Would you gamble 1 million?

Let’s imagine you won a million dollars in the lottery. Now assume that Donald Trump comes to you and challenges you to flip a coin, heads you win, tails he wins. If you win, he will give you 10 million dollar; however, if you loose you give him your one million dollar. Would you accept this challenge?

From a probabilities point of view you should accept the challenge since you get a 10:1 for the money with a 50% success, that is, you get 10 times the money you bet for a challenge that you would win half the time.

However, from a psychological point of view, should you accept it? It depends on the person. How many million dollars you have? How long does it take you to make one million? Are you willing to lose your one million? Everyone has a different perspective of life therefore we would see some people accepting the challenge (Type A), and some won’t (Type B).

In poker, we run into both types of people, from my personal experience, I never seen successful type B poker players. There is a saying, it takes money to make money and I completely believe it is true in poker. Saving your chips and never risking it is just going to shrink your stack by the hour. However, type A players are the players that you see having a huge stack in front of them or stands up and leaves the game very early. One good example of a type A poker player is Phil Ivey; in tournaments you either see him with a huge stack early in the tournament or you see him out the game in a couple of hours or even minutes!

Even though, type A is the way to go in poker. Sometimes, players (especially me) become type B for a moment. A good example was summer 2005 where an old experiences player went all-in(~$1,000), I knew he had pocket jacks or lower (I had a tell on him therefore I knew he didn’t have anything bigger), I had AKs, so if my assumption was correct it was a coin flip. The pot had $500 before he went all-in; therefore I was getting 1.5:1 for a 50% success. Probabilities-wise, I should have played, but emotional-wise I was too attached to my winnings.

p.s. He showed pocket tens.

A word about online poker

(This article was adopted from http://www.GambleWIKI.com.)

Since early February I had no time to go to Casino Niagara, therefore I've been playing online at PokerRoom.com and PartyPoker.com. So far this year I am in the negative -thanks to online poker. Actually if it wasn't for my casino winnings earlier this year; I would have been in the big negative.

So the question is; Is online poker for me?
I think I could be a good online player since I always make a profit in the first hour I play, then it goes downhill. What is it? maybe I have no patience, maybe I get tired after that or I just get bored.

Consider these points before playing online poker:

1. '''It can be very very addictive.''' Online gambling is more dangerous than live gambling because you tend to play more often (the computer is right in your house) and you can play whenever you want. Also, people tend to forget that the numbers in the screen is ACTUAL money so they tend to play loose.

2. '''Cheating is wide spread in online gambling.''' It is easier for more than one individual to play on the sae table and help each other through the phone or instant messeger. My recommendation to avoid such a situation is to play big tables, that is, 10 people in the table. Also,those tables are EASY to identify when you recognize check re-raise a lot among certain players.

3. '''Online poker can mke you or break you very easy.''' If you don't have patience, discipline and a solid strategy then it would be hard in online poker to make a steady cash flow, same goes for live games to a certain extent.

4. '''Get a CHEAP and FAST method to get money IN & OUT of the net.''' If you are not wise with your transactions you can lose a big portion of your winnings to admistritative and processing fees. Study each deposit site carefully, I personally use NETELLER.

GambleWiki - the ultimate gambling portal

Two days ago, Moneer and I decided that there was not a good gambling poker on the net. Our decision? create one. GambleWIKI.com is the ultime gambling portal on the net.

If you are curious about the history of gambling....GambleWIKI.com
If your friends use poker lingo and you feel like a bum...GambleWIKI.com
If you want to make some coin...GambleWIKI.com
If you want to donate some of that coin...GambleWIKI.com
If you want to share some strategies...GambleWIKI.com
If you would like to arrange house games...GambleWIKI.com

I would like to take the opportunity to metion that GambleWIKI.com does not encourage gambling in any way.GambleWIKI.com will help you be more educated in your gambling and know more about the history of gambling.

I hope that some of my beloved readers will become contributors at the gambling portal; GambleWIKI.com

Business talk

So I am into entrepeneur mode right now. And luckily they got this guy who started 4 businesses that is an alumni from my Uni to give a speach at some class of mine. There is one thing that he said that really got my attention,'If you have an idea just execute it. And just care about doing the first little transaction, do not care about later. If you do that first transaction then that would mean that you just opened your first business. Afterwards, everything gets easier.' So right now, I am trying to do that first transaction. Things are going slow since I need to go to a lot of places and try to make deals with people about something that I have no idea about. I have a friend that knows a lot about that, he is going to help me; actually his father is in that line of business. We'll see how things turn out.

Proyecto Uno

I have been considering this for a while, do my MBA and get a strategic management consulting job for 150k a year or open my own business. Long time ago I realized that I am a lousy worker; I don't let anyone boss my around even the biggest boss, I believe that's why I have so much respect in the company.

When people ask me 'where you see yourself in 5 years?' I give some diplomatic ansdwer that they all like, but later when I am thining about the question, I see myself owing my own company where the longer I work the more money I make, contrary to being employeed. I see myself having 100 employees working fr me, having a great company that provides a great service to the customers, my employees and the comunity.

I have tons of ideas but most of them need capital. Finally, last week I decided that I needed an action plan, so I picked one idea from my ideas vault (yes i have my brainstormed ideas with detailed business plans saved somewhere just in case) i do that because when the opportunity comes along there is no time for preparation; and that opportunity came earlier this week.

I was playing poker at PokerRoom, I was up by $300 in a 2-5NL game when I got a call from my friend. She called me because i asked her for help finding a place to lease in Bay St., the conversation went something like this,

(M=me, F= friend)
F= May I speak to EvolvedHomoSapien.
M=Speaking
F=Hi I am from Colliers, I am calling regarding your request for 4,000 sqt. office space for lease in Bay St.
M= Oh, it is you, how are you?
F=Nothing much. So why do you want that space?
M=I am planning to open a restaurant there.
F=Oh dear, i wouldn't do that, restaurants have the biggest turn over. But listen come tonight to this concert I am going with my boyfriend, you can talk to him about that, he knows a lot about that.
M=Alright, see you there.

That night i went to that concert, it was pretty awesome, good music, nice people and a vibe that filled the air with pure energy. One of the guys singing was her ex-boss, he was a pretty good singer. Well we stayed there listening to music, drinking domestic beer and singing along with the musicians, it was a good time.

In the break, her boyfriend and I started talking about business stuff and he told me about his 2 companies, how he started and all the details. After I pitched my ideas he offered to help me with my credit history through his contacts since he believed I had some good ideas for a business.

Later we went for dinner to the MarketPlace, such a nice place. I got a personalized made deluxe pizza, so delicious. We spend 2 more hours talking, it was such a nice night full of controversial topics, food and alcohol.

I went back home knowing that if I start one of this ideas I wouldn't need the MBA anymore. I emailed my brother and told him about the details and he started to work from his end of the rope. Our project was on its way...Proyecto Uno had been borned.