Some Theories And Some Updates

Earlier this week it was a little rainy here in Budapest. I went out for one of my usual evening runs, and – as expected – 90% of the usual running crowd were absent. This reminded me of one of my ‘theories’, a mostly useless bunch of observations which I like to collect about the world around us. Since it is Friday I would like to share 3 of these… and also let you know about some updates to articles here at SNG Planet which I have been working on.

#1 – Planet Mark’s Exponential Decision Making Theory ©2012

Here is an old favorite, this one proves itself to be true year after year – and in a multitude of settings. I suggest to you that the perfect number of people to make a good decision is exactly one, and that for every extra person you add to this decision making process you double the difficulty… the numbers look like this: 1 Person – Perfect! 2 People – Twice as hard 3 People – 4 times as hard 4 People – 8 times 5 People – 16 times as hard to make a decision as one person alone… And so on… Even the simple decisions, like which bar to go to next, or where to go for that family vacation clearly follow this pattern. Planet Mark’s Exponential Decision Making Theory… you heard it here first.

#2 – Planet Mark’s Infinite Pareto Principle

The infamous 80/20 rule is so damn pervasive, you can not escape from in so many forms of life. For those who missed it, this suggests that 80% of the benefits come from 20% of the effort… if you are a poker player then 80% of your profits come from 20% of your sessions, if you are a webmaster than 80% of your clicks are on 20% of your pages… it works everywhere! My theory is that we should not be stopping at the 80/20. That the 20% needs to be subject to the 80/20 rule too… the 96/4… and that the 4 then needs to be subject to this rule to give us the 99/1. No big shocker here, especially for those familiar with normal distribution math and the 3 standard deviations. Can be useful though – time to go searching for that 4%!

#3 – Planet Mark’s Rainy Runners Revelation

Final theory for now – and back to the runners. It should not be too much of a shock to hear that only 10% of the usual runners make it out in the rain. Looking at these runners who do come out I can only conclude that there is a near perfect inverse relationship between the need for a runner to come out (in terms of health / fitness / getting in shape) and those who actually do. Yep, its all the seriously fit people who probably could have missed a run no problem at all who were out… the huffers and puffers who could do with losing a few pounds… A little spit and spot of rain and they are firmly fixed to their couches in front of the TV.

Alright, enough of my silly theory nonsense. Here are some updates I have done here at SNG Planet this week! -    Best Site For SNGs. This is as old as this site and has been through many different iterations over the years. I have given this a big revamp, demoting Pokerstars in a couple of categories and giving OnGame a little promotion. There are just too many grinders on Stars these days, it gets to the point where the games elsewhere are completely different. -    1-table Satellite Strategy. Again an older article, with more players savvy as to how soft these games can be, I felt it was time for an update covering the different way of looking at prize pool equity compared to normal SNGs.

GL at the tables, Mark