Guess the casino, #227

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Answer: Imperial Palace

Guess the casino, #226

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Answer: Hooters

I'm pretty sure I've played poker with this guy

See here.

Guess the casino, #225

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Answer: Harrah's

"Face the Ace": Hated it

There was a lot of hype behind NBC's "Face the Ace." It's made by the same production team as "Poker After Dark," "High Stakes Poker," and NBC's "Heads Up Poker Championship," which suggested that it would be worth watching.

But, not so much. I found it nearly excruciating. There was way too much time wasted with small talk about the not-very-interesting lives of the contestants. It seems that the pros had been heavily coached to keep up the patter, lest the show go silent, and none of them were very good at it or comfortable with it, I thought. Every time there was an all-in and call (which was about every other hand), everything would come to a screeching halt while they analyzed to death what might happen next, got the thoughts of both players on how they felt about the situation, etc. There couldn't have been more than about 15 hands of poker in the whole hour, and most of those were completely uninteresting. When the pros lost (as they did every time), their praise for the skill of the amateur contestants seemed to me absurdly false.

Howard Lederer came the closest to speaking the truth when he intimated that the contestant should go for the million dollars, not because he was a favorite, but because he was being offered 5:1 and wouldn't be a 5:1 underdog, given the insanely fast structure of the play. That's true, as far as it goes, though it fails to take into consideration the actual life utility of the first $200,000 already won versus the additional utility of the extra $800,000 that might come. (I.e., each extra dollar adds progressively less life-changing value than the one before it.)

The host, Steve Schirripa, seemed surprisingly uncomfortable on camera, disclosed little or no knowledge of poker, and was basically painful to watch.

The whole thing was just a dreadful mess. I can't imagine it finding an audience sufficient to sustain it, especially given the way NBC is shifting broadcast times around willy-nilly.

See Shamus's excellent summary and commentary here.

Guess the casino, #224

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Answer: Hard Rock

When is a coin flip not a coin flip?

See here for the answer.

Guess the casino, #223

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Answer: Circus Circus

What an excellent idea for a web site! (No poker content)

I heard about this on public radio today:

http://givinganon.org/

Do you have a friend or neighbor or relative who could use some financial assistance, but you know they will politely decline the offer from you if made in person? Use this site to send them money anonymously, on your credit card.

They sound like extraordinarily good people. I'm happy to give them a tiny extra amount of attention here.

Guess the casino, #222

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Answer: Treasure Island

Revenge is a dish best served cold

Readers who have been around for a while may recall a series of two posts I did about a very difficult decision I had to make against an incredible jerk. This was at the Palms, just short of a year ago. (See here for the dilemma I was in, and here for the outcome.)

I had not seen this reprobate since then, nor thought much about him. But I had no difficulty recognizing him instantly today when he sat down three seats to my right. For his return into my life, he picked a day when I could do no wrong, when the deck was smacking me upside the head at every turn, when I averaged $123/hour all day, when I made more than I have in a single day in well over a year.

I had to keep reminding myself not to go out of my way to target him. He was likely to run into me all on his own, without me trying to force the issue. I had no idea if he remembered me at all, let alone as vividly as I remembered him. So I wasn't counting on him coming after me specifically--but it was just his nature to overplay hands, and I intended to be waiting for him when he did.

It didn't take long. I was, once again, being clobbered by the deck. In the first hour of play I had seven pocket pairs, of which four flopped sets, and all held up to win the pot--a truly remarkable run of luck.

So we get to what would prove to be the big hand. I have the two black 9s in middle position. I call a raise to $15 from an early-position player, as had my miscreant, and the button called behind, making a $60 pot. Flop is 9-7-2 rainbow. It's hard to ask for it to be more perfect than that--I have the nuts, with top set, no flush draws, and almost no straight draws. It's checked to me. The button is a classic Crazian that I think will bet if it's checked to him, no matter what he has, and I'm hoping that if he does, one or both of the others will come along. I was right: he puts out $45. Original raiser folds. The jackass counts his chips three times, rechecks his cards, and pushes all-in for $129. Happy dance!

Now my dilemma is whether to just call or shove. The Crazian and I both have stacks of about $400, and, obviously, I'd like his to be shipped over to me. The most obvious play is to call, hoping that he'll either shove over the top trying to drive me out, or feel pot-committed and call my shove on the turn--because there is no card that can come on the turn that will inhibit me from shoving if I call and he calls behind here.

I eventually decided to push all-in. This was not because I wanted to force him out. Quite the contrary. I wanted it to look like I was trying to push him out, so that he would feel he was sniffing out a weak hand being overplayed to try to get heads-up. My hope was that he had pocket tens for an overpair, or maybe A-9 for top pair/top kicker, or, of course, a smaller set, and would take the bait. Sadly, he folded. In retrospect, I think it was a blunder on my part. I think I overthought the situation and tried to reverse-psychology him, when the obvious play would have been the right one.

But in any case, my set held up and I took the entire stack of the nasty man in seat 5. I don't know what he had. He kept claiming pocket jacks, but I know better because I caught a glimpe of his bottom card as he mucked, and it was an 8, 9, or 10, definitely not a face card. So I called him a liar to his face three times, after each time he insisted that he had jacks. I know--I shouldn't have, but I did. And it felt good. Some days I'm human. Get over it.

So now he and I have played three big pots together. He's a little ahead in total dollars, but I'm quite certain that I'm ahead in satisfaction.

My satisfaction was enhanced a bit when I was cashing out a short time later. There's a woman who works the floor a couple of days a week at the Palms. I not only knew her back from Hilton days, but she was actually the first employee of any poker room who learned my name (the first day I played at the Hilton), and she called me by name the next day when I returned, which impressed me. She was there today, and had watched the big hand go down, so I quietly told her the back story of why this felt so perversely rewarding. She confided, "I can't stand that guy!" She has had several previous problems with him acting uncouth (surprise, surprise!), harassing opponents, mistreating dealers, etc. So clearly my intensely negative impression of this obnoxious ass is not unique.

I wonder when I'll get a chance at him again.

(For a brief discussion of the origins of the "best served cold" phrase used in the title of this post, see here.)

Tweeting

I joined Twitter three months ago now, as I noted in a blog post about it at the time. Predictably, my thoughts and feelings about the service have evolved rather rapidly.

I am currently following 17 people (though that's in flux every day as I work out who I think really adds value to my reading time), and I am followed by 174. I have done 362 tweets so far.

Many of them are pretty bland, e.g., tournament status updates when I'm playing online. (These, I'm afraid, sometimes take on a tone of whining that I try to avoid in blog posts. The immediacy comes through before I censor myself. For example, this recent one: "I now officially suck at every variant of poker, live and online, cash and tournament. I probably even suck at some forms not yet invented.") Many of them are kind of pointless but entertaining (well, to me, anyway), often snarky, conversations among a small circle of my friends. Some are just statements about where I'm playing on a given day, or a quick note about a big hand I just played. (I don't always post those. Some days I feel like just being quiet and/or left alone.)

But I have found that emerging from the primordial ooze are two favorites types of messages. (Dare I be so grand as to call them genres?)

The first is the pokery observation that occurs to me, usually while playing, that probably wouldn't befit a full blog post, even if it happened to still be on my mind by the time I got home. For example:

There should be a gaming regulation about poker dealers keeping their ear
hair from getting unruly.

I'm reminded of the gambler's prayer: Lord help me break even--I need the
money. Now only $11 from that goal.

Astute observation of the day: Climbing-out-of-the-hole poker is never fun
poker.

Maybe it's just me, but every time somebody bets "eleven," I hear it in a
fake British accent and think of amplifier volume knobs.

The other type that especially pleases me is the story. Compressing an entire story--with a beginning, middle, and ending--into 140 characters is not easy. It's like a whole new art form (using the word "art" loosely there). But I am enjoying the challenge. I don't claim that these are pearls to be preserved for the ages, but I find it strangely satisfying to come up with such a composition that can stand all by itself. (Once in a while, it seems impossible to squeeze the tale into 140 characters, and I have to make it a two-parter, as indicated by the ellipses in the following.) For example:

Difficult snack choice at deli: fruit salad or giant cookie? I finally
decide on a compromise: I get both.

People get confused by rake in half-dollar increments. Guy got a Kennedy
half dollar as part of a pot and asked dealer.... "Where's this from?" Smart-ass
dealer said, "Probably Denver."

Chips jammed in table drop. I pull out of infamous fanny pack slender
aluminum rod perfect for job. (Dont ask, long story.)... Woman next to me looks askance and asks, "Who are you--MacGyver?"

At IP. 2 players just prop bet $5 on genre of music I'm playing on MP3. One
said jazz, 1 classical.... Actual answer: Jimmy Buffet. Push.

Maybe I'm taking too much attention away from the game when I notice one of these potential observations or stories and then set about to make the composition of it as good as I can, under the circumstances. On the other hand, one simply can't concentrate fully on the game all the time anyway, so if one is going to be diverting one's attention for a while, it might as well be on something at least marginally fun and constructive.

So far, I find Twitter more enjoyable than I had envisioned at first. Whether it will continue to be, or whether my interest in it will wane over time, remains to be seen. For now, though, if you haven't signed up to follow my small contributions, you might be missing some tiny versions of the sort of content that you presumably like reading here. I don't make any money from the efforts, but it's nice thinking that a bunch of people get a smile from my blog-in-miniature.

New TDA rules

The 2009 version of the Tournament Directors Association rules has been released. Well, sort of released. For reasons that I can't figure out, it seems that one must be a member of the club to download the latest version, whereas previous versions were freely provided. Nevertheless, Dan at Pokerati broke the embargo (such as it is) and published them anyway; you can view the full set of rules here.

Back in June I did a post about a rules question that arose during a World Series of Poker event. Specifically, is a player entitled to get a count of an opponent's chips (from either the player, or from the dealer if the player is not cooperative) if those chips have not been made part of a wager? The two rule books I have both say emphatically yes. But readers spoke up in the comments section about casinos that seem to employ the contrary rule.

I was most intrigued by a commenter who wrote, "We discussed this rule at great length at the TDA Summit this past Tuesday. You will see this spelled out in future TDA rules." So I looked through the new set of rules eagerly, hoping to see this addressed. I have to guess that they were unable to achieve unanimity on the matter, because it doesn't seem to have been put into a rule one way or the other.

Poker gems, #303

John Vorhaus, in Card Player magazine column, July 29, 2009 (vol. 22, #15), pp. 87-88.


Your Problems + Denial = Tilt.

...

[Y]ou can't master poker if you can't master yourself.

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?

Rearrangement

In my recent post on the proper method of stacking chips, I mentioned the Three-Deep Chip Stack Rearrangement--that lovely point in good sessions at which one has accumulated enough chips that there is no longer sufficient room to keep them in the standard double rows, and they must be adjusted to triple rows.

Well, it was a good night for poker last night at the MGM Grand, and I reached that magic moment for the first time since composing the previous post. So this is just an addendum to document what it looks like when it happens.

Recent mentions

It has been about three months since I last did a Google search of other blogs to see what people have been saying about me (see here for previous roundup).

Here's the recent list, some mentions just passing, others fairly extensive. Again, I'm omitting my pals Cardgrrl and Shamus for the same reasons as mentioned the last time around (i.e., most readers, I think, already know of and follow them, and since we hang out in person when possible, it's not too surprising that we show up in each other's posts with some regularity).

******


http://pokerperambulation.com/WordPress/2009/07/21/gates-pulls-a-poker-grump/

http://lowstakeshands.blogspot.com/2009/07/other-shoe-drops-of-course.html

http://therazzchallenge.blogspot.com/2009/07/whats-your-favorite-tournament-poker.html

http://www.vegasrex.com/2009/07/14/5-years-in-vegas/

http://pokerati.com/2009/06/25/top-10-referrers/

http://pokersoup.tv/podcasts/episode-19-getting-a-little-grumpy

http://15400in2009.blogspot.com/2009/06/fable-of-fruit-picker.html

http://pokerperambulation.com/WordPress/2009/06/12/grump-and-grump/

http://pokerperambulation.com/WordPress/2009/06/01/161/

http://vegasflea.blogspot.com/2009/05/wsopits-on.html

http://pokergnome.blogspot.com/2009/05/so-it-must-be-that-i-should-be-ashamed.html

http://pkrdlr.blogspot.com/2009/05/way-back-in-2006-november-2006-to-be.html

http://aroundvegas.blogspot.com/2009/05/celebrity-apprentice-spoilers.html

http://pokerandbridge.blogspot.com/2009/05/spreading-gospel.html

http://bwop.blogspot.com/2009/04/it-was-bound-to-happen-sooner-or-later_26.html

Guess the casino, #221

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Answer: Suncoast