Matt Stephans of Competition Unlimited has been trying to organize poker tournaments to be held in various bars across Austin.

Poker tournaments are different from a live poker game in terms of legality because they can be classified as a contest rather than a betting event. A poker tournament would be comparable to a pinball tournament or a fantasy football pool -- while the outcome is governed at least partially by chance, and it would be illegal to bet on, say, a single game of pinball in a public place, it is not illegal for players to pay a fee to enter a tournament to win cash or prizes.

That's in theory, at least. I've never seen a legal case to test that interpretation of the law. And although the Texas penal code seems like it doesn't prohibit poker tournaments, poker is still poker. Matt said that he spoke with the APD and they don't believe that poker tournaments are illegal. But then he spoke with the friendly TABC people. They said they don't interpret the law, and that they would shut down any poker happening inside a bar.

Matt is working on several options. The one I'd like to see is to get a written opinion from the Texas Attorney General. However, this is a 6 month process and requires a request to be initiated by a government agency. Nevertheless, if this happened it would open the door for public poker tournaments in Texas, which would be great. I think a poker club that offered only tournaments could do quite well in Austin.

The other option that Matt is pursuing and would be nearer term is to hold the poker tournaments in non-bar locations so they're out of TABC's jurisdiction. I still think the question of whether the APD or state troopers would want to bust such a tournament is an open one; while public poker tournaments seem legal under Section 47, it's an untested aspect of Texas gambling law and therefore still open for interpretation.

I would love to see an Attorney General opinion on this; at least legal public tournaments would be a great step forward in Texas poker. Imagine public $220 buyin super satellite tournaments to enter the World Series of Poker $10,000 main event in Austin and the rest of Texas. That would be great!

The owner of the APC sent out a message to the membership summarizing what happened last Thursday. It sounds likely that the case is going to go to court, and that they are going to fight in what could become a landmark case.

While I continue to be skeptical that the APC will emerge victorious from a court case, I strongly support their efforts to get poker into the forum of public debate. The message raised the possibility of lobbying the legislature to change the laws regarding poker, and also stated that the APC is not planning to try to settle out of court; they want a clear legal decision.

This is great news because there is very little Texas case history on "grey area" operations like the APC. The closest case to what the APC will be defending that I know of is Gaudio v. Texas 1994, in which some guys had rented an apartment to play poker in 3 nights a week. These guys were found guilty of keeping a gambling place, largely on the basis that they were taking a cut from every pot to pay for things like rent, food, etc.

Although that case is more black-and-white than the APC's, it will still be problematic for the APC. The law states that one of the three prerequisites for a game to be legal is that "no person received any economic benefit other than personal winnings". The case has two problematic statements:

Based on the plain language of the statute no person can receive an economic benefit. If we apply the plain language of the statute, the jury's finding is not against the great weight and preponderance of the evidence. In this case the waitress and dealer received tips from the players. The receipt of money as tips is an economic benefit.

If we interpret the statute as the practice commentary suggests, i.e., that no person gambling there received an economic benefit, the evidence still supports the jury's finding. The dealer received money as a tip for each hand he dealt. He played poker with the others from time to time. The dealer's tips were [*7] an economic benefit to a person gambling there . Therefore, someone who gambled at the apartment received an economic benefit other than personal winnings.

I think the APC is not going to be able to demonstrate that no person receive economic benefit; after all, they operated it as a business, complete with paid dealers and waitresses.

Striking the economic benefit clause of the law would certainly make the APC 100% legal, but it would also open the door for legal poker clubs (not casinos -- games like blackjack are prohibited as they are house-favored games) all over the state -- something that I doubt the courts intend to do.

Here and here are the laws that the APC owners have been charged with. Here is a more detailed Austin American-Statesman article on the bust.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has some things to say that would be well at home in the Illinois debate over the state taking over casinos:

If the only objective is to get money, then why don't we have a government Wal-Mart or a government Target or a government Wendy's? They all would make money for the government and they would have less negative impact on people's lives.

Link to article on Minnesota gaming.

While Pawlenty is a staunch opponent of expanded gaming, he makes a good point. If Illinois Governor Blagojevich had suggested the state taking over Wal-Marts or Targets to expand tax revenue, he probably would have been instantly impeached.

The crazy thing about Illinois gaming is that the state already imposes a 50% tax on casinos -- and which Blagojevich recently proposed increasing to 70%. This is not a tax on profit -- this is a tax on all revenue above $200 million that a casino takes in (which Blagojevich wants to also lower to $100 million). So if the state thinks even that isn't enough, you know people are really getting screwed.

States think that casinos are licenses to make money. They impose ever-increasing taxes on them to make up for their poor financial planning. This causes the casinos to make the rules to their games more favorable to the house, crank down payouts on slots, raise food and drink prices, and more aggressively target new customers. And then the states complain about the huge social cost of gambling and how everyone is losing their money in casinos.

Well, it finally happened... the Austin Poker Club got busted. It had a good run of 6+ months of regular poker action. It will probably not re-open.

I expected this to happen, as it wasn't operating in a way likely to be legally defensible under Texas penal code. I actually did a lot of research into Texas gambling law and legal cases involving Section 47 before I joined the APC.

I came to two conclusions: 1. the club was probably not fully legal, and was probably going to be shut down some time in the future, but 2. if the club did get busted, no patrons would be arrested, and the worst thing that would happen is that you would lose your buy-in that night. (I read most of the cases in Texas history going back to the early 1900's; no gamblers have ever been prosecuted in any bust of gambling places.)

So it was a low-risk proposition, and gave me the opportunity to play a little more regularly than I had been. I didn't play there as often as some of my other poker buddies, but it was a great place -- well-run, friendly staff and players, and excellent saturday tournaments.

Incidentally, I do believe that it's possible to operate a poker club similar to APC in a way that's totally legal under Section 47. It's a pretty attractive proposition: I estimate APC probably booked over $150k in revenue in under 6 months and probably made over 50% margin. But I'll never do it, because even a club operating in a way legal under Section 47 is virtually guaranteed to be busted in Texas, and might still lose a trial, making the owner a felon. My desire to not have a felony on my record slightly outstrips my desire to own a poker club.

Update: John Ogilbee pointed out that there are no felony gambling offences unless organized crime is involved; keeping a gambling place is a Class A Misdemeanor.

Section 47 has an overriding philosophy behind it that while social home gambling (with some important restrictions, like not playing "house games" such as blackjack) is perfectly legal, nobody should ever be profiting from gambling in Texas outside of their normal winnings. I'd like to think getting a group together to lobby for legal poker clubs in Texas would be a fruitful venture, but I doubt it would. The APC's method of operation and really clean record of no bad stuff occurring there probably would help a case to legislators, though.

The governor of Illinois wants to raise casino revenue to help overcome an enormous budget deficit. His plan: take over the casinos. This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Sometimes I'm almost glad Texas doesn't have casinos just so I wouldn't have to get all worked up over state politics, which I largely avoid.

The governor was short on details, but he envisioned one scenario where the state would own casinos and hire private operators to run them. A similar model is found in Ontario, Canada, he said.

Link

Kenichi is having a birthday party this weekend with some decent specials, including $4 large sake. I'm really disappointed I'll be out of town for it. I used to dislike Kenichi. There were all kinds of reports last year of their sushi not being up to quality, and they remain the priciest sushi place in town, but the meals I've had there this year have all been incredible. Their "Austin-style sashimi" dish is fantastic.

Sunday April 27th 5:30-11:00 pm

No resevervations will be taken
First come first serve, come one and all!!
Sushi
Tuna-Maguro 5.00
Yellowtail-Hamachi 5.00
Fresh Salmon-SAke 5.00
California Roll 5.00
Hot and Spicy Tuna Roll 5.00
Eel Roll-Unagi Maki 5.00
Asparagus Roll (Steamed) 5.00
Hawaiian Roll 5.00
Aspen Roll 5.00
Aleutian Island Roll 5.00

Appetizers
Crispy Calamari 6.00
Gyoza 6.00
Grilled Quail 6.00
Blackend Tuna 6.00
Hot Spring Rolls 6.00
Chef's Nightly Dim Sum 6.00

House Specialty Sake
Small Sake 2.00
Large Sake 4.00
Small Purple Haze 2.25
Large Purple Haze 4.50

Please go there and consume large amounts of fish and sake as you think of me. I think I'll have to go to Shintaro on Sunday when I'm in Vegas.

The World Series of Poker is well underway at Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas.

I really wish I would have been there today to see the final table of the Pot Limit Omaha tournament -- poker legends Men "The Master" Nguyen, Erik Seidel, and Chris Tsiprailidis made for a pretty impressive final table.

Update: Erik Seidel won, after an epic battle with Men "The Master". Very good tournament report at the tournament link.

Last year Austin's own Poker Pages did an absolutely marvelous job of broadcasting all the final tables over the net, for free. This year, a company called iStreamPlanet nabbed the rights and is charging $14.95 for the privelege of seeing the regular tournaments, and an additional $29.95 for the main event. They're accompanying it with false press releases claiming they are giving the WSOP its "internet debut". So far they claim that 250 people have signed up -- making the broadcast worth about $3,700 for four weeks of broadcasts. Wonder how much they paid. They'll probably get at least double that number for the main event, for an additional $15,000, but that's still pretty small dollars.

I say it's a shame because it guarantees that only serious poker enthusiasts will watch the tournaments this year, unlike last year. Making poker widely accessible is good for the game; pay-per-view and inaccessible coverage is not. The upside is that the World Poker Tour continues to be successful on TV and is getting some good press. I hope it keeps up and regular poker becomes a permanent part of TV. WPT commentator Mike Sexton had a solid 7th in the $2,000 no-limit hold'em tournament on Saturday for a cash-out of $18,920.

Andy Glazer has a fantastic article about TV poker coverage and the general future of poker as a "sport" here. Glazer continues to be the best poker writer out there by far, both in terms of his writing quality and his genuine enthusiasm for the game:

The WPT has to produce ratings that justify the unprecedented production costs (great production values don�t come cheap). If the WPT can do that, either this year or next, poker�s hitherto untapped value as a television product will have arrived, finally letting poker boldly go where it has never gone before, creating opportunities for everyone involved in poker.

In other news, thanks to a last-minute trip from an old high school buddy from Australia, I'm heading out to Vegas this weekend where I will stop into Binion's and quite likely play in the $2500 limit hold'em tournament on Saturday. I haven't yet decided if I will do a straight buy-in as I have in the past few years or play in a single-table satellite, which I have had some good success with in some other tournaments over the past couple years. Wish me luck.

[From Austin BlogSwap Day, this entry is being brought to you by guest writer Chip Rosenthal - thanks Chip! Several Austin bloggers "swapped blogs" this week and wrote guest entries for each other. I wrote my guest entry for Holly.

Austin BlogSwap day also happened to be the day that some high-profile bloggers did a little blogswapping: Xeni is writing for Susannah who is writing for Neal Pollack (who now lives in Austin). Coincidence?]

---

I think I'd like to go to Vegas.

Actually, I've been before, but I don't think that counts. That was over 15 years ago. The city I visited no longer exists. It's been bulldozed to make way for the new, grander spectacle of today.

I'm not sorry to see the old city go. I remember the strip had this this insufferable cheesy vibe. After a few days of drinkin' and gamblin' and carousin', we were close to achieving critical mass and melting down. So, we bolted the city and spent the rest of the trip in a cabin on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I recuperated pretty rapidly once I got some distance between me and all that polyester.

Vegas was a very dangerous place to be at that time in my life. I was a few years into my career, which meant while I still harbored a full case of youthful stupidity, I now had some money to throw around. Our goal for the trip was a week of fear and loathing, but without the ether and extract of pituitary gland.

We, of course, rented a convertible car. We also, of course, crashed the car on the very first day. For some reason, at the time, that seemed a mark of accomplishment.

You may think I'm making this up. Or, at least, exaggerating my memories of the Good Old Days™. I swear, every word is true and accurate.

My accompaniment for that trip was an old college buddy who I haven't seen in many years. Writing this blog entry got me thinking about him. So, I thought I'd see if I could track him down. Thanks to the power of Google, I discovered that he was not in the penitentiary, but actually had amassed a bunch of advanced degrees and was now a reputable consultant. So I emailed him and he responded quickly. He said:

I am a respectable citizen now. While it is true that we once did fear and loathing in Las Vegas, I am not sure that I am willing to admit that I ever knew you . . . unless, of course, you are buying the beer.

So, I think I'm ready for another trip. This time, however, I expect there would be a lot less fear and loathing. Truth is, the thing I want most is to visit Star Trek: The Experience.

a nice concept, but they're a hoax. Phil of flyingchair.net posted a photo showing an alluring model wearing a Vuitton mask. One boingboing.net user posted an analysis on why he thinks the mask was photoshopped; well, there's no evidence more damning than before and after photos:

Courtesy of google.com image search, the original was found here.

Yahoo has partnered with eBet USA and is presenting the ability to bet on horse races as part of the Yahoo site. What else? Neither company -- both publicly traded -- has announced anything of their relationship to investors.

Penn National's eBet USA subsidiary has what a Yahoo spokesman calls a ``promotional presence'' on the horse-racing page. In plain English, that means Yahoo makes the link to eBet USA appear as part of the site rather than a separate banner ad or button.

Yahoo is also running online ads aimed at its members that imply the service originates within the company. I know, because I've recently seen the spots in my Yahoo Mail account.

The article doesn't even touch the legal question. Online gambling is illegal in almost every part of the US; yet Yahoo is actively marketing this service to their US customers. I can't see this lasting. Yahoo closed up their adult video store after public outcry; and that was a legal enterprise! I have no idea why they think they will be able to promote horse betting successfully. Kudos to them if they can. Link

There aren't very many good poker novels. Probably the one I've enjoyed the most is Jesse May's Shut Up and Deal, which is pretty entertaining.

During last year's National Novel Writing Month, a couple people wrote novels about poker. The only one I could find online is Joseph Hart's Monday Night Poker. It's better than many of the other NaNoWriMo novels I've seen although frustratingly it doesn't have an ending posted.

Ever wondered why Japanese boy bands aren't popular in the US? This may hold the key (old but funny stuff):

Yatta Video
Video History of Yatta
Hilarious Yatta Parody

And in a very similar vein:
Chin2

Springtime in Austin is my favorite time of year. With it comes leisurely weekends of attending festivals, listening to music and drinking exceptional quantities of Lone Star.

Last weekend I went to the Firewheel Festival, which was a good time although somewhat sparsely attended. This weekend is the Marley Festival which I'll be at on Saturday. This weekend there's also Bengali New Year and the Old Settler's Music Festival.

Next weekend is Eeyore's Birthday where I'll be volunteering in the beer tent. Next weekend also brings the Italian Chalk Art Festival, the Red Poppy Festival in Georgetown featuring dozens of Corvettes, and Austin ParksFest .

May highlights include the Old Pecan Street Festival, O'Henry Pun-Off, Cinco de Mayo Music Festival, 101X Springfest, and the Texas Greek Festival (now being billed as "My Big Fat Texas Greek Festival" -- evidently they want to promote Greek culture and heritage in the tackiest way possible).

Springtime festival fun is fully upon us! So get out, get some sun... and let the good times roll.

I've really been enjoying Other People's Stories since I first came across it a few months ago.

Every story on OPS is a story a contributor heard from someone else. These stories have been overheard and misheard, told and re-told and sometimes refined over time. They do not shy from hearsay, gossip, myth or guys we knew in high school.

My favorite stories are "World Class Liar" and "The Revenge Specialist" (Part 1, Part 2). The latest story, "The Suit Gnome", is entertaining too.

New Brazilian method for teaching math to pre-schoolers: take them to the horsetrack and let them bet.

The Little Mermie, who is 3 and a half, also made a point to collect her bets immediately at the restaurant cashier, all by herself, to the astonishment of all around. She came home with her pockets clinking with a grand total of R$12, to be squandared in lollipops and candy.

I doubt this radical yet apparently effective schooling method will be adopted in the U.S. anytime soon. Although when I was going to school in Australia, every Melbourne Cup the whole school would stop classes while the race was being run; it would be broadcast on the school PA system, and just about every teacher in my school would run a little $1 or $2 per student pool for their classroom. No illusion about it being a math lesson, though; it was just straight-up action. Link (via Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada)

There's a bullet-ridden sign on the edge of Baghdad
That says fifteen miles to Saddam's love... shack!
Saddam's love shack baby

I've got me a humvee as big as a whale
And we're headin' on down to Saddam's love shack
I've got me a humvee, with a gun and a radar
So hurry up and bring your jukebox dinar!

Saddam's love shack is a little old place where
We can relive the 60's... dictator-style baby
Saddam's love shack baby!
Love shack, Saddam's love shack, love shack, Saddam's love shack
Love baby, come to my shack, Love baby, pimpin' in Iraq

Sign says -- woo! -- stay away Yanks!
'Cause I've got mad tanks... and highly-armed skanks
Well it's set way back in an enclave in Baghdad
Saddam's 60's love shack is the mother of all pads!

Napalm on the front porch, land mines on the highway,
Ammo on the back porch, MOAB in the driveway...

Saddam's love shack is a little old place where
We can relive the 60's... dictator-style baby
Saddam's love shack baby!
Love sha-a-ack, shaggin' in Iraq
Love sha-a-ack, Saddam got back

Huggin' and a-kissin', killin' like a villain,
Stackin' Iraqi hotties to the mutha-freakin ceilin!
The whole shack shimmies! Yeah the whole shack shimmies!
The whole shack shimmies as B-1's and F-18's
drop bombs and more bombs and more bombs, that's da bomb!

Everybody's fightin', everybody's lightin' baby
Folks linin' up outside to hit the hookah
Everybody's jammin', Iraqi body be slammin' baby
Funky Saddam's shack, funky Saddam's shack!

Hop in my humvee, it's as big as a whale
And it's about to set sail
I got me a cigar, fake mustache and merkin
So hurry up, put on your party burqa!

Saddam's love shack is a little old place where
We can get together-r-r
Saddam's love shack ba-a-aby,
Rock out in Iraq baby!

Link

What are the odds of an amateur bowler hitting a 7-10 split?

While reading about the Pepsi promotion last week, I became interested in SCA Promotions, one of the companies behind the billion dollar promotion. SCA offers a whole range of "promotions" which are basically legal bets with big-dollar prizes attached to them that companies can sign up for.

I was really curious about their odds on some of these things, so I requested a quote for their 7-10 split promotion. For a 50-person company bowling event, where none of the players play in a bowling league, and where everyone gets one shot to hit a 7-10 split, and a max of 1 winner, they quoted me $6,250 for a $25,000 grand prize.

This puts the straight odds for a single bowler hitting the 7-10 at 374:1.

In some threads on alt.sport.bowling about the 7-10 split, opinions differ greatly about what the real odds are of hitting a 7-10. The numbers that players came up with ranged from 1 in 2 to 1 in 200 for pro or semi-pro bowlers.

On the PBA website, they state the 7-10 split has only been converted on TV three times. Apparently it's been shown on TV somewhere around 400 times, which puts the odds (for a professional) at around 130 to 1. Based on that, I'd say the real odds for a Joe Schmoe are longer than 374:1. I would think a pro could hit a 7-10 at least 5-20 times more often than your average amateur, which puts the odds at 750:1 to 2600:1.

SCA Promotions is in a great business. They're a legal bookie, and their vig is enormous.

Update: Thanks to Howard for pointing out below that my math was flawed on the single-bowler odds. Not sure what I did, but 374:1 is way off. A 1 in 4 shot for 1 or more bowlers in 50 hitting a 7-10 split implies odds of 173.3:1 for a single bowler hitting the 7-10.

The math here is fairly simple. The 1 in 4 shot means that they expect that over 75% of the time, 0 bowlers will make the split. That's how they make their money. So 0.75 ^ (1/50) results in a probability of 99.426% that a single bowler will miss the 7-10 split, or a 0.574% chance (173.3:1) that they will hit the 7-10 split.

The odds are better than the 1 in 200 that Howard mentions below because SCA does not have to pay more than one prize if more than 1 in 50 people hit the split.

Interestingly, the "real" odds of the promotion, assuming the real odds of an amateur hitting the 7-10 split are 1 in 1000, are 19.49:1, meaning it should cost $1,219 for a $25,000 prize. That yields SCA a profit of $5,030 per bowling promotion!

This list of recipes from elected officials really should be entitled, "pass the peas please: the dining lives of wealthy, really really boring people". Someone give these people a vindaloo now, please!

It also begs for some good parody. Honey, can you pass Tom Ridge's Duct Tape Salad? And some of Bill Clinton's Famous Salad Dressing?

The coolest fire truck EVER?

This Rare One Of A Kind Truck could be yours: 1950 Ford F155 Fire Truck, Converted into a Portable Hot Tub, while maintaining a total restored Antique Fire Truck look.

And it could all be yours for just $30,000 (reserve not yet met). Link

What do you get when you match up Pepsi, the WB, SCA Promotions, and Berkshire Hathaway? How about a monkey who could make someone a billionaire?

Through a somewhat complicated process of elimination, the thousand entrants will be pared down to a list of 10 finalists, who will then compete for a guaranteed $1 million prize.

Once the 10 finalists emerge, they will enter into successive, numbers-based games of chance. Through a process of progressive elimination, the million-dollar winner will be picked.

That winner will hold a multi-digit number. In order for him to become a billionaire, the number must exactly match a number to be drawn at random on live TV.

"An unusually dexterous monkey" will do the picking, says executive producer Matti Leshem. "It's the ultimate slap in the face to evolution: the fate of a billion dollars will be in the hands of a monkey."

Link to the CNN article on it.

But what are the real odds of winning here -- and more importantly, what is the expected value of a can of Pepsi in this promo? Pepsi is printing a billion numbers. In addition to the contest above, one million of those numbers will instantly win $15.

For a single can:

You have a 1,000,000/1,000,000,000=1/1,000 chance of winning $15 = 1.5 cents of E.V.

Pepsi thinks 15-20% of people will mail in their numbers to qualify for the TV show. From that, they'll select 1,000 people. So you have about a 1,000/200,000,000=1/200,000 chance of making it onto the show. Let's say only 80% of the 1,000 numbers chosen are from people who make it to the show, so assuming there's no element of skill in the competition you have a 1/200,000*1/800=1/160,000,000 chance of making it to the big $1m prize. The article doesn't say, but this is probably paid in a 30-year annuity ($33,333.33 per year), which gives it a present value of about $555k at 6% interest. So the expected value of the main million dollar prize = 0.35 cents

Once you make it to the big prize, it's not as apparent what the odds are of this crazy monkey drawing your number for the one billion -- the details are sparse in the article and online on how many numbers he draws from and how it will work.

The article does state that Berkshire Hathaway underwrote the billion dollar prize for seven figures. According to this excellent article on SCA Promotions and their big-bucks promotions, their profit margin on underwriting is typically well over 50%, but on straight-math and big-bucks promos their margin is much less. Let's say Berkshire Hathaway took a 30% margin for a premium of $9m. So the "real" value of the bet is $6.3m, which for a $1b payoff represents a 1 in 159 shot (not too bad!). However, the real present value of $1b paid over 40 years at $25m a year is more like $417m assuming a 6% interest rate. That puts the chances at about 1/70. That's close enough to 1/100 that I'm happy saying it's 1/100, putting Berkshire's margin at more like 54% which is probably reasonable. It could even be better than that, but I doubt that the premium cost $9m. I'd say more like $2-5m, in which case the chances are more likely to be slimmer than 1/100-- maybe 1/200.

If these assumptions are correct, you'll have a 1/160,000,000 shot of having a 1/100-1/200 shot of making a billion dollars over forty years. So your chances are 1/16,000,000,000 to 1/32,000,000,000, and the present value of that prize is $417m. That makes the expected value of the grand prize for a single can of Pepsi between 1.3 and 2.6 cents.

That makes the total value of this promotion, assuming Pepsi sells all their billion units of soda, and assuming you send in your can number, 3.15 to 4.45 cents per can.

Sound good? It's not really that great. Coke's recent Harry Potter Promo, for example, had a per-can E.V. of about 20 cents since you had a 1/24 chance of winning a $5 movie ticket (although the E.V. of the grand prize was just 0.11 cents).

But a billion dollar grand prize is just good TV.

Update 4/11/03: This article describes the determination of who wins from the final 10 players as "a game of chance and guts". This could imply some element of calculated risk (aka skill), which means that for people who are good at analyzing risk situations, their chances could improve significantly at making it from the final 10 to the grand prize of $1m. If you were extremely good and the game was skill-based enough (and your opponents bad enough) that you had a 35% chance of winning a top 10 situation, your E.V. for the $1m prize increases to about 1.2 cents (from 0.35 cents) per can, and your E.V. for the $1b prize increases to 4.55-9.1 cents (from 1.3-2.6 cents) per can. So get practicing on your odds evaluation skills!

Update 4/11/03: Scott Leith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution emailed me and pointed out that the $1b will not be a straight annuity, but will include a balloon payment of an unspecified amount. This makes a huge difference! It means basically they will screw you by making the balloon payment huge (thus greatly reducing the present value of the prize). I made a guess of $5m per year, with an $800m balloon payment after 40 years. This results in a present value of $161m for the $1b prize. This guess turns out to be pretty good based on past evidence; in 2000 SCA announced a $1b promo with a moving pay scale and a $620m balloon payment, and they gave it a present value of $170m.

Based on this, I think it very unlikely that Berkshire Hathaway's premium is anywhere close to $9m. I think something like $2m is more like it, and still think the chances are likely somewhere around 1/100-1/200, which results in a margin of 15%-57.5% -- a likely range. This also downgrades the E.V. of the grand billion dollar prize to 0.5-1 cent per can with no skill, and 1.9-3.7 cents per can with the 35% skill mentioned above.

is a cool-sounding Spanish film based on a cool-sounding idea:

that luck can be exchanged. That is, it can be stolen, accumulated and gambled, like money. The film takes this notion and runs with it, creating a parallel universe where gamblers steal fresh luck from unwitting victims to improve their chances in games of pure chance. No poker faces or counting cards here. In one game, the players' heads are smeared with treacle in a darkened room and a glowing praying mantis is released. Whoever the insect lands on, wins. In another, the competitors must run through a forest blindfolded with their hands behind their backs. The winner is the last one to hit a tree.

The film rights have been bought by Disney so they can bring the U.S. a dumbed-down blockbuster version of the film (a la Open Your Eyes). I'd like to get my hands on this film but it doesn't get released on DVD until June 24. I put it on my Amazon wishlist in the meantime. Link

4 guys are "Bowling to Vegas". Sometimes it would be nice to be an unemployed wealthy industrialist.

So we - Mike, Matt, Derek and Todd - have decided to cruise through the countryside where we hope to meet unique people, enjoy the scenery, drink, and of course, bowl. We're Bowling to Vegas, so buy us a round - we want you to be a part of it.

Link

Pop quiz: which popular online news site had these headlines today?

Mob Boss Admits Insanity Was a Ruse
Space Walk Underway
Bouncing Banteng Born To Iowa Cow

If you guessed The Onion, you're way off. These are the three headlines under the "Nation" section of The Washington Post.

The story about Vincent "The Chin" Gigante's 30-year facade of acting like an insane person with a 70-IQ while actually leading the Genovese crime family really needs to be made into a movie though.

Vincent "the Chin" Gigante dropped his three decade-long ruse today and acknowledged that he had tricked doctors into believing he was a low IQ, mental incompetent who paraded around Greenwich Village in his pajamas and a bathrobe.

I see Dan Hedaya as The Oddfather and Ralph Macchio as his son, with Hector Elizondo as one of the family psychiatrists and Delroy Lindo as the determined prosecutor. Throw in a love interest from Rosie Perez and comic relief from Seann William Scott, and you've got yourself a guaranteed blockbuster! Link

Mitch Hedberg is coming to Cap City Comedy Club, June 19-22! He is one hilarious stand-up comic. "I don't have a girlfriend. I just have a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that." It's good to see a really high profile comic come through town. Link

The best stand-up I ever saw was Jake Johannsen at the Bad Dog Comedy Theater a couple years ago. I'm really hanging out to see him again, he was totally up my alley. Unfortunately based on the tour dates on his website he's coming nowhere near Texas this year. He will be in Vegas in late July... maybe I'll take a jaunt there. Link

This Swazi war correspondent knows how to play it safe.

Announcer Phesheya Dube has been found to be giving "live reports" from a broom closet.

Link to the ABC Australia story on it. It's also worth checking out the Swazi Observer -- a slow site, but you get to see what the great nation of Swaziland is up to, including such excellent headlines as "Magwagwa lets fly at Bennett in Senate", "Man who stole firearms from royal residence could be former soldier", "Businessman threatens to shoot community cop", and "Another 'taxi war' almost erupts". Ngiyabathanda labafana!

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