NHL Playoff Predictor 09-10 Round 4
May 25th
Alas, the Montreal Canadiens couldn’t keep the magic alive. So instead, it is the seventh seed Flyers that make it to the cup final against the Chicago Blackhawks. The Hawks looked mighty strong against a strong Sharks team, and there’s probably no surprise which of the Hawks and Flyers it likes better. But first, here’s a review of the last round:
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.576 0.180
Montreal_Canadiens 0.424 0.106
San_Jose_Sharks 0.441 0.303
Chicago_Blackhawks 0.559 0.411
The predictor goes 2/2 this round making it 9/14 overall. Not a bad recovery after a topsy turvy first round!
The Stanley cup final starts on Saturday, and unfortunately for me, the games all start late — probably too late for me to watch any of them live. Oh wells. At any rate, here’s what the predictor says about the final:
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.287
Chicago_Blackhawks 0.713
No surprise, really. It might be an exciting series though…
Heraldk
NHL Playoff Predictor 09-10 Round 3
May 15th
What a crazy year for the NHL playoffs. The teams that make the semifinals? Seeds 1 and 2 in the west, and seeds 7 and 8 in the east! Yeesh.
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.611 0.332 0.122
Boston_Bruins 0.482 0.236 0.078
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.518 0.263 0.089
Montreal_Canadiens 0.389 0.169 0.046
San_Jose_Sharks 0.648 0.304 0.202
Chicago_Blackhawks 0.561 0.341 0.243
Vancouver_Canucks 0.439 0.242 0.161
Detroit_Red_Wings 0.352 0.114 0.059
So the predictor did a good job, going 3/4 this time around. The exception was Montreal’s 7 game masterpiece against the Pittsburgh Penguins. I’m feeling the magic! The question in my head is: will Montreal follow the “canadian team forcing game 7 in the finals and lose” pattern, or will they follow the 1993 pattern of having the stars align and pulling out a win? At any rate, the predictor now has a record of 7/12 (same as last year at this time). So what does it think of the next round?
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.576 0.180
Montreal_Canadiens 0.424 0.106
San_Jose_Sharks 0.441 0.303
Chicago_Blackhawks 0.559 0.411
The flyers are the favourite agains the Habs, but I’ll be rooting for the Canadian club anyways. There’s something special going on there. On the west side, Chicago has a bit of an edge … that should be an excellent series to watch.
Herald
NHL Playoff Predictor 09-10 Round 2
Apr 29th
So, umm. That was quite a first round — particularly that first round upset that was the Montreal Canadiens.
I don’t have much time for commentary tonight. It’s late, and I gotta get to bed. But what a topsy turvy scenario the Eastern Conference is in this year. The Pens jumped waaay up in equity after the top three teams in the East were knocked out. Craziness! Here’s how the simulator fared in the first round:
Washington_Capitals 0.823 0.637 0.454 0.291
New_Jersey_Devils 0.599 0.347 0.151 0.071
Buffalo_Sabres 0.593 0.320 0.130 0.058
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.644 0.268 0.102 0.041
Ottawa_Senators 0.356 0.104 0.027 0.007
Boston_Bruins 0.407 0.148 0.055 0.020
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.401 0.113 0.055 0.020
Montreal_Canadiens 0.177 0.063 0.026 0.008
San_Jose_Sharks 0.665 0.426 0.215 0.110
Chicago_Blackhawks 0.751 0.482 0.294 0.166
Vancouver_Canucks 0.613 0.327 0.179 0.090
Phoenix_Coyotes 0.549 0.233 0.099 0.041
Detroit_Red_Wings 0.451 0.170 0.063 0.023
Los_Angeles_Kings 0.387 0.176 0.074 0.030
Nashville_Predators 0.249 0.083 0.031 0.010
Colorado_Avalanche 0.335 0.103 0.045 0.016
So a bit of a rough (4/8) there. To be fair, that Washington/Montreal series would probably go Washington’s way most times you flip that coin, and the others were much more even coin flips: with the “most likely upsets” from all coming true (Det over Phx, Bos over Buf, and Phi over NJ). So what does the next round hold? Well my sim results look like this:
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.611 0.332 0.122
Boston_Bruins 0.482 0.236 0.078
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.518 0.263 0.089
Montreal_Canadiens 0.389 0.169 0.046
San_Jose_Sharks 0.648 0.304 0.202
Chicago_Blackhawks 0.561 0.341 0.243
Vancouver_Canucks 0.439 0.242 0.161
Detroit_Red_Wings 0.352 0.114 0.059
The Penguin’s probability of winning the cup jumped over 8%. Chicago is the sim’s favourite though despite the tougher Western conference matchups. Pittsburgh should have a much easier time getting to the finals — but what happens when they get there is a question.
Anyways, I gotta get to bed. Enjoy the next round of the playoffs!
Heraldk
NHL Playoff Predictor 09-10
Apr 13th
For previous years, check out: 08/09, and 07/08.
So the simulator likes the Capitals at a hefty 29.1%. Not as big a favourite as previous years (Detroit at 33% in 2008 and Boston at 30.8% in 2009). Despite the Sharks winning the Western conference this year, the Blackhawks are favoured higher by more than 5%. Considering that the Sharks struggled down the stretch and relied on a few extra OT “Bettman Points” to clinch the division (the Hawks actually had *more* wins). Vancouver is the next favourite coming in at 9%.
The most likely “upsets” in the first round are Detroit over Phoenix (45.1%), Boston over Buffalo (40.7%), and Philadelphia over New Jersey (40.1%).
The Canadian teams in the East drew tough first round matches against Washington and Pittsburgh, and as a result their overall chance of winning the cup are hurt tremendously.
Washington_Capitals 0.823 0.637 0.454 0.291
New_Jersey_Devils 0.599 0.347 0.151 0.071
Buffalo_Sabres 0.593 0.320 0.130 0.058
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.644 0.268 0.102 0.041
Ottawa_Senators 0.356 0.104 0.027 0.007
Boston_Bruins 0.407 0.148 0.055 0.020
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.401 0.113 0.055 0.020
Montreal_Canadiens 0.177 0.063 0.026 0.008
San_Jose_Sharks 0.665 0.426 0.215 0.110
Chicago_Blackhawks 0.751 0.482 0.294 0.166
Vancouver_Canucks 0.613 0.327 0.179 0.090
Phoenix_Coyotes 0.549 0.233 0.099 0.041
Detroit_Red_Wings 0.451 0.170 0.063 0.023
Los_Angeles_Kings 0.387 0.176 0.074 0.030
Nashville_Predators 0.249 0.083 0.031 0.010
Colorado_Avalanche 0.335 0.103 0.045 0.016
I’ll be running the simulator for each round of the playoffs again this year. More comments to come, but I gotta get my picks ready for the couple of playoff pools I’m in this year.
Heraldk
Edit: thanks Darse for pointing out that Philly doesn’t play Pittsburgh. Fixed!
iPad
Jan 28th
Well it’s late Wednesday night and I don’t have a blog post topic ready. It’s not entirely my fault … it’s been a busy week, and I haven’t really felt like doing anything other than sitting on the couch and playing video games. With all that said, the big news today is Apple’s iPad announcement … something that the internet has been collectively holding its breath for. If the internet could hold its breath that is.
The iPad? It’s basically a big iPhone. At least, that’s the first impression, and it runs a lot deeper since the iPhone apps you already have can also be used on the device. So it is an iPod touch with a 9.7″ screen with the ability to have 3G connectivity for mobile browsing on the go. Not too shabby. What’s interesting about this is Apple really does have a lot of arrows pointing in the right direction. They have a growing user base of users who are able to make purchases in the app and music store, and now they are enabling that same user base to purchase books. Apple’s making it easy for people to feel at home with this device. They can use all their existing iPhone apps, and the interface certainly seems similar enough to the iPhone that people aren’t going to have to re-learn much.
In one particular scene in the giant movie hit Avatar, one of the characters moves a tablet-like device up to a screen and swipes over an image that they wanted to carry around with them. That scene stuck with me, and it made me think that I am very much looking forward to user interfaces of the future. I’m not saying that the Apple iPad is amazing enough to be the wave of the future. But what I am saying is this trend of making user-friendly and intuitive user interfaces that are ditching some of the mainstays of computing is at least starting to look a little like the future. It’s 2010, and we may not have flying cars, but we do have some pretty cool devices. In the demo today, Steve Jobs showed off the New York Times app which lets you read the paper but also show video. That’s starting to feel like the future right there.
I’m not sure that I’ll buy an iPad right away. It would be a pretty awesome device to have on hand to browse my feeds on the couch. Instead of having my burning hot laptop making sure that my legs feel slightly cooked, there would be this sexy device that presumably did a lot of the same sorts of things I would like it to while I’m browsing the web. That said, my laptop is a pretty beefy machine that can do a lot of cool things — including a lot of work-related stuff and some serious photo-editing. So I’m not exactly looking for a replacement for that anytime soon.
One thing that does kinda suck though about this whole thing is while the hardware is there and it sure looks awesome, Apple looks to have locked this down just as much as it has the iPhone. On a device like this, I would love to be able to, for instance, play online poker on it. It’d be great to have an iPad and be playing some, oh I don’t know, Rush Poker on it. (Not that I can play, but I couldn’t resist the urge there). The App store is great. I love it. There’s just a few too many quirks to the Apple review process that either a) make particular kinds of apps (like online poker apps) difficult or impossible to get accepted or b) make the cost of developing an involved app a risky proposition if you don’t know how Apple will respond to all your hard work.
Anyways, it’ll be interesting so see what happens from here. How the market receives Apple’s latest brainchild is something I’ll be watching … and who knows, maybe in a couple years I’ll pick up a 2nd or 3rd generation iPad for myself.
Revolutionary Rush Poker
Jan 21st
Rush Poker
It isn’t too often that you get to experience the day an entire industry changes. It’s even rarer that you get to experience the months of work that go into the day that it gets launched, feel the surge of excitement when it goes live and suddenly thousands of people are using it and saying things like “This is the best thing ever”. Okay, so maybe if you work for Apple you might’ve got used to this sort of thing, but I’m certainly not used to it!
On Tuesday morning, we pushed a new version of the Full Tilt poker software with several new features. Each release generally comes with a big feature, but this one felt extra special. In this release, we pushed Rush Poker. In Rush Poker, instead of picking a table to sit down at, you join a pool of players. The server automatically seats players at tables, and a new hand starts. As soon as you are done with the hand, either by folding or the hand ends, the server picks you up and seats you at a fresh table with other players from the pool. There’s one key twist: Quick Fold allows you to fold out of turn. So if you aren’t happy with the hand you got dealt, you hit the quick fold button and you get picked up and moved to a new table.
The pace of this game is incredible. On average, players are seeing somewhere between 250-300 hands/hour. To put this in perspective, at a normal 6-max ring game you’d be happy to get something on the order of 90-100 hands/hour, and at a 9-max ring game the pace would be slower yet. If one rush poker table is not enough for you though, you can even multi-table it. So you can open up a table or two to really play a lot of hands.
The reception for the update has been phenomenal. People on 2+2, the largest poker forum on the internet, are normally extremely negative about changes. But with this release, the forum went through a very short stage of dislike posts from the people who hadn’t tried Rush Poker yet before exploding into a several-page-long string of posts with reactions ranging from “huh, this is surprisingly fun” to “holy crap this is like poker crack”. While not *all* the posts are positive, the tone of the forum is incredibly different from the norm of whiners and complainers claiming they’ve waited far too long for the things they want to be implemented (not realizing, that it takes a lot of work to implement even some of the “simple” features).
Releasing something like this on the world is an interesting experience. With something like this, you really have no idea whether people are going to love it or hate it. In this particular instance, we really did feel like we had something special going out. Perhaps the biggest innovation since the Sit and Go tournament. I think that like sit and gos, Rush poker is at the very least going to occupy a niche that attracts its own audience of players. It feels like it would be extremely addictive and fun to play, and for those reasons I think it will be a mainstay.
It is amazingly exciting to be part of the online poker industry and observe it through this stage of innovation and competition. The industry is quite young, with online poker really only starting in the late 90′s. This is a very exciting time. The top poker sites are starting to reach maturity in terms of basic feature sets and base games. It will be a very interesting year this year, followed up by probably a couple more interesting years as the sites start to experiment.
I must say though … I’m very jealous of the people playing these games since I am not allowed to play.
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