I’d love to learn more about this story. For instance, are they sure it wasn’t Nacogdoches, Oklahoma?!?!??!

Not too groundbreaking, but worth a post: another study that shows it still ain’t gambling:

The consulting firm that performed the study, Cigital, worked closely with PokerStars.com, which funded the study.  They utilized 103 million hands from PokerStars.  They only used real money cash games (no heads-up games) with blinds mostly over $1.

Of the hands they examined, slightly over three-quarters of them did not go to showdown.  That means that over 75% of the time, the best hand was not shown down.  With that in mind, it can be said that skill was utilized instead of pure chance.  That includes the skills of betting, being aggressive, and also knowing when to fold.

When there was a showdown, the study found that the best five-card hand actually won the pot only about half the time.  The other half of the time, what would have been the winning hand was actually folded prior to showdown.  This once again shows the amount of skill involved when players can get other players to fold better hands than them in order to win the pot.  All in all, the study showed that the true best hand only won about 12% of the time.

But we already knew that. One benefit that I have always attributed to online poker is the availability of data, both at the micro level (players) and at the macro level (studies like this).

Via Scipio, one of the best writers on the web, imho:
 

I’m often asked: Coach Mike Sherman, what are you going to do to restore the rich and storied history of Texas A&M football…that occurred entirely between 1985 and 1998?

Easy answer. I don’t even need notecards for that.

First and foremost, I want players who want to be Aggies. Right now the state has three of them.

Boom. Ours.

That just happened.

Failing that, I would like players that aren’t opposed to being Aggies; specifically after seeing their dream of playing for Texas, OU, or LSU shattered into a million pieces by scholarship limits.

That’s the kind of burning passion I’m looking for.

I used to think Twitter was stupid and wonder what exactly the use was for posting “what are you doing?” all over the internet and onto cell phones. I felt the same way about Facebook, too. Then I discovered that all of those websites were actually pretty effective (and FREE) marketing tools for my websites and some of my other businesses that I own so I set up some personal accounts and have been dipping my toe into the whole social networking craze. 

One guy I’ve started following lately on Twitter is @VegasRunner. Unfortunately, I don’t bet on basketball and that’s all he’s talking about right now. Nonetheless, some of the insight seems to be rather legitimate and interesting (ie the big casinos are all monkeying with their lines right now to try and create a big middle for this weekend’s NCAA games) and I’m curious to see what this guy says once we get into baseball and football seasons.

Testing a new tool.

I think we’re going to be hosting a game in Houston some time soon, maybe Omaha 8 if we have enough interest. If you’re on my list, be looking for an email. If you’re not on my list, use the link in the sidebar to contact me and I’ll get you added.