My night among the smokers

Once or twice a year, something hits me (a stroke, maybe, or a brain tumor) and I decide I should put in a session at one or more of the handful of poker rooms in town that still allow smoking at the table. (Wow--strange coincidence. I just noticed that it was exactly one year ago today that I first put up my frequently updated categorization of degrees of smokiness in poker rooms.) Tonight was such a night. I took in Boulder Station and Hooters. Nothing interesting happened at Hooters, but let me tell you about Boulder.


New room

They're advertising a new poker room at Boulder Station. Baloney. It's the same old room, with barely enough change to call it a face lift. They moved the check-in desk from one end to the other, put up new wallpaper, and are gradually replacing the chairs with more comfortable ones. That's it.


Pictures

Despite what has happened to me and other photographers in other Stations properties, I walked around snapping pictures at Boulder unnoticed and unmolested.


Massage

There was a young woman in uniform walking around offering table massages. I had not seen this at Boulder previously, though I've only played there twice before, so maybe it goes on all the time and I was just unaware of it. I've added it to my list of places where you can get a massage while playing.


Oops

On my next-to-last hand of the night, I was dealt J-J, except the second one flipped up and was exposed during the pitch and had to be replaced. I got an offsuit 4 instead. Ick. It's the first time ever, as far as I know, that I have had a big pocket pair broken up and taken away because of a dealer's bad pitch.


My big hand

OK, here's the story I really wanted to get to.

I had started with my customary $100 buy-in, and after a little less than two hours had worked it up to $201. I was two off the button and looked down at K-J offsuit. Not a great hand. Sometimes I'll throw it away, sometimes limp, sometimes raise. As is so often said in poker, it all depends. In this case, there were three or four limpers already, and it's not a hand I want to play in an unraised pot. I hadn't played a hand in a while, and hadn't raised pre-flop in a long time, so I thought that if I raised I could get credit for a bigger hand than I actually held. Furthermore, the cutoff and the button were the two tightest players at the table, so I thought that a raise had a good chance of effectively giving me the button for this hand. I raised to $13. I got four callers, including the button, which was not good.

The flop was Q-T-5 rainbow, giving me an open-ended straight draw to the nuts. The first three players checked. I bet $35 into the approximately $65 pot (a couple of limpers had folded, both blinds had called, and I think the max rake is $4--close enough), basically running a flag up the pole to see if anybody would salute, as the saying goes.

Boy, did they ever! The button reraised all-in for his last $95. The small blind pushed all-in for a little over $400. One guy folded. A middle-position maniac pushed all-in for about $250. Nothing, absolutely nothing like this had happened during the previous two hours! What in the hell was going on?! As the chatter and oooing and ahhing started, people started coming over from nearby tables to see what was developing.

I hated this situation. I probably had the worst hand among the four of us left contesting this pot! I had $153 left at this point. I estimated that I was getting better than 3:1 on a call for the rest of my chips and that I was right around 3:1 to win it. (Eight outs twice is about 33%, but you have to factor in some discount for the possibility of somebody hitting a runner-runner flush, or, more likely here, the board pairing and giving a full house or quads to an opponent currently holding a set.) It was close, but I thought the math favored a call.

I hate this sort of thing. If I'm going to be playing a huge pot, I want it to be on my terms, when I have reason to be confident that I have substantially the best hand. I might semi-bluff all-in on a good draw like this against a single opponent if I could be the aggressor, but calling all-in on a draw? Into three opponents? It's against my religion!

But I was finally persuaded by my estimate of the numbers that it was the right thing to do, so I stacked up my chips and pushed them forward. We now had an actual crowd around the table.

The dealer put out the turn card: deuce of the fourth suit. Didn't help me, but it didn't pair the board, and it killed the possibility of a backdoor flush.

River: a 9! Yes! I spiked my gin card, and now held the absolute nuts. The button mucked without showing. The small blind had 5-5 for a flopped set. The middle-position maniac had A-Q. (I don't know why he didn't raise before the flop. That was uncharacteristic of him.) The dealer pushed me about $654, and gave the rest to the small blind.

Here's the actual math, now that I can take the time to work through it with 20/20 hindsight. First, though, I have to guess at what the button had. I think it must have been 10-10, Q-Q, or Q-10--maybe A-Q or A-A, but I think those are less likely. Given his tight nature and how I had been playing, those are really the only two hands with which he would have called my pre-flop raise and then raised me all-in on the flop. For now I'm going to assume it was Q-10.

The pot was actually offering me $501 that I could win (the $65 pre-flop pot, plus my $35 bet, plus the button's $95, plus $153 from each of the two bigger stacks). That's 3.27:1 on my money if I win. The odds calculator at cardplayer.com assigns us the following rounded probabilities to take the hand: 27% (me), 13% (for the presumed Q-T on the button), 58% (5-5 in the small blind), and 2% (maniac with A-Q). That makes my odds 2.7:1 against winning. So I was basically right that it was pretty close, but mathematically favored the call that I ended up making. [Patting self on back.]

(If we assume instead that the button had flopped a bigger set, it change the odds between him and the small blind, but doesn't change my odds meaningfully. Because he was the short stack, he wasn't eligible for any side pot and therefore wouldn't have to show his hand even if he did have a better flopped set than the small blind's 5s.)

It's nice to be presented with a moderately complex situation, work out the right decision, and have the poker gods reward it. Study your math, boys and girls--it really does come in handy!

I finished that orbit, but didn't have another playable hand (because my jacks got taken away). I packed up my chips and told the table, "Gentlemen, I know when my luck has gotten as good as it's going to get, and that would be now, so I'm leaving before it changes on me." That was my flimsy apology for the hit-and-run. But I just didn't feel like taking a chance on giving it all back, like I did the last time I had a comparable stack. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Sometimes that means take the money and run.


Good dealer

By the way, I need to add kudos for the dealer. He announced verbally each step in figuring out the pot. He showed that I had the button covered, gave his stack to me, then counted my stack and took the same amount from each of the two big stacks, gave those sums to me, then gave the rest of the A-Q's stack to the small blind. He explained clearly at every point what he was doing and why. In multi-way pots, it's easy to make mistakes, but if the dealer says everything out loud along the way, it's makes it far easier for those involved to either be reassured that the outcome is correct or recognize that a mistake is being made and speak up to make it right. I tipped him more than I usually would for being so open and clear. Dealers usually get these things right, but do the work silently, so I have to figure out what they're doing as they go. That's not always easy, because there are several ways one can go about the process. I much prefer this dealer's uncommon explicitness.


One Hooters story

OK, I forgot about the one notable thing that happened at Hooters: I saw somebody flop a royal flush. He had A-K of hearts, and the flop came Q-J-10 of hearts--in that order, even. This is, I think, the third royal flush I've seen made using both hole cards, but the first one that hit on the flop. Given how much I play, that tells you something about how rare a phenomenon it is.


So all in all, my night among the smokers turned out OK. As soon as I burn the clothes I was wearing and finish coughing up a lung or two, I'll be fine.