Raise Your Game

Gaming

Scrabble Strategy: Board Position, Leaves, and Bingos

August 8, 2017 by Tim

Scrabble was my greatest passion for many years. I played in many national and international tournaments during Middle School and High School. Throughout this time, I was immersed in an intriguing and vibrant community of Scrabble players, where I witnessed the game and its various strategies. What I found most...

Poker

Poker Quiz #1: Expected Value

July 19, 2017 by Rob

The idea of expected value is one that comes up often in poker and trading discussions. Expected value is the sum of the probability of each possible event times that event’s payoff. For example, if you were to flip a fair coin where you got paid $2 for heads and lost...

Gaming

The Detective and the Starcraft 2 Player: How Experts Observe and Think

March 20, 2017 by Jack & Rob

How does the experienced detective, strategy game player, or trader think about and observe situations differently from a beginner? One important difference is how experts use their experience to gain an edge when making decisions based on imperfect information. In the book, “Sources of Power,” the author, Dr. Gary Klein,...

SIG Tournaments

I’ll Be Back

March 17, 2017 by David

I’ve been working as a technologist at SIG for over 20 years and currently manage four teams of 33 brilliant and hardworking technologists. I began my poker journey during my early days at SIG, finding a conservative playing style, and that I much prefer tournament play to cash game play....

SIG Tournaments

No Risk, No Reward

March 16, 2017 by Mark

I’m a “newbie” to both the SIG and poker worlds, having joined our Dublin office’s Campus Recruiting team a few months ago, and subsequently playing in my first SIG poker tournament a short time later. While I aspire to be an aggressive player, in reality, I’m terribly defensive. I’ve had...

SIG Tournaments

When Push Comes to Shove

March 15, 2017 by Shannon

I learned how to play 5-card from my Grandma when I was in kindergarten. I probably logged a thousand hands on my grandma’s handheld poker game by the age of 6! This is my second SIG tournament, and my favorite part about playing is the table talk. Chatting and making...

Sports

Did Kyle Shanahan blow the Super Bowl for the Atlanta Falcons?

February 27, 2017 by Justin

Here is the situation: The Falcons have the ball on the New England 23. It is 2nd and 11 with four minutes left, and the Falcons are nursing a 28 to 20 lead. Matt Ryan doesn’t hand it off! He gets sacked, putting the Falcons out of field goal range,...

Gaming

World Chess Championship 2016 Through the Eyes of a Chess Fan

February 6, 2017 by Bill

The position seen below is from the last tiebreak game of the 2016 World Chess Championship match in New York City. The defending World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, holding White, simply had to find a draw to retain his title against the Challenger Sergey Karjakin. Instead, he sealed the victory with...

Gaming

On Trading Games

January 13, 2017 by Joey

We talk a lot on this site about how various games are related to trading. Poker is our favorite example, but we’ve also mentioned Agricola, Magic: The Gathering, fantasy drafting, and even video games. One may notice, however, that we’ve never mentioned a board game that involves trading. Why is...

Why you should play your worse fantasy football lineup

Sports

Fantasy Football: Play Your Worse Lineup?

November 28, 2016 by Todd

Before we get into fantasy football strategies, let’s first discuss nontransitivity in preferences. Most of our day-to-day experience is with coherent preferences; if I like Kit Kats more than Mounds, and I like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups more than Kit Kats, then I must like the PB Cups more than...