"Belief"

The other night I had a near-Storm experience, when the topic - over wine - ended up for a short while about evolution and then the words "but science is also just a belief, really" were uttered. I did object to it, but I think my objection was lost/ignored/misheard/ruled out by generally loud conversation that quickly spread like wildfire to some other topic.

But I'm bothered by the statement, not because it's untrue, but because semantics force it to be true. Yes - science is also something that one "believes" in, much like some deity, the fairy godmother or Santa Claus. So the statement, taken literally, is true. There are serious differences between the two kinds of belief that are sadly jumbled up into one concept, but the English vocabulary does not allow for them to be easily expressed. Neither, by the way, does Swedish. Which leads me to wonder if there's a language that actually has separate words for the following two states of the brain:

• Accepting a statement about reality because it seems likely, or feels right, or makes sense, compared to:
• Accepting a statement about reality because it has been proven true.

I have more to say about these two sentences in a little bit. First, I want to also address another beef with the word "belief" - that it doesn't separate between "likely" and "virtually certain." Anything anyone deems just past the line of 50% probability gets the tag "belief." All the way up to 99.99%. And, for reasons having to do with social conventions and politeness in discussion, quite a chunk of the one-hundred-percenters, too. For instance:

• "I believe it will rain tomorrow."
• "I believe my wife is at work."
• "I believe my team will win the championship."
• "I believe this shirt is too small for me."
• "I believe evolution is true."
• "I believe there is a fly in my soup."

These are not six equally likely propositions. Yet there is no good way of stating the difference, because we're stuck with the word "believe." Sure, you could try throwing into the mix such phrases as "I hold it to be true that..." or "It seems likely to me that..." or "Surely, it's the case that..." but those are usually awkward. You could also go right ahead and just state matter-of-factly that "Evolution is a fact." Yes, it is. But that actually says something different than sentence number five above. It takes the speaker out of the picture, and I'm a firm believer (see?!) in speaking in first-person as often as I can because I want to talk about how I perceive the world and what I believe, my values, and so on. Maybe this is too fine a point, maybe I'm splitting hairs. But I can't help look at those two sentences and feel a big difference about what they say and what kind of conversation will take place after they're stated.

Maybe it's because of inflation. Maybe the word "belief" was originally used in the sense of "holding something to be true" but was gradually devalued as people used it for less and less certain statements about the world. There are lots of words that have had this happen to them, my favorite being the Swedish word "ganska" which originally meant "certainly" and now means "fairly." We slowly went from being "ganska" sure of what the word meant, to only "ganska" sure about it.

So about the word that is missing, the word that denotes something I hold to be a fact about the world because evidence dictates it versus things I've been told or think I have noticed - what about that? How do we separate between "I believe a full moon gives me headache" and "I believe Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system?" A minimum of one of those are - for most people - on authority. And only one of them is true. But both of them can correctly be summed up as being things people believe, thus implying a hugely unfair (to Jupiter) similarity in degree of truth. It pisses me off. Can I start saying that I "objectively believe" something?

• I objectively believe in evolution.
• It seems likely that it'll rain tomorrow.
• I'm probably over-obsessing about this topic.
• I'm almost certain that very few people will read this.

Oh, whatever. Watch this instead:

Officially retired poker player, am I

So, after quite a hiatus, I finally hammered the last nail into my poker career's coffin: I withdrew all of my bankroll, thus effectively putting to end an era of my life that lasted for 5-6 years, could in many respects be said to have been more formative of my personality than school or college ever was, and from which I bring (almost) no regrets.

And, with that, this blog will either die for real, or be reborn. I'm still not sure. I'm nowadays active on Twitter - @FredrikPaulsson - and I've found myself at times itching to say more than what fits into 140 characters. Perhaps this is the place to do that.

We'll see. Tonight, I'll drink a toast to my poker career, reflecting on its highs and lows, on all the friends I've made, the good times I've had and what I've learned.

Here's to you, poker, old friend. Maybe we'll cross paths again some day.

--FP

I did it.

For the first time in two months, I played poker. 150 hands in total - wouldn't want to overdo it the first session I play after my break. So a short session, a buy-in of profit, and maybe I'll do it again soon. I suppose it's premature to claim that my break is over.

What I have done in the past three months when I haven't blogged (and hardly posted on forums) and haven't spent an hour a day on poker? I've read books. I've worked - oh boy, have I worked - I've hung out with friends and family and I've watched a decent chunk of TV. Oh, and I've played some video games.

Anyway. I'm back, I guess. We'll see how this pans out.

Progressive Tipping

I think it's customary to write trip reports on poker blogs, especially when your travel takes you to Las Vegas, the Mecca of gambling. And I'm sorry if I've let you down. Rest assured that the lack of stories does not in any way correspond to an uneventful time. I had a great time, and a lot of fun things happened, but today I'll just focus on one of them: My experiment with progressively increasing tips for the poker room cocktail waitress.

The idea is simple: I tip the standard $1 the first time she brings me a beer. Then I up it to $2 the second time around, etc. I didn't explicitly mention my intention of doing it - hell, I didn't even have the intention of doing it until I was already well under way. Besides, cocktail waitresses seem to have a very sophisticated sense of tip, so I feel confident that most of them will pick up on it without having to be told.

The end result of this was that as the session went on, my beers became more and more frequent, which is hardly surprising. But here's the kicker: About 90 minutes into the session, my waitress came by our table and went up to me and offered me a last Corona (my beverage of choice this evening). I say "offered" and "last" because

1) I hadn't ordered it (I was still working on the last one she had brought me), and
2) she was getting off her shift but wanted to make sure I wasn't without a drink in the time it would take the next waitress to start her shift and get to our table.

So: She had ended her shift and brought me a beer (that I had not - yet - requested) on her way out. Out of kindness and generosity and care for customers? Maybe. But I bet she also wanted the $7 tip that was coming. So that was funny in its own right.

What made it even more fun is that BelgoSuisse (from Cardschat) who was sitting two seats to my right had tried to order a beer from her just a few minutes prior to her bringing me this Corona and had been told "no, sorry, I'm getting off my shift now." Had I known about this exchange as she brought me the last drink, I would have tipped her $20, because that's awesome.

Bloom

Yesterday, we had our first home-grown salad: Tomatoes and lettuce, with a sprinkle of (our own) parsley and then cheating a bit by adding some store-bought olive oil and garlic. I can honestly say that I'm not sure I ever want to buy tomatoes again. If you've never had home-grown tomatoes, you don't know what tomatoes taste like. I kid you not. There's just such a huge difference in sweetness, texture and aroma that it's not comparable. The best analogy I can come up with is comparing Heinz Ketchup to a really old bottle of generic ketchup mixed with two parts of water.

There's another thing that's in bloom and maturing wonderfully, and that's Sean Gibson's career as a poker reporter. Sean and I go back a few years from CardsChat, but I got to meet him last year in Las Vegas, when he was trying to break into the world of poker reporting. He had some various writing jobs, among others for PokerTableRatings, but at the time (if I'm not mistaken) his future was pretty much up in the air. I got the feeling that he wasn't sure if it was going to work out or not.

Fast forward one year, and we have who I can honestly say I consider the best on-camera poker reporter in the world right now. To combine the two traits of actually knowing what he's talking about and at the same time keeping the interviews light-hearted and being able to connect with the interviewee and make them feel relaxed is, I think, unprecedented in this (admittedly so far relatively small) field. Privately, he seems to have changed as well; more relaxed, much more confident and overall having that look of someone who's really, really enjoying his job and his life, and that's just awesome.

Sean, my friend, you're the home-grown tomato of poker reporting. Keep it up.

Next Stop: Vegas

Heading out tomorrow morning, and should be at the Venetian around 11:30, by my calculations. Taking only a carry-on and checking in online cuts the airport time down to a minimum, which. Is. Awesome. I really don't like airports. To me, they're buildings with thousands of people who can't wait to get out of there, which makes the overall mood in the place pretty damp. Whatever, I'll have my book. Or books, rather, seeing as there's three of them in my bag.

Once in Las Vegas, I'll be meeting up with Debi almost immediately for lunch. After that, I have exactly zero plans - and that's how I like it. Will I play poker? Who knows. Maybe. I'm bringing some change just in case, but I don't expect I'll be spending a ton of time at the tables, unless for hanging out with friends who want to play.

I'm excited about going there, I'm excited about coming back and doing a truckload of shopping, I'm excited about going to my parents after that to get back to my cats, and I'm excited about going home a few days later still. Once home, I'm excited about going back to work for the first time in 6 months, and I'm excited about grabbing my poker career by the horns and turning this year into my best one yet. I'm overall very excited about what's happening in my life right now.

Did I just jinx it? Let's hope not.

Oil.

Two random observations:

1. I'm under the impression that oil is used for a lot of very specific things, among them making plastic. It's a really neat substance. I don't know how much of the "stuff" we have today in which oil is a necessary ingredient, but I'm guessing it's a whole lot.

2. Also, oil is probably one of the most rare substances in the universe, based on the fact that it's what happens to organic lifeforms after millions of years. We don't know any other planet on which it exists.

And we're burning this stuff?