I begin to grasp the heartache of razz

This is another of the occasional posts that's completely self-absorbed and likely of a lot less interest to most readers than the majority of the stuff I try to write about, so again, all are forgiven for clicking on to something else.

My interest in razz keeps growing. I have moved both the Cogert and Sklansky books (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/03/razzberry-flavored-poker.html) off of my Amazon.com wish list and ordered them; they should be arriving any day. In the meantime, a reader who bumped into me (in the virtual way) in an online razz game kindly pointed me to a quick primer on the game from twoplustwo magazine. I read it this afternoon, but in a weird turn of events, it has disappeared from the twoplustwo.com web site within the last few hours. Trying to figure out what happened to it, I found a notice that the site only keeps its magazine articles available for three months. The article was in the January issue, so I suspect that they did housekeeping today and removed it. But never fear, entering some search terms in Google led me to the author's razz blog, where I found that the article was posted yesterday, specifically to make it available after twoplustwo removed it: http://listeningsrazzblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/introduction-to-razz-complete-newbies.html

Others in the series that I just now discovered and haven't read yet:

http://twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue39/listening_0308.php

http://twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue40/listening_0408.php

The primer introduced me to the concept (incredibly obvious once it's pointed out) that one must use at least two of the four up cards, which makes for a simple way of putting limits on how good or bad an opponent's hand can be. I also learned what "boardlock" is, a term that I had seen used in a couple of places, but without a definition that I could easily find, so it remained meaningless to me. (I figured I would just wait until my books arrived to learn about it.) I know, I know--in the ocean of knowledge of razz, this stuff is about puddle depth, kind of like realizing that there has to be a pair on the board in order to make a full house in hold'em. But that's where I am in learning this stuff, so don't make fun of me. You'll hurt my tender feelings.

The article also pointed me to this hand simulator/calculator, which will quite amazingly run several billion trials of a given hand-versus-hand that you give it, in just a few seconds: http://propokertools.com/simulator/razzSimulationEditor.jsp.

(As helpful as reading the first article today was at getting me my first real toehold on even the most basic strategy, I have to inject a note of caution about this author, whom I know only as "listening," the alias he or she adopts for both playing online and writing/blogging. There is another blog post at the same site, http://listeningsrazzblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Stop%20Loss%3A%20Measuring%20Your%20%22Luck%22, that in its grasp of the concept of randomness is, at best, just plain dead wrong, and, at worst, bordering on the looney. This makes me pretty tepid about recommending the author's work wholesale. But he or she doesn't have to know very much about razz to be able to teach me useful things at this point, and the razz stuff is well-written and easy to grasp. So you have been warned: Take what's useful, but be leery of anything mathematical.)

I've played several sessions of 0.50/$1 limit razz on Poker Stars over the last week or so. I'm using Stars exclusively because, as a reader kindly pointed out to me after my first post on the subject, they allow you to see the order in which the cards came in the post-hoc hand history, and at this stage of my development, I desperately need that in order to reconstruct what happened and figure out whether I did the right things. Full Tilt's decision to scramble the order still seems crazy to me.

Amazingly enough, even with my rudimentary understaning of the game, I've been able to break even over maybe 10 hours of playing, even when playing two tables at a time. Not only that, I've been able to make at least some general identification of the players who are better or (if you can believe it) worse than me.

Here's a hand I played this evening against a guy I had pegged in a previous session as really bad and a too-frequent bluffer. (The full hand history is below, in case anybody wants to dig through it.)

I get dealt 7-3-A. Only about 10% of starting hands are unpaired cards 7 or below, so this is definitely one to put some hope into. I raise. BIGDOG006 is the only caller. He has (as I was later to learn) A-3-8. Not a bad hand, but using the calculator linked above, I find that I was 59/41 favorite.

Fourth street brings me a 6, BIGDOG006 another ace. This is huge for me. I'm now an 87/13 favorite. I bet, he calls.

Fifth street: I get a 9, he gets a 4. So at least I now have a made hand with a 9-7-6-3-A; not great, but definitely workable. He has nothing. I'm still a 70/30 favorite. He is, as his screen name implies, a Big Dog. He bets, I call. (I know that I have a 9. He's showing an 8. Since I know he bluffs a lot, I could easily be ahead, but I'm playing cautiously.)

Sixth street: I get a jack, which doesn't help or hurt me. BIGDOG006 gets delivered another 3, so that he is now double-paired. He bets--the obvious thing to do when you have a horrible, horrible hand. I call again. I'm a 77/23 favorite.

In hold'em, I've seen enough hands that I can almost instantaneously figure out, once the hands are shown, what cards will make the underdog the winner. With razz, though, it's like learning to read all over again. I had to think long and hard (after the Stars session was over) to deduce what had to happen at this point for BIGDOG006 to win the hand: He needed to catch a 7, 6, 5, or 2 (we have a dead 7 and a dead 5), and even if he does, I still win if my last card comes a 5, 4, or 2.

You know I wouldn't be telling this story if it didn't end badly. PokerStars sees fit, in its infinite wisdom, to give him a 5 and to pair my 3. This gives him an 8-5-4-3-A, me a 9-7-6-3-A. At least I didn't lose another dollar at the end, because I knew my 9 was playing and I couldn't be sure if his 8 was his worst card or not.

In short, I was ahead at the first four of five decision points in the hand--all except the last, which, in the end, is the only one that matters.

This is why people hate razz! I get it now! It is certainly enough to make one want to blow raspberries at one's opponent (or perhaps at one's computer screen, if one doesn't mind viewing the remainder of the session through little globs of spit)--which I'm thinking is how the game got its name.

No, I'm not genuinely upset about the hand. It was a $10 pot, which doesn't even make a pixel of difference when I graph my overall profit/loss in Excel. And, of course, the same general thing happens all the time in hold'em (start with A-K, hit two pairs on the flop, opponent catches runner-runner jack and queen to make a straight with his 6-10 offsuit) or any other form of poker. So far, I don't see that it's really any more frustrating in razz, unless one has a selective memory. But I am starting to see why razz has the reputation that it does.

Perhaps the most encouraging revelation of the last few days is that, terrible as I am at the game, I am measurably and demonstrably better than at least some of the other people that inhabit the low-stakes games. I may be a razz donkey, but I am no longer the king of the razz donkeys.




(Hand history below, for the obsessive/compulsive.)
PokerStars Game #16427278923: Razz Limit ($0.50/$1.00) - 2008/04/02 - 02:08:47 (ET)
Table 'Celaeno II' 8-max
Seat 1: BIGDOG006 ($7.60 in chips)
Seat 2: Katty Bear ($18.10 in chips)
Seat 4: gas05 ($16.20 in chips)
Seat 5: Rakewell1 ($17.15 in chips)
Seat 6: Android982 ($8.90 in chips)
Seat 7: Wetdog13 ($23.85 in chips)
Seat 8: PokerWiz84 ($17.55 in chips)
BIGDOG006: posts the ante $0.05
Katty Bear: posts the ante $0.05
gas05: posts the ante $0.05
Rakewell1: posts the ante $0.05
Android982: posts the ante $0.05
Wetdog13: posts the ante $0.05
PokerWiz84: posts the ante $0.05
*** 3rd STREET ***
Dealt to BIGDOG006 [8s]
Dealt to Katty Bear [Th]
Dealt to gas05 [7h]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [7s 3s Ah]
Dealt to Android982 [7c]
Dealt to Wetdog13 [9c]
Dealt to PokerWiz84 [5s]
jbrennen has returned
Katty Bear: brings in for $0.25
gas05: folds
Rakewell1: raises $0.25 to $0.50
Android982: folds
Wetdog13: folds
PokerWiz84: folds
BIGDOG006: raises $0.50 to $1
Katty Bear: folds
Rakewell1: raises $0.50 to $1.50
BIGDOG006: raises $0.50 to $2
Betting is capped
Rakewell1: calls $0.50
*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to BIGDOG006 [8s] [As]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [7s 3s Ah] [6s]
Rakewell1: bets $0.50
BIGDOG006: calls $0.50
*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to BIGDOG006 [8s As] [4h]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [7s 3s Ah 6s] [9s]
BIGDOG006: bets $1
Rakewell1: calls $1
*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to BIGDOG006 [8s As 4h] [3c]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [7s 3s Ah 6s 9s] [Js]
BIGDOG006: bets $1
Rakewell1: calls $1
*** RIVER ***
Dealt to Rakewell1 [7s 3s Ah 6s 9s Js] [3d]
Wetdog13 said, "sup bro"
BIGDOG006: checks
Rakewell1: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
BIGDOG006: shows [Ad 3h 8s As 4h 3c 5c] (Lo: 8,5,4,3,A)
Rakewell1: mucks hand
BIGDOG006 collected $9.15 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $9.60 Rake $0.45
Seat 1: BIGDOG006 showed [Ad 3h 8s As 4h 3c 5c] and won ($9.15) with Lo: 8,5,4,3,A
Seat 2: Katty Bear folded on the 3rd Street
Seat 4: gas05 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Rakewell1 mucked [7s 3s Ah 6s 9s Js 3d]
Seat 6: Android982 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 7: Wetdog13 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 8: PokerWiz84 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)