Paradox

It's not arrogance that causes me to think that I'm usually the best player at the table; it's just that it really doesn't take much to be the best at a typical Vegas casino $1-2 NLHE game. Commonly I find that there is one other player that is of comparable skill level. I spend very little time and mental energy trying to make the fine distinction as to whether it is he (or she) who is slightly the better player, or I. It simply doesn't matter much. If somebody is in my general range of experience, I pretty much know what to expect, and that's all that matters.

Maybe once every couple of weeks I run into somebody that is good enough that it makes me feel pretty sure that I'm outgunned. These are the players that have moves that are not in my repertoire. These are the ones that have an uncanny sense of timing, of where they are in every hand, and a degree of cagey fearlessness that I can envy but not yet emulate. Frankly, there aren't too many of them, because most that are substantially beyond my ability will have moved up to bigger games than $1-2.

Last night at the MGM Grand I had one of this class at my table, two seats to my left (I was in 1, he was in 3). I had him spotted within the first two hands. He was always deliberate, taking an almost unnerving amount of time to make the big decisions. He was contemplative. He was the very model of selective aggression, a nearly perfect raise-or-fold player except when he was deliberately trapping. He responded to feeble attempts to play back at him with crushing return pressure that nearly always caused the opponent to cower off. He gave off no tells. He never spoke during a hand, letting his chips do the talking instead. He never showed his cards unless required. I never once saw him get his money in with the worst of it. He was seriously good in every way.

Except one.

After every hand in which he was a participant, he would launch into a verbal post-mortem with the few players near him. This was quiet enough that those at the far end probably couldn't hear, but clear enough that it couldn't be missed by anybody within a couple of seats of him. He would explain in detail what he thought the opponent(s) had and why, how his assessment of their possible range started and how it changed with the additional information each new board card and betting round provided, etc. It was, every time, a sharp, canny, accurate, insightful analysis.

It was also incredibly moronic.

Except for the two of us, the skill level at this table was quite low. It was, I think, overall the weakest table I've played in at the MGM, and it was, frankly, quite easy pickings. So what possible effects could the Professor's lessons have?

-- Alert the brain-dead players that there are whole levels of analytic skill to which they have not had their eyes opened before.

-- Signal these same players that Seat 3 is occupied by a person who has access to some of these higher levels of thinking.

-- Make these players conclude, "Gee, I'd better be more careful and try not to make any stupid mistakes, or I'll get eaten alive at this table."

-- Clue these players in to things like what bet sizes suggested about opponents' holdings, or what factors to consider when deciding whether to value-bet versus check behind on the river--things that they may not have considered before.

Possibly the worst possible outcome is one that I think actually occurred: chasing away a bad player. After I had been there not very long, the fishiest of fish sat down in Seat 2. He was terribad, stupibad. He barely knew how to tell when it was his turn. He was completely transparent when he was not being indecipherably stupid. He burned through his first buy-in within just a few hands, and rebought, to my great delight.

On the hand that I think was the last straw for him, the fish bet weakly the whole way. Smart player called him down, making the nut flush on the river. However, that card also paired the trey from the flop. Professor then delved into the lecture, explaining to the guy on his left (but perfectly audible to the idiot in 2) why he couldn't raise there, because he didn't think Seat 2 would have been betting a lower flush draw that way, so the only hand that would call a raise would be a set that had filled up on the river. In fact, Seat 2 had shown just two pair--pocket 9s plus the paired treys on the board--and there had been an ace and a king on the flop. His plan had apparently been to just hope that a series of small bets would win it for him, with likely no thought about what his opponent might have.

Anyway, the post-hoc analysis implied pretty clearly (without being overtly insulting or name-calling) that Seat 2 had badly misplayed the hand. This was true enough, but what on God's green earth is accomplished by making this even more obvious than it already was? I tried not to look to my left to add to the guy's social discomfort, but in my peripheral vision I got the sense that he was squirming from deep embarrassment, probably induced by a combination of knowing that he was in a game that was over his head and having that fact pointed out to everybody within easy earshot.

I got up for a restroom break, and when I returned, the fish was gone. I have no idea what, if anything, he said when he left, whether he lost the rest of his chips on a hand that I missed or just cashed out what he had remaining. Either way, it was a serious blow to the profitability of the table. The most likely conclusion, it seems to me, is that his desire to play had been completely crushed by his mortification at being tagged as a bad player and an unworthy opponent.

Maybe he went to play limit instead of no-limit. Maybe he went to the craps tables instead. Maybe he went back to his hotel room, and will now spend the rest of his long-planned weekend in Vegas, and the rest of his bankroll, on strip clubs and hookers instead of on the poker that he had been looking forward to. If so, it is a loss to the poker economy.

So now it's 18 hours later, and I'm left still utterly baffled by the seat 3 Professor. How is it possible simultaneously to be so damn smart at the game, and so damn dumb at the metagame?