Farha VS. Sbrugby

[Topset72]

From all the information we have on Brian, I do not think he would have really flipped for $450,000. he is just trying to convince himself he would.

This episode reminds me of the great non-fiction book on wall street "Liar's Poker." It is about Salomon Brothers in the early 1980's.

Michael Lewis writes about the traders ordering Mexican food with 5 gallon drums of guacamole. "Do you know how much food you have to eat to use five gallons of guacamole?"

The most famous scene in the book involves the gambling game Liar's poker. All the bond traders used to play the game for large sums of money all day long. One of the best and most fearless players was the head of bond trading , John Merriwether.

The head of the firm was John Gutfreund. He had been a trader, but not for a number of years. He resented that when he was on the trading floor he was treated as an outsider, not one of the boys, since he no longer put his ass on the line anymore. He wanted to re-establish his maverick side with the traders.

One day Gutfreund walked up to Merriwether in front of all the other traders. Gutfreund said "One hand, one million dollars, no tears."

Most games were for only a few hundred dollars. No tears meant no whining or complaining after your million dollar loss.

"The code of the Liar's poker was something like the code of a gunslinger. It required the trader to accept all challenges. Because of the code- which was his code- John Merriwether felt obliged to play. But he knew it was stupid. For him, there was no upside. if he won, he upset Gutfreund. No good came of this. But if he lost he was out of pocket a million bucks. This was far worse than upsetting the boss. Although Merriwether was by far the better player of the game, in a single hand anything can happen. Luck could very well determine the outcome. Merriwether spent his entire day avoiding dumb bets, and he wasn’t about to accept this one.

“No, John,” he said , “if we’re going to play for those type of numbers, I’d rather play for real money. ten Million dollars. No tears.”

Ten millions dollars. It was a moment for all players to savor. Merriwether was playing Liar’s poker before the game even started. He was bluffing.

Gutfreund put on a forced smile and said “You’re crazy.” And then he walked off the trading floor.

- Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis

This is a great book full of NVG type stories on a much larger scale.

Topset72

[Lurker.]

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just wondering.... who of the two has the edge here?? Opinions anyone?????

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lol

[SkinnyLittleTwig]

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just wondering.... who of the two has the edge here?? Opinions anyone?????

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this could be an interesting topic for discussion!!!

[jmill2511]

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I wonder if they know the live players laugh when online players come to the table to play real poker.

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I wonder how funny Sammy thought it was to be up 1.2 million and end up down.

Probably laughing his ass off as we speak.

[exec771]

According to Taylor caby brian ended 450k down??

brian ended out down just below 450k, which was a great comeback of close to 1 million for him. i have a lot of faith in brian after talking to him about his match (as if I didn't before). i'm not going to say all of the reasons why but let's just say i would take a piece of brian if he wanted it. btw, brian does have 100% of himself for all the people who are asking. they are going to play today and probably all week. brian is going to be in town as long as sammy will be here.

today i am going to play the 1500 6 max event. frankly i'm not sure how it is going to go but i am going to give it my best shot. i hate tournaments and i've never had a ton of success in them but i would like to do well to get publicity for CR. I'm going to keep this in mind when i have the urge to lose focus and just donk around. it's really tough to play an event that is 1/3 to 1/10th ish of your typical buyin, especially when you have one table at a time instead of 4-6.

afterwords, if i bust today, i'm going to try to go to the avril show which is somewhere in vegas (i forget where, maybe caesars i really dont remmeber) but i'm hoping i wont bust in time.

melissa comes tomorrow evening for the weekend.

tc

[EricS31]

i agree with topset...i dont think brian had any intention of doing the flip...not that he wouldnt have the balls to do it knowing its plus ev...but for the fact that he played his heart out for 12 hours...why piss it away in one hand

[Kjell201]

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He just posted a blog. Pretty sick degen stuff in there. Sammy is batshit insane, and it appears that Brian is close. Sounds like he was close to flipping for about 1/2 a mil.

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flipping with an edge is just good poker.

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what edge?

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Then he took all the money he had in front of him, 470K, and said lets flip you only have to put up 450K.

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20k in EV

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note to self: read all other replies first.

[EricS31]

i also dont think it is that good of a deal...the only way it would make sense for aba to do it would be if they agree to do it a certain amount of times to cut down on incalculable variance

[Kjell201]

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Is this the end of the match, or are they continuing? I got the impression this was the end, since Townsend says he "ended up 50k for the entire match", not "I am now up 50k" or something.

Also, is not Farha's desire for a -EV flip for half a mil proof that he is in fact a fish?

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1) I think he said that to clarify that it was for day 1+2 and not only day 2.
2) The -EV is pretty small + I'm pretty sure Farha knows Brian won't do it, so he's not risking much since he won't get "called" very often, and when they do flip, it's only a -2% mistake. It could be good for Farhas image. (He might still be a fish, I have no idea, just saying this doesn't neccesarilly prove anything)

[Homer]

aba would need a little over 20 million to his name to justify flipping 450k to win 470k, all metagame stuff aside.