Smelly and me

I ran into Smelly again a couple of weeks ago. He got up and left the table. It was one of the most tangible markers I've yet been given that I have gotten better at this game.


Back to the beginning of the story: As most readers know by now, the Hilton was the first poker room that really caught my attention as a quiet, friendly, comfortable, convenient, and profitable place to use as my default poker destination when there was not some reason to go elsewhere. I naturally ran into a lot of the same people frequently. One of them was a guy that I'll call Allen (not his real name).

Allen is a sourpuss. He could call himself the Poker Grump more accurately than I can. He also had questionable personal hygiene. One day when I was waiting for a table, I chatted with the person at the front desk. One of the high-hand jackpots had been capped at its maximum for an unusually long time, but that day I noticed that it had been reset to the minimum, meaning that somebody had hit it the previous day. I asked if it had been won by somebody I would know. She said, "Yeah, it was Allen." There were two frequent customers named Allen, though. One of them was dating one of the Hilton poker dealers. So I asked, "The one who's dating [so and so]?" She replied, "No, Smelly Allen."

I almost died laughing. Up until that point, I had no idea that the dealers had adopted that nickname for him for use behind his back. When they needed to make the distinction, there was "Nice Allen," and there was "Smelly Allen."

My first few months in town, I found Smelly to be a challenging opponent. Here's how I described him in an email to a friend back in Minnesota on September 20, 2006: "He’s erratic and tricky, very unpredictable, and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost more to him than I’ve won from him. When we’re in a hand against each other, he seems to be able to get away from me when I’m strong more easily than I get away from him when he’s strong."

Over time, though, I started noticing patterns to his play. For example, one of his favorite moves was a huge raise from the big blind when several people had limped in. After a while, I could even predict when he was going to do this, which meant that he was doing it largely independent of what his cards were. I also noticed that he would fold to a reraise, and wouldn't take any heat after the flop if somebody called him in that situation. So although in any one hand, that move might look like he has a big pair, seeing it occur many times made it clear that he was often doing it with air.

Another pattern that I started to notice was that he would usually put in a continuation bet after the flop, if he had raised before the flop, but he wouldn't fire second and third bullets if he missed the board.

The reason for that 9/20/06 email was to describe my turning point with Smelly. I limped in with 9-9. He raised, I called. At that moment, I had something of an epiphany. I could see the different paths that this hand might take at each decision point, all simultaneously. It wasn't a vision, exactly, but a weird sense that I knew the things he might do at each decision point, what each of them implied about his cards, and, therefore, how I would need to respond to them, for all of the remaining three betting rounds. Basically, most flops were going to go check-bet-call, because I knew that I needed to see what he did on fourth street to know whether he had (1) either started with a big pair or started with two big but unpaired cards and had hit one of them, or (2) he had started with two big cards and whiffed on the flop.

The flop was 10-10-2. Check-bet-call, as expected. Turn was a rag. Check-check. Aha! I was confident then that he didn't have an overpair. His pattern would have been to fire again if he did, and let my response dictate what he would do next. (I.e., if I check-raised, he would probably fold.) Now my only concern was that the river not be an overcard that might pair him up. It was another small card. I bet, and Smelly insta-mucked.

The hand had followed one of the paths that I had foreseen. Now that I have about a billion more hands of experience, nothing about that seems particularly remarkable. But it was the first time that I ever had an advance sense of the ways in which a whole hand could play out, instead of just taking each decision separately as it came. It was also one of the first times that I had been able to apply betting patterns of a particular opponent from previous sessions to a specific current hand. (Of course, I had at least some facility with observing and adjusting to players over the course of a session, but cumulatively gathering information on people over weeks and months was a skill I was just developing.)

The pot wasn't very big, but it was a huge turning point for me. From then on, I didn't fear Smelly. I realized that he wasn't nearly as tricky and unpredictable as I had mentally labeled him. The tide turned between us. I started winning more of our encounters.

By the time that the Hilton poker room closed about a year after that, Smelly largely stayed away from me. It was crystal clear that he had been burned enough times that he decided it was better to pick on other people and stay out of my way.*

Since the closing of the Hilton poker room, I have bumped into Smelly only three or four times, all but one of them, I think, at Harrah's. Our old pattern on those occasions seemed to continue--he would rarely contest pots in which I was taking the lead. He seemed to want to avoid me.

Then, as I alluded to at the top of the post, a most interesting thing happened a couple of weeks ago. I joined a game at the Monte Carlo where Smelly was playing. Within five minutes, he stood up and cashed out without saying a word.

It's impossible to know for sure that I'm the reason he decided to leave, but I have a strong hunch. He hadn't just lost or won a large pot, and didn't have a particularly short or large stack that would suggest itself as the reason for him calling it a day. I believe that he simply decided that he could find an easier table somewhere else. (That wasn't entirely due to me. I discovered that there were other good players at that table. But I think that I was the final straw in his decision to look for better hunting elsewhere.)

I can't think of any other opponent with whom I have that kind of history--starting off with me intimidated by him, and ending up the other way 'round. It's highly satisfying, because it's a pretty unmistakable sign that I have made progress (and had even made measurable improvement between early July, 2006, when I started here, and late September of the same year, when we played what proved to be that pivotal hand). Smelly, I'm afraid, has basically stayed at the same level of play.

And he still has questionable personal hygiene.



*Every time I write something like this, I feel the need to throw in my usual disclaimer: I do not view myself as any sort of poker prodigy. I'm not especially good at the game. No real pros would find me scary or difficult. I have a basic level of competence that is probably about as low on the scale of poker talent as one can possess and still manage to squeeze a living out of the tourists. Readers should not mistake what are intended as fairly objective statements about me being a better player than some particular other one as suggesting swagger on my part.