Nat Arem's Blog

I just returned to Las Vegas after an 18 day trip (first to Costa Rica, then to the east coast) and, at various points during my trip, I found myself explaining some common misconceptions. I thought to myself, what a terrific blog idea. I’m going to make this a series although I will definitely mix in other blog entries as I go. I can easily see this series going on for years because of all of the common misconceptions that are out there.

Also, I too am likely guilty of believing in common misconceptions. Hence why they are common. I wish that someone would point out things where I’m wrong so I figure I might as well point out spots where most people are wrong.

So, first things first: octane. There are really two misconceptions related to octane. The first is the use of the phrase “high octane” to mean what people think it means. The second is what the octane rating on gasoline really means (and whether premium gasoline is “better” for a car).

First, high octane. Usually this refers to things which are explosive, exciting, whatever. That makes zero sense. Higher octane ratings mean fuel is more difficult to ignite. That means, depending on how you define it, it’s actually less explosive. All fuels have roughly the same energy content but higher octane is simply more controllable due to being less likely to spontaneously ignite in a hot/compressed engine cylinder. So basically, if someone says the Pats have a “high octane” offense, that makes zero sense. Be sure to let them know that they basically just said that the Pats offense is more difficult to get going, easier to control and less likely to explode randomly.

Second, “premium” gasoline. As you probably know, the number by the pump (87, 89, 91, 93, 94 are the common ones that I know of) is the octane rating of your gasoline. A lot of people think that has to do with purity, quality, etc. As you saw above, it doesn’t. The reason that high end cars take premium gasoline (ie, high octane gasoline) is because they are designed to work with high compression levels in the engine and 87 octane gas is more likely to cause knocking in the engine at high compression/temperatures. Basically the engine can be “tougher” on higher octane fuels. If your engine is not designed for high compression (your manual will state what type of gas to put in it), you are simply lighting money on fire by putting harder-to-ignite gasoline into your car. It doesn’t make the engine last longer, give you better mileage, allow your car to run “cleaner”, make your car faster, etc. If anything, because the engine is not designed for higher octane gas, you might actually be damaging the engine (I don’t know this for sure but it seems plausible that there’s a non-zero chance of damage). There is nothing universally better about premium gasoline despite the name “premium”. So even though high performance cars do perform better with high octane fuel (these same cars usually adjust if they detect lower octane fuel which lowers relative performance), that doesn’t translate across all cars.

Anyway, that is Common Misconceptions, volume #1. I’m sure I’ll be back soon with more.

One really interesting phenomenon some web entrepreneurs come across is that many of the very users of their products are actually against the entrepreneur actually making any money from their effort. It’s happened in every business I’ve ever run. When we started charging for the “advanced db” (as it used to be known) on thepokerdb, there were a lot of complaints about the fact that we were selling access to data that we got “for free”. Of course, free is used kind of liberally here because we spent a lot of time, effort and money developing software to get and compile the data so I would hardly call it data acquired for free. Nonetheless, I heard a lot of “can’t you see that data in the PokerStars lobby for free? what right do you have to charge for it?”. And with PSDollars (a W$/T$ exchange I used to run), lots of people would be like “it’s so ridiculous that you’re offering x% for W$ and selling them for y%, don’t you think that’s an unfairly large spread?”. Or if I was selling T$ in a spot like the twoplustwo marketplace and I set a price, people would complain the price is too high — and then usually within 10 minutes the T$ would be sold. This post followed by this post is an example — it’s like the user is totally incredulous that I could possibly name a price that high.

Anyway, I think we all know that business is business. I have the right to set whatever price I want. And if no one will pay it then I set it too high and I pay the price by not being paid. As a professional W$/T$ trader, I didn’t exist to serve the needs of 2p2ers at the cheapest possible price — I was in the business to maximize my profits. Of course sometimes it made sense to sacrifice margin for volume but that decision was made based off of what I thought the market would bear, not to save an MTT grinder some money or anything. Don’t get me wrong — I want 2p2 MTT grinders to do well. But cutting margin on T$ for no reason would not have been all that far away from me just randomly shipping people $50 or $100 on Stars here and there… something clearly no one would do.

Where else does this show up? Well, the inspiration for me to write this entry was reading the youtube comments for the Holiday Special by The Micros (the krantz/jimmylegs animated short project). It is sponsored in some way by Full Tilt and for a lot of people, that is somehow a problem. Here are some YouTube comments:

One big commercial for full tilt.

Nothing else….ZZZzzzzzz

Genius but dont fuck it up with only full tilt ads

-1 for Full Tilt plug, +1 for Eric Seidel saying ‘motherfucker’

Lol at people complaining about the FTP stuff and being afraid this ill continue. The point here was obv to blatantly make a ftp plug (it probabily helps fund the future episodes) The “real” episode 2 comes out in january, and i am 100% sure that will not be like this, so chill already.

Now I’m obviously cherrypicking the negatives but there are also comments like this or this on 2p2 about the holiday episode. I’m sure similar comments are all over the internet about this episode and the comments will keep popping up. For whatever reason, a lot of users simply HATE the idea of any product, branding, commercialization, etc. The funniest part is, the holiday special of the micros is MAKING FUN of the idea of selling out. They go from having one or two Full Tilt things to being completely blanked in Full Tilt things. It reminds me of this scene from Wayne’s World.

But even if the sponsorship thing (and I’m not even sure The Micros got much of anything out of Full Tilt for this video) wasn’t the whole reason for the video being funny, what is really wrong with selling ads? The users don’t own The Micros — the creators do. It’s their right to sell ads. If that causes less people to watch the show, that is the owners’ loss (maybe — oftentimes the users who rebel against monetization are relatively worthless in a strict direct monetization sense). But it is the content/site/etc owner’s choice to do what they want with their asset. Users should really stop complaining that someone has decided to make money off of their property. It’s fine to complain if they think the episode is dumb but just complaining about monetization of the property makes the user look like a jackass — we live in a capitalist world economy, get over it.

We are about to introduce something on PocketFives that might generate a similar reaction. I can’t say what it is quite yet but I will be sure to follow up on this post when we get a similar “wtf you are charging for that?? how dare you!!” reaction from some users. And just to make sure this doesn’t cause confusion, we are not charging for anything that currently exists on the site. We’ll be charging for a new feature or two that we’re adding.

In conclusion, good luck to The Micros. I hope they make tons of money from the show.

Don’t root against people for no reason.

I’m currently traveling in Costa Rica but I’m making a non travel related post for once. I think my readers are probably tired of hearing about Costa Rica given that I come here like five times a year and I used to live here.

So here goes… (don’t take offense to these please, they are not meant to be taken seriously)

See also: Philosoraptor

Feel free to post some good ones in the comments!

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is things like nature v nurture (thanks to reading Outliers) and misguided attitudes. I’ve noticed it more and more lately so I feel kind of compelled to write about it. Basically, people just make endless excuses. And the excuses are, 95%+ of the time, in the wrong order. Everyone seems to have it backwards.

So what do I mean? How many times have you heard people say something like “oh I’m not technical, I can’t do [something technical]” or “I could never lift something like that, I’m not strong” or “I could never run a fast mile, I’m not really a runner”. All of those are backwards. It should be “I’m not technical because I never try to do [something technical]” or “I’m not strong because I never pick up something heavy” or “I’m not a runner because I don’t go run miles”. Obviously their original statement is factually correct but it’s just a way to say something that makes it out as if they are somehow cursed in life to never be able to do something. In almost every case, they aren’t. They can do it.

The fact of the matter is that human minds and bodies are pretty awesome. Not trying to toot our own but we adapt amazingly well. And we adapt to pretty much anything. If you have a bad memory and you start doing memory game and puzzles, I’ll bet you will develop a better memory. If you’re weak and you start lifting heavy things, the body will adapt and allow you to pick up progressively heavier and heavier things. If you suck at running, you just need to start running more and before you know it you’ll be running with ease. Now, of course, there are lots of ways to screw something up with injuries but, forgetting that for a second, if you do actually run on a frequent basis there is a 99%+ chance that you’ll be a pretty good runner in short order — and an even better one with a good diet and such. But instead, the mindset is “oh I won’t go running because I’m not a good runner”. Excuse my language but, simply, fuck that. You are a good runner, you just haven’t developed the skill. This applies to almost every skill, mental or physical. You’ve got it backwards.

You’d think there’d be a programmatic way to stop this. Like after the third comment in a span of three minutes, require password re-entry. Obviously don’t publish the method for determining how to require password verification but it wouldn’t be too tricky.

The same concept could be applied to poker accounts that are normally tag but suddenly sit at stakes 10x what the account normally plays at and the account starts throwing money around… just lock the account automatically. It’s like 99%+ likely to be a hacked account joyriding.