Me and the Spewtard

It has been kind of a dry spell for interesting poker-table stories. It's not that I've been withholding them--it's that not much blog-worthy has been happening. That changed tonight.

I was playing at the Rio. I had thought it would be full of March Madness people paying more attention to basketball and their sports book tickets than poker. Surprisingly, I was wrong about that, and nobody at my table was giving the televisions more than an occasional glance. Oh well.

Soon after I sat down, I was graced with the arrival of a member of that rare species, Pokerus spewtardus, subspecies Bacchanalius.

For the first hour or so, I was frustrated because he was burning through buy-ins as if they were about to run out of chips and he had to get the last of the ones left in the drawer, but they were being distributed to every seat except mine. Completely card-dead. However, I was able to use the time wisely to figure out his betting patterns. For the most part, he bet small when he had real hands, and huge when he was bluffing, which was most of the time. I knew this not only through showdown hands, but because he was frequently holding his cards where I could easily see them, despite several warnings.

(Aside: Ted at Red Bull and Poker recently put up this post about playing against a guy who was terribly sloppy at protecting his hand. It's an interesting story, and shows the kinds of practical and ethical problems that such players cause for their opponents and the dealer.)

Spewtard was sitting on my immediate left. At first I thought I should move to get him on my right. But three things finally made me decide to stay put. First, Shamus recently mentioned an article by Rolf Slotboom arguing against the conventional wisdom that it is better to have the maniac on one's right. I'm not completely convinced, and his argument critically relies on having tablemates who are savvy enough to make smart adjustments to the maniac's presence, which might get one trapped along with the maniac. That is manifestly not always going to be the case in low-stakes games. But still, it was a thought-provoking piece that I have been mulling over. The second factor, though, was that after a while I realized that it didn't matter. This particular Spewtard was just as happy to call big bets as to make them. Furthermore, he would bet with virtually 100% reliability if the action was checked to him. Given those factors, I knew I could pick my spots well pretty much regardless of where he was in relation to me. And, finally, if he was going to be flashing his cards to somebody at the table, despite all sorts of warnings, it might as well be me.

Spewtard had blown through all of the money he had brought with him, and had borrowed more from a friend to keep playing. I was getting worried that it would be all gone before I got any of it.


Hand #1

This one actually didn't involve Spewtard, but it's how I got the big stack that would be put at risk in Hand #2.

A-Ko on the button. Bunch of limpers. I raised, got four callers. Flop: A-K-Q rainbow. Nice, because I don't think that anybody limp-called me with a pocket pair of any of those cards, so top two pairs is very likely to be good. My main concern will need to be somebody sitting on J-10. People have this irrational love of the J-10, even played for a raise and from out of position. As a result, whenever J-10 in an opponent's hand would be trouble for me, I am wary.

First guy bet $30 and he was called by two others before the action got to me. The J-10 was on my mind, but, on the other hand, I didn't want to fall victim to the "monsters under the bed syndrome," especially since it was obviously a situation in which giving a free or cheap card could spell disaster. So I raised to $100. (Sitting on about $225 at the time.) First guy pushed all in. Second guy pushed all in. I called. First guy showed A-10. Second guy never showed. Turn was a jack. Yikes! Made the inside straight for first guy. But--whew!--king on the river gave me a winning full house, and I chipped up to about $635.

A roughly $435 profit is perfectly fine for me for a day's work. So I had decided to finish the orbit and call it a night.


Hand #2

About two hands before I would have stood up to go, I looked down at the two red queens. This gave me mixed feelings, because while it's obvious a strong hand, the last two times I've had it, I've lost my entire stack--once to A-K and once to K-K. Reflexively, then, I'm feeling a little gunshy about it. Nevertheless, it makes no sense to be sitting there playing if I'm going to throw away premium hands. (Besides, after losing twice in a row with queens, heck, I was obviously due to win with them, right? It's impossible to get stacked three times in a row with Q-Q, isn't it?) So I raised.

Spewtard flashed his cards again, and I saw perfectly clearly what he had: A-J of diamonds. For him, this might as well be aces, and I knew instantly that there was almost no way to avoid an all-in clash. I simultaneously welcomed and dreaded it. He had recently gone on a luckbox tear, twice hitting nut flushes and getting paid off by multiple opponents who understandably thought that he was on a bluff yet again. His chips were in a huge messy pile, so I couldn't guess how much he was playing, but it was enough to hurt. It was enough to hurt a lot.

I warned him that I had seen his cards. Silly me--I thought that might dissuade him from playing. Nope. He said, "That's OK," and raised to $40. It was folded around back to me, and I reraised to $140, knowing I was well ahead. (To be exact, I was 68% to his 31% for the win.) He shoved. I called. Flop came all small and with no diamonds. Turn was similarly benign. River: ace.

Oooof. Talk about knocking the wind out of my sails. A three-outer will do that to a guy.

When all the chips were counted, he had $435, knocking me back down to within a few dollars of my original $200 buy-in, and neatly erasing every bit of profit I had had up to that point.

Let me just interrupt the story to make this observation: When you can see the other guy's cards, poker is really, really easy. But it's still also really, really hard.


Hand #3

Maybe 45 minutes later I was still at about the same stack size. There was only one player at the table that I judged to be smart and skilled enough to be a potential threat. (Actually, it was Woodrow, an off-duty Rio dealer, whom I wrote a bit about here.) He was sitting on the biggest stack, having taken most of what I had sent to Spewtard when the latter tried an all-in bluff into Woodrow's flopped trip kings with queen kicker.

Woodrow put in an early-position raise to $10. I called with A-9 of spades, but with extreme caution. If I didn't hit the flop securely, and/or if Woodrow put the pressure on, I wasn't going to waste any more money on it. This was the point at which Spewtard flashed his cards my way again: Q-9, one red, one black. He called, too.

Until recently, I would have spoken up about having seen Spewtard's hand. But I have had two recent situations in which making that announcement seemed to cause more problems than it solved (written up here), and I had decided that it was actually better not to interrupt the play of the hand. Tonight was the first time the situation has arisen since having come to that conclusion.

I don't recall all the details of the betting and raising, and they don't matter much. But it does matter that when the flop came 9-high, Spewtard picked up his cards again and held them so far in front of him that it was obvious to everybody at the table that I would have seen them. The dealer therefore made him show them to one and all. (Nobody but me knew that I had seen them earlier, and it no longer mattered.) Woodrow dropped out, and it was me, Spewtard, and one other player. I moved all-in on the river when no queen had come to help Spewie's hand, and the other guy didn't seem very enthusiastic about whatever he was holding. Spewie called, other guy folded.

This is how drunk Spewtard was: He didn't even remember that about 60 seconds earlier he had been forced to show his cards to the whole table. After the third guy folded, and the dealer said, "Let's see them, " Spewie said, "I have a nine." Oh, really? Wow--there's a surprise! I showed my better kicker and more than doubled up.

I left at the end of that orbit. The first reason was that Spewie was now nearly out of chips, and given how he was playing, I didn't think that his friend was going to lend him more.

But I'll admit that the primary reason was something pretty unusual for me--a purely emotional one. If I continued playing and lost my entire night's profit again, well, I'm not sure exactly what would have happened, but I knew that I would have found it very hard to deal with. So I took the money and ran. There was also this pragmatic consideration: Since I would be more afraid than usual about losing what I had won (due to the previous big ol' punch in the gut), I would be playing timidly, and even with a Spewtard at the table--or maybe especially when there is a Spewtard at the table--one cannot win at no-limit hold'em while playing timidly.


If you encounter a Pokerus spewtardus, rejoice. They are mostly benign and profitable creatures. But they do occasionally bite.