Friday Fun (v.1.11)—Physics Fun

An all-science Friday Fun this week.  Let's hear it for our geeky friends in the lab!

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First off is a cool video of a lightning strike, filmed at 9000 frames/second (hat tip The Daily Wh.at).  This video captured lightning strikes over Rapid City, South Dakota, and is equivalent to one second of real time (well, except for all my readers who are traveling near the speed of light relative to my frame of reference):

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Neatorama.com passed along a report that scientists have measured the smallest unit of time so far—20 attoseconds.  What's an attosecond, you wonder?  Well, Neatorama helpfully tells us:

An attosecond is one quintillionth of a second.

Oh, that clears it up for me.  Anyway, the measurement was performed to discover the amount of time it took electrons to move after being struck by a photon.  Seriously, where are all the particle rights activists, and why are they allowing this lepton abuse to occur?  Are electrons just not as cuddly as the baryons?  Are the particle protestors all too busy enjoying their Swiss vacation as they protest hadron abuse in the CERN facility? 

In any event, if scientists want to conduct humane experiments about short time periods, they need only follow Phil Hellmuth in a poker tournament.  There is nothing faster than the "Hellmuth two-pawed insta-call" when he thinks he has trapped an opponent, except perhaps for the period of time between when Hellmuth's opponent reveals he has, in fact, actually trapped Hellmuth, and the beginning of Hellmuth's whining rant.

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Finally, ever wonder what would happen if a flamethrower went up against a fire extinguisher (especially when death is on the line)?  Here's the answer, in a video for "Ritalin" by Dancing Pigeons (hat tip Neatorama.com):

Dancing Pigeons - Ritalin from Blink on Vimeo.

Physics & Poker—Lesson 2: Black Holes

One of the more fascinating modern scientific discoveries is the existence of black holes.  Black holes are superdense objects created from the gravitational collapse of sufficiently large stars (at least three times the mass of our sun).  Essentially, at some point, the star's fusion process runs out of the fuel necessary to maintain the thermal energy required to resist the gravitational force of its remaining mass.  The star then collapses back in on itself into a core known as a gravitational singularity, where the mass of the star essentially becomes infinitely dense.  Around the singularity is an event horizon, which marks the point where any particle or wave is unable to escape the gravitational field of the black hole.  Thus, the black hole is "black" because no light (including any form of electromagnetic radiation) can escape from inside the event horizon.

A significant implication is that it is impossible to ever directly observe a black hole from outside the event horizon.*  That's right, you will never see a black hole.  So, how does one observe a black hole?  Thankfully, due to the nature of black holes, scientists have developed several effective methods of observing black holes indirectly, essentially deducing their presence and properties by the black hole's effect on other, observable phenomena.  Some of these techniques include:

• Gravitational lensing—Strong gravitational fields will cause light (including all electromagnetic radiation) to curve as it passes by a massive object.  In a way, the light trapped within a black hole's event horizon is simply light whose path has been curved by gravity to such an extreme that it bends completely back around on itself inside the event horizon.  Light passing a great distance from the black hole will be unaffected.  But light passing near the black hole will indeed take a curved path, and this curving can be detected by observing objects (such as stars or galaxies) that are out of their expected positions or by noticing multiple images of one object (known as a gravitational mirage).
• Accretion discs—Black holes will attract gas particles, which will then form a disc spiraling into the black hole which can be observed directly.  Although many cosmic bodies can create an accretion disc, the presence of an accretion disc with no observable center object is indicative of a black hole.
• X-rays—As gas is drawn into the black hole from the accretion disc, it will superheat, releasing energy, in particular X-rays, which can be detected.  In fact, this is one of the most energy-efficient processes ever observed, transforming up to 40% of the matter to energy.  This process occurs just outside the event horizon, enabling the x-rays to escape the black hole's gravitational field.  In many cases, the x-rays will be released from electromagnetic poles perpendicular to the accretion disc via relativistic jets (often shown on diagrams of black holes, such as those below).
• Black hole binary star systems—In some binary star systems (where two stars orbit around a common point), one of the stars is a black hole which cannot be seen, but its gravitational effect on the companion star can be detected.  A famous example is Cygnus X-1.
• Gamma ray bursts—These are short bursts of high energy radiation which occur when a large star collapses into a black hole after a supernova, or when two black holes or a black hole and a star collide to form a bigger black hole.
• Quasars—Quasars are supermassive black holes at the centers of young galaxies that emit a high volume of x-rays from a large accretion disk.
• Gravitational waves—Fluctuations or distortions in space-time are caused by the movements of certain massive objects, including black holes, and those distortions then ripple out from the object.  Although the techniques are still experimental, scientists hope to eventually detect black holes by detecting gravitational waves.

So, what do black holes have to do with poker?  Well, other than the obvious analogy that poker seems to suck all of the interpersonal skills and human decency out of the souls of some players ...

Black holes came to mind during my last live poker session because of the concept of indirect detection.  I sat down at a 2/5 NLHE table, and there were a few regulars as well as a few players I did not know (which is rather unusual for the Meadows ATM).  Two of the regulars are players whose games I respect.  One is rather loose preflop, the other is rather tight, but both players are solid postflop players, aggressive when possible, cautious when necessary, but rarely putting chips into the pot without a good reason.  Early on, I was fairly card dead, so I wasn't playing a lot of hands.  However, by watching the two players I did know, I got a feel for the table.  Two of the newbies could be bullied.  One was a calling station.  Most importantly, there was one newbie with a bigger stack who was given respect by the players I knew.  When this newbie played a hand, the regulars showed respect to his bets and raises, and never made moves on him.  Clearly, then, two players who I respected felt that this newbie was a solid player and stayed out of his way. 

So, about an hour into the session, I found AQ on the button.  Limped to me, I made a standard raise, solid new guy was the only caller in early position.  Flop was A-K-Q rainbow.  Yahtzee!  New guy checked, I bet 1/2 pot, new guy check-raised for 3x my bet, his standard raise.  Now, there are some players who check-raise that flop with any two cards, hoping I have a pocket pair under the board.  But given that the regulars respected him, I was worried about the check-raise.  A hand that limp-called preflop out of position, then check-raised the flop could easily be something like AK or QQ, possibly JTs.  There weren't many hands a tight player would play that way that I could beat.  I finally laid it down, deciding there were softer spots at the table.  Though I rarely do it, I mucked face up, and the newbie smiled and obligingly showed AK.

So, even if you don't have personal history with a player, you can still get a read on him from observing how he interacts with other players, and how other players react to him.  Also, a cool way to deal with table d-bags is to throw them into a black hole.

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* It's also pragmatically impossible to observe a black hole from inside the event horizon, even setting aside the impossibility of ever sending a signal from inside the event horizon to anyone outside the event horizon to describe any observations that might be made.  As an observer crossed the event horizon, he would be destroyed as gravitational tidal forces caused spaghettification—essentially, if falling feet first, his feet would be accelerate faster than his head due to stronger gravitational forces, causing his body to be stretched and eventually ripped apart.  However, all the observer's matter would eventually join the singularity, which would be a rather cool way to go, if you ever get to pick the way you go.

Physics & Poker—Lesson 1: Special Relativity

I've always been a big science geek, even though my career took me in other directions.  My all-time favorite test question from every course I took in college and law school was this gem from my honors physics course:

You are driving down a highway and see a stoplight in the distance, with a police car stopped on the side of the road.  The light is green, so you keep driving.  Suddenly, you see the police car in your rearview mirror, lights flashing.  You pull over and get a ticket for running a red light!  Now, assuming you and the police officer are both telling the truth about what happened, do you have a defense to the ticket for running a red stoplight?  If so, why should you probably not use that defense in court?

Now, the answer is fairly straightforward if you've been studying special relativity for a few weeks.  The question is simply a dressed-up inquiry regarding the different frames of reference for the car driver and the police officer, as expressed in terms of a redshift / blueshift of the color of the stoplight.  The police officer is stationary relative to the light, while the car driver is approaching the light and thus experiences a blueshift—the light from the stoplight appears more compressed to the car driver, so the light shifts to a higher frequency (the more common redshift is the opposite effect—as a light source moves away, it will shift to a lower frequency).  If the car driver is driving toward the stoplight at a fast enough speed, the color of the stoplight will shift from red to green.  So yes, it's entirely possible that both the car driver and the police officer can tell the truth about whether they viewed the stoplight as green or red.  The only problem for the car driver is that he would have needed to be driving at something approaching 2/3 to 3/4 the speed of light (relative to the police officer) for that magnitude of blueshift to have occurred—which would mean getting one heck of a speeding ticket just to prove one hadn't run a red stoplight.

The arms of a spiral galaxy exhibit redshifts and blueshifts

as the galaxy rotates relative to an observer on Earth.

So what do special relativity and redshifts / blueshifts have to do with poker?  I was reminded of the importance of recognizing different frames of references in what turned into a big hand Friday night.  I was in the cutoff with Ts9s, and a fairly tight player in early position raised to $12, pretty standard for the table.  There were a couple of callers to me, so I called as well.  The flop was T-8-3 with two hearts.  The original bettor made a half pot bet, it folded to me, and I called.  Now, I often raise with top pair in these situations, but I wasn't sure where I stood and I wanted to keep the pot small and reevaluate as we went along.  The turn was an offsuit 6, giving me a gutshot straight draw as backup, but I still wasn't too excited about the hand, so I flat-called another 1/2 pot bet, and began to wonder if I could even make a crying call on the river.  The river, however, saved me, putting out a non-heart 9 for top two pair.  My opponent led out again for the same bet as his turn bet, looking like a value bet.  I raised enough to put my opponent all-in.  It wasn't a lot more, and I was fairly confident I was ahead, not to mention I had pretty well committed myself to this raise for value by how I played the hand.  My opponent thought a bit, then called and showed KK.  He seemed genuinely shocked to see my hand, saying several times, "I thought you had a busted flush draw."

So what does this hand have to do with special relativity?  Well, the common connection is the concept of "frames of reference".  Things that appear one way for you may not appear the same way for another player.  I was playing small ball with top pair-weak kicker, and value raised the river when I caught top two pair.  My hand, T9s, seemed fairly obvious to me, but I figured an overpair would still make a crying call.  I certainly didn't think my opponent would be all that shocked to see T9s given the way the hand played out.  To my opponent, however, my line of calling the flop and turn, then raising the river, looked exactly like how he would have played a busted flush draw in late position.  Also, my opponent would never have flat-called with top pair on the flop or the turn.  So, from his frame of reference, my hand was almost certainly a draw, and the only credible draw was the flush draw, which didn't hit.

A lot of poker commentators have talked about a concept related to frames of reference—"levels of thinking".*  Here, my opponent seemed stuck on Level 2—"What does my opponent have?"—and made the determination I had a flush draw based on how he would play certain hands in my position.  What my opponent forgot—and what we all tend to forget—is that other players may play hands differently than we do, or differently than the "standard line".  In fact, I would argue that assuming another player shares our frame of reference at the poker table—i.e., plays hands the same way, has the same level of poker knowledge, has the same regard/disregard for money, or is playing for the same reasons—is one of the biggest errors a serious player can commit.

So, when trying to interpret an opponent's play at the poker table, the relevant question is never "How would I play my opponent's hand?" or "What would Jesus Ferguson do?" (WWJFD).  Instead, the correct question is "How would this player play this hand?"  Sometimes, the answer may surprise you.

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* Short-Stacked Shamus penned a classic discussion of "Level Zero" poker thinking.