Bounty EV on Full Tilt, Nonsense on TV

There was an interesting thread on 2+2 about a hand someone played against me and he was trying to factor the added value of the pro bounty in his decision to call my all-in pre-flop shove with his 33. The issue of whether or not you should or even could factor it into an ICM model. Here is the link:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/87/high-stakes-mtt/correct-equity-vs-ftp-pro-roy-winston-given-bounty-707388/

There was a lot of rhetoric about the added fun of busting me, but only one person really analyzed it really carefully. With his 33, unless he had some Jedi read which put me on 22, my range of hands at that point of the tournament to shove with isn’t all that large. Also what’s not mentioned in the thread anywhere is that I play knowing the bounty is on my head. This means I try and use it to my advantage, I will often shove AA, KK pre-flop in a multi-limp or minimally raised pot so it looks like I’m squeezing. You would be surprised at the number of time I get called by less than marginal hands hoping for the bounty. I had one opponent recently who raised 3 big blinds in early position and the button called. I had AA in the big blind and shoved almost 100 big blinds. He wrote in that chat before calling “AK, AQ? I’m ahead so I can’t fold.” He then called with 10 10. After he busted he wrote, “that’s just a stupid way to play AA.” I didn’t respond at the time, however calling off your whole stack, especially when you are very deep with only a small amount invested in the pot, hoping you have a coin flip isn’t going to bring long term results. Keep calling me light for the bounty, I love it.

So while I’ve been hanging around at home playing on Full Tilt the last few months. I usually have the TV on in the background and although I am often watching something I saved on the DVR, occasionally I watch something that is on daytime TV. I am specifying daytime because now I am setting the bar very low. I could go off here on the horrendous quality of these daytime shows, like Jerry Springer where the theme for the day was “my boyfriend or husband got my sister pregnant” or some such nonsense. Not only are these shows the lowest of the low and offensive but, I’m even more offended by the content of the commercials running during these shows. They seem to be either advertising lawyers who want to sue someone for disability income, or a drug that you took that ruined your life, or perhaps you have cancer and someone must be responsible and has to pay or, you need an electric chair that can be paid for by Medicare so you can have an “active” lifestyle, or you have a settlement that you have already won from suing someone and you receive annuity payments over time and they will buy you out for a lump sum, that way you can blow your whole nest egg in one shot.

I realize the solution is simple and okay I’m turning the TV off and only watching the shows I DVR and live sports. The broader question here is what does this say about our society and those who watch this stuff on a daily basis? By and large I hate commercials, but it does seem like commercials were once about trying to market products, occasionally some are witty or somewhat entertaining like those during the Super Bowl. Nowadays it seems like so many are for parasites just trying to infect us. What does this have to do with poker? Absolutely nothing. I was just sitting here thinking. Well I’m off to resume playing in the online world. I’m feeling better and better about my online game, and I have gotten deep in a bunch of events lately, I feel like it’s only a matter of time.