higher. Additionally, the games are going to continue to get tougher and if you're putting in SNE level volume it is likely you'll be spending less time studying and working on your game than you have in the past.

This isn't to say you don't have a decent shot at making SNE, but if you are currently a modest winner playing low volume and expect your winrate to hold steady (or improve and allow you to move up) when grinding out 5x the hands you will inevitably have a rude awakening in store.