More Thoughts on titles

The choice of a blog title is a big deal in this age of global information and insight as to the choice potentially discloses much about the author. Fred’s Blog, for example (and to no one’s real great surprise) describes the life of Fred (who seems to be into cats). Tales of an Emergency Room Nurse is equally descriptive, but at least has the benefit of suggesting a topic that might make for interesting reading (to be fair to Fred, I actually enjoyed his discussion of Oracle error messages).

Given the importance of a title, you might ask yourself what the deal is with the “suited” part of Stochastically Suited? Again, there is the obvious answer – that the author (in this case me) feels they are suited to discussions stochastic. But it is more the use of the word suited as a justification around the poker table that attracted me. For many players the concept of suited cards is used as some kind of expression to suggest they have carte blanche to play stupidly because their starting cards where the same color. I’ve lost track of the times a horrendous play was explained with “What could I do? they were suited”.

This search for a an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for what, on any objective measure is just plain stupidity, is at the heart of what makes poker so potentially profitable and the world such a silly place.

I remember the sign off I saw on one of the popular poker forums sometime back (it’s probably still being used and I do not mean to suggest it is original to me, just that I can’t be bothered to look it up and credit the author) “Yeah, penguins are suited too – it doesn’t mean they aren’t great shark food”.