My ROI for poker this year: some puny, not particularly high number. (In fact, if you count live poker, it's pretty spectacularly negative, but that's everyone except, uhh, my entire WSOP house...okay, I suck.) My ROI for political betting this year: 200%+. I'm pretty sure this means I should stick to tworags, poker coaching (those who can't do, teach), political betting coaching (those who like to hear themselves talk, teach), and whatever else I do that doesn't involve poker and/or possibly move to a different country holding elections every year so I can handicap their races. C'mon, that'd be really fun, right? No? Okay, then.

Aside from the ugly ROI part, which mostly involves running awful in tourneys, I've been playing good winning poker recently, but in the last place I expected to wind up [back] at - SNG's. Playing around with a push analyzer, I discovered a handful of leaks, but it looks like my intuition is still good and I don't make many push/fold errors, which is about everything that's required to beat those things other than running well. Because of my prop deal, I get paid for playing them more than anyone online except for FTP's red pros, so it makes sense for me to get a bunch in every day; they're unintrusive enough/I don't care about bad runs in them enough to take time off. My end of the year goal is to play half or more of the high level ones running on Cake while I'm doing a session, which would wind up being something like 30-40 over a few hours. I can probably do that and stay sane; since there's only one big political betting day left, and Sundays are usually a money sink, it's a good way to grind up cash for the rest of the year.

In the meantime, Intrade has definitely been fun. Two days ago, when nobody knew who Palin was, a friend of mine and I did flight traffic analysis, spotted a plane from Anchorage to Ohio, followed up on that and spotted a Free Republic (right wing forum) thread proclaiming the same thing, and basically had the entire Palin market to ourselves for hours. Having taken a flyer on her earlier that day when she was trading at 2% rather than the 4% most of my shares were at, my friend made more than I did, but both of us cleaned up (I made more off the night than I have in any single tournament this year) and I've no complaints. Much like poker, there's a kind of cerebral high that comes from having a clear scoop on a piece of critical information, knowing that you are very likely right and hugely ahead of the curve, and then having the market prove you right time and time again. It's definitely got a competition element, and I can see why hedge fund guys love what they do, except for the whole "sleeping at the office for weeks at a time" part.

Now that I'm done bragging, check out the good (for once) pic of me about to bust out of a Fresnoment on Kyle's blog :)

The CNBC interview aired today. Since 60M hasn't aired yet, this is my first major TV interview ever. Yay! Granted, I kinda hoped it'd be for winning some big donkament or other, but this is fun, too.

In other news, Tworags is going places and people will like the changes, but since that's still a ways off, I encourage you to check out SirWatts' lucky cats.

...waiting for a particular text message is getting old.

Since being on the scene for this is probably worth several grand, it's more than worth it, but it would certainly be nice if Obama would HURRY UP AND SEND THE DAMN THING OUT ALREADY.

On the plus side, at least the media has fallen for it to the point where the last three days have been all Obama all the time. It'd be funny if the delaying tactic weren't so transparently calculated to do exactly that and the MSM didn't obligingly fall for it anyway. The news cycle has effectively made American politics an absurd circus, in whose main ring two opponents battle it out over whether one is a bigger celebrity and whether one is loved by the ringmaster more than the other. (Incidentally, when one candidate has three times the media presence of his opponent, the correct fair and balanced thing to do is probably not to write three times the negative stories to make up for it.) The debate over Iraq - anybody realize that the US went ahead and set timetables for withdrawal this morning? - and over the economy has been relegated to the sideshows. Ridiculous.

But hey, it's great for me; the dozen or so talking heads that never switched off their HRC support (I'm looking at you, Stephanopolous) have been talking up Hillary for vice president to the point where the Intrade price hit double digits. Aside from the fact that she hasn't been vetted, Obama can't stand her, and she's *still* disingenuous about her level of support, Obama is (perhaps overly) sure he's going to win, and, as such, is almost certainly not concerned with VP electoral math at all, removing the only reason that she would ever be picked. Nevertheless, the market rates her as more likely than Sebellius *and* Kaine combined. "Lol".

...and as I write, Drudge seems to be breaking that it's Bayh. Looks like a busy night is coming up.

Update: I'm good at doublechecking, so the Bayh false alarm didn't cost me any money. OTOH, I don't have anything on Biden right now, either, and he's not quite worth it at the high 80's just in case of a last second switch.

In the meantime, I'm told that Dick Morris was on Hannity today talking about how much Obama needs to pick Hillary. Dick Morris, much like anyone else on TV ever connected to the Clintons, is entirely worthless.

Right after I got back home from the 60M thing, I got a strange email in my inbox from CNBC asking me to contact them. Turns out they read the NY Times article on me about Intrade and wanted to do a piece on that. The result was a pretty decent (I think) interview that will air on CNBC around 8/25, largely rehashing the NY Times piece; depending on what they air, it should be a little more in depth, though. Bottom line: if you think that Intrade is a good example of the wisdom of crowds theory, you're probably better off just taking my predictions (or that of another decent trader) as gospel, instead; you're much more likely to get something coherent out of me than out of trying to look at that kind of political market.

In other news, I'm currently playing the Sundays and haven't posted a hand on the blog in forever, so here's one from the Cake 100K. I had T9 and think the river fold was good. Opinions?

The interview was a long time coming, but it did finally happen today. I'm proud to say I think it went well. ETA: sometime this fall.

Fun fact: it turns out dlpnyc21 (NYU Dave) and I went to the same high school!

Preview pics: