Seahawks and Mora

I'm a firm believer that you need to give a coach a chance to build a team.  But at some point there has to be a level of play where you conclude you have a PURE (previously undiscovered recruiting error) as a coach and should let him go.

Before the season, the Seahawks were talking playoffs.  Obviously the absence of Walter Jones has hurt them.  But this team has been terrible.  They're 5-9 and just lost to a Tampa Bay team that hadn't scored a touchdown since November and might be the worst team in the league.  Three of their five wins are against St Louis and Detroit.  You could argue that the game against Jacksonville is the only time they've played well all year.  Somehow when the team seems to underachieve every week and gets worse as the season goes on, you have to blame coaching.

I'd fire Mora.  It's not all his fault, but it's hard to believe a good coach could get such a terrible effort out of this team.

Poker update

It's not that I haven't been blogging, I actually haven't played much poker since my last post. With the holidays, evenings have been spent shopping, wrapping, packaging, lighting candles, etc.  And then I had a major "non-playing" disappointment.

I played at Snoqualmie a couple of weeks ago and nearly tripled up by buy in. One of my best results of late.  Basically had two big hands where I hit sets and got paid.  One I erred by calling too much pre flop -- but I just didn't believe the guy -- but the other I played well calling down what was essentially a three barrel bluff on an all-club flop.  Also had a simple hand where four people limp called my raise to 25 and a flopped top pair and took down the pot.  I wish I could have more hands that were so easy.

We spent the weekend at Tulalip for my birthday so I could get a lot of poker in.  Unfortunately it didn't work out well. Monica wanted to go shopping after dinner so I accompanied her and didn't get into a game until after 9 PM.  It had been a long day and I just wasn't feeling it.  Though it was a great table with really bad players.  I also liked that their 3-5 game allows a $500 buy in which means more money on the table.  Wound up winning a little bit almost all of it on one hand where a guy "donated" $300 with trips, no-kicker against my tips-ace kicker when his hand HAD to be no good on the turn.

Hope to get in a session this week, likely Friday if not before, before I head to Las Vegas next Monday.

Poker this week

I'm trying blogging from my phone. Good week of poker. Came out ahead on cash game Tuesday. Won a home game tournament Friday and cashed in the Snoqualmie tournament today.

Hmm, apparently blogging via phone doesn't create a title.  Scratch that and stick to Twitter and Facebook via phone/text.

Session on Tuesday was good.  I nearly doubled up early with KK vs AK with all money in pre-flop.  He really thought he was racing when I four-bet!?!  Played a couple more hours and gave some back.  Some friends held a home game Friday night.  Well, I wish it was Friday night.  We were supposed to start at 9:30 but actually started at 11 (!). Without much structure and organization we kept the starting blinds for at least 90 minutes.  Good news was that I chopped the prize pool with another player at 2AM though I had a small chip lead. 

Today I probably played the best tournament poker I've played in a long time.  I had one bad read, but basically made hands, put pressure on other people, and kept winning pots.  By the time we got to the final table everyone was micro-stacking (about 2-5 BB) and the determining factors were draw for seats, getting lucky with cards, then chips, and last a touch of skill. I did poorly on the first one and wound up 8th. So I cashed twice in one day.  Not sure I've ever done that.

NFL Update

After 10+ weeks, the NFL looks exactly like I called it after 3 weeks.  While it's nice to be right, it's also disappointing the the league is so predictable.  The eight teams I called out as terrible are a combined 18-64 (22%) but 10 of those wins are against each other.  Against the "non-terrible" teams they're 8-54 (13%), which means it's almost a guaranteed win if you play one of them.  The Lions have two wins not because they're improved but because other teams have fallen to their level.  As noted, 2-2 was a schedule fluke for the Redskins whose 3-7 is a better representation of the team's skill level.  The Panthers, who were the top of the terrible group, appear to have upgraded to "bad".

The top is a bit trickier.  I gave the Ravens too much credit for wins against bad teams and they're 2-5 since.  That said all five loses are to division leaders and they were close in every game. The schedule looks more favorable the rest of the way.

The Titans shaped up from their start and people are actually talking playoffs.  I think they have too many teams to catch, but 8-8 would be a great accomplishment after starting 0-6.  Sadly it might help Jeff Fisher keep his job.

Beyond the Colts, I still think there's a lot of smoke and mirrors with the top teams.  The Saints and Vikings have played the two easiest schedules in the league this year.  (Followed by the Packers and Redskins, see I told you Washington was awful.)  But no one in the NFC looks that good, so I'd expect the Vikings and Saints to win in the playoffs, but bet against them and take the points.

The wild variance of tournaments

Tournaments are great fun because you can turn a 60 buy in into a few hundred of few thousand dollars in three or four hours. I enjoy them because the competition is generally week because people don't adjust their play to tournament constraints. Adequate cash players become bad tournament players and bad players become terrible in tournaments.

The flip side is the variance is high. While 30-50% of cash players at a table come out ahead only 10-15% of players in any tournament make the money. As well, with short stacks, you can't be patient and one mistake or one unlucky hand can do you in. Today was a day like that.

Played the Snoqualmie $60 bounty tournament. In addition to paying the top 10 players, you get $10 for every player you bust out. It's a reasonable tournament -- the players aren't very tough but it plays pretty fast. You have to take some chances. Today I had three key hands in huge pots, which coincidentally all involved the same hole cards.

Experts say that when you get under 8-12 big blinds, you should either go all-in or fold preflop. In part that's because you shouldn't raise for 1/3 of your stack and then ever fold. I generally agree but I've found that in these fast tournaments, bad players react almost the same to any raise size. If you have 10 BB whether you raise to 3 BB or 10 BB, people will look you up with TT,AQ+ and fold everything else. A small raise puts a few more hands in play. Thus a small raise has almost the same benefit is a big raise without risking your tournament life with 5-high. That said this play can sometimes get you in trouble. Because of my cards, stack size, and position, I wound up with a few hands where I raised, got called and was all-in on the flop.

First time I had king-rag, flopped a king and both players folded. Then the last hand before the break, the first key hand came up which hurt me. I read an article where the author declared the worst thing that happens in poker is when a third party makes a stupid play which affects the outcome of the hand. And I ran into this here. A MP limps, late position player with a short stack limps in, I complete the SB with JT, BB checks. The flop is 5-2-2 rainbow. This seems like a good spot to bluff -- except for BB, there's no reason anyone should have a 5, 2, or 43 -- so I make a small bet, BB calls (oops), LP calls (double oops). Even if I hit a J or T on the turn, I'm going to be careful. Turn is a T, I check BB bets 1200, LP goes all-in for 1800, I think a long time and fold -- one of them must have me beat, BB says "I have to call". BB has 95, LP has Kh7h, there are not two hearts on the board. LP simply decided he wanted to go home. He made obvious mistakes on all three streets including a naked bluff with no fold equity; it's his money he can do what he wants BUT his stupid play cost me the pot and truly donated chips to BB. I could call one player here, but not two.

Next key hand. UTG limps and it folds to me in the hijack with 7h5h. I decide to steal here, though to be honest I missed that UTG was in until I declared raise. The BB and UTG both call. Flop is Th-8h-5s, pretty good for my hand. Both players check, I shove all in for 2/3 of the pot, BB folds but UTG tanks and finally calls with JdTd. His call is easy if he knows what I have, even though I'm a slight favorite, but this is the exact peril of limp calling (see a couple posts below) with a marginal hand. Even if you hit, you have no idea if your hand is good. Turn ace, River 7. I survive.

Last hand. One mid position limper. I have AJ in SB and raise to 1200, BB is only caller. Flop is J-T-x. I bet 2000, BB raises to 4000, I got all in for about 5500, he calls (uh oh). He has JT. The turn is a ace, but he resucks with a river ten and I'm done. This worked great for him, but I think he'll get in trouble calling here with JT. If he doesn't hit the ten, he's going to lose a lot of chips here.

Poker is a game of skill, but in the short term, luck plays a pretty huge factor. And my luck wasn't so good today.

Snoqualmie 11/18

Had one of the most frustrating nights of poker in a while. First see my previous post on bad players.

Was at a good table at Snoqualmie against a number of bad players and wound up down a buy-in. Played three or four hands the first hour and was up $4 -- I had K8 in the blinds flopped top pair a rivered a straight and won a small pot. I could never get anything going. Had at most one big pair, no big aces that I recall, and a couple of small pairs. Saw a lot of KQ, KJ, 75 hands.

A made a few bad plays, but meanwhile I watched people throw money around. The guy on my left seemed like he had never played live before -- needed an explanation on every bit of terminology. He was pretty tight, but would limp call for 20% of his stack. I made a bunch of second best hands, but I think my real problem was inconsistent aggression. I'd make a loose raise pre-flop then give up when someone check-called. I think I could have pushed people off better hands a few times with a turn or river bet. And I probably played a bit too lose.

But ultimately when people are calling too often, you have to make a hand to win, and I couldn't make a hand.

Overall I'd grade my play a B-, but I need to be on my A game.

Recognizing bad players, way #1: Limp, call

A key element to winning at poker is playing against bad players. If everyone at the table is as good or better than you, the only way you can make money is to get lucky. So it's critical to find bad players and be able to recognize them. How do you find a bad player? Easy, look for them to make bad plays. What's a bad play, well that's not so easy. But here's a favorite of mine.

Sklansky's gap theory says you need a better hand to call a raise then to raise. An application of that is that limp calling is a bad decision. You have a hand you've already deciding isn't worth raising, are now faced with a raise and decide to call the raise. Essentially concluding A > B > A.

Like anything in poker, it's not a hard truth but "it depends". This doesn't apply to a fixed limit game where you're getting at least 4:1 and sometimes 10:1 on your call; here you'd be foolish to fold though this is a reason to not limp first in or in early position. In non-poker terms, once you've paid/wasted $4 for a bottle of water, you might as well drink it. In no limit games, this is often a bad play but one you see all the time. With deep enough stacks and a speculative hand, it makes sense to call a small raise with a speculative hand, like a small pair. But you need to be able to win enough money when it hits to make up for the times it misses. If you start with $100, limp in early position with 44 and someone raises to 25, you can't call off 1/4 of your stack. You'd actually be wise to fold a raise to 15 unless several others are in the pot but that's open to discussion.

That said, one of the worst plays you can make is to limp with a medium strength hand -- a suited ace, ace-jack, ace-ten, two face cards -- then call a raise out of position when you're easily dominated. You're better calling with 98 than with AT even though AT is a better hand overall.

This is doubly true in a short-stack game where players have 20-50 BB only. Watch players who limp call and see if they ever put in more than 10% of their stack or have trouble hands.

Poker this week, Main Event

I played twice this week though neither of those were the most interesting poker of the week.

I played pot limit Omaha at Snoqualmie on Tuesday. Generally I've found that Omaha games are very profitable. Take all the hold 'em players who look for any excuse to play a hand and love Ace-rag or king-seven and give them four cards and their in heaven. Watch any Omaha game for 15-minute and you'll be amazed at hands people turn over -- 8876, Q973, etc. If you play a decent game, you start out so far ahead of your opponents' average hands that it's easy to make a profit. Of course that's a long term thing and over a short session anything can happen. I started off way ahead when I won a huge pot with full house over full house (rare in hold 'em but common in Omaha). But over the course of the session I lost most of a buy-in. I wasn't very happy with my play -- I bet a couple of times when I checked behind -- but basically I ran bad, making lots of second best hands.

Wednesday I played in my semi-regular home game -- blinds of 10 cents and 20 cents and a $10 buy-in. I got great cards and people made loose calls and I quadrupled my buy-in over 3 hours. We started only five-handed and ended with only four players. I think we were mainly screwing around rather than playing actual poker most of the time.

The real poker highlight of the week was watching the final table of the WSOP main event. For the final nine players at the biggest poker event of the year, there was some amazingly wild and poor play. No doubt Cada and Moon are good players but they made some incredibly terrible plays and got lucky. Cada should have busted several times but won as a 4:1 dog and wound up winning the whole thing. I commented that the only player at the final table who would scare me in my home game is Phil Ivey and stand by that. I think this will be great for poker. Watching the play will further convince casual (bad) poker players that anyone can win the main event. I think we'll see a second poker boom and that's great for regular players.

Poker History and Playing in Vegas

Not really to my surprise, but my posts have been few and far between. Part of this is not finding time to blog though much of this is the explosion of microblogging (Facebook, Twitter) since I started this blog. I'm going to try to blog more on my poker sessions and see if that will get me writting more on a regular basis.

So I thought I'd start with writing how I got into playing poker on a serious recreational basis and making regular trips to Las Vegas.

Mark Rafn first explained Texas Hold ‘em to me sometime in late 2004 or early 2005 and we played at work for Hershey’s kisses. This was just after BEA Systems announced they were closing the Seattle office and we weren't very busy or very motivated. I first played in Las Vegas in April 2005 (2/4 limit at the Flamingo), but really didn’t know what I was doing. I was there to meet my parents and see the Cubs-Mariners spring training game and coincidentally some of my friends who played were there and introduced me to live hold ‘em for money. I think I screwed around for six months or so – made some trips to Muckleshoot with a couple of friends. I remember one drive where they were trying to explain starting hand ranges to me, so I was pretty clueless at that point. I bought Lee Jones Winning Low Limit Hold ‘em in January of 2006, finally had some idea how to play, and got more serious. That’s really the start of my hold ‘em play with any thought to starting hands and actually strategy of play and level 1 thinking.

I started playing low limit in local card rooms, mainly the now closed Kenmore Lanes. (As a side note, I think I've played more hours in local card rooms that are now closed than that are still open.) Monica and I met her family in Vegas in February 2006 and I got in a few limit sessions. April 2006 was the first time I/we went to Vegas for the primary purpose of playing poker (along with my business partner and some of her friends) and my poker record keeping starts here. A group of us went in November 2006 (I won the Sahara tournament twice) and that was the first time I played no limit cash games. We went in March 2007 and then again in September. In 2008 I went to Vegas in January, March, and August. I was there again for March madness and a "business" trip in October. I'm trying to get back in December.

Why Vegas? Well, the glitz and glamor are a lot of fun. But the big factors are variety of places to play, really bad players, and good tournaments.

Locally I play almost exclusively at Snoqualmie Casino. It opened a year ago so has that new feel and it's a nice place and 15-20 minutes away. But the room is small (10 tables) and cramped. And the choices are 4-8 limit or 2-5 NL with a 300 max buy in. I'd rather play with deeper stacks where there's more money to win. And the tournament selection is pretty sparse. It's weekend mornings at Snoqualmie. Sure there are other tournaments and places to play. But only the tribal ("Indian") casinos have anything close to a no limit game.

I usually play at Snoqualmie Sunday AM when the Bears don't play and Monday or Tuesday night and then Friday or Saturday night. But it winds up twice a week at most. And there's a friendly penny stakes home game that runs occasionally on Wednesdays.

College Football, SEC Dominates

Because of the baseball playoffs, my car radio is usually on ESPN Radio in the evenings, so in the mornings I've been listening to much more sports talk than normal.

There's a lot of talk about SEC dominance in football. Florida and Alabama are #1 and #2. And they've mentioned that the SEC has won the last three national championships. I was looking at it and was surprised the SEC run is actually deeper than that. LSU won after the 2003 season, Florida after 2006 and last year and LSU again in 2007. That's 4 of 6 and in 2004, Auburn finished 12-0 but was shut out of the title game by two other 12-0 teams. And Georgia and LSU have had top 3 finishes in years the SEC won the title.

So the interesting question is could you have two SEC team play for the National Championship. The consensus was "no" and I agree the pollsters wouldn't let it happen. But it's pretty stupid -- if Alabama and Florida are the clear best teams in the country, go undefeated and settle the SEC Championship in double overtime, and LSU is the third best team (losing only to Florida and Alabama) do you really want Cincinnati, Boise State, or USC in the the title game?

MLB Playoffs

It's been proven time and again that the baseball playoffs are a crap shoot. As much as people like to see the Yankees as great and a "sure" thing to make the World Series, history shows they're just better than 50-50 to win each series. It's of course a bit better with a 1-0 lead already.

My take, I have no clue who will win but bet the underdogs -- Rockies, Twins, Cardinals. Not really sure who's the dog in the Boston-LA series.

NFL So Far

I figure it takes three weeks to really have any idea about the football season. Any given game can be an outlier and with two games it's hard to know which is real and which is the outlier. After four weeks, we have a really good idea.

The Browns, Chiefs, Raiders, Redskins, Lions, Buccaneers, Rams, and Panthers are terrible. Despite being 2-2, Washington has beaten Rams and Buccaneers, by five points total, and lost to the Lions. Incredibly they get the Panthers and Chiefs next and might make it to 3-3 or 4-2; but then they'll finish 2-8 or 1-9. If Matt Hasselback doesn't return soon, the Seahawks join that group. That's a quarter of the league that's horrible.

Giants, Ravens, Patriots, Colts, and Saints appear to be the elite teams. Despite being 4-0, I'm not convinced the Broncos and Vikings are better than average the rest of the way; of course 6-6 will get them to 10-6 and likely playoffs. Next batch of teams -- Bears, Bengals (maybe), Eagles, Falcons (maybe), and 49ers (maybe).

The rest of the league looks mediocre. Despite being 0-4, the Titans should be decent. Of course, you can't overcome an 0-4 start and make the playoffs.

Check back in 12 weeks.

Maybe they need an exhibition season

The first half of the Rams-Seahawks game is the worst exhibition of pro football I've seen in a long time.

The Rams fumbled the opening kickoff and the Seahawks started the season on the Rams 19 yard line. Incomplete, incomplete, interception in the end zone. The Seahawks also turned the ball over on the first play of their third possession. Oh but it gets worse, check out the Rams next possession.

Incomplete pass, offensive holding, defensive offside, timeout Rams, incomplete pass, timeout Rams, bad snap followed by Bulger throwing the ball in the ground to avoid a sack (marginally legal), punt downed at the 4 and the Seahawks waste a challenge. One set of downs, six bad plays and that doesn't count the three incompletions.


Oh, it keeps going. The Rams have third and one on the Seahawks nine -- false start, delay of game, missed field goal.

With the half winding down the Seahawks attempt a 49-yard field goal which the Rams block and run back for a touchdown. Then the replay official notices the Rams had 12 men on the field.

One half: four turnovers, 11 penalties (nine by the Rams), two botched field goals, an a bad challenge.

Maybe if they had an exhibition season like baseball where the starters got to play under game conditions, it would look like pro football out there.

The weather outside

was crazy today.

Light rain, torrential downpour, rain, overcast, sun breaks, repeat. A couple of times I could see the lake across the street.

Driving to the gym (second day in a row) I passed two joggers running down the street. I know these people are dedicated but I have to think there's something not quite right up there when you run in pouring rain. That can't be good for your health, can it.

House update

We signed paperwork last week. Closing is scheduled for Tuesday. Feels good to be done with the house since the emotional part has long past and it's a business transaction waiting to happen.

House Sold!

We haven't closed yet but our home in Sammamish is basically sold. The buyers have moved in and are paying us rent which is a double win -- we get money before closing and it's pretty unlikely they cancel the deal having moved in.

It's an exaggeration to say we sleep easier at night, but it's one less big thing to spend or energy on.

What I Do

Since I started by new job in August I find it hard to explain to people, especially those not in software development exactly what it is that I do and what my company does. Serena recently updated our web site and has a ton of information about Agile on Demand. There's also a picture of me and my co-workers on the site.

The information is very high level and you can click through in ten minutes and get of what we do.

Michael Jackson dies

No this isn't another one of a thousand posts reflecting on Michael Jackson's life. Rather it's about the process surrounding how I/we found out the news.

At work about 2 PM Pacific, someone shouted the first news about Michael Jackson. I forget if it was that he'd had a cardiac arrest, was rushed to the hospital or something else. Shortly thereafter someone yelled that he had died. As a group we spent the next 20 minutes using the power of the internet to get the latest and greatest news. We used out local IRC chat to sent around the latest news link. I found Crowd Eye incredibly useful as I could see what other people we're tweeting. We all found TMZ breaking the news first and for 15 minutes it was the only source aside from those quoting TMZ. While we knew it was 99% likely true, none of us believed it until we saw got confirmation in the LA Times blog. Meanwhile I was getting breaking news email updates from CNN which we're all "old news".

The thing I've found most interesting about his death is how open people are about their hatred of the man just minutes or hours after he died. I.e., their feeling are so intense, or perhaps their tact so lacking, that they can't wait a day to share their negative thoughts. I'm no fan of the Michael Jackson of the last 15 years but for God sakes, the man just died and people lost their father, brother, and son.

Woo hoo, softball

Our softball team finally won a game this weekend to move up to 1-7. Funny thing is unlike all of my brother's teams, this team isn't bad at all. We've played even with the top teams in the league. Seems like our good games are against good teams and our bad games -- missing people or didn't play well -- are against the teams we should beat. Good news is every team makes the playoffs as we'll be ready.

Our house is coming along. We're replacing the carpet downstairs with a tile floor. Should increase cleanliness and reduce allergens. Time to think about painting/staining outside now that it's warm.

New House

I've been telling people that December-March is a big blur. Monica and I made an offer on a house in early December and between negotiating, repairs, packing, unpacking, decorating, etc., time has flown by. I see my blog is neglected as well.

Pretty much everyone has heard about the house by now, so I won't go into details. We moved to be closer in to the city and have less to take care of. We're loving it.

Super Bore

Is anyone excited about this game, outside of Cardinals and Steelers fans of course.

The Cardinals either got hot at the right time or simply survived among 6 not-so-good NFC teams, one of which had to go to the Super Bowl. In the regular season they were 9-7 and outscored their opponents by 1 point. They made the playoffs by winning their division by default. In the last five weeks of the regular season they were routed by New England, Minnesota, and Philadelphia. And in the NFC finals they got by a Philadelphia team who got every break the last two weeks to sneak into the playoffs.

The Steelers are pretty good and arguably the best team in the NFL. But they're boring.

With neither city being among the dozen largest markets, and I assume Phoenix being relatively low on % of football fans due to transplants, snow birds, and relatively short and horrid tenure of the Cardinals in the city, this is almost guaranteed to be the lowest rated Super Bowl in 20+ years. I guess it could have been worse -- the Titans could be playing the Panthers.

Now I've seen everything

Or what happens in Redmond, doesn't stay in Redmond.

While our blog is named "Life with Hunny Bear", there hasn't been much about Hunny Bear himself in the blog, so here's some news.

Hunny Bear was having some back problems -- he couldn't jump up on the couch or bed -- so Monica took him to the vet to get checked out.

Apparently the holistic vet is a bit different. Yes, that's Hunny Bear getting an acupuncture treatment. He was well-behaved and decided to relax and take a nap.

Woof!

College Bowl Games

Today is January 1st. For the first time in what might be my lifetime, I didn't watch a single minute of college football. I actually watched hockey (the Winter Classic) and baseball (part of Don Larsen's perfect game on the new MLB Network) instead of New Year's Day Bowls.

Which gets to a post I've been kicking around for a few weeks but never typed out about college bowls.

Point 1: I've been really undecided what to think about Vanderbilt being in a bowl. On one hand it's nice that Vanderbilt no longer appears near the top of "longest bowl drought" lists. And a six-win season is the best Vanderbilt has had in a long time so this qualifies as a great year by Vanderbilt standards. On the other hand, it's not like Vanderbilt is actually any good. After starting 5-1, they finished the regular season 6-6 which isn't exactly something to be proud of. Their offense is horrible, their defense is OK. They basically win by not making mistakes and getting some breaks. They may not even be in the top 50 this year heading into bowl season. I'd like being excited that a C and D student got one B on her report card.

Having played the game, it was a lot of fun to watch them on National TV and pull off a big upset. While the line was only 3-4 points, Boston College was a top 25 team and I think 90% of ESPN viewers picked them to win. A guy I know was in a contest where he ranked the bowl games by likelihood of winners and made BC his #1 pick.

Point 2: On the BCS, I had a long talk with Glenn about the selection process and options and we came to a couple of interesting conclusions. There's no good way to decide a three-way tie for a conference or division title when each team has lost to one of the others. And it's a bit disconcerting that who plays for a national championship comes down to the arbitrary selection of which tie breaker rules the conference happens to have in place. I can't argue against the approach utilized by other conferences to "eliminate" the #3 team then look at head-to-head and that approach would likely have put Texas in the championship game. Not sure how the conference strength of victory would have determined a winner. What's really tough is a lot of the computer polls have Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech 1-2-3 so it's very close. I suspect some weird things can happen in the Pac Ten with USC being the dominant team but coming very close to NOT winning the conference title.

What Glenn and I found very interesting is that even though this is a year where there's a good argument that the best team in the nation isn't playing for the National Championship (Texas), the BCS does a better job of ensuring that the best team IS in the championship than a playoff. Let's declare best team to mean if the top 21 teams each played each other 50 times, the team with the best record is the best team. This year is pretty extreme, but even so there's only a 35% chance the best team isn't in the game. It's hard to argue Texas being so much better than Oklahoma and Florida that it wins more than 1/3 of the time. In general, I'd say the best team is left out of the BCS Championship 20% of the time. But if you switch to a 16-team playoff or even an 8-team playoff, the best team missed out of the championship game much, much more often.

Let's be optimistic and say the #1 team has a 100% chance of beating the #16 team, and then a 90% chance of beating the #8/9 team and a 70% chance of winning in the national semifinal against the #4 or 5 team. That would give the team a 37% chance of NOT making the championship. And really it's greater than that since those win % are inflated. Rank your top 8 teams and see if you think the top team would really beat #8 9 times in 10 or #4 70% of the time.

This is the dark side of the beauty of March Madness. While it's good entertainment to see upsets and close games and 64 teams in, it's also almost a crapshoot once you get to the final 16. I believe last year was the first time ever that all 4 #1 seed made it to the Final Four. Quite simply, the more teams you involve, the LESS likely it is that you crown the best team as champion assuming the selection process isn't arbitrary.

Net net, so while I firmly believe Texas got screwed even though I think Oklahoma is better, I much prefer the current system to a 16-team playoff. I would like a 6-team playoff, though it will never happen.

Happy New Year

Happy 2009. Here's hoping for a great year for everyone.