I do like the way one of the banner ads at the top of this page was advertising how to improve your chances of getting a knighthood, MBE or OBE...
Just make a small donation to adblocker. What ads?
I've no problem with the ads, its potential site revenue I assume. Just find it amusing that some algorithm picked up the headline article and fired that out as an ad.
My nearly 9 year old girl has been crying at bedtime, scared about the virus. I don't think there's anything specific that's worrying her, but tomorrow is yet another day where she's not going to school and seeing her friends.
I've told her that although the virus is bad and has changed a few things it's not all bad change. That people have started to think a little more about each other, saying "stay safe" instead of very little at all. That nature has started to recover, with cleaner air and wildlife enjoying fewer people being about. That less position and not sitting in traffic is making people and politicians think about how we can do some things differently. About how not everything people were doing before was good and that some of the changes are better.
It's a one-sided account. But I hope for her sake that in at least partially right. We can't just go back to status quo ante. That really would be a disaster.
My nearly 9 year old girl has been crying at bedtime, scared about the virus. I don't think there's anything specific that's worrying her, but tomorrow is yet another day where she's not going to school and seeing her friends.
I've told her that although the virus is bad and has changed a few things it's not all bad change. That people have started to think a little more about each other, saying "stay safe" instead of very little at all. That nature has started to recover, with cleaner air and wildlife enjoying fewer people being about. That less position and not sitting in traffic is making people and politicians think about how we can do some things differently. About how not everything people were doing before was good and that some of the changes are better.
It's a one-sided account. But I hope for her sake that in at least partially right. We can't just go back to status quo ante. That really would be a disaster.
I am sorry to hear about your daughter and her fears.
There must be very many frightened and worried children and your words of comfort are just perfect
Isn't the drop in tests at the weekend going to be a long term issue because since a lot of them are posted out and Royal Mail have stopped the Saturday service and there's not a Sunday service?
Royal Mail delivered to us yesterday, just saying.
It looks like a case of population density + poor health. It's not age per se, because the Montgomeryshire and Brecon&Radnor areas have the oldest populations AFAIK.
It would be interesting to see the same chart for Scotland to compare
The United States just had its deadliest day on record due to the coronavirus as states across the country begin to ease restrictions meant to curb the spread of the virus, according to data published by the World Health Organization.
The U.S. saw 2,909 people die of Covid-19 in 24 hours, according to the data, which was collected as of 4 a.m. ET on Friday. That’s the highest daily Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. yet, based on a CNBC analysis of the WHO’s daily Covid-19 situation reports.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
I’ll believe all that when some actual evidence emerges (not that it’s impossible). Thus far, approximately nil.
It looks like a case of population density + poor health. It's not age per se, because the Montgomeryshire and Brecon&Radnor areas have the oldest populations AFAIK.
It would be interesting to see the same chart for Scotland to compare
My nearly 9 year old girl has been crying at bedtime, scared about the virus. I don't think there's anything specific that's worrying her, but tomorrow is yet another day where she's not going to school and seeing her friends.
I've told her that although the virus is bad and has changed a few things it's not all bad change. That people have started to think a little more about each other, saying "stay safe" instead of very little at all. That nature has started to recover, with cleaner air and wildlife enjoying fewer people being about. That less position and not sitting in traffic is making people and politicians think about how we can do some things differently. About how not everything people were doing before was good and that some of the changes are better.
It's a one-sided account. But I hope for her sake that in at least partially right. We can't just go back to status quo ante. That really would be a disaster.
I am sorry to hear about your daughter and her fears.
There must be very many frightened and worried children and your words of comfort are just perfect
Lets hope they also reflect the new tomorrow
These things leave very strong impressions.
This from an article on the 1919 pandemic...
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/1918-pandemic-cultural-memory-literature-outka.html ... Reading letters from survivors of the flu pandemic, one of the things that strikes me over and over again, that’s so moving, is that almost every one of them says, “I never forgot; I never forgot; I never forgot.” [Researching the book], I interviewed one 105-year-old woman who had the flu in Richmond, when she was 8. And in my cheery way, I said something like “Why do you think people forgot the flu?” And she looked at me like I was crazy. “We didn’t forget! We didn’t ignore it! We didn’t forget.” She’s 105, right? And she was like, “It never faded—not for us.”...
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
I’ll believe all that when some actual evidence emerges (not that it’s impossible). Thus far, approximately nil.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating, which can now be really quite sophisticated.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies. They cartels communicate with one another, hold or flood the lobbies on organized schedules, so if you get a game, it is because you are the sucker.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
I’ll believe all that when some actual evidence emerges (not that it’s impossible). Thus far, approximately nil.
There is such a thing as circumstantial evidence.
That, such as it is, fits a number of different interpretations. Specific evidence for lab origin, thus far, has not been presented.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
AFAIK, Stars are the only ones that have this sort of level of expertise when it comes to tracking cheating. But, every change of ownership / management over the past 5 years have made the site worse and worse. They are trying to screw every last cent out of the player pool.
It looks like a case of population density + poor health. It's not age per se, because the Montgomeryshire and Brecon&Radnor areas have the oldest populations AFAIK.
It would be interesting to see the same chart for Scotland to compare
What is going on in Clackmananshire? 18% rise in cases today. Most of the rest of Scotland is low single digits.
And that new deaths by day line is stubbornly refusing to bend down.
I'm sure PB will be full of experts on Clackmananshire(sic) by end of play tomorrow.
See the scatter plot linked to at the foot of the data- Clacks is fractionally above the Scottish average infection rate but below the average death rate. A reporting blip?
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
AFAIK, Stars are the only ones that have this sort of level of expertise when it comes to tracking cheating. But, every change of ownership / management over the past 5 years have made the site worse and worse. They are trying to screw every last cent out of the player pool.
Of course they are they are a business, while they remain the only sane choice to play on they will continue to do so. They still compare favourably with the rake in a meatspace casino however. Especially when you take the "tipping the dealer" thing being almost socially mandatory in every casino I have ever visited
I think the scientists are going to get there one way or another. It seems that the science behind it is fairly well understood, it is tweaking it for the specific oddities of coronavirus.
Of course they are they are a business, while they remain the only sane choice to play on they will continue to do so. They still compare favourably with the rake in a meatspace casino however. Especially when you take the "tipping the dealer" thing being almost socially mandatory in every casino I have ever visited
However, it is a shadow of its former self when Scheinberg's owned it.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
I’ll believe all that when some actual evidence emerges (not that it’s impossible). Thus far, approximately nil.
I'm not attempting to provide evidence. The above isn't about stating a case, its about what is coming out in the US and could happen next in terms of the situation ramping up.
100% accurate is hyperbole, but Roche does claim 100% sensitivity, and something like 99.8% specificity for their test which was just approved in the US. So it is not completely incredible.
The devil is in the details, though, as such a test will require fresh blood, and the mechanics of getting several million people to prick their own fingers and apply the blood to the test kit aren’t going to be 100% reliable, Even so, accurate stats (and they’ll also be sampling a randomised selection of 100,000 across the UK for active infection next week) ought to make a huge difference in formulating effective policies to deal with the pandemic.
I thought that it had been claimed by scientists that many that have been tested covid positive while ill have produced little to no antibodies post infection. A figure like 30% rings a bell but that is just memory and might be inaccurate
Tech firms are in talks with ministers about creating health passports to help Britons return safely to work using coronavirus testing and facial recognition.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
It seems unlikely that the Wuhan lab would do anything so detrimental to China's interest as deliberately releasing the virus into the local population. Virologists seem certain that Covid-19 has the characteristics of a naturally occurring virus originating in bats. The Wuhan was doing normal virological research into these viruses.
Accidental release of the virus into the neighbourhoood is plausible given the proximity of the lab to the origin of the outbreak, but there doesn't appear to be any evidence for this.
I thought that it had been claimed by scientists that many that have been tested covid positive while ill have produced little to no antibodies post infection. A figure like 30% rings a bell but that is just memory and might be inaccurate
Yes, and this is why the Chinese ones didn't work. The UK already has one that works, but it is lab based. So do lots of other countries.
However, that is different to making mass market ones for home use. Nobody has managed to get one that is accurate enough.
Oxford have been working on one that looks promising, but looks like they might have been pipped by this company.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
It seems unlikely that the Wuhan lab would do anything so detrimental to China's interest as deliberately releasing the virus into the local population. Virologists seem certain that Covid-19 has the characteristics of a naturally occurring virus originating in bats. The Wuhan was doing normal virological research into these viruses.
Accidental release of the virus into the neighbourhoood is plausible given the proximity of the lab to the origin of the outbreak, but there doesn't appear to be any evidence for this.
And there is no suggestion in the above that there is strong evidence of either.
BORIS Johnson has told how he leapt on to his hospital bed wearing only his boxer shorts just two hours after leaving intensive care — to “clap like crazy” for the NHS.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
Wow.
I've historically trusted @Yokes on things, but my friends in this field at Cambridge, and @TimT , are adamant that this does not look anything like an engineered virus.
It looks like a case of population density + poor health. It's not age per se, because the Montgomeryshire and Brecon&Radnor areas have the oldest populations AFAIK.
It would be interesting to see the same chart for Scotland to compare
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
I’ll believe all that when some actual evidence emerges (not that it’s impossible). Thus far, approximately nil.
Just curious - what would count as evidence to you?
Oxford University students vote to block 'ableist, classist and misogynistic' reading lists
Oxford University students have voted against “ableist, classist and misogynistic” reading lists, claiming that they should not be forced to engage with any “hateful material”. Students should not be required to attend any lectures, tutorials or seminars, nor should they have to sit exams, which involve “hate speech” against a particular group, according to a new policy that the university’s student union has adopted.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
Wow.
I've historically trusted @Yokes on things, but my friends in this field at Cambridge, and @TimT , are adamant that this does not look anything like an engineered virus.
I don't think they were saying/claiming that. They could have been studying it and it got out accidentally. There's nothing sinister about that, just human error.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
Oxford University students vote to block 'ableist, classist and misogynistic' reading lists
Oxford University students have voted against “ableist, classist and misogynistic” reading lists, claiming that they should not be forced to engage with any “hateful material”. Students should not be required to attend any lectures, tutorials or seminars, nor should they have to sit exams, which involve “hate speech” against a particular group, according to a new policy that the university’s student union has adopted.
Well that pretty much empties the history curriculum....How the f##k can you learn lessons from the past if you don't educate yourself about it?
Western universities are writing their own death warrants. Post coronavirus, who is going to get massively into debt to earn a worthless certificate in wokeness?
Prediction: this whole culture of bien pensant identitarian academe is entering its final lunatic phase. The squealing will be deafening.
Oxford University students vote to block 'ableist, classist and misogynistic' reading lists
Oxford University students have voted against “ableist, classist and misogynistic” reading lists, claiming that they should not be forced to engage with any “hateful material”. Students should not be required to attend any lectures, tutorials or seminars, nor should they have to sit exams, which involve “hate speech” against a particular group, according to a new policy that the university’s student union has adopted.
Well that pretty much empties the history curriculum....How the f##k can you learn lessons from the past if you don't educate yourself about it?
Western universities are writing their own death warrants. Post coronavirus, who is going to get massively into debt to earn a worthless certificate in wokeness?
Prediction: this whole culture of bien pensant identitarian academe is entering its final lunatic phase. The squealing will be deafening.
To be fair, I think the vast majority of students have bugger all to do with this. Most are only concerned about getting their 2:1 and getting on a grad scheme.
It is a vocal minority who dominated SU politics who appear to spend years of their life going from paid elected position to position, putting off getting a real job for as long as possible, who come up with this shit.
The problem is the sensible majority just don't want to get involved, they want to stay out of trouble. The numbers even voting for SU officer elections is a tiny percentage, let alone when they pass they dumb motions.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
It seems unlikely that the Wuhan lab would do anything so detrimental to China's interest as deliberately releasing the virus into the local population. Virologists seem certain that Covid-19 has the characteristics of a naturally occurring virus originating in bats. The Wuhan was doing normal virological research into these viruses.
Accidental release of the virus into the neighbourhoood is plausible given the proximity of the lab to the origin of the outbreak, but there doesn't appear to be any evidence for this.
And there is no suggestion in the above that there is strong evidence of either.
Yeah but if the baseline is that a naturally occurring virus being studied at the lab might have been released accidentally but probably wasn't, that may say more about the sources you quote and their "position of considerable knowledge" than the practices of the lab and those of Chinese authorities.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
Hold on... the random numbers were "produced" by another company? Do they not realise that you can generate them on any computer to a probably sufficient level of randomness.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
Wow.
I've historically trusted @Yokes on things, but my friends in this field at Cambridge, and @TimT , are adamant that this does not look anything like an engineered virus.
I don't think they were saying/claiming that. They could have been studying it and it got out accidentally. There's nothing sinister about that, just human error.
The best theory is the simplest. A poor lab researcher sold a rare bat for folding money in the nearby exotic meat market, under the counter. Et voila
Still an interesting question of when that transaction happened. October? September? And whether the Chinese Govt. chose to observe for a while what would happen if...
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
Hold on... the random numbers were "produced" by another company? Do they not realise that you can generate them on any computer to a probably sufficient level of randomness.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
Hold on... the random numbers were "produced" by another company? Do they not realise that you can generate them on any computer to a probably sufficient level of randomness.
Yes.
Wanna start a random number factory with me, Peter?
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
Oxford University students vote to block 'ableist, classist and misogynistic' reading lists
Oxford University students have voted against “ableist, classist and misogynistic” reading lists, claiming that they should not be forced to engage with any “hateful material”. Students should not be required to attend any lectures, tutorials or seminars, nor should they have to sit exams, which involve “hate speech” against a particular group, according to a new policy that the university’s student union has adopted.
Well that pretty much empties the history curriculum....How the f##k can you learn lessons from the past if you don't educate yourself about it?
'I notice the policy commits to protection of transgender, non-binary, disabled, working class and women students from hatred in a university context.'
Does that include those of the working class who voted for Boris and Brexit?
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
Hold on... the random numbers were "produced" by another company? Do they not realise that you can generate them on any computer to a probably sufficient level of randomness.
Yes.
Wanna start a random number factory with me, Peter?
I don't think the RNG was the problem. As I tried to point out to them, they were not auditing live data. They needed to take a sample of live games and test whether the dice rolls were randomly distributed in those games. I saw no evidence they did this, nor indeed did they seem to understand why this would be necessary.
If you don't test live data, there is always the chance of interference between the RNG and the actual roll. The RNG could be honest, but the roll you get on the screen may not be.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
Hold on... the random numbers were "produced" by another company? Do they not realise that you can generate them on any computer to a probably sufficient level of randomness.
Yes.
Wanna start a random number factory with me, Peter?
"Seven. Seven. Seven...."
"Peter, you can't just keep saying seven. That's not very random."
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology when it comes to online games.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
Hold on... the random numbers were "produced" by another company? Do they not realise that you can generate them on any computer to a probably sufficient level of randomness.
Yes.
Wanna start a random number factory with me, Peter?
"Seven. Seven. Seven...."
"Peter, you can't just keep saying seven. That's not very random."
"Seventeen. Seven. Seven...."
Digits of pi are pretty random, aren't they? We'll use those.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
It seems unlikely that the Wuhan lab would do anything so detrimental to China's interest as deliberately releasing the virus into the local population. Virologists seem certain that Covid-19 has the characteristics of a naturally occurring virus originating in bats. The Wuhan was doing normal virological research into these viruses.
Accidental release of the virus into the neighbourhoood is plausible given the proximity of the lab to the origin of the outbreak, but there doesn't appear to be any evidence for this.
And there is no suggestion in the above that there is strong evidence of either.
Yeah but if the baseline is that a naturally occurring virus being studied at the lab might have been released accidentally but probably wasn't, that may say more about the sources you quote and their "position of considerable knowledge" than the practices of the lab and those of Chinese authorities.
Remember this is not a case of showing your hand, its not how it works. We don't know what raw information Western agencies have or how they have interpreted it and its unlikely to come out unless they can protect sourcing and methodology. If they can, then they will release it but how do you show say intercepts of logs of a computer for example. That's your source blown. How do you show intercepts of telephone conversations and so on.
What I'm trying to do is suggest how this may go forward, because its likely to become a bigger story and source of conflict.
Equally it doesn't take top secret intelligence to suggest that there was suppression at work. Not even the Chinese appeared to deny that they muzzled a doctor, who later died, that wanted greater attention to & warning of the severity of the situation. Also there are suggestions based on local reports that the death toll in Wuhan and wider Hubei was way way larger than the authorities stated. There are reports, on record, of concerns over the Wuhan site's bio security before this thing ever kicked off. There are stories that the EU has confirmed Chinese attempts at public disinformation in the West over SarsCoV2
None of those is intelligence agency sourced but add them up and the you'd be asking what the fuck were the Chinese at and why.
I will say this though, Western agencies try very hard to keep an eye on anything and anywhere that may be involved in dual-purpose activity. Its doubtful they'd not try to monitor the Wuhan facility and its doubtful they don't have some picture even if fragmented.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
The head guy from Recode in Iceland stated he was very confident that CV was much more widely spread and earlier in the UK that the official figures show.
Not going to be surprising if we find that across Europe even earlier.
The head guy from Recode in Iceland stated he was very confident that CV was much more widely spread and earlier in the UK that the official figures show.
Not going to be surprising if we find that across Europe even earlier.
A lot of people had a particularly bad case of flu in December.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in....
I have no doubt this could be possible.
It is also why in my original post, that when it comes to poker, basically stick to two sites these days.
Of the rest, the biggest issue is they don't have the resources to combat cheating, and a small minority (mostly Chinese apps that run as private clubs) aren't trustworthy.
The Chinese apps based sites, many reports of very dodgy things going on, and the whole way the eco-system works stinks.
Oxford University students vote to block 'ableist, classist and misogynistic' reading lists
Oxford University students have voted against “ableist, classist and misogynistic” reading lists, claiming that they should not be forced to engage with any “hateful material”. Students should not be required to attend any lectures, tutorials or seminars, nor should they have to sit exams, which involve “hate speech” against a particular group, according to a new policy that the university’s student union has adopted.
Further to my Backgammon points, what has always intrigued and disturbed me is that these Random Number Generators must be used for all 'board' and similar games. In Backgammon, the nature of the game is so finite that an experienced player soon notices if the dice are somehow loaded and the table isn't straight. Most players immediately notice something a bit off about the internet Backgammon tables. I'm not sure it would be so obvious with, say, Monopoly or whatever other games are played for money.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in....
I have no doubt this could be possible.
It is also why in my original post, that when it comes to poker, basically stick to two sites these days.
Of the rest, the biggest issue is they don't have the resources to combat cheating, and a small minority (mostly Chinese apps that run as private clubs) aren't trustworthy.
The Chinese apps based sites, many reports of very dodgy things going on, and the whole way the eco-system works stinks.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
I've seen similar things with online backgammon. I wonder whether the game's system is rigged, or whether your opponent has hacked the dice throws to get exactly what he needs for the optimum outcome, time after time after time. Still don't know, but none of my money will be wagered on it regardless.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
Unless I've misunderstood something here, rolling a 6 and a 1 on two dice is 17-1, not 35-1. Assuming that the two dice are thrown together and are indistinguishable from each other, which I think is the case.
Oxford University students vote to block 'ableist, classist and misogynistic' reading lists
Oxford University students have voted against “ableist, classist and misogynistic” reading lists, claiming that they should not be forced to engage with any “hateful material”. Students should not be required to attend any lectures, tutorials or seminars, nor should they have to sit exams, which involve “hate speech” against a particular group, according to a new policy that the university’s student union has adopted.
Well that pretty much empties the history curriculum....How the f##k can you learn lessons from the past if you don't educate yourself about it?
I for one am outraged that people who lived and died centuries ago dared to have ideas and attitudes different than mine!
On a serious note look at something like Ryan Murphy's Netflix series "Hollywood" to see how "problematic" history is increasingly rewritten to conform to contemporary values.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
Unless I've misunderstood something here, rolling a 6 and a 1 on two dice is 17-1, not 35-1. Assuming that the two dice are thrown together and are indistinguishable from each other, which I think is the case.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
It seems unlikely that the Wuhan lab would do anything so detrimental to China's interest as deliberately releasing the virus into the local population. Virologists seem certain that Covid-19 has the characteristics of a naturally occurring virus originating in bats. The Wuhan was doing normal virological research into these viruses.
Accidental release of the virus into the neighbourhoood is plausible given the proximity of the lab to the origin of the outbreak, but there doesn't appear to be any evidence for this.
And there is no suggestion in the above that there is strong evidence of either.
Yeah but if the baseline is that a naturally occurring virus being studied at the lab might have been released accidentally but probably wasn't, that may say more about the sources you quote and their "position of considerable knowledge" than the practices of the lab and those of Chinese authorities.
Remember this is not a case of showing your hand, its not how it works. We don't know what raw information Western agencies have or how they have interpreted it and its unlikely to come out unless they can protect sourcing and methodology. If they can, then they will release it but how do you show say intercepts of logs of a computer for example. That's your source blown. How do you show intercepts of telephone conversations and so on.
What I'm trying to do is suggest how this may go forward, because its likely to become a bigger story and source of conflict.
Equally it doesn't take top secret intelligence to suggest that there was suppression at work. Not even the Chinese appeared to deny that they muzzled a doctor, who later died, that wanted greater attention to & warning of the severity of the situation. Also there are suggestions based on local reports that the death toll in Wuhan and wider Hubei was way way larger than the authorities stated. There are reports, on record, of concerns over the Wuhan site's bio security before this thing ever kicked off. There are stories that the EU has confirmed Chinese attempts at public disinformation in the West over SarsCoV2
None of those is intelligence agency sourced but add them up and the you'd be asking what the fuck were the Chinese at and why.
I will say this though, Western agencies try very hard to keep an eye on anything and anywhere that may be involved in dual-purpose activity. Its doubtful they'd not try to monitor the Wuhan facility and its doubtful they don't have some picture even if fragmented.
Yes, that's all perfectly plausible.
Best educated guess at the moment seems to be that there was a local cover-up, quite possibly at a fairly junior level but once this failed and the scope of the problem became evident, the Government opened up and became cooperative. If that is the case, valuable time was lost but at least the concept of 'the comity of nations' was not shredded beyond repair.
I expect to see more heat put on China, but not a complete breakdown in relations.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
Unless I've misunderstood something here, rolling a 6 and a 1 on two dice is 17-1, not 35-1. Assuming that the two dice are thrown together and are indistinguishable from each other, which I think is the case.
It’s two 5/1 shots in a double isn’t it? 35/1
It's very possible I'm being thick:
- 36 total possible outcomes - two of them are "good": 6/1 and 1/6 - so 2 out of 36, or 1 out of 18. 17/1
This as this origin of the virus story is going to gather some wind behind it. The US government is becoming more strident that it came from a lab but some things to note:
1. I've seen a report from the US that there is reasonable concurrence amongst the 17 US intelligence agencies that its origin was in a lab. In reality there are a handful of agencies that actually would have any on the spot focus on such matters in terms of intelligence take and analysis; CIA, NSA, NRO, NGA & DIA The rest probably do not count because they are probably not involved in the original raw take or analysis of it.
2. For clarity, the Wuhan facility were mixing viral components together, its no secret and never hidden. That in itself is not necessarily a smoking gun but if its mentioned as a claim to suggest something sinister, its not a revelation. Maybe it is sinister work, maybe it isn't.
3. Its viable, probable even, China lied its arse off about Sars CoV 2 in particular around its knowledge of it, the timelines and potentially information around its nature,severity and casualty rate, especially early on in proceedings. The follow up weird and wonderful disinformation is deflection but for what purpose. Plain embarrassment or something more calculated and worrisome?
4. As yet no one with any authority claims it was a deliberately engineered release and as yet no one has quite yer stepped up to say it was created 100% artificially even if done in the course of medical research.
5. The process of ramp up of claims & pressure from the US (and perhaps more notably from Australian officials who are very aware of China upstream) is only likely to be calibrated such for three reasons:
a). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge and are progressively going to embarrass China and eventually release take.
b). They are pushing from a position of considerable knowledge but are possibly reluctant to reveal the take (which they may have to)
c). They have plenty of fragments but cant quite put it together so are stirring the pot.
I'd refer to any decent story sourcing that refers to the Aussies with due attention. Their investment in monitoring China is as proportionally sizeable as anyone.
The above doesn't refer to political side of this. Its pretty clear how the current administration could and will use the situation but it shouldn't take away from the questions about exactly how China handled the whole situation.
It seems unlikely that the Wuhan lab would do anything so detrimental to China's interest as deliberately releasing the virus into the local population. Virologists seem certain that Covid-19 has the characteristics of a naturally occurring virus originating in bats. The Wuhan was doing normal virological research into these viruses.
Accidental release of the virus into the neighbourhoood is plausible given the proximity of the lab to the origin of the outbreak, but there doesn't appear to be any evidence for this.
And there is no suggestion in the above that there is strong evidence of either.
Yeah but if the baseline is that a naturally occurring virus being studied at the lab might have been released accidentally but probably wasn't, that may say more about the sources you quote and their "position of considerable knowledge" than the practices of the lab and those of Chinese authorities.
Remember this is not a case of showing your hand, its not how it works. We don't know what raw information Western agencies have or how they have interpreted it and its unlikely to come out unless they can protect sourcing and methodology. If they can, then they will release it but how do you show say intercepts of logs of a computer for example. That's your source blown. How do you show intercepts of telephone conversations and so on.
What I'm trying to do is suggest how this may go forward, because its likely to become a bigger story and source of conflict.
Equally it doesn't take top secret intelligence to suggest that there was suppression at work. Not even the Chinese appeared to deny that they muzzled a doctor, who later died, that wanted greater attention to & warning of the severity of the situation. Also there are suggestions based on local reports that the death toll in Wuhan and wider Hubei was way way larger than the authorities stated. There are reports, on record, of concerns over the Wuhan site's bio security before this thing ever kicked off. There are stories that the EU has confirmed Chinese attempts at public disinformation in the West over SarsCoV2
None of those is intelligence agency sourced but add them up and the you'd be asking what the fuck were the Chinese at and why.
I will say this though, Western agencies try very hard to keep an eye on anything and anywhere that may be involved in dual-purpose activity. Its doubtful they'd not try to monitor the Wuhan facility and its doubtful they don't have some picture even if fragmented.
The reports of concern about (one of) the Wuhan sites’ biosecurity included requests from the Chinese for help in improving it. The details are unclear, as the US hasn’t published those cables,
One of the problems is that we’re nearly four years into a US administration almost as mendacious as the Chinese.
Further to my Backgammon points, what has always intrigued and disturbed me is that these Random Number Generators must be used for all 'board' and similar games. In Backgammon, the nature of the game is so finite that an experienced player soon notices if the dice are somehow loaded and the table isn't straight. Most players immediately notice something a bit off about the internet Backgammon tables. I'm not sure it would be so obvious with, say, Monopoly or whatever other games are played for money.
Strange you should mention Monopoly. My youngest went 3 times round the board from the off yesterday never landing on anything other than chance community chest free parking just visiting or Go. And never being moved either forward or back by the cards he drew. I have no idea of the odds but they must be astronomical. Incidentally he won!
The head guy from Recode in Iceland stated he was very confident that CV was much more widely spread and earlier in the UK that the official figures show.
Not going to be surprising if we find that across Europe even earlier.
A lot of people had a particularly bad case of flu in December.
As is the case most years. If significant numbers had been infected with the Covid virus, we’d almost certainly have seen a much earlier spike in deaths.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
Unless I've misunderstood something here, rolling a 6 and a 1 on two dice is 17-1, not 35-1. Assuming that the two dice are thrown together and are indistinguishable from each other, which I think is the case.
It’s two 5/1 shots in a double isn’t it? 35/1
It's very possible I'm being thick:
- 36 total possible outcomes - two of them are "good": 6/1 and 1/6 - so 2 out of 36, or 1 out of 18. 17/1
Yes, it's a while since I've played now and I think you are right - 17/1. But I'm talking about throwing it repeatedly, say seven or eight times in a dozen throws. The math is a little tricky, but the odds are astronomic however you do it.
Spoke to a university friend who lives in Brooklyn last night and he said the sirens were certainly much less regular than they were a few weeks ago
It does seem that NYC and the wider tri-state area are probably past the peak of this wave, but the decline is low and slow. I don’t think we’ll be reopening this month although upstate may.
It’s all the places around the country with half-hearted lockdowns or which are even lifting their restrictions where the brown stuff is really going to hit the fan, and soon.
Further to my Backgammon points, what has always intrigued and disturbed me is that these Random Number Generators must be used for all 'board' and similar games. In Backgammon, the nature of the game is so finite that an experienced player soon notices if the dice are somehow loaded and the table isn't straight. Most players immediately notice something a bit off about the internet Backgammon tables. I'm not sure it would be so obvious with, say, Monopoly or whatever other games are played for money.
Strange you should mention Monopoly. My youngest went 3 times round the board from the off yesterday never landing on anything other than chance community chest free parking just visiting or Go. And never being moved either forward or back by the cards he drew. I have no idea of the odds but they must be astronomical. Incidentally he won!
In my experience, the odds of anyone ever actually winning a game of monopoly are essentially zero.
I haven't moved from my computer since lockdown started and I've lost 100 pounds on online poker.
I've been considered getting back into online poker. There must be a surge of fish rushing to the tables to relieve lockdown boredom.
I wonder of there are PL Omaha HiLo games these days.
This works both ways: some of the people coming back in aren't fish. But I think you're probably right that the overall quality level has dropped.
SkyBet used to have PL Omaha HiLo tables, although I don't think they were ever as popular as HoldEm, and I haven't been round that way in a while.
The joy og the PLOHL tables back in the day was the idiots who thought they could play not only could they play Oamaha HL but that they understood how PL worked.
Playing PLOHL with good players would be a sure fire route to misery. Only playing Limit Omaha HL would be worse
I may have misled you; I have no idea what any of that means; I just remember that SkyBet had the thing you said. Omaha scares the living daylights out of me so I stick to HoldEm.
I would warn off people playing off a number of types of online games these days for any serious money (even if you were decent back in the day). And I would be very careful which sites. Outside out PokerStars and Party Poker, most just don't have the resources to battle the widespread abuse of TOC and cheating.
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Stars are pretty good as I had my account frozen, not because I was cheating but while playing the early stages of a tournament was doing some testing on a piece of software I was writing. Merely an analyser for the hand logs you can get and they picked it up even though it doesn't give real time info. Let them see the code and they unfroze my account
I lost a lot of money playing on-line backgammon. Given my skill level, I should only have lost a bit and I couldn't figure out why my results were so bad. Eventually I figured the table wasn't straight. The Random Number Generator [RGN] did not appear to be entirely random. I have my own ideas as to how it was fixed, but didn't hang around to prove it. Haven't touched the game in years and wouldn't touch on-line gaming for money with a barge pole now.
I am extremely sure the RNG on the big poker sites is on the up and up, and even today you can still make a good living at it.
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
How would you know?
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
What for Pokerstars?....their RNG has been tested and accredited by a company called Gaming Labs International.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
See my answer to RobD. The integrity of the RNG only takes you so far. You MUST test the live data - i.e. real games that have actually been played. I don't know that anybody does this. The Backgammon boys certainly did not.
Pokerstars absolutely does....
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
I'll take your word for it. Please take my that the Backgammon tables stank, so badly that I packed in.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
Unless I've misunderstood something here, rolling a 6 and a 1 on two dice is 17-1, not 35-1. Assuming that the two dice are thrown together and are indistinguishable from each other, which I think is the case.
It’s two 5/1 shots in a double isn’t it? 35/1
How can you get it so 1-6 works but 6-6 or 1-1 doesn't ?
Comments
edit damn auto correct
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52521426
I've told her that although the virus is bad and has changed a few things it's not all bad change. That people have started to think a little more about each other, saying "stay safe" instead of very little at all. That nature has started to recover, with cleaner air and wildlife enjoying fewer people being about. That less position and not sitting in traffic is making people and politicians think about how we can do some things differently. About how not everything people were doing before was good and that some of the changes are better.
It's a one-sided account. But I hope for her sake that in at least partially right. We can't just go back to status quo ante. That really would be a disaster.
There must be very many frightened and worried children and your words of comfort are just perfect
Lets hope they also reflect the new tomorrow
The U.S. saw 2,909 people die of Covid-19 in 24 hours, according to the data, which was collected as of 4 a.m. ET on Friday. That’s the highest daily Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. yet, based on a CNBC analysis of the WHO’s daily Covid-19 situation reports.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/02/who-us-just-reported-deadliest-day-for-coronavirus.html?__source=sharebar|facebook&par=sharebar&fbclid=IwAR147eN6tJp8AQQ9DujSY7uWhbSHKz--dimsbf0wwtlSCGsmGCPZy3Gmmpo
Thus far, approximately nil.
In this case I might also throw in a "might be some data artifacts" as well.
This from an article on the 1919 pandemic...
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/05/1918-pandemic-cultural-memory-literature-outka.html
... Reading letters from survivors of the flu pandemic, one of the things that strikes me over and over again, that’s so moving, is that almost every one of them says, “I never forgot; I never forgot; I never forgot.” [Researching the book], I interviewed one 105-year-old woman who had the flu in Richmond, when she was 8. And in my cheery way, I said something like “Why do you think people forgot the flu?” And she looked at me like I was crazy. “We didn’t forget! We didn’t ignore it! We didn’t forget.” She’s 105, right? And she was like, “It never faded—not for us.”...
Any sort of short stack game like HU SnGs or Spin n Goes are an absolute no-no. These are totally dominated by cartels from top to bottom, many of whom have been caught using real time assistance software, which provides Game Theory Optimal (GTO) solutions. Even those not cheating provide extremely detailed information in regards to GTO strategies. They cartels communicate with one another, hold or flood the lobbies on organized schedules, so if you get a game, it is because you are the sucker.
NL / PLO cash games, again I wouldn't. Same problem, but to a lesser extent with real time assistant software. But, coaching for profit stables have become widespread, who again disseminate high quality GTO information.
Due to much lower cost of living in places like Eastern Europe, you even get this even at very low levels like 50NL for NL cash games.
I would just stick to large field MTTs...the level of improvement is much lower, but even then be aware that big stables exist, and plenty of suggestion of ghosting / coaching if a horse makes it deep.
Specific evidence for lab origin, thus far, has not been presented.
Antibody tests to tell millions of Britons if they have had coronavirus will be in use within two weeks as '100 percent accurate' kit is rolled out
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8282929/Antibody-tests-tell-millions-coronavirus-rolled-two-weeks.html
The devil is in the details, though, as such a test will require fresh blood, and the mechanics of getting several million people to prick their own fingers and apply the blood to the test kit aren’t going to be 100% reliable,
Even so, accurate stats (and they’ll also be sampling a randomised selection of 100,000 across the UK for active infection next week) ought to make a huge difference in formulating effective policies to deal with the pandemic.
Tech firms are in talks with ministers about creating health passports to help Britons return safely to work using coronavirus testing and facial recognition.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/03/coronavirus-health-passports-for-uk-possible-in-months
Not sure everybody is going to be happy with facial recognition tech though.
Accidental release of the virus into the neighbourhoood is plausible given the proximity of the lab to the origin of the outbreak, but there doesn't appear to be any evidence for this.
However, that is different to making mass market ones for home use. Nobody has managed to get one that is accurate enough.
Oxford have been working on one that looks promising, but looks like they might have been pipped by this company.
The hospital’s head of security said
"We wont tolerate any Crimea"
BORIS Johnson has told how he leapt on to his hospital bed wearing only his boxer shorts just two hours after leaving intensive care — to “clap like crazy” for the NHS.
Oxford University students have voted against “ableist, classist and misogynistic” reading lists, claiming that they should not be forced to engage with any “hateful material”. Students should not be required to attend any lectures, tutorials or seminars, nor should they have to sit exams, which involve “hate speech” against a particular group, according to a new policy that the university’s student union has adopted.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/03/oxford-university-students-vote-block-ableist-classist-misogynistic/
Well that pretty much empties the history curriculum....How the f##k can you learn lessons from the past if you don't educate yourself about it?
https://twitter.com/secpompeo/status/1257022823882727425?s=21
The warning I was putting out that if you aren't already in the right circles, just trying to come back to the game now after a number of years out of the scene, you are going to get steam rollered in many game types.
It is a vocal minority who dominated SU politics who appear to spend years of their life going from paid elected position to position, putting off getting a real job for as long as possible, who come up with this shit.
The problem is the sensible majority just don't want to get involved, they want to stay out of trouble. The numbers even voting for SU officer elections is a tiny percentage, let alone when they pass they dumb motions.
Not that more people are leaving with it than entered with it. Because that would be a bit of a shit hospital system!
I made enquiries about the auditing of the RNG and got no satisfaction. The random numbers were produced by an Australian company and audited by another. For all I know the two companies were connected. It was impossible to find out anothing of worth about them.
My enquiries into the method of auditing drew a complete blank. The site owners were either ignorant, or deliberately stonewalling.
Gaming Labs are an absolute massive worldwide operation that accredits all the big gaming outlets, physical and online. Most gambling regulatory organizations state that for a gaming product to be passed for use, it must pass their certification. It is basically the gold standard.
Does that include those of the working class who voted for Boris and Brexit?
If you don't test live data, there is always the chance of interference between the RNG and the actual roll. The RNG could be honest, but the roll you get on the screen may not be.
"Peter, you can't just keep saying seven. That's not very random."
"Seventeen. Seven. Seven...."
I have huge criticisms about them as a company now, but on game integrity they are world leaders in security and technology when it comes to online games.
Also, I have also personally worked with datasets of "live" data from their site that contained 100s millions of hands.
And due to a scandal on another poker site, where the operator had a "god" mode and got involved in the games, lots of very smart people have repeated looked at Stars data and never found anything that implicates the Stars as an operator.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1257047680167051265
What I'm trying to do is suggest how this may go forward, because its likely to become a bigger story and source of conflict.
Equally it doesn't take top secret intelligence to suggest that there was suppression at work. Not even the Chinese appeared to deny that they muzzled a doctor, who later died, that wanted greater attention to & warning of the severity of the situation. Also there are suggestions based on local reports that the death toll in Wuhan and wider Hubei was way way larger than the authorities stated. There are reports, on record, of concerns over the Wuhan site's bio security before this thing ever kicked off. There are stories that the EU has confirmed Chinese attempts at public disinformation in the West over SarsCoV2
None of those is intelligence agency sourced but add them up and the you'd be asking what the fuck were the Chinese at and why.
I will say this though, Western agencies try very hard to keep an eye on anything and anywhere that may be involved in dual-purpose activity. Its doubtful they'd not try to monitor the Wuhan facility and its doubtful they don't have some picture even if fragmented.
This was at least five years ago so things may have changed but let me give you a couple of examples that I will always remember. I was bearing off with an 80 point lead. My opponent threw six consecutive high doubles to beat me home. The odds against one high double (double 4,5, or 6) is 11/1 against. So the odds against doing is six times in a row? Astronomic. The kind of thing you might see once in a lifetime even if you play regularly. Next day the same thing happened, although this time I was the beneficiary. (Ironically my opponent accused me of cheating.)
On another occasion, my opponent and I both remarked on the frequency with which doubles were coming up. This culminated in one game in which over half the throws were doubles (memorably I threw 20 double 5s.) We were laughing about it. But would you play for money on a table where this happens?
One other piece of weirdness I recall concerns escaping from the bar. You can engineer it so that your opponent has to throw a 1 and a 6 to get a piece out. I've seen this rolled repeatedy at odds of 35/1 against to spring succession of pieces off the bar, but only in intenet play. If it happened in a casino, there would be a riot.
Not going to be surprising if we find that across Europe even earlier.
It is also why in my original post, that when it comes to poker, basically stick to two sites these days.
Of the rest, the biggest issue is they don't have the resources to combat cheating, and a small minority (mostly Chinese apps that run as private clubs) aren't trustworthy.
The Chinese apps based sites, many reports of very dodgy things going on, and the whole way the eco-system works stinks.
On a serious note look at something like Ryan Murphy's Netflix series "Hollywood" to see how "problematic" history is increasingly rewritten to conform to contemporary values.
Best educated guess at the moment seems to be that there was a local cover-up, quite possibly at a fairly junior level but once this failed and the scope of the problem became evident, the Government opened up and became cooperative. If that is the case, valuable time was lost but at least the concept of 'the comity of nations' was not shredded beyond repair.
I expect to see more heat put on China, but not a complete breakdown in relations.
- 36 total possible outcomes
- two of them are "good": 6/1 and 1/6
- so 2 out of 36, or 1 out of 18. 17/1
The details are unclear, as the US hasn’t published those cables,
One of the problems is that we’re nearly four years into a US administration almost as mendacious as the Chinese.
I have no idea of the odds but they must be astronomical.
Incidentally he won!
If significant numbers had been infected with the Covid virus, we’d almost certainly have seen a much earlier spike in deaths.
It’s all the places around the country with half-hearted lockdowns or which are even lifting their restrictions where the brown stuff is really going to hit the fan, and soon.
1-6 /6-1 is 17-1.