Back to the Felt

After some fun in the sun and all kinds of hassles with my business, CEU.com, which we are trying to sell (more later), I'm back blogging. The way it is suppose to be. Not only that, but I'm going to talk about what we all love - poker. Live-in-the-moment Poker!

It was great to be back in live tournament play. I played two events at Foxwoods and I thought I might be a bit rusty since I haven't been in a real event for about five months.

So first I enter the $340 event which attracts 1093 entries. For the first six hours, I got very poor cards and worked hard to tread water. The longer I could survive with crap hands, the better chance I'll have when the mother load of starting cards comes in. At one point my 15,000 starting stack was down to under 4000. I skanked my way back up to 9000 or so when I went on a mini-rush. I get pocket aces and made a standard 3X raise. I got one caller. An old guy with a lot of chips who didn't seem to know what he was doing (I just moved to the table). It was gift time when the flop came out 6-6-A. He checks. I check. Turn puts 2 diamonds out there. He bets 3,000. I call. Diamond on river. He goes all in with his flush and I, of course, call. When you get situations like that, you can see why making big, strategic lay downs is important (more on that and plenty more on my courses). I got two more courtesy double ups. Another weak player goes all in for 15X. I have AA again. He has 8-8. (I would feel his pain later.) A few hands later, I'm peeling back one ace and I hear; "I'm all in." The woman had over $100,000. I peeled back another ace. "I call." She had A-4 of hearts. The flop brought a 3 and a 2. The turn brought a second heart. It's never easy. But I won and was now table chip leader.

I cruised into the money. Picked up a lot of chips around the bubble. Now we were down to two tables. I had about $420,000 in chips. Just before a break I get 4-4 in the cutoff. The BB is $30,000. I raise to $100,000. The SB goes all in for another $120,000 to me. This was a sucky position. I knew I had to call. He was getting low and would certainly push with A - (any high card). So I figured I was a slight favorite. And I couldn't just abandon my children out there. So I called. He did indeed have AK. So I was happy, but my happiness did not last long when a K hit on the flop. Now I was short and the blinds were going up to 20K; 40K. I got my stack back up to $380,00, but we were in push or fold territory. I decided to fold 9-9 when an early "all in" was called by the guy on my right. It turned out to be AK against AJ and I would have tripled up!!! Instead I went all in with 8-8 and was called by pocket AA. I finished 14. Remember 1093 started. Cashed $2399.

I'll tell you all about the Mega Stack Challenge ($2000) next time.

The End of Jobs

No this isn't a blog about the charismatic CEO of Apple Computer. Its about work. Rather how we work. The need for workers. The end of an era.

Today it was announced that worker productivity increased 6.4%. The largest increase in six years. So what's the big deal. People are working harder to keep their jobs, you may think. That's a good thing or, at worst, a minor economic statistic. Right? I suppose it depends on your point of view. Lets look more closely at this paradigm-shifting trend.

Back when I was studying for my doctorate in Management of Technology, I learned that as new technologies are introduced into the marketplace, efficiencies increase. Incrementally, it became relatively easy for four workers to produce what it took 5 workers to produce in the past. The new workers had better tools. It was expected. Historically, this was a very good thing. Companies became more profitable. Stock prices went up. We could produce more food, goods and services to meet the needs of an ever growing population. But now we have reached a level of automation which is allowing companies to produce more with a relatively sparse work force.

I have experienced this phenomena first hand. In 1999, I founded a company called CEU.com, an Internet education company that provided continuing education courses and credit to insurance professionals. We had about five employees at first and served, on average, 200 customers a month. Today we have seven employees and we service 2000 customers a month. If and when it grows to service 20,000 customers a month, the company will only need ten or eleven employees to keep things humming.

Lets look at this on a macro scale. If other companies are also finding the Internet and other technologies are allowing them to meet demand with exponentially fewer workers, then the need for humans in the workplace will decline overall at an alarming rate. Suddenly, efficiency is going to create a massive social problem. The US, in essence, will need, not the approximately 100 million jobs it provides today, but at best, 50 million or even less.

The minds of economics always assumed that there would be a migration of factory jobs to the service sector and that has been born out. No need to worry. Although most politicians focus on the migration of jobs overseas, its really automation and the corresponding productivity increases that are causing this decline. But worry we must. Now the service industry is finding all kinds of savings through the use of technology. There are fast food restaurants that are completely automated. Education can happen much more efficiently over the web (e.g. CEU.com). Even health care can provide on line diagnosis and treatment through remote medical servicing. Then you have online pharmacies and other management efficiencies as well. Of course we'll still need nurses, school teachers, doctors and lawyers in great numbers, but not in the kind of numbers we required in the past. Beyond a doubt, the net number of jobs needed will decline markedly. This current economic recovery could be the first "job shock" of many to come.

Lets extrapolate out what this will mean from a social and economic perspective. Most manual labor jobs will disappear. Many professional jobs will decline as well. Think programmers (surprisingly IT work will decline as do-it-yourself programs predominate), editors (book and news media), managers in general and, most obviously, journalists. Think what must be going through the mind of a 2009 graduate from a Journalism program. She applies for work and finds hordes of experienced out-of-work journalist competing for the trickle of low paying jobs.

In the future, "a real job" cannot be made available for every qualified individual. A job can no longer be the center of our lives since so many of us will not have one. It can no longer be the source for our health care, material needs, retirement nest egg or the way we spend most of our time.

Now is the time to begin thinking about a country in which only half of the working age people are needed to do the jobs that need to be done. What then will the other half do? I do not presuppose to have the solution. But it will mean that Laissez faire capitalism, as we know it, will no longer work. It will had run its course. Money will become more and more concentrated in the hands of the relatively few owners and controllers of the means of production. Does this language bring to mind any images. How about Karl Marx? What goes around, comes around.

World Series of Poker Reflections

The World Series of Poker for 2009 has come and gone. Its now being shown on ESPN on Tuesday nights.

There were some interesting developments this year. The most interesting was the re-emergence of Phil Ivey. For true fans of poker and for the serious player, there should be nothing better than seeing the most skilled player in the world succeed in big time tournament play. To the inexperienced eye, it looks like luck, luck, luck - all over the place. But the key to poker success is getting and keeping those sometimes slight edges over the competition. It so good to see that this one player is showing the world that poker is a skill game.

For those of you who don't follow this closely, Phil Ivey has won two tournaments (bracelets) at this years World Series. But the truly amazing thing is that he made the final table of the Main Event as well. Do you realize how difficult that is? 6500+ entries. Eight days of playing. Not only that, but he hit a serious swoon in the later rounds and had to fight back to get into contention. He has made so much money in poker (and betting on himself) that he tipped the dealers the entire $90,000+ prize money he won in his first victory.

It goes to show that if you work at your game. Keep looking for leaks and trying to improve every session, you too could be a regular big winner at the tables. In the long term, poker has nothing to do with luck. Did I say that already? Check out my courses if you want more detail.