Encounter with the movie monster

Warning: Long post here--almost 4000 words. Budget your time accordingly.


I just got home from another Saturday evening at Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon. I had repeated tangles with one opponent--not at all the typical Bill's player--that are probably worth chronicling here.

After I had been playing for maybe three hours, I was a little tired and hungry, so I took a break. I walked up the street to O'Shea's, where I knew there was a small ice cream shop, and got a chocolate shake. When I got back to my seat, maybe 20 minutes after leaving, there was a new player in. As usual, I was in my favorite seat, #9, next to the dealer, and this guy was in #7, two to my right.

Almost at a glance I knew he was going to present a challenge. He was absolutely comfortable and at ease in his surroundings and shuffling his chips like a pro. He exuded confidence. He had bought in for the maximum amount allowed, which is distinctly unusual at Bill's; it signals that this is a guy who wants to be sure he doesn't miss a chance to stack an opponent because he has bought in for too few chips. He's wearing a "Bally's Race and Sportsbook" shirt, and I think he may work there.

Sure enough, he was a player. He raised essentially every time he was in last three positions, and quite often other times, too. He always raised the same amount, so no information given off there. He virtually always made continuation bets.

However, he had made a serious miscalculation. The first two biggish pots I watched him play he was trying to bully and bluff his way to a win, and he was trying it against two different calling stations--who did what calling stations do! He had no better than ace-high each time and lost both pots.

This kind of player seriously complicates my Bill's strategy. If he were tight-aggressive, OK, no problem, I can just stay out of his way when he suddenly comes to life in a hand. But loose-aggressive players, contesting so many pots, really gum up my strategy of picking on the weak players when I'm unusually strong. I have to figure out whether he has it this time or not, and his contending for the pot often causes the fishies to fold where they might otherwise have been inclined to call me.

Nevertheless, I'm confident that I can make money from him. It's going to be riskier than tangling with others, but he's not as good as he thinks he is. The fact that he could make such a monumental misjudgment as to try to bluff calling stations--twice in a row, no less!--is evidence aplenty of this. He has only one gear: foot mashed down on the accelerator. Sooner or later, he's going to overplay a hand when I've got the goods. My usual strategy against players like this is to open up my game quite a bit. Since his raising range is so broad, I can open up my calling range, especially since I have position on him nearly every hand. The dilemma is that this is directly contrary to my strategy for taking chips from most of the other players at the table, which is wait, fold, wait, fold, wait, fold, BIG HAND--take their money!

He had another weakness: He played without much respect to position. The first time I saw his hand at showdown after he had put in a preflop raise, in fact, was 3-5 offsuit, with which he had raised from second position! This makes him really difficult to put on a hand, but also is an Achilles heel of vulnerability that I might be able to exploit.

This guy annoyed me, not only because of his style, but because he's one of those jerks who never want to show their cards if they can possibly avoid it. He would take advantage of the fact that most of the other players were less experienced, and even when they called his bet on the river, he would just sit there, not exposing his hole cards, until enough uncomfortable time had passed that the inexperienced player would show first. This kind of guy really irritates me. He's violating both rules and etiquette, as well as wasting everybody's time. It's a mild form of angle-shooting, but it's still angle-shooting, and I dislike it immensely. The first time it happened I was willing to cut him some slack--he was embarrassed to be caught bluffing. But it quickly became apparent that this was a longstanding habit of his. I called him out on it: "Dude, he called you--show your hand already." It's not like he didn't know the protocol, but I wanted him to know that I knew what he was doing.

That wasn't the end of his obnoxious habits, though. He criticized weaker players for making bad calls, whether against him or against somebody else. This is horribly inappropriate. I go to Bill's precisely because I know it's the Bad Call Center of the Universe. I crave bad calls at Bill's. That's the key to making money there. The last thing I need is some jackass know-it-all taunting and embarrassing these fishy players and making them rethink their play, and start folding where they should.

And then he pushed my last button when he tried to give me a poker lesson. The situation was that I had A-K on a flop of K-Q-x. A fairly weak player, a middle-aged woman from Texas, was at the other end of the table. She bet $10, I raised to $30, and she called. The turn was a blank. She was not radiating great strength. I thought she probably had a king with a worse kicker. But she only had $42 left, so when she checked the turn, that's what I bet. I wanted a call, because I thought I was probably ahead. She did call, though reluctantly. As it turned out, she had K-Q for top two pair. OK--I misread her. It happens in a game of incomplete information. No big deal. I tell her "Nice hand," and move on with life. I was surprised, because she had the appearance of one who thought she was probably beat. In short, this was a player sufficiently inexperienced that she didn't grasp how strong top two pairs was likely to be. She didn't give off an aura of strength, because she erroneously undervalued her holding.

But Mr. Bally's launches into a taunting lecture. He informs me that "old ladies" (she was about 50!) always have it. He apparently thinks that I was trying to push her out of the pot, which wasn't the case at all. Given the stack sizes, I think the way I played it was a no-brainer. I might have been able to get away from it if she had roared over the top of me on the flop (but maybe not, because she could only charge me $42 more for what would then have been a roughly $110 pot, giving me better than 2:1), which would have been a better play on her part, but her timidity worked out for her, because it misled me. He asked me, "You didn't think she had at least top pair?" The guy must be out of his mind, or maybe didn't notice what I had. Yeah, I thought she had top pair but was still behind me. But I don't say that. I want him to stop with the lectures, not only because it's annoying, but because none of us needs the weak players at the table to smarten up. So I give him my standard smart-ass "shut up" line: "Are the lessons free, or do we have to pay extra for them?" It worked.

So by now there is definite tension between us. I have been taking stabs at pots that he raises, and doing so with speculative holdings. The first time a possible chance comes up I have 4-5 offsuit, and the flop is something like 9-4-2. I only have middle pair with a bad kicker, but I could easily be in front here. He bets $20. I call. One could argue for a raise here, but I really have no idea where I am, and I want the big pots between us to be when I'm on firmer footing than this. The turn is an ace. Ick. He has put in several raises with ace-rag. He bets again. He could well be bluffing, but I don't want to be reduced to guessing in a big pot, so I let it go.

He laughs tauntingly, points to me, and says, "This guy wants to bust me so bad he can taste it!" Well, yeah, I do, but only in small part for the reasons he thinks. My impulse is to say, "Emotionally, I don't really care where my chips come from. It's just that I recognize that some chips are easier to get than others, and yours looks like the easiest pickings." But I think better of it. I think I'm a much cooler head than he is, and I don't want to lose that edge and escalate the tension for the sake of a clever jab at him. Instead, I think of the advantages: (1) I have just convinced him that he can defeat me by continuing to bet at pots, and (2) he thinks I'm gunning specially for him, which means that he'll tend to mistakenly assume that I'm bluffing or coming at him weak, when I'm not. File that observation away and use it, I tell myself. It will feel plenty good when you take his chips--you don't need to feel good now by delivering a verbal put-down.

Our next encounter comes when he has raised from early position (which, again, means nothing for him), and I have called with 9-10 offsuit. The flop is a beaut: 9-9-6, rainbow. He bets $20. I call. Turn is a king. He checks, unexpectedly. The problem with my overall approach to him has been that if I don't bluff back at him sometimes, but only wait for strong hands, if he's smart he can just run away when that happens. That would leave him collecting the majority of the pots we contest, but without me getting the occasional big one to make up for having abandoned a lot of smaller ones. Fortunately, I think the observation above--about how he is now persuaded that I'm targeting him more specifically than I should--should counter this.

I'm torn between checking behind him here and letting him bluff again on the river, versus betting, in the hope that he'll think I'm trying to buy it. I settle on the latter approach. To my delight, he apparently thinks just that, and calls my $30. I don't think he has a king, or he surely would have bet the turn, but maybe he has a 6, or some medium pair. The river is a deuce, as I recall, and he checks again. He has convinced me that he has something, and that he thinks I'm bluffing and he will want to pick off that bluff. I push out a stack of $50, and try to look just a little nervous, without being all Hollywoody about it. He thinks for about 30 seconds, then finally calls. I must have come close to that magic number--the most that he would have been willing to put in without folding. Score one for me!

He looks pretty disgusted at my 9-10. Predictably, the comments start up again. This time he directs them, well, at nobody in particular, but sort of at the table as a whole. "This guy folds folds folds for round after round, and when he finally goes for it, it's with 9-10 offsuit!" He laughs, as if I'm the biggest idiot he's ever played against. I just smile. If he can't see that I'm deploying a reasonably smart strategy against his style of play, so much the better for me. And if he helps convince less perceptive players at the table that I don't know a good hand from a bad one, hey, maybe that will enhance their temptation to call me down light, too, further fattening my stack. So jabber away, Bally's Boy--I've got more of your chips than you have of mine now, and I sense more coming my way.

And then the inevitable final confrontation occurred. It was only a matter of time.

As usual, he raised from middle position to his standard $12. I had A-K suited (hearts), which is huge against his raising range. But I don't want to tip him off. I haven't reraised him even once preflop, so if I do so now, it will set off alarms in his head. I don't want to flip a coin for our stacks. I want to see a flop, and either get away from the hand cheaply if I whiff, or let his overaggressive tendency hang him if I hit.

But, OOPS, a wrinkle develops in the plan. A short-stacked player in the big blind has moved all in for $25. This re-opens the betting to Mr. Bally's. He surprises me by pushing out most of his chips in one big stack, about $200. I'm sitting on about $310 at the time.

I have to tell you about my mental state at this moment. I had been playing for about five hours, which is pushing the limit of how long I can stay attentive and sharp. I'm up by a little over $200, which is a decent day's wages for me. I had been planning to have this orbit be my last, and go home, having resigned myself to not getting the perfect opportunity to felt Mr. Bally's. I was in my "I will not get myself into a big pot" mode. At this point, ready to head for home, I did not want to be put to a decision for my whole day's earnings. If I lost, I would have to either eat the loss and record an "L" in my books for the day, or hunker down and start over again, when I wasn't fresh. Those were both unpleasant prospects.

But, geez--this may be too juicy to pass up. I do not habitually overplay A-K in deep-stacked cash games. I'm smarter than that. But given the huge range that Mr. Bally's raises with, I'm way ahead of about 90% of what he could have. The fact that he put in this enormous reraise is actually kind of encouraging. If he had the only two hands that I'm really scared of--A-A and K-K--he's smart enough that he would try to suck me in, not push me out. This bet is absolutely screaming, "Go away and leave me alone with the short stack." I had just called his initial raise, rather than reraising, largely so that my strength was disguised, in order that he would assume I was calling with junk and hoping to get lucky, just as he had previously seen me do with the 9-10. I had thought to spring my surprise on him later in the hand, but it looked like I would have to do it now instead.

My job is to figure out what opponents want me to do, then do the opposite. He obviously wants me to fold, which means that I have to not fold. I hesitate for longer than usual, because of (1) my general aversion to putting a ton of money on A-K before the flop, and (2) my dread of losing in one fell swoop what I've carefully built up over the last several hours. But I know that the mathematically right thing to do here is to be willing to risk it all. He can't fold, no matter what cards he has; he has 2/3 or 3/4 of his chips in already. Our stacks are so close in size that I can't tell who has whom covered, so this is basically for stacks here.

I hate it, but I push. He calls, of course.

He has the two red jacks (for once, he showed as soon as the bets were all in), near the very tippy-top of the range with which he would play as he just has. Ouch. Mr. Short Stack has the two black queens. Yowza! I am in deep doo-doo here! But the good news is that all of the aces and kings should be live, because I am in desperate need of finding one of them. Also, I'm guaranteed to see all five community cards, so I have maximized my chance for catching what I need. I don't care much about losing the main pot, which is only about $75. It's the side pot between Mr. Bally's and me that matters, since it is worth $600 or $650.

The flop is a bad one: 10-5-2, one heart. Ugh. My chances for the side pot just dropped from about 45% to about 30%.

The turn was the queen of diamonds. Mr. Short Stack jumped up, clapped his hands, and shouted "Yes!" My heart sunk a little lower. No flush will be heading my way on this hand, and there is only one card left to come with which to catch my ace or king.

The river was a jack. Mr. Bally's lets out a triumphant whoop. Damn. No ace or king for me, and both of my opponents hit sets on me! I guess it's home with nothing to show for my day's work, and actually down by my initial $100 buy-in. I turn my attention to the stack sizes to see if I have anything left. But just then I hear the dealer say, "Straight. Ace-king is gonna take it all."

I swear I had not even noticed this possible way of winning the hand when the queen came on the turn. To my slightly-overwrought brain, the queen had written off the side pot to the short stack's set, as well as killing my backdoor flush draw, and I was looking for only an ace or king to save the main pot for me. A straight never even entered my mind, in the couple of seconds I had for processing the situation. But there it was: My A and K, a 10 on the flop, and Q-J on the turn and river. With no three of any suit out there, I not only had the winner, I had the stone-cold nuts!

As it turned out, I had Mr. Bally's covered by a small amount. He lost the hand in arguably the most painful way possible: His incessant raising and pressuring with mediocre hands had gotten me to put it all in against what had to be one of his strongest hands of the day. He was ahead at every point, and, to apparently put the lock on it, had hit his three-of-a-kind on the river. Both he and I overlooked the straight at first. (I'm completely confident that I would have spotted it a few seconds after the dealer's announcement, by the way. I wouldn't relinquish my entire stack without giving the whole situation one last looking over.)

Mr. Bally's must have felt sick when the runner-runner miracle was pointed out to him.
It's quite a pleasant sensation to go, in an instant, from thinking that you just lost $300 to realizing that you just made $300. But riding that little emotional rollercoaster in reverse would surely induce motion sickness.

For A-K to beat two different big pairs, both of which have hit sets, without itself making a pair or a flush is really quite rare and remarkable. Not only did I have to make the straight with exactly a queen, jack, and ten coming--with two queens and two jacks already out--but I had to do so without any pairs to those three cards hitting the board, because if two of any of those cards came, it would make full houses and/or quads for my opponents.

Mr. Bally's slinked away without another word to anybody. Good riddance. I kind of wish I had gotten a chance to rub it in a little because, frankly, he's the rare asshole that I would say deserves such treatment. But on the other hand, if I had done so, I would now be feeling worse about myself, because it would be a violation of the standards of decorum that I both want and try to hold myself to. Kicking a guy when he's down might feel perversely satisfying at the moment, but I'd be ashamed of it after the fact.

I played for another hour or so, because there were still several soft spots at the table, and nobody with anywhere near enough chips to cause me to leave loser for the day, no matter what happened. After the big hand, I changed my mind about leaving because it had infused me with new mental energy, and because I thought I might be able to use my new-found aura of invincibility (combined with a comparatively enormous chip stack) to intimidate some pots away from opponents. But it was up and down, without much net forward progress. So I packed it in and left with my biggest Bill's win yet: up $520 in 5.8 hours, for about $90/hour. Excellent day's results. (My previous Bill's record was $416 profit on the poker room's opening day, May 13, 2008. My record there is now 9 wins and 2 losses, with a net $2326 profit, or about $211 per session.)

Saturday night at Bill's might become a habit for me. Both of the last two of them have been profitable (uptick $323 last Saturday) and generally enjoyable. Most of the table was delightful tonight. That fact kind of got obscured in telling the story of the one jerk.


So what's with the Godzilla picture and the "movie monster" reference in the title to this post? Well, in Hollywood monster pictures, there are classically three encounters with the monster. There's the first skirmish, in which the villagers (or Earthlings, if it's an sci-fi flick) become aware of the monster and take a licking, because they're not prepared. Then they assemble their weapons so that they're better prepared, and we get the second battle. But the monster is stronger than thought, and the weapons are useless. The villagers then have one last, desperate attempt to kill the monster, with all the odds against them. Just when it looks like all hope is lost, something finally works, and the tide turns their way. The monster is killed or run off, and all is well with the world again. Any number of movies follow this basic blueprint: "Godzilla" and "Independence Day," for two prominent examples.

Anyway, tonight's script deviated a bit from the norm, in that I won the second skirmish. Besides, there was the verbal jousting along the way, and a bunch of small pots that I abandoned early when I missed the flop, none of which are recounted in detail here.

Still, in its general outline, it felt a lot like I had taken on a movie monster. I had lost the first battle, plus some small ones along the way, and had basically given up on defeating the beast. Then out of the blue, we were suddenly deeply engaged in an all-out life-and-death struggle. And just when it looked like the monster was going to win this one, the screenplay dictated a runner-runner miracle straight to save the day for your hero at the last second, and the monster limped away, fatally wounded. It was as if I had used my lowly Macintosh to deliver a computer virus to the mother ship, or found a way to implant the command "sleep" in all of the members of the Borg.

Yeah, it was pretty damn lucky, but it was definitely not dumb luck. I had played him intelligently, and hadn't let my dislike for his style of play and his appalling lack of etiquette throw me off of my game. I was willing to put all my chips on the line when it mattered and when the sum total of the circumstances strongly suggested that it was the right move to make. In short, I did what is always said of poker tournament winners: I put myself in a position to get lucky, then did.

In the poker world, the monsters do sometimes win--unlike in Hollywood. But not here, not today.