As it happens, I finally determined why I cannot restore from backup.
It turns out that the C: drive partition of my system drive is missing from all my recent backups.
This is a show-stopper.
I do have a backup from last September that I desperately hope has all my licenses preserved.
What a saga!
I found a backup I had saved on another drive last March that restored successfully.
I'm still running into configuration items that I had changed between March and October, and of course all the Windows updates needed to be re-applied.
To recover I had to purchase a new SSD system drive, however I bought a 1TB drive instead of the 250GB original.
To prevent future similar destruction, I've ordered a UPS.
The UPS connects to the computer via USB. The UPS signals the computer when mains supply is lost, and the computer can then do an orderly shutdown
Lessons Learned:
Test your backups. Yes, yes, I already knew this, and I had done so, but apparently not recently enough!
Contact tech support early when things go worng -- I wasted nearly a week trying to figure out by myself why my most recent backup wouldn't work
I was saved from a total disaster because:
except for operating system, programs and configurations all my data is stored on separate drives -- my databases are on a second SSD drive, and all photos, spreadsheets, pdf and general records are on a 3TB conventional drive.
I had a backup
I have now successfully ensured that I'm now backed up.
First hand of a freeroll
No, I wasn't the one punished.
One of the things people do so often in freerolls is open shove the first hand with air. If they win, fine, if not, so what?
So if you open-raise with a half-decent hand, and someone shoves, it is very often profitable to call very widely.
Opponent here didn't count on my flopping a full house though.
Then to give him the useless flush OTR is just adding insult to injury.
Don't worry -- I didn't gloat. I'm Canadian 
Pacific Poker - 15/30 Ante 3 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4
MP+1: 3,000
MP+2: 3,000
CO: 3,000
BTN: 3,000
SB: 3,000
Hero (BB): 3,000
UTG: 3,000
UTG+1: 3,000
MP: 3,000
9 players post ante of 3, SB posts SB 15, Hero posts BB 30
Pre Flop: (pot: 72) Hero has T♥:T♦:
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, CO raises to 120, fold, SB calls 105, Hero raises to 2,997 and is all-in, CO calls 2,877 and is all-in, fold
Flop: (6,141, 2 players) 2♠:T♠:2♦:
Turn: (6,141, 2 players) 7♦:
River: (6,141, 2 players) 4♠:
CO shows A♠:8♠: (Flush, Ace High)
Hero shows T♥:T♦: (Full House, Tens full of Twos)
Hero wins 6,141
2:1 favourite pre:
Equity Win Tie
MP2 67.89% 67.72% 0.16% { TdTh }
MP3 32.11% 31.95% 0.16% { As8s }
Slightly better OTF
Board: 2♠T♠2♦
Equity Win Tie
MP2 99.60% 99.60% 0.00% { TdTh }
MP3 0.40% 0.40% 0.00% { As8s }
OBS had some problems, but went ahead anyway.
Missing were the joke of the day, and some info panels on the various games.
Big Deal.
I did cash two of the 4 tournaments I played, and made up the rest in a couple of cash games.
Felt good to be back.
Afterwards, I fixed the problems with OBS -- it turns out that the info panels required an add-in that I had added in after my March backup.
I'm sure I'm going to find crap like that to fix for some time to come.
so it goes..
VS
Elsewhere I predicted
My UPS arrived.
Murphy's law dictates that from this point onwards, there will be no critical power outages.
Also, since my backup problem is now solved, and my system is backed up daily, I will never again have a disk failure.
Just shows you how little I know...
We had a very short outage today.
There is no way of knowing what -- if any -- damage it would have caused...
But I'm happy to know that the UPS actually works...
I also upgraded my backup software to the lastest version, and one of the first things I did was clone my system disk to an external drive.
Theoretically I should have been able to boot from this, however I could not.
We'll talk to tech support later this week.
G'Night all...
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
A Death in the Family
No, nothing like that -- just my computer ♠_cry:We had a power failure Friday morning, but immediately after the power went out, it came back for a second or so then when out again -- and I think that that second of returning power toasted my SSD system drive.
heh, had this exact same thing happened to me. but instead of twice, the power just goes on/off on/off several times in an hour. Which happened several times in a week. rip SSD.
Originally posted by kenthmp
heh, had this exact same thing happened to me. but instead of twice, the power just goes on/off on/off several times in an hour. Which happened several times in a week. rip SSD.
Brutal!
I now have a UPS that will keep the system running for about 15 minutes, but if the power is out for more than 5 minutes, software on the computer that monitors the UPS will shut the computer down gently.
I'm eager to see this actually work [1]
We had an industrial UPS where I worked for several years that would keep the entire server farm operational for up to 20 minutes.
The circuit protected by the UPS was also backed up by a generator that kept the emergency lighting, the press electronics and the server farm supplied with power for as long as necessary.
Once a year, the UPS underwent maintenance, and during the course of that maintenance, battery backup would be unavailable for up to 10 minutes.
You guessed it -- during that 10 minutes one year we had a power failure.
The generator kicked in, but the generator had a delay of about 40 seconds before coming up to stable power.
We lost no hardware, but did have to answer a lot of questions...
[1] Or not so eager, depending on what I'm doing when the power goes out...
Apart from my first straight flush in ages. which led to a min-cash in the $2.20 PLO8 on PokerStars, I could put nothing together today.
Dropped 4 bucks playing PLO8 5 cash, about 15 bucks playing 5-Card Draw NL 25 cash. Over and over I hit a decent hand and opponent hit decenter ones
There's always tomorrow...
I've been playing NL 5 on GGPoker a few hands per day since about Aug 01 this year.
I've been deliberately tight -- aggressive and trying to select when I'll CBet, fold to CBet and so on -- deliberately trying to evaluate players' possible ranges.
This is tough at GGPoker NL 5 where anyone can have anything any time.
So it came as a total surprise to me when I imported all my hand into PT4 and found this:
I rather thought I was getting more than my share of folds -- people just didn't seem to be challenging me much.
Although that is a definite consequence of a tight image I guess...
Also, my QQ+ hands have just been winning the blinds, or just taking it down OTF
Like so:
GG Poker - $0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4
Hero (SB): $5.01
BB: $0.80
UTG: $5.31
CO: $12.53
BTN: $5.00
Hero posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05
Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has Q♠:Q♣:
fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.15, BB calls $0.10
Flop: ($0.30, 2 players) A♥:8♥:6♦:
Hero bets $0.15, fold
Hero wins $0.30
Rake paid $0.01
I don't really think it makes sense to slow play 2nd pair though...
(and it is sure better than getting beaten, so I'll just shut up now... )
It is a mathematical certainty, that in the long run, luck is the same for all players. Stated another way, "variance will eventually average to 0 for all players"
The big Q is <<What the long run means?>>! And theoretically lifetime can be nothing compared to it! I am seeing pros playing the highest stakes and playing super bad, but having ridiculous luck most of there lives!
They are many living proofs of bad players named pros playing poker for living, that bad players , playing bad and consistently winning and they are others at the other hand, that are real good, and more intelligent, and learning and working harder and are loosing players!
I say many leaving proofs of pros and coaches that are winning only, because of consistent luck running always like goods or just good and doing so lifetime!
So tell me someone <<What the long run means?>>! Proof, that for example for 1 mil hands your green and orange line will be the same!
Just some people are mentioned/it is written/fade to win and others no! This is most probably the truth!
Who runs the world? Are they the most intelligent and working people or not! And the answer is not!
Originally posted by vengeance77
It is a mathematical certainty, that in the long run, luck is the same for all players. Stated another way, "variance will eventually average to 0 for all players"
...
So tell me someone <<What the long run means?>>! Proof, that for example for 1 mil hands your green and orange line will be the same!
Hi vengeance77, thanks for stopping by...
I'm sure you've seen this: https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/
Just add three zeros to the #of hands input then click "calculate".
Just looking at the graph as it opens, I call the top line "Phil Ivey" and the bottom one "Joe Btfsplk"
You'll see why if you follow the link.
Well not really answering the Q!
Besides if you are winning 2.5/100 you will actually be looser, because of the rake/not calculated in there!/!;)
Originally posted by vengeance77
Well not really answering the Q!
Besides if you are winning 2.5/100 you will actually be looser, because of the rake/not calculated in there!/!;)
The question cannot really be answered definitely, but as sample size increases, the perceived win rate moves closer to the actual winrate.
The other problem is that as time goes by, players' tendencies change -- and they often change session to session depending on who the opponents are.
The pokertracker graph does take rake into account -- the GGPoker graph does not <== not posted, because in truth it is meaningless
The rake is meaningless? Seriously? Well you should beat the rake 1st to go to BE and after that you can thing for profit! And it isn't an easy task now days!
Originally posted by vengeance77
The rake is meaningless? Seriously? Well you should beat the rake 1st to go to BE and after that you can thing for profit! And it isn't an easy task now days!
No -- the graph is meaningless since it does not include the rake
First off, my standard two opening tournaments, the $3.30 NL 2-7 Single Draw PKO and the $2.20 PLO8 on PokerStars didn't run.
In the rest of the tournaments, I had very few playable hands, and most of those I lost.
I didn't exactly rage quit, but I quit nonetheless.
Afterward I decided that it would be wise to play some more, and just keep going -- making sensible choices with each hand as it came.
I recovered somewhat -- mostly thanks to the https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=3183947#post3183947
But even so, I still finished the day well in the red.
Bright spot was PLO8 5 on 888 where I made a reasonable return -- but nothing very big. It is hard to make a lot of $$ playing a $0.02/$0.05 full ring split pot game
Good question
Scenario:
We hold 5 cards, 3 of them of the same suit. (see today's https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=3184368#post3184368)
If I throw away the 2 mismatched cards, what are the odds of drawing a flush?
There are 10 cards left to make our flush if we nail two of them.
There are 45 2-card combos of those 10 cards.
We have seen 5 cards, so there are 47 unknowns.
There are 1081 2-card combos in those 47 unknowns, so 45 "good" ones, and 1036 "not so good" ones.
Thus the odds are 1036:45 or 23.02:1
This seems low.
Let's try it another way.
Assume we draw the two cards individually 1 after the other.
Chance of drawing a matching card:
1st Card: 10/47 = 0.213
2nd Card: 9/46 = 0.196
The chance of hitting both are the two multiplied together: 0.042
So the odds of hitting are 95.8:4.2 = 22.8
Pretty close, but why would the be any difference at all?
Any mathematicians out there can help?
Neither mathematicians nor fluent in the odds-notation but it's rounding.
In the second calculation you're rounding the denominator up 0.0416(=> the result gets smaller) and therefore rounding the numerator down (=> the result gets smaller) because numerator and denominator still have to sum up to 100.
If you calculate the first assumptions in percentages like the secondone you get: 45/1081 = 0.042 which is equal.
or the 2nd with one more significant decimal: 95.84:4.16 = 23.04
Originally posted by Rhodriguez
Neither mathematicians nor fluent in the odds-notation but it's rounding.
Bingo!
I'm so ashamed of myself, since I spent a fair amount of time as a science teacher in the olden days.
If you do the operations I describe, the two numbers come out exactly equal.
Today I was a bit worried that my mental state was still reeling from the thrashing I took on Monday.
So I played with bonus money on 888 (3 tournaments) and 1 on playnow.com
Results: 3 of 4 cashes, 2 of them FTs
Nice to get some $ back.
Including a rare session of $1/$2 Fixed-Limit 5-Card Draw
I managed a bounty on the 2nd or 3rd hand in the $3.30 NL 2-7 Single Draw PKO -- but that was it for tournament cashes today.
Made up for it with some might fine hands that help in the above-mentioned 5-Card Draw game. See today's Hand of the Day for the hand that made up about half the winnings.
I liked my play a bit better, but my luck a bit less, in that I was more aggressive that usual, and managed to collect a lot of chips from that alone.
Tomorrow is 888 Freeroll day, and I'll also play a bunch of PLO8 cash as well, since on Saturday there is usually PLO8 10 running, whereas PLO8 5 is usually the highest limit running 888
