Me and my brain: A story in four parts

Part 1.

Tonight I went to Bill's Gamblin' Hall, where I had played only once before, on its opening day. Remembering how that game had been chock-full of weak, passive calling stations, and anticipating more of the same, my brain had a little chat with me as I was walking from the parking ramp to the poker room.

BRAIN: There will be no bluffing tonight, you understand.

ME: Huh? What?

BRAIN: Not here. You're going to be surrounded with people who will call you down with second pair and a bad kicker. The watchword for tonight is "value bet."

ME: OK, I'll cut back on the bluffing.

BRAIN: Did I say anything about "cutting back?" No. There is to be no bluffing. Zero.

ME: But you know that bluffing is a pretty big part of my game. I can't just, y'know, go cold turkey! That could lead to, I dunno, convulsions or something!

BRAIN: Do you want to leave here with more money than you have right now, or not?

ME: Well, yeah. But I want to play poker, too.

BRAIN: Shut up with the commentary, and just answer the questions. Do you want to leave with more money?

ME (whimpering): I suppose.

BRAIN: Is trying to bluff a table full of calling stations the route to making money?

ME (shuffling feet, kicking pebbles, face down, dejected): Not really.

BRAIN: Then it's settled. No bluffing. Value bet.

ME: Oh, all right. I guess I'll have to get by with just my semi-bluffs.

BRAIN: You really are a retard, aren't you? You will wait for a good hand, bet it strongly, and get paid. It's that simple. What part of this formula is too hard for you to understand?

ME: You used to be fun.

BRAIN: Yeah, well, get over it. We are not here to gamble. We are here to take other people's money as painlessly and with as little risk as possible. One of us has to be responsible.

ME: Just my luck, stuck with Mr. Responsible.

BRAIN: So are we understanding each other here?

ME: (mumble mumble mumble)

BRAIN: Excuse me, I didn't quite catch that.

ME: Yes, all right, dammit!


Part 2.

That I made this commitment less than wholeheartedly became perfectly apparent only 15 minutes or so into the session. I had J-10 of spades in first position.


BRAIN: Throw it away.

ME: What? You're crazy! It's a good hand!

BRAIN: It has its place, yes. But this isn't it. You need good position to even think about playing it. What will you do if somebody raises? Huh? What then?

ME: But they won't. There's a lot of limping in this game.

BRAIN: Oh, so now you can see the future, eh? If you call now, then you're going to feel committed to calling a raise, too, and you'll just dig a deeper hole. Throw it away.

ME: No! It's only a dollar with this silly game structure Bill's has. What's a buck? I can muck it if somebody raises.

BRAIN: No you can't--you never do.

ME: I will this time, I promise.

BRAIN: *sigh* Well, I can't stop you. You control the right hand, not me.

ME: That's right--and don't you forget it. There. One dollar in.

BRAIN: You should have kissed that chip good-bye first.


Several other players limped, then a player in late position raised to $5.


BRAIN: OK, you said you'd fold to a raise, now's the time.

ME: Well, to a real raise, sure--but this is only $5. And everybody else is going to call. Pot odds! I've got pot odds! All the books say you need a lot of people in the pot for suited connectors to be profitable, and we have that!

BRAIN: Don't those same books say something about needing late position, too?

ME: Um, well, I don't really remember for sure. Oops! That red chip just slipped out of my hand!

BRAIN: Sure it did.


The flop was 9-6-6 with two spades.


ME: Whee! A flush draw! I loves me my flush draws! I'm gonna bet!

BRAIN: You're the first one to act here. Don't you think it might be better to check, with six people left to act behind you?

ME: Nope. Gotta thin the field. I know I read that somewhere.

BRAIN: Do you remember what we said about waiting until you have a strong, made hand to bet?

ME: I bet $10.

BRAIN: You're not even listening any more, are you?


A couple of people called, then a guy across the table raised it to $30.


BRAIN: OK, now you see what you did? You got caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Get out while you still can.

ME: But, but, but I have a flush draw! You want me to fold?

BRAIN: If you'll recall, I didn't want you to get into this hand in the first place, and this is exactly why. Now dump it!

ME: But it's a good hand. It might win.

BRAIN: What do you think he has?

ME (softly, not very convincingly): I dunno.

BRAIN: Yes you do. He has a 6 in his hand. He flopped trip 6s. He wouldn't raise with anything else here. It couldn't be more obvious if he showed it to you.

ME: He, uh, he might be bluffing!

BRAIN: Yeah, right.

ME: Maybe he has a really bad kicker with his 6, and if I go all in, he'll decide I have a better kicker and fold.

BRAIN: What, exactly, have you been smoking?

ME: What's wrong with that plan?

BRAIN: First, he could easily have A-6. What "better kicker" will he think you have then, eh? Second, suppose he just has 6-2. If you were in his seat, would you fold 6-2?

ME: Fold equity! I read about that in a book, too!

BRAIN: How much do you have left to bet? About $70? There's already about $90 in the pot. You can only charge the guy $40 on top of what he just bet. So what pot odds are you offering him, hoping to make him fold?

ME: Hey, you know I'm no good at math story problems!

BRAIN: OK, then just trust me. Your fold equity is basically zero. He is going to call.

ME: But I could still hit my flush! Then his having called would be great!

BRAIN: Really? Even if he has, say, 6-9 or 9-9 for a made full house?

ME: Well, maybe not. But if he doesn't, then I'm in good shape with a flush.

BRAIN: Yeah, you might hit. And one of those other players still in the hand might be on a higher spade draw along with you, so that you're drawing dead.

ME: Nosirree. I am not drawing dead, no matter what. Look again--that's the 9 of spades out there, and I've got the jack and ten here in my hand. That gives me three parts of a straight flush draw that I might hit.

BRAIN: Listen to yourself: you're justifying an all-in raise into a made hand because you might hit two perfect cards to hit a straight flush. When was the last time you made a straight flush--a year ago, maybe? Isn't that a little far afield from the "wait for a strong hand, then bet it hard" plan we agreed on?

ME: But a flush is a strong hand!

BRAIN: You don't have a flush, dude. You're hoping for one. And if your idea of winning poker is to shove it all in with 2:1 odds against making what you hope for, then you might as well go play at the craps table instead.

ME (fingers in ears): I can't hear you, I can't hear you, nyeah, nyeah, nyeah! I'm all in!


Of course the raiser called. And of course he had a 6.


But sometimes the fools win, and the queen of spades came floating down the river to save my sorry butt. The other guy just looked at me and shook his head.

Dude--I feel you. I've been on that end of it many times.


Part 3.

All right, enough of letting you listen in on the colloquy. Let me just explain how it all played out in the end.

I really did feel sheepish about having made what I knew as I was making it was a stupid move. It felt even worse, because I quickly realized that I had done precisely what John Vorhaus had warned about in the "Poker Gems" post I had written up just a couple of hours earlier: I had veered way over the line between deceiving my opponents and deluding myself. I had told myself every flimsy excuse to justify each bad step of a bad hand, even though I was perfectly aware that the rational truth was just the opposite. I was just like "bad Jim" in James McManus's wonderfully honest tale of playing at the WSOP 2000 in Positively Fifth Street, with a right hand that kept pushing in chips in spite of knowing he should fold.

When I buy in fairly short, as is my custom, I need to build up my chips rather carefully before I have a stack with enough force that I can wield it as a weapon. And the ugly truth was that tonight I just wasn't feeling patient enough to do that the way I usually do. I wanted to build it up quickly, go home, and go to bed.

Patience, I am well aware, is one of the few poker commodities that I tend to have in greater abundance than most of my opponents. When I try to play without it, I nearly always regret it and end up losing. I know that. I know it deeply and thoroughly. I've proven it over and over and over again. I tell it to myself before every poker session, and frequently while playing. Usually the self-coaching works. But once in a while, impatience still gets the better of me.

At least I have enough sense to recognize when I'm playing badly, and do something about it. Usually when I'm feeling impatient, that's not something that's going to fix itself in that session, and I'm better off just leaving and waiting for another time. But I had memories of how the cash flowed so freely into my coffers the previous time at Bill's, so I was really reluctant to leave.

I'll spare you the internal dialogue (trust me, it wasn't pretty), but Brain really took Self out to the woodshed and made himself very, very clear about what was going to happen. I got enough of a sense of control that I decided I could indeed play the way I had at the last Bill's session. And I really did get a grip, and started playing smart.

I also started thinking about the possibility that I might be able to exploit the fact that the table now had me pegged as somebody who would try to push as a semi-bluff, just on a draw. If only I could luck into a situation where it looked like I was doing that again, but this time with a made hand, I might really be able to hit a home run. Proverbs to the contrary notwithstanding, in poker it might actually be possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.


Part 4.

About an hour later, it happened. I had A-4 offsuit in the blind (Bill's plays with a single $1 blind). Nobody raised, so I got to see the flop for free. It was A-5-4 with two clubs. Top and bottom pair for me was feeling promising. But the pot was really small. I needed to build it up. I bet the size of the pot, got one caller, then the best friend of the guy on whom I had rivered the flush raised. The action was back to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other player with cards in his hand, ready to muck. So it was going to be one on one.

I was reasonably confident that I was ahead here. I didn't think he would play 2-3 (for the straight) before the flop, even for just a dollar. The most dangerous possibility was 5-5 for a set, which he probably would indeed raise with here, given the draw-heavy board. A-5 was less likely, since two of the four aces were accounted for.

I concluded, after thinking for a while, that it was most likely that he had an ace with a medium kicker (e.g., A-7, A-8, A-9), and he was raising because he put me on a flush draw, just as in the previous situation when I was up against his buddy. My dilemma was the stack sizes. Moving all-in would be a substantial overbet, and if I was right, I didn't want the fish to spit out the worm because he tasted something suspicious. On the other hand, if I was right, then an all-in push might be the very thing to seal his conclusion that I was on a flush draw, because that's just what I had done before. It was a tough decision--milking him versus going for the whole enchilada.

Finally, I went with my read of him, and announced all-in. He thought and thought and thought. And finally he called. He was even weaker than I had guessed: He had just A-2, with only the one-way straight draw to save him.

He didn't get as lucky as I had, and I took his whole stack. I didn't ask him what he thought I had, but the answer is pretty obvious. He must have concluded that I was on either a flush draw or a straight draw, because he could not beat anything else. So not only had my assessment of the situation been dead-on, it was exactly the kind of spot that I had been looking for since my initial bad play, when I began wondering if there was a way to exploit the image I had created for myself.


Coda

I think the one thing that more than any other makes me occasionally feel like a honest-to-goodness professional at this game is the rare occasion when I'm able to figure out what an opponent's thoughts and/or weaknesses are, to get inside his head, then either design or exploit a situation in a way that takes maximal advantage of what I have concluded about him. This was one of those moments. They don't happen every day--not by a long shot.

I was feeling pretty smug about the whole thing. But then Brain came along and made it perfectly clear that I would be getting none of the credit, thank you very much. I had created the mess; he got us out of it.

I guess I'd have to give him that much.