Two strange hands

A worthwhile read:

http://www.bluff.com/magazine/two-weird-hands-15286/

Poker gems, #471

Joe Stapleton, in Bluff magazine, September, 2014, page 88.


I'm really going to miss charity tournaments like "Put a Bad Beat on Domestic Violence," "Play Dark for the Cincinnati Center for the Blind," and "Flop Quads for Spinal Recovery Center of Duluth."

Bluff readers' choice awards

I understand that today is the last day to vote, here. Might I suggest throwing a click to Hard-Boiled Poker for best blog?

Poker gems, #467

Pauly McGuire, in Bluff magazine, December, 2012, page 93.


There's often no logic in what happens once the dealer fans out the flop, then drops a turn card, and a river card. Because the universe has spoken and that's that. Either you make the best hand, or you don't. And if you don't have a strong hand, then you better have balls the size of a Volkswagen because that's the only way you're going to win the pot...to bully your opponent and let them know who's tougher...who's a bigger bad ass. You can't do that playing limit hold'em or playing low-limit stud with the myopic fogies reeking of mothballs and Ben-Gay. But at a no-limit table, you look a man in the eye and scare the heck out of him with a fierce movement of chips to the center of the felt.

Poker gems, #466

Jennifer Tilly, in Bluff magazine column, December, 2012, page 90. She describes a wild night of poker in Ivey's Room at the Aria, which saw her down by $400,000 at one point, gradually clawing her way back to a $6000 profit by around 6:00 a.m.


I take a taxi back to the Bellagio. The bill is seven dollars, and I give the guy 20 and tell him to keep the change. He lights up like a Christmas tree, and I realize I am back in the real world where money means something.

Poker gems, #465

Nick Wealthall, in Bluff magazine, December, 2012, page 71.


The worst offense--one that you see time and again--is to fold a legitimate hand to a bet and then show it. There is simply no way to state how utterly stupid this is.... Over and over, you'll see players open-raise a hand, get three-bet or shoved on, think and then fold, before showing one card--an ace. Let me tell you right now you might as well have taken every good player at the table to one side before play and said, "Hey fellas, I'm the soft spot at the table. Feel free to reach into my arse and pull out as many chips as you like. Seriously, beat me up. Batter me over and over again. I fricking love it. I am here to help you!"

When a player shows a semi-strong hand he's folded, his opponents don't think, "Ooh, he's so clever to make that big laydown," they think,"Wow, what a pussy! I wonder what else I can make him fold."

Poker shirts

I saw this full-page ad in the latest issue of Bluff magazine:

At first I thought it was some sort of parody of poker-themed clothing. I expected the copy to be something like, "Don't want to look dorky like this? Turn the page for what today's fashion-conscious poker players are wearing." 

But no. They seem to be serious about selling these get-ups. 

Remember the great 1983 movie "Trading Places"? Two ultra-wealthy business tycoon brothers make a $1 bet with each other as to whether they can reduce their most successful commodities broker to abject poverty, while simultaneously getting a homeless criminal to take his place in the firm. 

Well, I imagine that Randolph and Mortimer Duke were at it again, and that's how we got the company producing the ad seen above. Here's how I think it must have gone down: 

Randolph: I so much prefer our home poker games to playing in the casinos. When you let just anybody in to play, they wear the most appalling clothing.  

Mortimer: Oh, come now. You're exaggerating. They may dress casually, but they're no worse than the average riff-raff that inhabit the city.  

Randolph: You are sadly mistaken, brother. Poker players will wear anything marketed to them as "poker clothes." They have no taste, no discernment whatsoever.  

Mortimer: Randolph, are you willing to back up that assertion with a little wager?  

Randolph: What do you have in mind?  

Mortimer: You think that it is impossible to design a poker-themed shirt so ugly that poker players won't buy it, right?  

Randolph: That is correct.  

Mortimer: All right, then. I'll bet you that I can design poker shirts so hideous that even when promoted with a full-page ad in a nationally distributed poker magazine, not a single person will order one.  

Randolph: What you propose cannot be done.  

Mortimer: We'll see about that. You can't imagine the horror I have in mind.  

Randolph: Do tell!  

Mortimer: Very well. You know how when the rodeo is in town, it seems that everybody is wearing the same goofy-looking clothes? They all have "cowboy" shirts with this curvy yoke, spangly decorations, contrasting-color piping, pearly buttons, and so on, right?  

Randolph: Yes. So?  

Mortimer: I'm going to have a designer put together a line of shirts following that same general pattern, except with poker-themed appliques. I think I can even get her to include a patch on the inside of a sleeve, so that the wearer would be able to roll it up a bit to reveal--wait for it--an ace up his sleeve! You might as well just give me my dollar now. Nobody would ever buy such sartorial monstrosities!  

Randolph: Bring on your seamstress. Make your shirts. Place your ad. Your dollar is mine. Poker players will buy anything!  

Mortimer: So say you. But you still haven't heard my coup de grace. My ad will feature only models who look like they came directly from a 1970s gay porn shoot. Ha! Take that, loser!  

Randolph: Oh, my poor deluded brother. You think a little thing like that will stand in the way of poker players rushing to order whatever idiotic-looking mess you throw together? You have much to learn.  

Mortimer: We shall see.The usual amount?  

Mortimer: Of course--one dollar.  

Randolph: One dollar it is. I can't wait to see your face when the orders start rolling in. 

Is there really any other possible explanation? 

Who ya gonna believe--Bluff magazine or, um, Bluff magazine?

I have been paying very little attention to the November October Nine this year. I recognize a couple of the names from watching the weekly ESPN broadcasts, but that's about it. I couldn't tell you who's in the lead, who's a good or bad player, or anything about their lives or personalities.

This week I started reading the October issue of Bluff magazine. One of the first things I read was on page 28, "By the Numbers...October Nine," by Ryan Lucchesi. He writes:

6
Number of professional poker players among the October Nine. Russell Thomas (insurance actuary with Aetna Insurance), Michael Esposito (commodity broker), and Jacob Balsiger (student at Arizona State University), are the three non-pros at the final table. 

Then a couple of days later I got to page 65 and the cover feature, which is titled "October Nine: A Look at the Contenders," with no byline. (I don't know if all of the player profiles were written by one person, each by a different person, or distributed in some other way among Bluff's staff.)

We start with Russell Thomas:

Russell Thomas is one of only three professional players at the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event final table, though the other two have a bracelet to show for it.... He's primarily a cash game player, though he also has a full-time career working for an insurance company. 

So now we're being told that there are three professional players among the final nine, whereas the earlier article said there were six. Now we're being told that Thomas is among the three pros, but Ryan Lucchesi said Thomas was among the three amateurs.

Confused yet? Hang on, there's more.

The second profile is that of Jacob Balsiger. He is explicitly labeled as an amateur, with a decision to make as to whether to go pro after the WSOP ends. That concurs with the label given him by both Lucchesi and the writer of the Thomas profile.

Next up is the profile of Jeremy Ausmus:

Ausmus, a Bellagio cash game regular, was considered by some to be one of the best cap game players in the world on Full Tilt Poker before Black Friday hit.... In 2005, he moved to Las Vegas to play poker professionally. 

It lists no job for Ausmus other than poker, and that description certainly sounds like they're considering him a professional player (as does everything else I can find about him), and he is one of the six that Lucchesi is calling a pro. But at the same time he must not be one of the three being dubbed a pro by the anonymous author of the Thomas profile, because he specified that the two professionals other than Thomas both had bracelets, and Ausmus has no WSOP wins to his credit.

Next up is Steven Gee. No controversy here. He is explicitly labeled as a professional player and is also one of the two bracelet winners.

Same story for Greg Merson--his profile dubs him a pro, and there seems to be no argument about this designation. He is the other bracelet holder, having won the last tournament before the start of the Main Event.

Here's Jesse Sylvia's profile:

The 24-year-old pro who originally hails from Massachusetts is having his first real taste of success in live tournament poker.... Sylvia is a cash game specialist who's had a lot of success online. 

Sylvia, therefore, is deemed a pro by his profile writer (no other job is listed for him) and by Lucchesi, but definitely not by the author of the Thomas profile.

Robert Salaburu:

Twenty-seven-year-old Robert Salaburu primarily makes his living as a professional poker player who predominantly focuses on cash games, and if you think you're starting to see a pattern among the October nine, you might be onto something. 

Again we read nothing about any other job. He is considered a pro by his profile writer and by Lucchesi, but not by the writer of the Thomas profile.

Andras Koroknai:

Koroknai is a 30-year-old professional poker player from Debrecen, Hungary.... Koroknai has been playing professionally for the past six years and he is proud to represent his home country at the final table. He attended the University of Debrecen and worked as a computer engineer before turning to poker. 

Again we have agreement between this profile writer and Lucchesi. But the author of the Thomas profile deems Koroknai an amateur, not a professional. On what basis? I do not know.

Michael Esposito:

Michael Esposito is a 44-year-old from Seaford, New York, who has two kids and works as a commodity broker in New York City. Esposito plays just a few times a year as a hobby. 

Here we appear to have agreement among the three different viewpoints I've been exploring: Esposito is one of the amateurs.

To sum up: Lucchesi says that there are six professional players: Ausmus, Gee, Merson, Sylvia, Salaburu, and Koroknai. The author of the Thomas profile says that there are only three pros: Thomas, Gee, and Merson. And the nine profiles taken together judge seven of the nine to be professionals: Thomas, Ausmus, Gee, Merson, Sylvia, Salaburu, and Koroknai.

You can also look at it by the player. There is agreement across the board that Gee and Merson are pros and that Balsiger and Esposito are amateurs. Thomas is dubbed a pro by the author of his profile but an amateur by Lucchesi. Ausmus, Sylvia, Salaburu, and Koroknai are all called pros both by Lucchesi and by the author(s) of their individual profiles, but are all considered amateurs by the author of the Thomas profile.

Thanks for clearing that up for us, Bluff!

Look whose functionally illiterate

Enter the editor-in-chief of Bluff magazine (pictured above) into the Slow Learners' Olympics. I see a gold medal in his future.

The August issue is the third one in nine months that contains headlines with rudimentary errors of English--the kind that should have been shaken out of your system before high school graduation. (See here for the others.)

Guys, bookmark this great web site: Common Errors in English Usage. It might save you from further embarrassing blunders like this one. For the record, here is the entry on the who's/whose distinction:

This is one of those cases where it is important to remember that possessive pronouns never take apostrophes, even though possessive nouns do (see it’s/its). “Who’s” always and forever means only “who is,” as in “Who’s that guy with the droopy mustache?” or “who has,” as in “Who’s been eating my porridge?” “Whose” is the possessive form of “who” and is used as follows: “Whose dirty socks are these on the breakfast table?”

Please make a note of it.

Poker gems, #457

Chris "Fox" Wallace, in Bluff magazine, June, 2012, page 71.

When aspiring pros find out that being a poker pro mostly involves folding hands and waiting for the right spot, they get bored. Sometimes it seems like you are folding hands all night long, and when you do get a hand, you end up folding the flop. And on a rough streak this can happen for a week straight. When an aspiring pro discovers that playing poker correctly really isn't that much fun and it isn't the fascinating creative experience he thought it would be, the bloom is off the rose. Playing poker for a living is a ton of work, and sometimes you work hard all week for a paycheck that has a negative number written on it.

After a few years as a pro, you may start to wonder when the big baller lifestyle is going to kick in. You'll get impatient for your time on TV at a big featured table, your time on the podium being awarded a bracelet, your big sponsorship dollars. And they may never come. There are great players who have never done any of these things. They just grind away, making good money, paying the mortgage, paying a ton of taxes, and folding hands. Are you sure that's what you want?

This article is really the long way to ask a simple question. Do you really want to play poker seriously, or do you want to play poker the same way I wanted to be an astronaut when I was 9?

Running it twice

I remember vividly the first time I heard about "running it twice" in poker. It was during one of the first episodes of "High Stakes Poker" on the Game Show Network, and I had no idea what they were doing until Gabe Kaplan explained it. After learning a bit more about how it worked, I decided that if I were ever faced with that decision, I would just run it once. Among other reasons, that's how Barry Greenstein did it, and he was the consummate professional, my favorite of the regulars on HSP.

It was years before the option first presented itself. I was in a cash game at the Palms soon after their new manager, Joe Viator, had taken over. He had put in place some new rules, including what is still, I believe, the only low-stakes game in town where players can agree to run it twice. [Correction: on second thought, there's at least one other: the Tropicana, as I mentioned here.] At one point I went all in and was called, and my opponent asked if we could run it twice. I said no purely on the basis of having pre-made that decision years earlier, rather than based on any particular strategic consideration. It worked out for me that time.

Since then, the only times the issue has come up have been during the Pokerati games at the Palms, which I have done about five times now. It's half NLHE, half pot-limit Omaha, changing every orbit, with $1 and $2 blinds. My approach to the question in that setting has been to let my opponent decide, so that I don't cause any resentment from players who strongly prefer one way or the other, since I didn't feel I cared very much.

That's a noble enough goal. But lately I've read two things that are changing my mind on this point.

First, Phil Laak wrote in one of his recent columns for Bluff magazine (not available online yet) that he has switched his practice. He used to embrace running it as many times as he could get an opponent to agree to, in order to reduce his variance. But he has now decided to embrace the variance. (I think that was his exact terminology.) He feels that he is more even-keeled than most of his opponents, better able to absorb a big loss and still keep playing well. If he wins, though, he is likely to face an opponent who is stuck a lot of money, angry at the loss, and desperate to get back to even. That makes for a great opportunity for winning even more money.

A similar point is made in the newest issue of Card Player magazine by one of the publication's newest columnists, Bart Hanson. But he adds another argument that I had not thought about before:

Players commonly ask when deciding whether or not to make big calls all-in if the other player in the hand will run it more than once. This is an issue especially when you are trying to maximize your fold equity with a draw. Why would you want your opponent to know that you will run it more than once and not instill the fear that he could lose all of his chips? It also works the other way around when players try to push you around with their draws. If they know that you will run it more than once, they are more likely to make an aggressive action because if they get called there is less of a chance that they will lose all of their chips.

That seems like sound reasoning to me. So on the basis of these two considerations, I have decided to revert to my original plan from years ago: I am now a run-it-once player. I embrace the variance.

What the hell is the problem at Bluff magazine?

A few weeks ago I poked fun at Bluff magazine for having this mess of a headline in the December issue: "IF YOUR GOING TAKE MONEY, IT MAY AS WELL BE FROM THESE GUYS."

Little did I know that this was just the beginning of an epidemic of bad headlines in that publication. The three images above are scans of pages from the January, 2012, issue. If one wanted to be picky, one could gripe about a couple of others, too, involving the use (or lack thereof) of a comma here or a hyphen there. But I'm not including those, since they are arguably correct, depending on the exact sense that was intended, and they are at worst small errors.

These three, however, are just glaringly wrong. The first say, "...A COUPLE MORE TO ON THE WAY." My guess is that this originally read, "A COUPLE MORE TO GO." Somebody then decided to alter it to "A COUPLE MORE ON THE WAY," but failed to delete the now-unneeded "TO."

The second and third examples are even more embarrassing, because they obviously result not just from a bit of oversight, but from some chucklehead at the magazine who actually does not know the difference between your and you're. I hope it's the same lamebrain who was responsible for the error in the December issue, as I'd hate to think Bluff has two such sixth-grade dropouts on its paid staff.

Hey, Lance Bradley: You are listed as the editor-in-chief. Do you know what it means to edit?Here's the most relevant portion of Merriam-Webster's online dictionary definition:

1c : to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose

(Emphasis added.)

Is this not your job? Do you have any idea how unprofessional this makes the magazine look?

I like Bluff. I really do. I read it faithfully and look forward to new issues hitting the poker room stands. But jeez, guys, this is really terrible work.

Poker gems, #445

Scott Huff and Joe Stapleton, in Bluff magazine, December, 2011, page 88, commenting on various professional poker players' decisions about where to relocate outside of the United States in order to be able to continue playing online.

Aguiar, Deeb, others -----> Mexico.

Uhhh, is it just me, or does this sound like an accident waiting to happen? In Mexico, you can get kidnapped and ransomed if you're suspected of having an abundance of unused Tower Records gift cards.

What the heck is going to happen when a country that has a pretty disproportionate gun/job ratio finds out a bunch of Vitamin D-deficient supernerds who keep massive amounts of cash on them--and who have the ability to transfer large sums of money electronically--live in that ridiculously lavish high-rise over there? You know, the only building you can see no matter where you're standing in the barrio?

Poker gems, #444

Jennifer Tilly, in Bluff magazine, December, 2011, page 76.

Sometimes I wonder if I am a compulsive gambler, and then I realize I am not. If I am losing, I quit because I hate losing. If I'm winning, I quit. I like to quit while I'm ahead.

Phil [Laak] is the exact opposite. If he is down, he refuses to get up from a table until he is unstuck. Conversely, if he is winning, he won't get up either because he is on a roll. According to Phil, there is NEVER a good reason to get up from the table.

Your not going believe this one

Did you notice a couple of problems with that headline? Of course you did. Unless, that is, you happen to be one of the people in charge of writing and proofreading headlines for Bluff magazine. To them, it would have looked perfect.

How do I know? I have evidence. The following is what one finds on page 72 of the December, 2011, issue:

Notice the subhead: "IF YOUR GOING TAKE MONEY, IT MAY AS WELL BE FROM THESE GUYS."

This will sound snarky, but I mean it entirely literally: How do you get a job writing and/or copy editing for a magazine if you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're"? Isn't there some sort of test for 6th-grade-level English competence that one has to pass before getting hired on?

Another question that will sound rhetorical, but which I ask in earnest: How many people were involved in the production of this page without any of them noticing the homophone problem and the missing word? Five? Ten? And what is wrong with all of these people? (OK, that one was just rhetorical.)

Pity Phil Hellmuth

It's not easy to be assigned to write a feature about a well-known player for a poker publication. They've all been interviewed and profiled to death. Coming up with something new and interesting to say about them takes hard work and creativity. Getting the tone of such pieces right--neither sycophantic hero-worship nor gratuitous bashing--complicates the task.

My friend Dave Behr (of "Riding the F Train" blog) has, in my opinion, been absolutely nailing this difficult genre recently with a series of player profiles in Bluff magazine. These have included features on John Racener in May and Eugene Katchalov in July. But the one that has been sitting on my desk, with my thoughts about it percolating since I read it a couple of months ago, is the one about Phil Hellmuth in the September issue (not yet available online).

The article focuses, naturally, on his series of second-place finishes in this year's World Series of Poker. He was not only runner-up in three major bracelet events, but in the Player of the Year race, too, though at the time of this interview he still had a chance to take that title away from Ben Lamb if he did well enough at the WSOP-Europe.

I don't think this was the intent of either the interviewer or interviewee, but I was most struck by how pitiful a character Hellmuth is. Specifically, I find it terribly sad--and, frankly, baffling--that he has accomplished so much, yet is still so overtly desperate to win the world's approval.

Consider these excerpts from Dave's feature:

"I felt like 99 percent of the planet was rooting for me [to win the $50,000 Poker Player's Championship]," Hellmuth said a few weeks after the 2011 WSOP ended. "Even if you hated me, seeing me finish second twice and knowing the pain and the turmoil that it was causing me had to be enough to say, 'I hope you get this one.' Of course, maybe it was out of pity." ...

Hellmuth reiterated that all he really cares about is winning bracelets. He feels like he could win 24 before he stops playing poker, a benchmark by which his career might be measured. "Nobody is going to judge me by Player of the Year," he said....

But there are still critics out there who say that the 2011 WSOP proved once again that Hellmuth can't beat the great players, can't win the big buy-in tournaments, and can't win in non-Hold'em games. For all of his success this year and over the course of his career, Hellmuth is bothered by those people. He said he listens to his "haters" too much.

"Phil Jackson, what does he say during his parting interview?" Hellmuth asked. "The greatest coach of all time says, 'You won't have me to kick around anymore.' Nine percent of the world can't related to that.* Like, what's he talking about? This is the greatest coach of all time. But he listens to his critics. I listen to my critics."

Published at nearly the same time was another interview with Hellmuth for Poker Player newspaper (the September 26, 2011, issue, page 10) by Lou Krieger and Shari Geller. This one is nowhere near as original or insightful as Dave's. It reads like a generic bit of promotion for the iPhone poker app that Hellmuth recently put his name on--which is probably exactly what it was. Still, there was another quotation included that continues the same theme:

"Like it or not, I play for my fans and friends, but I hear all the critics. There have been a lot of critics saying 'Phil can't do this, he can't do that, he can't play in the modern era.' Well everything they said I couldn't do, I did this year."

You see the common theme, don't you? He is terribly obsessed with what everybody in the world of poker thinks about him. It doesn't matter how much money he has won. It doesn't matter how long his list of successes is. It doesn't matter how many people like and/or admire him. He can't get over the fact that there remain others who are not sufficiently convinced that he's a great player, and he is doggedly trying to win the approval of every last one of them.

Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying that he'll stay on the radio until everybody agrees with him. It's a fool's errand, of course, a Sisyphean task that can never be accomplished, as there is absolutely nothing on which all people everywhere will agree. Limbaugh obviously knows this; his tongue in firmly in cheek. But I'm not sure Hellmuth grasps it. My impression of him is that he will go to his grave bothered by the fact that there remain some people who refuse to acknowledge his poker talent.

I am reminded of my favorite Aesop's fable (though I just learned from Wikipedia, to my chagrin, that the common attribution is false, and it is not a genuine Aesop), "The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey." Here is one common recitation of the tale:

A man and his son were once going with their donkey to market. As they were walking along by his side a countryman passed them and said, "You fools, what is a donkey for but to ride upon?" So the man put the boy on the donkey, and they went on their way.

But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said, "See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides."

So the man ordered his boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other, "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along."

Well, the man didn't know what to do, but at last he took his boy up before him on the donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passersby began to jeer and point at them. The man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at.

The men said, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey of yours -- you and your hulking son?"

The man and boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, until at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey's feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them until they came to a bridge, when the donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the donkey fell over the bridge, and his forefeet being tied together, he was drowned.

Try to please everyone, and you will please no one.

Source: Joseph Jacobs, The Fables of Æsop (London: Macmillan and Company, 1902), no. 63, pp. 149-51.

You can't go through life trying to win the admiration and approval of everybody you encounter. It can't be done, and you'll make yourself crazy trying.

I can't figure out why Hellmuth cares that there are people who won't give him the credit and respect he feels he deserves. A mentally healthy person would take his own measure and decide whether it is or isn't good enough, perhaps taking into account the assessments of family, close friends, and trusted advisers, but not waste time or emotional energy with what millions of strangers think.

For reasons that I can't wrap my head around, Phil Hellmuth seems unable to do that. Instead, he continually worries that there remain poker players who don't respect him, and wonders what he has to do to win them over. For that, he is, in my view, a man to be pitied.

(Image above is Hellmuth in a Speedo many years ago. He sent this out via Twitter a while back. I was torn between using it and the one of him piloting a giant hot dog boat. Did I choose wisely?)

*That "nine percent" struck me as peculiar. "Ninety percent" would seem more natural, even though, obviously, neither one would be meant to be taken with scientific precision. I emailed Dave to ask about it, and he told me that it was indeed "ninety," but was somehow changed to "nine" by an editing error at the magazine.

"I guess I should have kept my mouth shut"

One hand from yesterday's HORSE tournament is worth describing for you, I think.

I started the tournament in a deep hole, and for a while it looked like I would be among the first handful eliminated. But just before the first break I had a series of three consecutive miracle suckouts in razz hands (including one where I busted a guy when with the last card I made 8-6-4-3-A to edge out his 8-6-4-3-2) that got me back to my starting stack. Soon thereafter I got moved to a new table, which was much, much softer. Once I figured out how generally meek and passive this new table was, I was able to use a combination of stepped-up aggression and a run of good cards to build a stack that was more than double the tournament average.

(This included, unfortunately, busting my new friend Dave, with whom I had gone to the Lyle Lovett/John Hiatt concert. In an Omaha hand, he opened from under the gun with AAxx. I called for one bet from the big blind with the crummy K-9-8-4 double-suited. The flop was an amazing K-K-4, and I ended up taking his remaining stack. It never feels good to end a friend's tournament run.)

Soon after I got to my third table, the worst hand of the day for me occurred. I called a raise in hold'em with 7-7, and four of us saw the flop of 9-7-2 with two diamonds. The betting ended up getting capped on the flop, and again on the turn of a second 2, with the other two players (i.e., not the original raiser and me) getting all in, one of them with the nut flush draw, the other with 10-10.

The interesting point was when I put in the cap on fourth street, the original raiser was obviously disturbed by how things were developing. He finally called, but as he did so he said, "I sure hope you have pocket sevens and not the pocket deuces."

The tournament director happened to be standing there watching this hand play out, and he immediately and properly warned the player not to be discussing his hand, as it could be considered collusion against the two players who were already all-in.

Well, his words were about as clear as he could be that he had 9-9, and I had stumbled into the bad end of the dreaded set-over-set situation. There was a small possibility that he had aces or kings and was cleverly trying to fool me into thinking that he had top set, in order to shut down further betting, but I didn't think so. He sounded utterly genuine to my ears.

The turn was some brick, and he and I both checked. Sure enough, he flipped over 9-9 and scooped the biggest pot I had seen all day.

(Despite the enormous stack he earned here, he ended up busting out in either 8th place for a min-cash, chiefly because he kept severely overplaying one-pair hands. Slow learner, apparently.)

As he was stacking all of his newly acquired chips, he turned to me and said, somewhat remorsefully, "I guess I should have kept my mouth shut." He realized, in retrospect, that he may have cost himself more bets on the river. Indeed he did.

He ended up with more than half of the chips with which I started that hand, and it took me down to well below the tournament average. I had to play short-stack ninja for two or three hours to recover from that devastating blow. But it could have been even worse. I don't know how much more I would have put in on the river, because the overpair theory was starting to lose force with his willingness to cap it with me, but I think at least one or two more big bets would have gone in.

There are a few players who are skillful enough to talk to an opponent during a hand and extract more information than they leak, but they are few and far between. The vast majority of players who talk about their hands give away valuable information--and this guy was a prime example.

Tommy Angelo is on my mind this week, and I'm reminded of a column that Lee Jones wrote about the experience of playing poker with Angelo. It was in Bluff magazine in 2009, and can be found here. Angelo is famous for advocating "mum poker," and Jones describes seeing it in action and trying to emulate it. It's not the only way to play poker (Mike Caro routinely denounces it as not the approach that will make the most money), but it's worthy of your consideration.

Way to stay classy, Bluff

So Bluff magazine's managing editor earlier today put up an online piece in which, without further comment or explanation, she casually refers to women as "broads." See here.

Next time, why not just go with "bitches"?

Just in case the page gets removed or altered later, a screen shot is below.

Poker gems, #424

Alec Torelli, in Bluff magazine column, June, 2011, page 96, on what American online poker professionals should do now that the game is mostly gone.

The way I see it, when you have nothing to do, you are free to do anything you want!

...Just relax. Take a few breaths. The sun is still going to rise tomorrow. Take some time to be grateful for the countless options you have at your disposal. If poker is something you still fancy, what better opportunity to take advantage of living in Europe and experiencing something totally new? Or if you want to digress, you are free to take that trip you always wanted, learn an instrument or language, write a book, or climb Mount Everest. Remember, the only loss suffered here was monetary. Personally, I'm always comforted to know where the ingredient of money fits into my recipe for happiness, and it's usually no more important than a pinch of salt.

Poker gems, #416

Lance Bradley, in a profile of Erik Seidel in the May, 2011, Bluff magazine, p. 81.

If you forget about the luckboxes who've made the WSOP Main Event final table, Erik Seidel has already won more money in 2011 than anybody else won in any single year since 2004. And the year's not even close to being half over.