The game is dominated by all-in processes; x(t) >> b(t)

[shipitfish]

I only had time to skim this academic letter by Clément Sire entitled Universal Statistical Properties of Poker Tournaments. He primarily argues various types of observed natural phenomena in Physics and Biology evolve the same was as poker tournaments, particularly those where chips are not evenly distributed.

He does seem to make some

Comments

[patty_bush]

Is LaTeX like Adobe and '.pdf's?

[shipitfish]

LaTeX is a document formatting system. Uber-geeks use it instead of Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. The key difference is rather than using some GUI to highlight text and indicate how it should be format, in LaTeX you effectively program the format of your document. LaTeX, in essence, is a programming language for formatting and typesetting documents.

Tex and More

[anonymous]

On the link you give, the paper can be downloaded in the pdf format.

In addition, the author summarizes the main results of the paper in a non technical notice:

http://www.lpt.ups-tlse.fr/article.php3?id_article=239

(click on "Read the non technical introductory news article (in English)")

Cheers

Re: Tex and More

[shipitfish]

Yes, of course, LaTeX can be converted to PDF, Postscript, etc. However, it's unmistakably formatted in LaTeX. A LaTeX user can tell just by looking at it. :)

attitude change

[anonymous]

I've read your blogs for a couple years now and I am curious - was there some major event in your life that caused your recent attitude change toward poker? Was it the downfall of online poker? Your blogs now seem so negative towards the game - and poker is just a game. I enjoy it myself as much as a game like chess, but poker pays me on top of the entertainment it offers. I actually quit online poker a long time ago after taking numerous unbelievable bad beat after bad beat leading me to believed online poker could in fact be fixed, not to mention I've actually caught numerous people colluding at tables I've played at. I enjoy live play much more for many reasons, tournaments and ring games.

Re: attitude change

[shipitfish]

It's a complicated situation. One of the biggest factors is that I have a firm moral belief that life activity should always have a positive impact on making the world a better place, and I've come to realize that I was investing a time in a futile activity (as you say, a game), when I could be instead trying to make the world a better place with that time. Poker feels to me like completely wasted time. I'm all for wasting a little bit of time in life, but I think there has to be a limit. Your question has intrigued me, though, and I'll write a more complete post on the subject sometime int he next few months.

Oh, and also, poker became a job for me, and it stopped being fun once it was. I play a few times a month now, and it's just a time-killer when I can't be productive at other things. I like it better as that.