A tale of two bikeshares: Mexico City and Melbourne

Earlier this year I visited Melbourne, Australia. One of the highlights of that trip was using the bike share system they have in place there. For those who have never been to one of the 712 cities that have a bike share, it is pretty straightforward. You go to a station, insert a credit card for payment as well as a damage deposit, and you rent a bicycle. Usually the cost is either free or very small for short periods and go up exponentially. Here's Melbourne's:

This of course, to increase bike turnover and prevent people from hoarding bikes. The consumer's ability to reliably have a good expectation that a bike will be available when and where they need it is critical to success of the system.

Melbourne's bike share is great for tourists. As a tourist, one often places oneself in neighbourhoods where the walk is very long, but taking a cab seems wastefully short. Additionally, taxis are a little sterile and boring, as they do not easily allow for the ability to randomly stop, change directions, or do something impulsive, which is one of the most fun components of the tourist experience. Cycling is the best compromise between the two.

The Melbourne bike, in my experience, was extremely tourist-oriented. According to its Wikipedia page, it is underperforming ridership expectations. (This is not surprising; estimates for public transit usage are consistently too high so it's not surprising that bike share would be the same.) The vast majority of people I saw using the bike share had obvious tourist tells. While Melburnians do ride bicycles a lot, most of them tend to own their own bikes.

In Mexico City though, the Ecobici system seems to be well-utilized by locals. One reason certainly must be the price discrimination at work:

That is an insane price gap: the first 7 days cost 300 pesos ($19.50 US), and the next 358 days cost another 100 pesos ($6.50 US).

The Melbourne prices offer a big discount for the yearly subscription as well, but they are far more tourist-friendly:

Considering that $8 Australian is the equivalent of 95 Mexican pesos and that Australia's per capita income is over 2.6 times that of Mexico, renting a bike for a week in Melbourne is more than 8 times cheaper than renting it in Mexico City. Of course, another way of putting it is that Mexico City's yearly price is more friendly to locals (58 AUD = 686 MXN).

Mexico's lower relative wealth would also make renting bikes more attractive than buying. Buying a bike can be expensive, so investing capital up front on a bike makes more sense for a Melburnian than it does a Chilango. I would also suspect that people feel less likely that an unattended bike will be damaged or stolen in Melbourne than they do in Mexico City, making ownership more attractive down under. So it's no surprise that I notice that less than 30% of those using the bikeshare in Melbourne were locals, more than 90% of those using it in DF live here. (Note that these estimates are pretty arbitrary since they rely on my subjective snap assessment of who is, and is not, a tourist.)

There are other factors beyond price that will affect utilization. Melbourne has only 51 stations while Mexico City has 444. True, Mexico City is a larger and much more populous city, but check out this comparison of station density (both screenshots are approximately, but not exactly, 11 km^2):

Mexico City

Melbourne

It makes sense that residents of Mexico City use the bike system a lot more than those of Melbourne. They're more easily able to commute, run errands, and so forth with confidence that there is a station near their destination. When catering to tourists, a higher density and distribution of stations is not nearly as critical; you simply need to prop them up where all of the tourist attractions and hotels are.

Melbourne's system is more tourist-oriented than local-oriented in another way, not nearly as obvious: a lower barrier to registration. In Melbourne, you simply insert your card and authorize it at the machine. In Mexico City, most of the stations are only for pickup and dropoff. To actually purchase a subscription, you must go to a "fourth-generation" machine, which are far less common (they are marked with triangles in the above pictures). Once at one of these machines, you have to enter full name, phone number, e-mail (twice), and date of birth on a touchscreen. Not only that, there are serious issues accepting non-Mexican cards. I've been trying for days, and I still haven't actually been able to take one of the bikes! Frustrating!

I haven't read a lot of reliable data on the ROI of civic and regional governments spending money to promote tourism, but from a libertarian perspective I'm always going to be skeptical about any project that takes money from the residents in an attempt to increase tourist dollars. Bike shares in heavily congested cities like Mexico City, or perhaps those in China, make more sense to me than they do in cities that are simply "pretty", like Melbourne and Vancouver. In non-congested tourist cities, it seems like the private sector should be able to handle the tourist bike rental market just fine.

Despite my libertarian bias, having a convenient city-wide bike share program is great for frequent tourists like myself. With a sufficient density of well-stocked bike stations, a bike share provides nearly as much autonomy as your own car while getting exercise and seeing the sites. Riding a bike to the grocery store or even the museums and tourist attractions make you feel more like a local.

Now, if only the one here would take my credit card.

Aussie Millions wrap-up

After my previous entry, I decided to skip the $2500 HORSE, $2500 PLO and $5000 heads-up, all of which were marked as "possible" on my schedule. But I did play one event which I figured I probably wouldn't play, the $2500 6-max NL. 6-max NL tournaments are awesome but it was a 2-day event, the second day being the day I was scheduled to fly home to Hong Kong. I felt reasonably assured that I wouldn't make Day 2 without making the money (with an outside chance of even the final table) so I decided that I'd play it and change my flight later if necessary.

The tournament started out with an annoyance: I ended up being seated at a late registration table with all the other people in the registration line, which included Jamie Rosen, Salman Behbehani and Joseph Cheong, the latter on my immediate left. The other late registration table (the one which opened right after us) was much, much softer, and it tilted me every time I looked over in that direction knowing that I had I registered just a couple minutes later I could have had that table. My HeroPoker teammate Aaron Benton knew the score and intentionally went back in the registration line so he would be seated at the softer table. While I think in general the Aussie Millions is a well-run tournament (and it was universally agreed that the structures were fantastic), this is the kind of stuff that is inexcusable in tournament poker and is really, really dumb. At least at the WSOP when they are forced into late reg tables, they break the table immediately, but at the Aussie Millions they do not break the tables nearly as quickly. As a result I ended up playing a couple of hours at this table, more than enough time for me to foolishly bluff off half my stack to Joseph.

I grinded back to the starting stack of 10k, then proceeded on a big heater. I coolered a guy holding Ah5h to his Jh9h, getting a ridiculous runout of Jc5s2h-4h-3h to get it in on the river. Then I made a set against a flush draw and held, won two flips, and was probably chip leader five hours into the tournament. It was a nice heater and once again, the kind of thing that potentially keeps people coming back to tournaments. But it wasn't to be. After the dinner break I ran ice cold and made a couple of questionable decisions that cost me some chips. I ended up busting less than 10 off the money when my JJ failed to hold against Jonathan Karamalikis' 99.

Despite bricking the Aussie Millions -- and actually not doing that much outside of it -- I enjoyed my time in Melbourne. Last year with Gavin and Amy Griffin was great because I got to explore with two of my best friends, but meeting and spending time with the newest HeroPoker pros, Aaron and Grant Levy, was also good times. And at the risk of sounding like I'm sucking up to the boss, HeroPoker CEO David Jung was awesome in taking care of the three of us. He drove us around, not just to and from Crown Casino, but even if I wanted to go train at the MMA gym. If we were hungry he threw steaks and pork bellies on the barbecue. It was first-class treatment and I feel like I was treated as well as any sponsored pro could be. (Well, without a gross misappropriation of player funds diverted towards obscene player salaries, at least. But who would do that?) HeroPoker itself is also starting to do well in terms of traffic and player base, and our presence was clearly noted at the Aussie Millions when a young kid in the 6-max looked at my patch and said, "wow, you HeroPoker guys are everywhere!"

No real plans going forward for me, but I foresee spending most of February in Hong Kong, playing cash games on Hero and mostly training MMA/BJJ/Muay Thai. I may run off to Thailand for a training trip as well, but it seems like a number of friends will be visiting Hong Kong within the next couple months, so I may well be hanging out for a bit. There's an outside shot I will get to fight MMA on a card in China in late March, and that would be very exciting. Other than that, a short jaunt to APPT Seoul (never been to Korea!) is the only thing marked on the calendar before WSOP time.

to play or not to play, my Aussie Millions so far

It's another beautiful, partly cloudy, 21-degree day in Melbourne, so I'm typing this while sitting outdoors on the front lawn of the HeroPoker house, where CEO David Jung has put up three of his pros -- Grant Levy, Aaron Benton, and me -- for the week while we play the Aussie Millions. David is chauferring Grant and Aaron to Day 2 of the main event, leaving me to sit at home for a while with a little downtime. I've spent most of the morning deciding whether I want to play the $2500 HORSE in the evening or going to train Muay Thai and no-gi jiujitsu tonight. If you're a regular reader of this blog you've probably figured that I'm leaning towards the latter.

I was really excited to come out here for the Aussie Millions. In Thailand while training every day, twice a day, I allowed myself the fantasy of taking down the thing, as I do for every major that I play. I looked forward to it, and I stayed sharp by trying to grind a few hours daily online. Those fantasies were quickly put to an end on Day 1A of the main. I raised with Ad3d, got called in the BB by 88, the flop came 2d2h4d, he check-called, and the magical 8d peeled right off on the turn. Obviously all the money went in and shortly thereafter I shipped what remained of my stack on a flip and lost that as well.

The Emotional Fallout: another bustout, but this one feels different

It was pretty frustrating. Insert here the standard bitching about how I played well the whole day; how earlier I had trapped a guy into floating me with overs and getting him to lose much more than he should have, only for that cooler to happen. Blah blah blah; no one cares. The fact remains that while a the hand was a cooler, I've certainly experienced far worse, as has anyone with a lot of poker tournament experience. It is part of the nature of the game. Nothing has changed except my attitude towards it all. The first thing I tweeted after the hand happened was, "I can't wait to quit poker," and many days I really do feel this way. I feel like I'm waiting for something. That something could be anything: a great professional opportunity, a lightbulb moment for personal development, a big score to go out on a high note. But it certainly seems that I'm rolling through the twilight of my poker career on inertia with no real exit strategy.

They say that no one ever says on their deathbed that they wish they had worked more. Of course, poker has always straddled the line for me, and for most pros, between work and pleasure. We got into it because it was fun, and often it still is. It's a great feeling to be playing well and running well. Those days in the sun in tournament poker are great moments and I relish going deep in tournaments. Those rare deep runs and even rarer wins are what keeps people coming back to tournament poker. But clearly most players have a love-hate relationship with tournament poker, and I wonder these days how that balance looks for me.

The bad days I have in the gym are rarely that bad. When I get tapped out, punched in the liver or kicked in the face, it's usually with a smile. But when I turn the nut flush against the nut boat, the feeling is so different. I want to get the fuck out of the room as soon as possible. I want to be anywhere but at the poker table, waiting for an opportunity to ship an 11 BB stack in the middle, sitting there and steaming about the fact that my chances of winning this tournament have gone from small-to-begin-with to now absolutely dismal. I have made a point of never, ever using the phrase "FML" because I think considering how good my life is that it's ridiculous for me to say it, but in that moment, I felt it.

So, where do I go from here?

And yet I say all of the above, I do so while thinking that I might still register for the $5k HU NL or the $2500 HORSE today, or the $2500 PLO tomorrow. Part of this is that I came to the Aussie Millions to represent HeroPoker and I feel like with a total of 12 hours of table time I haven't done a particularly good job of that. I haven't felt pressured in the slightest way to play more poker but I've been treated very well here by Dave and feel somewhat bad that I haven't done more to generate exposure for the brand. On the other hand, I just don't feel like I'm in that great a state of mind, my limit/mixed games are a bit rusty and I know that I'll be in a pissy mood if the most probable result (i.e. not winning or cashing big) occurs. On the gripping hand, there is always the off-chance I catch a heater, run deep, and feel better about everything again.

There is also the fact that, as I mentioned, while training in Thailand that I was looking forward to playing poker. And now that I'm in the midst of a poker tournament, I want to go train. That's kind of messed up and I wonder if it says something about me as a person. I've never thought of myself as the type of person who sees the other side's grass as perpetually greener, but maybe this is evidence that I am. I think I would also miss the social side of poker, as bizarre as that might sound. For as weird a group as poker players can be, almost all my best friends are poker players. There are exceptions, but I don't really get along with most of the fighters I meet and I can't have a real conversation with most of them, nor do we share much common ground outside fighting. It is bizarre to say, but I feel like walking away from poker tournaments would mean having a substantially less fulfilling social network. I crave real-life social interaction and I would actually miss getting it from poker players.

So, I'm torn.

I wish I could talk to the deathbed me, and ask him for advice. What say you, old man?