Automatic Decisions In NL Holdem Cash Games

The main reason that it is possible to 4 to 8+ table NL Holdem cash games is that for good players the vast majority of “no read” decisions are automatic and instant. If you had to think through a good portion of your decisions, you would not have the time to play so many tables at once for a profit. I wanted to look in depth a bit at automatic decisions in deep stack cash games. For those out there that do not play cash games, this can apply to early deep stacks MTT play as well.

For cash games specifically, adjustments based on blind level and your own stack size fall away because your stack should always be “deep”, and the blind levels do not change over time. As you progress through an MTT, automatic cash game type decisions become less automatic because important factors are always changing. So when a good player plays NL cash games a large portion of the decisions are purely automatic. A new or improving player is constantly experimenting with their game by trying different things in similar situations to see what works best. Experimenting with your game requires you to think through decisions that may at one point in the future become automatic. The better more experienced player has already done a lot of this experimentation, and has found the best line, and now automatically takes it. An experienced cash game player makes a higher percentage of automatic decisions than a new player. As a new player’s game progresses they will start to increase the percentage of automatic decisions.

Let’s look at an example. Preflop you need to make the decision to limp, call an open, open raise, or reraise your starting cards. Think about the expectation value of each option for each possible starting hand. For hands like the hammer, it will be –EV to do anything but fold it from outside of a blind. The good player knows this, and auto folds the hammer preflop. A new player may try to steal the blinds with it from late, or make some kind of limp move with it. A good player knows that auto folding 72o is the best Expectation Value you can get, and any other play lowers your Expectation Value. So lets move on to a hand like 54s. A good player auto folds this hand preflop, unless late or in a blind and getting a pretty great price to call. A good player will never open raise or call an open raise preflop with a small suited connector, because it lowers your expectation value for the hand. A new player loves to experiment with these types of hands, and will often limp, open, and call raises with it to see what happens. The good player that auto folds preflop is now done with making decisions for this the hand. The new player, who continues on with a hand they should have dumped preflop, will now be forced to make tough decisions on the flop/turn/river that a better player would not even be facing.

So in summary, a new player will experiment a bunch preflop with hands that a better player auto folds, and that will lead to more tough decisions post flop that the good player never needs to make. The good player folds a bunch preflop, and when they play on preflop, they are in more standard type situations post flop that can lead to more automatic type decisions post flop. When you have a decent starting hand to start, you have a good idea where you are on latter streets. When you are playing junk it is hard to know where you are post flop. Is my top pair crap kicker any good? Is my middle pair on an all low flop good when I called a preflop open? It’s a much easier position to be thinking along the lines of “my top pair top kicker is likely good here”, or “my over pair is good for sure here, unless the other guy just flopped a set”. So the question is, for a new player, and for a good NL Holdem cash game player, what percentage of the decisions are automatic? My cash game is a bit rusty so I figure my auto decision percentage has dropped a bit over what it was 2 years ago. I plan on multitabling NL cash and logging auto decisions (made in a few seconds) versus thought out decisions (decisions that you had to think through before making) to see what my percentage is. I think you could get a rough estimate in about an hour of 3-4 tabling. Any guesses on what would be typical. I am thinking that I auto-decide at least 95% of the time in cash games and possible a bunch higher.

Joe Speaker Wins Blogger TOC. Bonds Wins Overall Title

Our second annual Blogger Fantasy Football Battle on Fantasy Sports Live is now complete. bonds earned the overall title and a $100 bonus by putting up the most battle points for the season. Joe Speaker got into the TOC late, but made the most of it by getting the win and earning a $130 cash bonus as well. bonds also earned an additional $100 & $25 bonus, by having the best and third best blogger fantasy scores for the season. LTLover won the last week of the battle. Final results and cash bonus amounts are shown below. Cash bonuses will be credited this week to your FSL account. Thanks to everyone who participated in this year's Blogger Fantasy Football Battle.

Week 17 BFFB Results

Blogger Battle TOC Results ($190 in Blinders Dead Money Added)

1st Joe Speaker 142.3 ($130)
2nd bonds 115.6 ($60)
3rd AlCantHang 91.6 ($10)

Blogger Battle Final Points Standings ($175 Added)

bonds 695.54 ($100)
Kev 685.38
Buffalo66 660.21 ($50)
Kaiseroll13 493.92
Blinders 443.37
AlCantHang 412.23 ($25)
Resino 397.43
RTrizzle 350.94
bayne_s 339.39
Joe Speaker 336.93
Schaubs 272.46
I Am Legion 271.80
Randy 234.05
pokernut0826 198.12
Big Pirate 190.79
carmine316 190.17
ebk03001 184.65
LTLover 169.58
Miami Don 162.97
Zeem 150.16
HermWarfare 145.65
V-man 133.51
etoppsfan 129.55
Johnny Sixx 126.95
JD 98.50
love_elf 89.28
Capybara Carnival 86.70
Canable 82.90
Family Guy 82.07
only1calvary 80.84
BobbyBracelet 72.50

Blogger Battle High Scores For Season ($175 Added)

Randy 147.3 (Week 5), LTLover 142.5 (Week 17), bonds 142.3 $100 (Week 6), RTrizzle 142.3 (Week 1), Kev 141.5 (Week 12), Olliewood 140.8 (Week 17), Kaiseroll13 140.0 (Week 12), AlCantHang 139.7 $50 (Week 2), bonds 138.8 $25 (Week 5)

JD Wins Week 16 of BFFB. TOC Field Set

JD put up the top score this week against 24 runners. The TOC Field is now tentatively set at three bloggers. If you have won a week of the blogger battle and have a qualifying blog that does not currently show a link, you must submit it by midnight Wednesday to gain entry in the TOC or qualify for any of the other Blogger Fantasy Football Battle added prizes. Next week we will have the TOC, and the final week of the blogger battle where the final overall standings and season top scores will be determined. Official results and season standings are shown below.

Week 16 Blogger Battle Results

Qualified for Tournament of Champions ($150 Min. Added)

Rtrizzle, AlCan'tHang, bonds, Kaiseroll13, Randy, pokernut0826, Kev, Resino, Carmine316, Joe Speaker, JD

Top Scores of the Season ($100/$50/$25 Added)

Randy 147.3 (Week 5), bonds 142.3 (Week 6), RTrizzle 142.3 (Week 1), Kev 141.5 (Week 12), Kaiseroll13 140.0 (Week 12), AlCantHang 139.7 (Week 2)

Blinders Dead Money in TOC Pool

$170 so far.

Points Leaders ($100/$50/$25 Added)
bonds 667.11
Kev 638.95
Buffalo66 624.24
Kaiseroll13 493.92
AlCantHang 412.23
Blinders 410.54
Resino 397.43
RTrizzle 350.94
bayne_s 339.39
Joe Speaker 336.93
Schaubs 272.46
I Am Legion 271.80
Randy 234.05
pokernut0826 198.12
Big Pirate 190.79
carmine316 190.17
Miami Don 162.97
ebk03001 154.25
Zeem 150.16
HermWarfare 145.65
etoppsfan 129.55
Johnny Sixx 126.95
JD 98.50
V-man 93.29
love_elf 89.28
LTLover 89.15
Capybara Carnival 86.70
Canable 82.90
Family Guy 82.07
only1calvary 80.84
BobbyBracelet 72.50

Chapter 11 for California?

California is facing a massive 40+ Billion dollar deficit over the next 18 months. Unfortunately, our government is sized based on the Stock and Housing Bubbles, and not based on reality. We will likely never see boom times again like the building of those two bubbles, so something obviously must be done. Raising taxes is not a way out of this mess, and I am starting to realize Chapter 11 (or whatever version of bankruptcy a state files) is the best/only solution.

Currently we have a Democratic congress in California who is not interested in cutting spending to get out of the problem. The minority Republicans are blocking any and all tax increases as well. Everyday of this gridlock just puts California further in debt, but I certainly hope the will of the Republicans will not be broken. California (and all governments) needs to be run like a business, and when times get tough businesses do not raise prices (i.e. taxes), to cover expenses. Unless you are a monopoly, raising prices in tough times simply does not work. Yet this is the Democrat philosophy of choice. When facing budget issues you raise taxes. You keep them high until the next budget issue, and then you raise them some more. Rinse and Repeat. Taxes go up, up, up, and never down with Democrats in control. That kind of thinking has made California state taxes about as high as they get among all other states. These other states are competition to California. We are pricing our best and our brightest out of California with excessive taxation. It’s the rich that care the most about this, and when you lose them to another state, they and their tax revenues are gone for good.

California’s bloated budget needs to be dramatically cut, but we face the same issues that the Auto industry is facing. Most of California’s government workforce is unionized. That makes it difficult to cut costs or reduce the workforce. The Unions will ultimately bankrupt California, just like they are bankrupting GM and Chrysler. The idea of unionized Government employees is laughable at best. Unions were originally formed to protect workers from abuses by private companies. Unless we are expecting the Government to abuse its employees, Unions serve no purpose for government employees other than to shake down the workforce, and help force a great state like California into bankruptcy. I would really like to see it made illegal for Government workers to Unionize. Since the congress is controlled by Democrats, and they love unions, there is no chance that any meaningful reduction in Union workforce will take place in California and as a result, no chance that we can fend off an ultimate bankruptcy filing.

A bankruptcy filing for California would be a good thing though IMO. We would get to wipe out a ton of debt that we hold, which is a huge chunk of the deficit. We can also break up the unions, and have a realistic chance at controlling expenses and sizing the government right going forward. Sure our reputation would be damaged, and it would be difficult to raise funds going forward, but we need to stop borrowing period. Why not run a balanced budget? I bunch of bond holders would be burned by this, but buyer beware. If you choose to finance a state with a bloated budget, and stalemated congress, you are taking a huge risk. Let’s face it; investing in California was/is not a good idea. We have not been able to pay our bills for years now. You invested in a sinking ship that was easy to see. You just chose not to look. So the only losers would be the unions and bond holders. The winners would be the non-union citizens of California which are the vast majority. Seems like a no brainer to me, but I expect we won’t actually do it for 6 months or so.

Vegas Winter 08 Trip Report

This time I am going to recap the Winter Blogger Gathering in a single report. I rolled into town Thursday evening and checked into the Palms. I headed over to the IP at around 9PM. There was a huge turnout at the IP Thursday night with all of the A-listers. Rather than play a bunch of –EV games like normal, I hung out more at the bar, and eventually sat down at the 3/6 blogger mixed game table. I can hold my own playing HORSE, but this was mixed with no Holdem, and other games like Badugi and triple draw thrown in. Things did not go well. I bled all the way through the Omaha 8 and Stud 8 orbits without winning a pot. A few mistakes preflop, but mostly just getting nowhere with any of my hands, and getting pushed off other hands by overaggressive donks. Then came Badugi and although it looked like an interesting game, my lack of ever playing it was a big disadvantage. When I got near the bottom of my buy-in, I got up and walked, down $95 without ever winning a single pot.

I hung out at the bar for a while, and after noticing that it had thinned out a bit, I figured some bloggers had made the trek down to Casino Royal for Craps. I wondered over there to play, but no bloggers. So I ended up playing $3 craps from about 2:30-4AM winning a nice $115 to help me forget about my mixed game troubles, and then called it a night.

You need to be careful not to blow your wad by partying to hard the first night in Vegas. The last thing you want to do is do all of you partying on Thursday night, and be destroyed for Friday/Saturday. I never learn this lesson. I went on a 14 hour recovery plan Friday that included sleeping into noon, getting up and grabbing some lunch, then going back to sleep until 5-6PM. With the 14 hours of recovery behind me, I headed over to the MGM for some NL Poker. I would go on quite a rush.

I sat down at the first table, and was waiting for my chips, when I posted the BB (without chips). I had a junk hand, and it was 5-way and checked through the flop. On the turn I made a hidden straight, and bet $5 into the pot. (again no chips yet). The guy on my left jams all-in for about $45, and I call. As I am calling they called me for a table change to a blogger table. I picked up my winnings without ever having chips at the table and moved to the other table that had Jordan and CJ. I won a pot off CJ and then picked up AA and was able to re-raise preflop to $22 and got 2 callers including Jordan. I would flop an Ace and checked to trap, getting another $25 off Jordan before he was able to fold to my $50 River bet. The table got short handed, and I was moved to a very juicy table with a bunch of kids who thought they were much better than they actually were. I made some more cash there, and eventually Kat joined the table. I would get called for the blogger mixed game, and had the tough decision of going to where I had lost $95 the night before, or staying where I was up $170 in less than 45 minutes. I went to the mixed game.

The mixed game was dealer’s choice, but only games that I had played before. I tried to play my best, and tightened up a bit preflop. As a result I went a few more orbits without winning a pot. This was starting to get crazy, and the entire table was aware that I had not broken my mixed game cherry in two nights now. We would eventually play Razz which is my favorite mixed game, and I am actually good at it. Finally, I would win my first pot, but it was close. I had a 7642A, and it took a minute to realize that I had beaten a slightly worse 76 hand. I jumped up in celebration of the win, which drew a bit of a crowd. Sorry, just excited to get my first win. I would scoop a pretty big stud 8 hand where I made a low and straight 5 cards in, and was able to build a pretty big pot. Eventually I walked ahead about $25. I hung out with at the Sports book bar until around 2AM and called it a night.

I slept in again until noon, had some lunch, and played a small amount of blackjack winning $5 before heading over to the Venetian for the Tournament. I love the structure of the Venetian tournament, and this time we even started with 10k in chips. This would be my forth MTT at the Venetian, and I had made the final two tables every time. I settled in for what would be an expected marathon.

I have not been playing a ton of poker lately, but my game was on. I played pretty aggressive at the first table, but hovered around the 10-11k area until the first break. After the first break at level 4 there were already antes which I was not happy about. I ended up on a mini rush right after the break, and moved up to about 14k in chips. I would hold around there through the second break. I would eventually get moved to Smokkee’s table and arrive a bit short of average. I would finally win a big pot with KQs when I flopped top pair and a flush draw, and was able to reraise jam the turn when my flush hit and get the call from the Keno pro Neil who had a big stack. Finally I had some chips to work with. I picked up KK and chose to smooth call a T2500 open. The flop was AJx, and I decided to stab at it for 5K. I was reraised all-in by emptyman, and had to release my KK. He had JJ for a set. I would then lose a coin flip to Pirate Lawyer, and get back down to around 11k. I was playing the short stack well. I would look for +EV situations and Jam preflop, and was not getting called. I was doing this at least once an orbit so I was holding my own against the blinds. I would slowly work my way back up to 18k, before being moved off of the table. First hand at the new table, and Heather opened, and I smooth called with AA. The flop was all low, and I checked, and called Heather’s bet which put me all-in. She would flip up KK, and I would get my second double up of the MTT. The hand crippled Heather’s stack, but she would rally right back, and eventually win the whole thing. I would not see anther big starting hand, and was forced to get back into short stack mode. Eventually it was folded to my SB and I jammed K2o into Smokkee’s BB. This time he had A3o and made the call. I whiffed the flop, but a nice deuce fell on the turn. An Ace on the river sent me packing though in 15th out of 82 runners. I have no problem with that hand. K2o is close to 50/50 against ATC, and there was a ton of dead money with the blinds and antes. I can’t just call because Smokkee would likely push preflop on me, so I have to Jam or fold. Jamming is much higher EV than folding, and I was pretty short relative to the blinds so easy decision.

The timing structure of the MTT is a bit difficult. It starts at 3PM and you only get a 10 minute break every 1 ½ hours. That is barely enough time to use the bathroom, but no time to get any food. Last year when I cashed, I went without food until after midnight and was pretty much destroyed. This year, I literally had to run to the food court, and inhale a sandwich and run back to not miss a hand. The other issue is drinking. I like to drink beer when playing live poker. Since I normally do not play more than 2-3 hours straight it is not an issue, but in 6+ hours of MTT play, I ended up pounding quite a few beers. Pounding beers all day long is not a good way to prepare for a raging Saturday Night in Vegas. By the time I was knocked out, it was late, so I headed back to the Palms to change and get ready for some more MGM action. I did not have the energy, so I called it quits for the night at around midnight. Pathetic!

Sunday AM I had the usual work to do at FSL prior to the start of the early football games. I wrapped that up and headed to the IP sports book, where a huge crowd of bloggers had gathered. I was only able to stay till about noon, because I had tickets for a huge concert back in L.A. Sunday night, and needed to head home. It was a great trip, and tons of fun as usual, but I still need to work on pacing myself when in Vegas. My nights ended progressively earlier each night, and that’s a bit of a bad beat I would say. Overall, I booked a decent profit covering most of my expenses, and was profitable at all games that I played. Not too shabby.

Joe Speaker Sandbags His Way To The TOC

Joe Speaker loves to talk about how bad he is at Fantasy Sports. All that talk may have just been sandbagging. Joe took down week 15 of the Blogger Fantasy Football Battle, and earned just the third seat so far in the season ending TOC to be held in Week 17. Week 16 will be the last chance to gain entry in the TOC. Will a fourth blogger make it in? Also, if you have already won a blogger battle week and have a blog that is not linked, please submit your blog for review. It just takes an active sports or gaming blog that existed 3 months prior to the start of this season's Blogger Battle to be eligible for the bonus cash. There will also be Blogger Battle leagues in Week 17 to determine the final standings and other bonus cash prizes. Week 15 official results are shown below, and the season standings have been updated.

Week 15 Results

Qualified for Tournament of Champions ($150 Min. Added)
Rtrizzle, AlCan'tHang, bonds, Kaiseroll13, Randy, pokernut0826, Kev, Resino, Carmine316, Joe Speaker

Top Scores of the Season ($100/$50/$25 Added)
Randy 147.3 (Week 5), bonds 142.3 (Week 6), RTrizzle 142.3 (Week 1), Kev 141.5 (Week 12), Kaiseroll13 140.0 (Week 12), AlCantHang 139.7 (Week 2)

Blinders Dead Money in TOC Pool
$150 so far.

Points Leaders ($100/$50/$25 Added)

Kev 638.95
bonds 610.23
Buffalo66 595.80
Kaiseroll13 493.92
AlCantHang 379.39
Blinders 375.71
RTrizzle 350.94
Resino 348.17
Joe Speaker 336.93
bayne_s 295.33
Schaubs 272.46
I Am Legion 271.80
Randy 202.90
pokernut0826 198.12
Big Pirate 190.79
carmine316 190.17
Miami Don 162.97
ebk03001 154.25
HermWarfare 145.65
etoppsfan 129.55
Johnny Sixx 126.95
Zeem 120.46
V-man 93.29
love_elf 89.28
Capybara Carnival 86.70
Canable 82.90
Family Guy 82.07
only1calvary 80.84
BobbyBracelet 72.50

Blinders versus NBC

Since we launched fantasysportslive.com in June 2007 we have seen several copy cat sites come into existence that were entirely based on our web site. One was a now defunct site called instant fantasy sports, started by a fellow poker blogger who personally stole the idea from me after we agreed to discuss the idea in confidence months prior to launch. After we launched there is not much we can do, because the idea of daily fantasy sports is not patentable. So we had a major online sports book knock off our site. This knockoff was particularly helpful, because they threw a ton of money at the software, and made several improvements to the draft interface that we were able to implement on our site. The problem for them is they are an online sports book, so there are the usual issues funding and cashing out that we do not have, and they are also heavily restricted on advertising in the U.S., another huge disadvantage. After that there have been some low budget knock offs, one which actually stole our rules word for word, but have no hope of obtaining a critical mass of customers. The one site that is similar to ours that actually launched before us, shut down over the summer, and relaunched with its contest lobby overhauled to match ours nearly exactly. And then came NBC.

I just found out about a site that is backed by the mighty NBC that is essentially a carbon copy of our site with an identical contest lobby. I guess it is nice to set the industry standard in fantasy sports contest lobbies for all to follow. The list of previous knock offs all had fundamental problems that made them essentially no threat to Fantasy Sports Live, and the NBC site suffers from one of these major fatal flaws. The heart of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are trying to do at FSL. Most copy cats just do not get it. We are trying to offer a very specific product that has very specific minimal requirements that must be met in order to compete. If you are simply copying something that looks promising, but you do not understand it, you might tweak something that makes you miss the minimum requirements. The trouble is that if you figure this out after the fact, you might realize that you no longer have a viable business model once the newly discovered minimum requirements are met.

Let me give you a hypothetical example. You have a great idea for a new web site called coinflips.com. To make the website legal, it needs to be a game of skill so you set up a couple of controls for the user to set before flipping. Let’s call them height and torque adjustments for the flip. Let’s say that you can play around with these controls and get heads to come up more often if they are set in a certain repeatable way. So those who practice can become good at it and win more than ½ of the time. So before you launched your website, you tried to figure out how big of an edge someone good at flipping could get. Lets say that the top flippers could gain a 10-15% edge on the system, but overall the edge washed away to zero for the sum of all players (there were others that made stupid plays when flipping). So you set up your site so that it costs $11 to flip and you win $20 if you are right. This seems to work out ok, because for the average flipper, they get to have some fun without too much cost, and the best flippers, have enough of a skill advantage to make some money long-term at flipping coins. Even those who can’t yet can look at those that already are earning money flipping coins and work to become good enough to do the same. Because of all of this, your little known website starts growing pretty quick and gets noticed by the mighty double youuuu eeeeeNnnnnn Beeee Ceeee. They just love the concept, and figure they can market it more aggressively, and earn a pretty penny. So they knock it off exactly down to the same controls over height and torque with a site called bettercoinflips.com. They make a couple of small changes. One thing they noticed about your site was the super low margins. 9% are you kidding me? We are freekin doubleyouennbeeeceee, and we don’t settle for 9% margins. How do we pay for the corporate jet, and our cash spewing network that way? Let’s bump those margins up to 20%. Let’s make it cost $10 to win $16, that way we can make some money on this. Anyone see the obvious problem here? In actuality our margins at 9% are too high. We obviously will lower them at some point, but as long as our buddies at NBC charge 20% why bother.

Anther thing to be worried about when not understanding what you are copying is the legal issues. We take the legal issues very seriously, and designed our website to be in strict compliance with both the letter and spirit of the UIGEA of 2006. One of the strict requirements for fantasy leagues is shown below.

(I) All prizes and awards offered to winning participants are established and made known to the participants in advance of the game or contest and their value is not determined by the number of participants or the amount of any fees paid by those participants.

Our competitor’s prize payout rules state:

“One 1st place prize is awarded which equals 80% of the contest fees.”

Let’s see here. Contest fees are equal to the number of participant’s times any fees paid, and the prize is 80% of that amount. That sure appears to be determined by what it is not allowed to be determined by. Also, how are the prizes known in advance? They do not publish them in advance. The only way to know what the prizes are in advance is to use the two things that are not allowed to determine the prize amount. You guys must have some good lawyers to find that much wiggle room in a pretty clear restriction on fantasy sports.

Ultimately we welcome the competition. With NBC now competing and being super loose with the laws, we are now insulated in a big way from any legal threats. Any entity will be going through NBC with their deep pockets and larger exposure first. Also, as long as the competition is inferior in a significant way they are no threat to us. Anyone who knows of both of us would obviously choose our offering. Anyone who does not know about us was not ours to lose at this point. That leaves the new class of users that NBC may be able to educate about daily fantasy sports with a deep pocketed advertising campaign. If just ½ of those people search for other daily fantasy offerings, and ½ of them find us, and we are able to capture ½ of those people we stand to gain a ton from our new competition.

See everyone in Vegas who is going, and I will be sure to take a few notes for later when the interesting stuff happens. God knows I will be too drunk to remember most of it.

Al Can't Hang Wins Another Week

Al Can't Hang took down week 14 of the Blogger Fantasy Football Battle against a field of 20. We are still looking at a heads-up TOC if a new blogger can't get a weekly win. Complete results are shown below.

Week 14 Results

Qualified for Tournament of Champions ($150 Min. Added)

Rtrizzle, AlCan'tHang, bonds, Kaiseroll13, Randy, pokernut0826, Kev, Resino, Carmine316

Top Scores of the Season ($100/$50/$25 Added)

Randy 147.3 (Week 5), bonds 142.3 (Week 6), RTrizzle 142.3 (Week 1), Kev 141.5 (Week 12), Kaiseroll13 140.0 (Week 12), AlCantHang 139.7 (Week 2)

Blinders Dead Money in TOC Pool

$150 so far.

Points Leaders ($100/$50/$25 Added)

Kev 593.99
bonds 570.02
Buffalo66 532.22
Kaiseroll13 457.21
AlCantHang 379.39
Blinders 375.71
RTrizzle 350.94
Resino 348.17
bayne_s 295.33
Schaubs 272.46
I Am Legion 271.80
Joe Speaker 247.01
Randy 202.90
pokernut0826 198.12
Big Pirate 190.79
carmine316 190.17
Miami Don 162.97
ebk03001 154.25
HermWarfare 145.65
Johnny Sixx 126.95
Zeem 120.46
etoppsfan 97.76
V-man 93.29
love_elf 89.28
Capybara Carnival 86.70
Canable 82.90
Family Guy 82.07
BobbyBracelet 72.50

Too Big To Fail???

I think one of the biggest problems facing us in this current economic crisis is the idea that companies have become to big to fail, and therefore must be bailed out by the government. I am not saying that there are no companies that are too big or too important to fail, I am saying that we should not allow companies to merge thier way into an entity that is "too big to fail". Most of the big financials that are too big to fail have merged and acquired thier way into this situation with the blessing of government. This needs to stop immediately. We need to consider how big a company will become, and if they will be considered too big to fail before approving any mergers or acquisitions going forward.

Companies love to do mergers and acquisitions not so much for the additional profitability through savings, but for the ability to cook up there financial books up front when announcing the merger, and on the backend if they ever wind it down. All these acquisition related charges and charge offs kill transparency, and are part of the problem. If letting financial companies grow into a massive size is so effective at improving profitability, why did the biggies just about go bankrupt without a massive bailout? Where were all these additional profits to cover the bad times? Sorry, but I am not convinced that there is any advantage to letting financials get has big as they have, and it is most likely a huge disadvantage. Not only do we need to stop letting financials and other key companies merge there way into massiveness, I think we are going to need to force the break-up of many of them into smaller sizes with the ability to individually fail.

What has happened so far as a result of government actions is to grow these financials even bigger than they were before. We have WaMu, Wachovia, Merril, Countrywide, and numerous other companies merged into bigger stronger companies at fire sale prices to keep them from failing. While this may have been one of our only choices short term, it has actually made us more vulnerable to a repeat of what is happening. We now have even bigger financials than before the crisis that are actually way too big to fail. When the economy turns around, we must break up all of the large financial service companies into much smaller chunks. Smaller sized companies that can be allowed to fail. If we don't, sit back and watch a repeat of what is happening, except next time it will be much worse.

Kev Wins Again, Moves Into 1st Place in BFFB

Kev continues to dominate late in the Blogger Fantasy Football Battle at FSL with back 2 back wins that have moved him into first place overall. I put up my worst fantasy football score ever of 53.7. Overall, it was a pretty tough week to put up numbers. Compete results are shown below.

Week 13 BFFB Results

Qualified for Tournament of Champions ($150 Min. Added)
Rtrizzle, AlCan'tHang, bonds, Kaiseroll13, Randy, pokernut0826, Kev, Resino, Carmine316

Top Scores of the Season ($100/$50/$25 Added)
Randy 147.3 (Week 5), bonds 142.3 (Week 6), RTrizzle 142.3 (Week 1), Kev 141.5 (Week 12), Kaiseroll13 140.0 (Week 12), AlCantHang 139.7 (Week 2)

Blinders Dead Money in TOC Pool
$150 so far.

Points Leaders ($100/$50/$25 Added)
Kev 593.99
bonds 570.02
Buffalo66 480.30
Kaiseroll13 457.21
RTrizzle 350.94
Resino 348.17
Blinders 341.73
AlCantHang 289.47
I Am Legion 271.80
Joe Speaker 247.01
bayne_s 243.42
Schaubs 240.66
Randy 202.90
pokernut0826 198.12
Big Pirate 190.79
carmine316 190.17
Miami Don 162.97
ebk03001 154.25
Johnny Sixx 126.95
HermWarfare 105.44
etoppsfan 97.76
V-man 93.29
love_elf 89.28
Capybara Carnival 86.70
Canable 82.90
Family Guy 82.07
BobbyBracelet 72.50
D-Train 71.56
SHaMRoCKeD 65.60
kinnehboo 61.97
JIMBO52N 59.19
Zeem 56.87
Madden 48.42
lexx575 47.16
only1calvary 46.85
Acefilleddreams 44.96
SilentCent 44.96
cyandle 44.31
DARTHraider 44.21
Turf Toes 43.82
PachucaSunrise 41.32
$mokkee 38.50
JayP 37.37
Switch 36.71
beantowngiantsfan 35.65
Toddlers 35.47
tw 35.35
jbvolfan 33.99
Stop Sign 32.65
Bobby262626 32.52
23skidoo 32.42
Humperdink 31.44
jek187 30.03
jcm 29.82
Muffins 29.22
scramp 28.44
lakewoods 28.44