My example exvluded tips but included a jackpot.

This is the way the math works, just consider everyone's mistakes as going into the pot, rake gets subtracted, and the pot (even ifnegative) divded equally.

So let's saythere's a game where one player makes 3 BB/hr worth of mistakes and the other 9 make 5 BB/hr. At 6/12 roughly 15 BB/hr comes off the table and then the remaining 33 BB is divided. One player nets +0.3 BB/hr and the other 9 net -1.7 BB/hr. The mathematically astute will recognize that the absolute value of the mistakes don't matter, only the spread between the biggest winner and the average of everyone else.

When I played 6/12, which to be fair was a long time ago, $5/hand came off the table (drop plus tip) at about 35 hands/hr, let's say exactly 15 BB/hr. So assuming I was the biggest winner at +1 BB/hr, my average opponent was making -1.8 BB/hr of mistakes relative to me.

Now as stakes get bigger the average opponent gets better but rake goes down proportionally. So whether a bigger stake is beatable heavily depends on how those two factors balance out.

And I pointed this out in another thread recently but unless you're at high stakes where a fraction of a BB is a lot of money, your winrate depends far more onyour ability to beat "the field" (the middle half of the table skillwise) than how bad "the fish" (the worst player) is.

Serious book recommendation:

Really, just "The Intelligent Poker Player" by Newall. Best poker book I ever read, by far. Everything else, you can get from reading and posting on 2+2.

Less serious (but still helpful in a perverse sense) book recommendation:

Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller. The poker community is a community filled with suckers, dreamers, and the deluded, chasing something that only a tiny percentage achieve. Those that do achieve it tend to get extremely lucky at key points of time, and those that don't are often felled by indiscipline rather than lack of talent. Miller was a Communist who felt that these same elements powered the entire capitalist economy, so he wrote a critique of it in the form of a play. But whether he described American capitalism correctly or not, he sure described the poker economy correctly.

My son is enjoying the Hobbit. JRR Tolkien is the author.

Tell us when he makes it through the The Silmarillion and we'll be impressed (maybe he could write a book report for us?)

I tried to read that 3-4 times, and never made it past like the 2nd chapter.

This is why I want a book report, I've made it about as far as you have

It has a slow start but that book is amazing with all the lore in it.
It is a bit complicated with so many character's but still a good read imo.

Someone needs to start a website scifibookspoilers.com.

I would pay someone to write book reports on the last 10 books of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.

I just read wikipedia, it does a pretty good job. Breezed through the Dark Tower series in about 20 min.

I read the first Jordan book. That was enough for me to not want to continue.

Hey all,

I couldn't find some master reading thread, so I decided to bump this. If anyone picks up Ed Thorp's new book coming out at the end of November and wants to put me first on the list to send it to, please PM me. I can make a couple trades, give you a few bucks and send it back, or simply buy it from you.

Also if anyone wants to unload a copy of beyond counting, let me know

I would try on a blackjack forum. Wong's (bj21) might be the best, haven't kept up but it used to be that and BJO and BJO shut down.

Why do that? What is so special about this chapter? TIA!

It's a widely misinterpreted chapter in which people are encouraged to try to make villains fold. But the problem with most small stakes villains is that they call too much, so it's far less useful than it seems at first. As a matter of fact, beginners often make so many mistakes trying to apply the chapter that I argue it's better to ignore it at first.