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Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

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Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#141

Post by noduerme »

mbreese wrote: post #125
fastball wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought tie goes to the dealer, so they collect from everyone regardless?

A tie is a “push” where neither the player nor the dealer wins. Everyone keeps their money (you keep your money and the dealer doesn’t pay you).

Except in some European casinos, which don't check for dealer blackjacks before play. Under those rules - someone may correct me - a blackjack outranks any other 21, and if the dealer has a blackjack and you made a 21 with more than two cards, I believe it's not a push and the dealer wins. I could be wrong, it's been awhile since I played over there.

They often weight the rules back towards the players in other strange ways, like, being able to double down at any time (even on the 3rd or 4th card), resplit aces, as well as surrender.

Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#142

Post by komali2 »

case wrote: post #117

Alameda is a city (and an island) in Alameda County, California. Perhaps the title could be updated to reflect that this article is not referring to the city?

I used to do some work for a company called Captech, then called Capital, I think it's called Hum Capital or something now, but I was always waiting to see how they'd handle it in the news if someone did an article on it when it was called Capital.

Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#143

Post by fsckboy »

noduerme wrote: post #27

Honest question: How do you determine that something like this was an honest mistake? Once, when I was much younger, I had a side gig dealing poker at an underground club in NYC. One morning at the end of 10 hours dealing, I accidentally exposed a burn card which turned out to be something one of the players was representing (bluffing), with about $10k on the table. It was an honest mistake - literally a fat finger m…

> let off a patsy if they had orchestrated it

the patsy in that scenario would have been the guy screaming the game was rigged

or you, if they had popped you in front of the gambler to prove they took his allegations seriously

the patsy is not "in on" what's happening. They might let you off if they thought it was intentional but that somebody more important had put you up to it

wiktionary

patsy: (informal, derogatory) A person who is taken advantage of, especially by being cheated or blamed for something.

Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#145

Post by denimnerd42 »

keyle wrote: post #32

Reading stories like this makes me wonder why I don't have a long term trade in place for a low amount and hope to fish a good one during a flash crash. Seen them on the stock market too. Back in my day I wrote a few trading bots, they never went anywhere positive after about a week of profit. Seems to me now that the smartest robo-trader algorithm is... 10 wait for human mistake... 20 goto 10

I made 17.5k doing this by dumb luck.

I was trading crypto back in 2016-2017. Making a few thousand here and there. Mostly just from time in the market during the run-up of ethereum. The whole thing drove me crazy because I thought it was so stupid, like gambling. So in 2017 I withdrew my several thousand dollars and put in a trade on coinbase pro for 5 etherum at $100. (I had left $500 to do this, the most I was willing to risk at the time) On 2018-11-25 this trade was executed in a flash crash.

I had totally forgotten about this trade and when I was going to buy a house in 2021 I was looking for any change in the seat cushions thinking I may have left a small amount in these accounts. Well imagine my shock when the amount was just short of $18,000.

Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#146

Post by noduerme »

gexla wrote: post #139
cperciva wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a poker player, so maybe I'm missing something obvious, but: How did he think you were cheating? You had no way of knowing what that card was, right? And if you did somehow know what it was, surely you could have pre-arranged more subtle ways to tip off a player you were conspiring with?

He said the player was attempting to bluff. In a given set of community cards, you're calculating the possibilities in which you can get beat. You're also watching your opponents actions to see if their lies (bluffing) are plausible. Let's say you have a seriously strong hand, and there's only one way you could see that you could be beat. The opponent may have that hand now, or they may be hanging around in an attemp…

ftw, this is a perfect explanation of that hand and the betting / emotional situation of the players. Also, it was the river, and it was heads up. But I'll be damned if I can recall their hands or what card I flipped by accident.

Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#147

Post by kortilla »

noduerme wrote: post #98
FireBeyond wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once watched a new (I assume) dealer make two large mistakes at a blackjack table, in Vegas, of all places. One, I had put down $500 in twenties, and he was giving me chips, except he was going to give me $1,250 in chips, like he thought they were fifties. Pit Boss looked at him, looked at the chips, "What are you doing??", let him fix the error. A couple of hands in, dealer gets an Ace, so he checks the hole card.…

Based on the second mistake, on pure speculation, I think that might've been a dealer who recently came from Eastern Europe, where typically dealer blackjacks are not announced until the end of the hand (a significant loss in EV for the players). Since never exposing a card early is the one thing that's most drilled in, exposing one is counter to training, and that might be a hard habit to break. A lot of Eastern Eur…

Then why would he have checked the card?

Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#148

Post by function_seven »

hinkley wrote: post #138
NSMutableSet wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that this is how valuations for publicly-traded companies are calculated, right? Also the networths of people whose vast majority of wealth is tied to publicly-traded shares.

IBM is still worth money if their stock gets delisted. Real estate, buildings, equipment, patent portfolios. Bitcoins is worth $0.

Those buildings and equipment and patents may have value, but less than the bonds, loans, and other liabilities IBM also has. Not only could IBM be worth $0, it could be worth less than that.

Things are worth whatever people are willing to pay. Bitcoin may be the original sin of crypto bros, but it still appears to be worth money, because it's impossible to make one for free, or obtain one for free. And it has utility. You can buy drugs or avoid the banking system using it.

Silicon Valley Bank had buildings. It was literally worthless at the end. A company is just as fictitious as a bitcoin, only existing because people all agree that "company" is a thing.

(EDIT: I changed my example to SVB from Enron)

Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#149

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

SilasX wrote: post #119
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny that the top comment here is about poker - there's a rumor in the poker world that SBF was a whale in some of the biggest private app games, and owed the game runners north of $10m when he went down, which the winners in that game (apparently including legend of the game Dan "Jungleman" Cates) are now never going to see.

Don’t they generally have ties to the underworld/extralegal means of reprisals against people who owe them money? So wouldn’t they have acted by now if this were true (even if not “successful”)?

I mean, there are gangsters that play poker, and there are private games run by gangsters (I imagine), but the idea that the poker world is highly entangled with the underworld is pretty outmoded at this point. High level pros like Jungleman aren't going to risk their rep/access to other good games by breaking someones legs, even over a few million. He and his backers have the risk of losers defaulting baked into their EV calculus already when he plays those games.

Re: Alameda lost tens of millions because of a fat fingering mistake

#150

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

Horffupolde wrote: post #38
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the hand end in a case like that?

On the house, especially if players are usual customers.

Unlikely; if it were lower stakes, maybe, but even high end poker houses are not such high margin enterprises that they can afford to comp $10k to an angry customer because of dealer error. Maybe some smaller comp, but not the whole pot.
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