Skirmishes in the information war

This post is in the form of a letter to Tony (yes, the same Tony featured in the previous post's silly story), but because the problems I identify are common, I hope there is value to my readers in letting you all peek in on it.

Dear Tony:

Last night was the longest time I've spent in a cash game at a table with you, and it gave me my best chance yet to observe for myself something that many others have commented on in your blogs after playing with you for a while: You give away way too much information. It's not entirely clear to me if you understand the extent to which you are doing it, or the damage it does to your bankroll, so I'm going to try to lay out some concrete examples from last night and explain how they can hurt you. These are just a few of the things I saw; there were dozens more that I could chose from, if I wanted to try to make an exhaustive catalog.

My intention here is not to embarrass you or say that you're a bad player. You obviously do well enough to get by. But you could do so much better if you closed off some of your leaks, and many of your worst leaks relate to control of information.

It should also be noted that none of these are unique to you. In fact, they are things I see commonly in many players--which is exactly why I think it might be valuable to readers to list them here, because they may see the same problems in themselves. But I would expect somebody who aspires to be a professional at the game to have a better handle on these things than the average tourist. Moreover, an aspiring professional should want to improve where he can. Though I have to point out specific things I think you're doing wrong, in order to make my points, my goal is to be helpful, not just condemning.

These are in no particular order.

1.

You freely told people at the table about the current size of your bankroll. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with you writing about this on your blog, and once in a while you'll have somebody at the table who reads your blog and therefore has this information. But to give it out voluntarily is, I think, a terrible mistake.

The most obvious problem is that it invites potential crime. Somebody might think that you mean that you're carrying all that money with you. I know that you're not, but what I know doesn't matter. Just the idea that you're carrying a ton of cash could set you up for being assaulted and robbed. You worry about that possibility enough as it is. Why add to the potential?

The second problem is that nobody cares, unless they're (A) a friend, or (B) thinking of trying to steal your money. Talking about money is fraught with social problems. It makes people uncomfortable. In our society, we don't ask other people how much money they have or make, and we don't disclose that information to others unless there is some very specific reason. I'm pretty open about just about everything in this blog, but I have never and will never talk in concrete terms about how much I make at poker. It's nobody's business.

I know that you care what others think about you. Telling them how much money you have will pretty much have only negative consequences. Those who have a lot more money than you will look down on you for being nearly broke, as they see it. Those who have less might be jealous. Either way, you have sown negative feelings. Negative feelings about you from other players hurt you. You make more money from people who like you. (This is Mike Caro's most emphatic teaching.) Doing things that make people either resent or look down on you is self-destructive. Frankly, you sounded like you were bragging, and nobody likes a braggart.

Answer me this: What do you gain by sharing this information with strangers at the poker table? How does it benefit you in any concrete, identifiable way? I think the answer is that it doesn't, and the potential for several kinds of harm is real. The cost:benefit ratio here is infinite.

2.

You frequently discussed how a hand was played immediately after it was over. In one instance, you caught a pair (jacks, I think) on the river to beat a guy who had been ahead prior to that. You pointed out to him how his raise on the flop was so small that it made sense for you to call to try to catch a card. Then you told him that since you missed, if he had bet again on the turn you would have folded.

I'm not sure I can describe how awful this kind of talk is, in terms of long-term poker strategy. You were telling an opponent explicitly how to play better against you the next time! Why on earth would you do this? You should want him to continue playing as weakly as he did. That's how you won the hand, and that's how you would win the next one, too--except that you clued him in to precisely what he did wrong, and how to do it better the next time.

Frankly, I wanted to stand up and yell at you: WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???? The answer is that you weren't thinking at all. You were just reacting, with no filter between your brain and your mouth. Maybe the two dumbest things a poker player can do are criticize another player for his bad play and educate him as to how to play better. You did both at once. What did you get for it in return? A little bit of ego gratification. Was it worth it?

By the way, when you engage in such idiotic behavior as that, you cost ME money, too. If the guy smartens up and starts playing better, he will do so against everybody, not just against you. Your words are taking money out of my pocket, and I resent it.

There are plenty of resources that this guy and others can turn to if they want to learn to play better poker. It is not your job to educate him. Lots of recreational players aren't interested in investing time and work into getting better. They're just there to relax and have a good time, maybe win a little money if they get lucky. Imposing on them a poker lesson that they didn't ask for will tend to cause resentment. Sometimes they even leave the table, in search of a game where everybody is having fun and nobody will criticize how they play or make them feel stupid. Then we all lose out.

Tony, this kind of talk is self-defeating. It is precisely this kind of talk that is condemned with the common expression, "Don't tap on the aquarium--it scares the fish." There is absolutely no justification for it. It is a bigger leak in your game than things about which you have repeatedly expressed concern, such as how to play flush draws.

"The poker table is not a classroom. And you don't want recreational players to conclude that you're playing seriously. If you do that, they're likely to become self-conscious about their decisions and stop playing so liberally--which will cost you money." Mike Caro, Caro's Most Profitable Hold'Em Advice, page 242.

3.

You repeatedly told everybody at the table whether you were up or down from your original buy-in. Once you even said something like, "I have to get back another $62 and then I can leave."

First, again, nobody cares, in the sense of being sympathetic for you if you're down or rejoicing on your behalf if you're up.

Second, as others have told you countless times, you cannot play A-game poker if you're obsessed with always finishing up for the day. Chips are tools for gaining more chips, nothing more. In other words, you shouldn't even be thinking about being up or down for the day or for the session, let alone talking out loud about it.

Third, it opens you up to exploitation. Have you ever noticed the way that many players segregate their chip stacks into their original buy-in and their profit? As long as they're playing with their profit, they're fairly loose. After all, it's found money, free money. If they lose it, they're not really out anything, as they see it. But if the profit goes away, and they start cutting into the original buy-in stacks, they become much more serious. A player like that who is reaching into the original buy-in stacks to put in his raise is far, far less likely to be bluffing than if he is only having to play with his profit stacks.

You know that, right?

You don't keep your stacks segregated that way, but the effect is exactly the same. If sharp, observant players know the degree to which you are ahead or behind, and they know that it matters a great deal to you which side of zero you end up on (and the fact that you frequently call attention to your status makes it abundantly clear that it does matter a great deal to you), they will exploit that information. Now, I think that you're not as completely predictable as the chips-segregation guys, and sometimes you're more willing to bluff and gamble when down than when you're up. But that doesn't matter. All that matters is that it's information that smart players can use to gain extra insight into how you are thinking and playing, and thus play better against you.

I would ask again, How does it benefit you at all to tell the table how much you need to make to be back to even? In theory, you could do this to spread disinformation, knowing what people will think of you, then do the opposite of what they will anticipate. But I do not believe that you are doing this. I think you are just spewing the information because it occurs to you, because it's on your mind so constantly, and, again, you just don't stop to think about the consequences of opening your mouth.

4.

You show your hole cards unnecessarily. You do this a lot. You did it more than any other player at the table last night.

This is a complex area. There is no one clearly best strategy for deciding when to reveal your hole cards if you aren't required to do so. Some world-class players never do it. Daniel Negreanu, asked about this once for a World Poker Tour special feature, said that he does it occasionally, but always with a specific plan and purpose for what he wants his opponents to think and know. That's smart. Antonio Esfandiari recently noted in his live WSOP commentary that he never shows cards that reinforce an opponent's good decision. E.g., if they fold, he won't show them a winner--but he might show them if he was bluffing. He wants to spread disinformation and put opponents on tilt for having made a mistake, not give them a psychological reward for making the correct decision. Again, that's a perfectly justifiable strategy. It's a thoughtful way to decide what to show.

In Caro's Most Profitable Hold'Em Advice, the author spends several pages discussing how to selectively show cards in order to reinforce the erroneous tendencies of specific players. For example, show your strongest hands to players who are already inclined to fold too often when you bet. It will have the effect of making them think, "Yep, that guy always has the goods, just as I suspected." As a result, they will tighten up even more against you. Conversely, show your bluffs to players who are inclined to call you too often, in order to get them to call even more often. Again, this is a perfectly valid, well-reasoned approach to the question.

But I don't think you are following any well-thought-out strategy. I think you show when you feel like it, and there's not much more to it than that. That is unacceptable. That is unprofessional. That will cost you money.

By far the simplest approach is just never, ever show any cards unless the rules require you to show them. I think that should be your default plan. It may not be fully optimal, but it's never very much of mistake, whereas showing willy-nilly, the way you are doing now, is an egregious leak. If you asked me for advice on this point (and I realize that you didn't), I would say shut off that gushing pipe completely. Lock it down. Get in the habit of never, ever showing unnecessarily. After several months of getting used to that practice, then you can consider trying to find very selective, strategic spots in which showing your cards can increase your profits. But for now, just stop it completely.

You might also consider that the message you are sending is not the one you intended. I caught a very keen insight from Olivier Busquet the other day when he was doing live WSOP commentary. One very tight player raised, got everyone to fold, then showed some high pocket pair. Busquet was asked what it says about a player when he shows cards like that. He responded (paraphrasing here), "It tells me that he's weak and afraid. He is trying to tell the table, 'When I raise you shouldn't play back at me.' Why doesn't he want people to play back at him? Because he's afraid of tangling with them." I think Busquet is on to something there. It was a revelation to me. I had not thought of it that way before, but it's worth considering that when you intend to convey strength, it accidentally comes across as weakness.

5.

You freely discuss what you will do with certain hands in certain situations. For example, at one point last night you showed something like an A-8 that you had raised with, and said, "I'll raise with hands like that, but I won't call if somebody else has raised first."

That was another occasion on which I wanted to yell at you. What possible good is that doing? The smart, observant players will file away that information to use against you. The really bad players, who only consider hand strength and not situations, perhaps have never considered that there are hands with which one might sensibly raise, but fold if somebody else raises first. Why are you giving them an education? They didn't ask for it, and if they learn to play better, it makes it harder for you to win their money.

For about the umpteenth time I'll ask, what could you possibly hope to gain by sharing with others exactly how you play certain hands?

6.

I'm sure you'll remember the hand in which you had Q-Q and the other guy had 2-4, and hit a gutshot on the river to make a straight and win the large pot. I'll dispense with pointing out that 2-4 is the most powerful hand in poker and always wins. My point here is that you went on and on about this. You repeatedly said, "Goddammit," and other such things. Even half an hour later, long after that player had left the table, you were rehashing it, talking about how much money he had put into the pot when he was drawing nearly dead.

This is another example in the category of things you shouldn't even be thinking, let alone saying.

When I hear somebody droning on about a hand that was over half an hour ago, I know that he is not focusing on the present. I know that he is more likely to call than his baseline. (Never try to bluff a player who is obviously on tilt.) I know that he is going to be playing more hands than usual in an attempt to get back what he perceives as having unfairly lost, and will be more likely to bluff or overplay weak or mediocre hands. When you expose your feelings to the table like this, you unintentionally inform the better players what to expect from you and how to play more accurately against you. This will cost you money.

The best thing would be to get to where you don't care about the outcome, as long as you made the right decision. If you can't manage that, at least make it look to others as if that's where you are. Never let 'em see you sweat.

7.

You played a hand with, I think, A-Q, then immediately afterward asked me if I thought you played it right.

I will never discuss poker strategy or tactics at the table with you--or with anybody else, for that matter. (OK, "never" is too strong there. But it's almost never. And when there is a rare exception, it is sotto voce, when seated next to somebody I know and trust, not out loud for all to hear.) It's just plain bad for the game.

It is a bad mistake to clue in the recreational players that there are layers of depth to the game that they are not seeing. It is unwise to let them know who among their opponents are the most thoughtful and experienced and analytic. The fact that they can't figure that out from just watching hands is part of what makes them bad players. (You know the old saw about not being able to spot the fish at the table in the first 20 minutes.) It is self-defeating to let them listen in on discussions about how a hand could or should have been played.

I also don't want to be spotlighted at the table as a player whose advice you seek and value. That hangs a big sign around my neck telling the inattentive players that maybe they should watch out for me more than they had previously been inclined to do. That, in turn, may make them less willing to play hands against me, and therefore cost me money. It's bad form all around, and reduces both of our expected profits for the night.

Mike Caro again, page 261: "It's a very bad idea to discuss serious strategy with weak opponents--at the table or away from it. Doing so makes them self-conscious, and helps them recognize that there are levels of poker they don't understand. They are apt to play more cautiously as a result, and, worse, they may even learn to play well!"

8.

While sitting in Seat 1, at least one time you showed your cards to the dealer before mucking. The player in Seat 10 was still in the hand and saw them, though he didn't say anything about it. I know you didn't mean to show them to that other player, but you did. You might have influenced how the hand played out, because now that guy had information about what cards were out, information that was not available to his opponent(s).

It is generally really difficult to control exactly who can and cannot see your cards when trying to expose them selectively. It's just a bad idea.

Yet again, I have to ask: What possible gain is there from showing your cards to the dealer? He doesn't care what you had. If he is good at his job, he is not going to react and reward you with sympathy (which I assume is what you are seeking). He is going to act like he saw nothing. The best dealers, in fact, will turn their eyes away and refuse to look when a player is trying to share his cards that way, and explain that he doesn't want to take the chance of influencing the action by giving away anything with a reaction to what he is seeing.

This kind of action not only gives away to another player what you were willing to fold to his bet, but directly and adversely affects the integrity of the game. This was a serious breach of protocol. To be blunt, there is no excuse for it. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost.

Some general thoughts:

I like what John Vorhaus wrote in one of his columns: "They say that information is power; in poker, it's cash, just cash." Information is money. You should not give it away when you don't have to.

Even better is Tommy Angelo's extended discussion of poker as an "information war" (Elements of Poker, pages 86-92:

I play poker on a need to know basis. I need to know the thoughts my opponents are thinking. I need to know the feelings they are feeling. And I need to know the cards they are playing. Meanwhile, I need them to know as little as possible about me. I call this relationship the information war.

The information war is fought on two fronts--sending and receiving. To win it, send less information than they send, while receiving more information than they receive. By controlling those differences, you control information flow....

The information war at poker has an arms race, and if one were to take it to its natural extreme--which I have--one would play a style of poker I call "mum poker"--which I do.

On the outside, mum poker is the classic poker face, extended to the entire body, and maintained through sixth street. [Angelo coined the term "sixth street" to refer to everything that happens after one hand ends and before the next begins, most especially the players' discussion about what just happened.] On the inside, mum poker is no complaining, no blaming, no regretting. Mum poker is stillness. Mum poker is readiness....

Or you could just think of it as sit up and shut up.

Today, when I am playing primarily for profit, I play mum poker.... I do not speak unless spoken to, and even then, I do not react to questions or comments about poker.

I have found that the less information I send, the more I focus on the game. And when I am focused on the game, I send less information. When I employ mum poker, I fight on both fronts of the information war simultaneously....

Mum poker is not about not talking. It's about not talking about certain things, namely, poker things. Mum poker means not talking about poker plays, poker thoughts, and poker feelings, especially the recent ones. And it means not talking about poker players, especially the present ones.

Mum poker means not saying certain words and phrases when you play. Words like ace, king, queen, spade, heart, pair, straight, gutshot, river, etc. Mum poker also means not being a dickhead. If someone asks you if you like your food, answer. If someone asks you if you like your cards, don't answer. That's mum poker....

There's a big difference between ignoring the people and events in a poker game and not reacting to them. Ignoring is when you react on the inside, but not on the outside. Not reacting is when nothing happens, inside or out. Not reacting looks the same as ignoring, but it feels better....

Everything everyone does is a tell. What they wear is a tell. How they sit is a tell. What they say is a tell. What they don't say is a tell.... It's all a seamless trail of tells. And what do all these tells tell you? It depends. Tells might tell you about your opponent's thoughts. Tells might tell you about your opponent's feelings. Tells might tell you about your opponent's intentions. Tells might tell you what your opponent's hole cards are. It all depends on what you are doing. Are you listening? Or are you telling?

To the extent that there is identifiable motivation for why you do these things, I think it is chiefly that you very much want others at the table to respect you, to think that you're a good player. To that end, you try to show them that you understand the game more deeply than they do. But sooner or later you have to ask yourself what is really more important to you--controlling what nine strangers think of how you play poker, or maximizing your profit? Those two goals are mutually exclusive. You cannot give away information without giving away money. As it stands, you are giving away information on a nearly constant basis. That means that you are giving away money. I don't think you can afford it.

I have a serious suggestion for you, and for any of my readers who recognize similar problems in their own information wars. When you first read this, you'll think I'm just exaggerating to make a point, but I'm not. I'm deadly serious and completely literal in this suggestion: If you really want to plug these information leaks, you have to make your brain equate information and money in a very explicit and automatic way. I suggest that every time you catch yourself leaking information--showing a card that you didn't have to show, talking about strategy, criticizing how an opponent played, cursing about a bad beat, rehashing a hand that is long over, discussing your bankroll, telling people whether you're up or down for the day--punish yourself by giving the dealer a $5 chip as a tip. Giving away information is giving away money, and you've got to learn that association down to the deepest fibers of your being. The way to ingrain that lesson, I submit, is to make it hurt, and make the information=money connection explicit to yourself along with the pain.

I don't know whether any one piece of information that you give away is worth more or less than $5, and it really doesn't matter. What matters is that you come to grips with the fact that when you leak information, you are giving away your chips. It is literally true, whether you acknowledge it or not, so make it literally true and concrete for yourself. I predict that if you do that, it will not take long before you learn to keep your information to yourself--and all those red chips, too.

If your reaction is that you can't help yourself, that these things just happen, I will have to disagree. Suppose I offered to pay you $100,000 if you played poker for one hour without a single unnecessary information leak. Could you pull it off? Of course you could. These leaks are things you choose to do--every single one of them, every single time--and you could choose not to do them if you wanted to, if you had sufficient motivation. The question that remains is whether you will decide that making more money is sufficient motivation.

I hope you find these observations and suggestions helpful. I wish you success, my friend.

PeeGee's Big Adventure, Part 9: Day 1, the hands

I have just a few hands from my Day 1 to tell you about. I'll take them in chronological order.

1.

The first occurred at about 1:15 p.m. It was the first time I was dealt the Mighty Deuce-Four. My chance to show the world what it does! I was in the hijack seat and raised to 275 (blinds 50/100) with 2h-4s. Both blinds called, including Greg Raymer in the big blind. The flop was A-J-5, all hearts. The blinds checked. I bet 600. SB called, Raymer folded. Turn was an offsuit 9. SB bet 1200. I raised to 3000. He called. River was an offsuit 3, making my gutshot straight. We went check-check. He said, "Two pair," but didn't show. I flipped over my wheel, to puzzled looks all around. Why not bet the river? I thought there was a reasonable chance he had flopped a small flush. Maybe I should have bet again, but his line was odd (particular the flop call/turn lead-out bet), so I was confused, not having a good sense of what he could be holding, and I decided to play it conservatively at the end. After having been down a bit, that hand was my first time back over my starting stack, putting me at 32,425.

2.

The first really big pot I was involved with occurred at about 1:40 p.m., roughly 90 minutes in. Both I and the guy on my right had been letting our blinds go without a fight nearly every time. Naturally, the others noticed this and were stealing liberally. I decided to take a shot at playing back. So when Raymer open-raised from two off the button, I thought he was in an any-two-cards situation, and when the others folded, I reraised as a pure resteal, with 9c-8s. (I didn't write down bet sizes for this one when the hand was over.) He thought a bit, then called. The flop was A-Q-8, all clubs. I bet. Raymer raised.

Often in poker, one's cards simply don't matter. What matters is the situation, and what the other player will think that you have. I believed that this was just such a spot. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I was trying to treat it as such a spot, whether it was or not. Raymer would know that I would likely continuation-bet a high percentage of the time, even if I missed the flop. He would also know that it was statistically unlikely that I had flopped a flush, and if I didn't, I would have to be worried that he might have. His raise, therefore, doesn't require a real hand at all; it only required him to guess that much of the time I would have missed this scary-looking flop and he can take the pot away regardless of what his own cards are. Recognizing this, I reraised him, to signal that he had picked a bad spot for that move. Obviously this play was not based on my own hand strength, but on an educated guess as to what Raymer was thinking and doing.

Raymer's response was a nearly instantaneous declaration, "I'm all in."

Oops.

Given that he had never seen me play a hand this aggressively, it was now highly unlikely that this was simply a bluff on his part. Though I had tried to make it be about the situation and not the cards, now I could win the pot only with the best cards, which I almost surely didn't have. I had to fold.

Raymer flashed the king of clubs before mucking, so he at least had the nut flush draw, and likely had either a pair (especially a queen) or a straight draw to go with it. He could have even had a made flush, though I doubt it.

So my play didn't work, but I would still defend it as having been a reasonable read of the most likely situation, and one that would have won me a juicy pot a lot of the time. This just wasn't one of them. It was a big hit, taking me down to 21,325.

3.

It was about 2:45 p.m., and I was still at around 21,000 when this next hand played out. This one was reported by somebody I don't know at PokerNews, here, with me identified only as the "player in middle position." (Such indignity. DYKWTFIA?) Go read that account so that I don't have to recount the action.

I had pocket jacks. I was tempted to raise Busquet on the flop, since he will have missed a 9-9-6 flop most of the time, and can continue only if he has a bigger pocket pair. I was hampered, though, by the presence of two others in the hand (which, by the way, is my own fault for not putting in a three-bet before the flop). The SB had hesitated before checking in a way that made me suspicious that he had a 9 in his hand and was trying to decide between a donk bet and a check-raise, and I didn't want to get trapped in the middle for a larger sum. So I just called. I kicked myself when the SB folded. My read on him had been wrong.

King on the turn. Oh, great. That just hit a large swath of Busquet's pre-flop raising range, not to mention Raymer's blind-defense range. On the other hand, he could have me on a flopped flush draw, and continue firing even with a clean miss. So I called again.

River--ace. Wonderful. Another big chunk of Busquet's range just beat me. He thought for quite a long time, then moved all in.

I briefly considered calling (he had me covered), because he could easily be doing this with a smaller pocket pair, especially if he put me on the flush draw. But if that was what he was thinking, why would he risk so many chips, when a much smaller bet would force me out just as effectively? Based on the play he had seen from me, he should never think that I would execute a river raise as a bluff on a missed draw. I might have had the best hand there, but it was so easy for me to be beat with any ace or king in his hand. I was reduced to a pure guess, and I just didn't want to risk it all on a guess in an extremely risky spot like that. So I folded.

In retrospect, I played it badly. I should have raised before the flop, and likely either won it right there, or at least I would have reduced the complexity of the situation by having only Busquet to deal with. Whether or not I did that, I should have raised the flop. If any of the other three players called or reraised, then I could be reasonably confident that I was facing a bigger pocket pair or flopped trips, and stopped putting more money in. My caution (OK, call it timidity) and passivity cost me more than a raise would have.

4.

Shamus reported one more hand in which I was involved, here. This was after the dinner break. My opponent was the most active pre-flop raiser at the table. This was another spot in which I had decided it was time to play back at the blind stealers with any semi-decent hand. In fact, I had Kc-3c here, which some of my friends refer to as a "LeDawn" (for reasons I won't bore you with). The flop was A-A-J. I check-called, with plans to take the pot away if he showed any weakness. Turn 8. Check-check. So now I'm pretty sure he doesn't have an ace.

River: Another J. Perfect for my purposes!

One of the specific tips that Daniel Cates gave me, when we met to discuss strategy, was to bluff in situations in which my opponents would have to judge that I would almost never be bluffing. This was exactly such a spot, I thought. Given how tight and conservatively I had been playing, a lead-out river bet here would just never get read by a thinking opponent as being a bluff.

In fact, my opponent's only question would be whether I had the ace or the jack. From his point of view, if I had the ace (perfectly plausible, given my rare defense of my big blind), then I had slow-played the flopped trips, trying to trap him. If I had the jack (defending with something like J-Q or J-10, presumably), then I had simply not believed him to have an ace, thought my jack was good enough for a call on the flop, and I had gotten lucky to river a full house. Either boat was entirely consistent with my line and with my demonstrated tendencies. He simply could not call unless he had an ace, and I was quite confident that he did not. So I bet.

Sure enough, he folded. He took long enough and looked sufficiently pained about it (he wasn't one to Hollywood usually) that I suspect he was folding a decent pocket pair, maybe even as good as kings or queens.

Heh heh! Stealing pots is so much more satisfying than winning them with the best cards.

That last hand put me back to around 30,000, where I had started the day. But then things fell apart. I rather suddenly hit the proverbial wall mentally with about two hours left in the day. I was sleepy, my thoughts were foggy, and I had lost interest in paying attention to the action and trying to decipher what the other players were doing. This happened to coincide with a long stretch of utter card-deaditude. (Yes, it's a word. Look it up.) I decided to just fold-fold-fold to the end of the day, and start again fresh on Monday.

The problem was that I didn't stick to that plan. After some period of folding everything, and being aware that everybody knew that I was folding everything, I would kind of randomly decide to make a play for a pot, and fail. Maybe I had tells showing due to fatigue. More likely, the conspicuous pattern of folding even more than had been my tendency all day telegraphed to everybody that I was just trying to survive to the end of the day, and, therefore, that I wouldn't be willing to play a big pot--so they made the intelligent adjustment and forced me to play big pots. This happened several times over the course of two hours, and it meant that I was putting in a raise or a reraise, then throwing my hand away--along with the chips.

That's what caused my stack to plummet in the final level, from around 28,000 to where I finished at 8325. It was my stupid vacillation between mutually incompatible plans. I would have lost far, far less if I had just stuck to my original plan of folding to the end of the day, once I recognized that my A-game was gone.

In reality, making it to Day 2 was not an important goal to me in and of itself. If I was going to go bust, it made no difference to me whether it was an hour before the end of Day 1 or an hour into Day 2--it's all the same result. I didn't decide to fold because I wanted to be able to say I made it to the second day. I decided that because I knew I was off my game, and would be able to use the chips better after starting fresh.

Whatever hand-specific mistakes I made in the first four levels paled in comparison to waffling that way during Level 5. I basically gave away 20,000 chips by being unable to commit consistently to either folding to the end or getting my chips in where I could and trying for a double-up. Half-hearted attempts at doing anything are rarely a smart strategy either in poker or in life generally, but that's what I kept trying, and failing badly. The prophet Elijah famously asked a gathered crowd, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" (1 Kings 18:21) Well, for me it was about two hours--but that was plenty of time to do all the damage.

When they announced that there were just three hands left, I was under the gun (being the unlucky one chosen to put in the big blind for the last hand of the day) and saw 8-8. I toyed with the idea of sticking it all in. But I reconsidered, realizing that if I got called it would be either for a race against something like A-K, or as a huge dog against a bigger pocket pair. So I folded yet again, paid my blinds, and bagged up my pathetic remaining chips.

I really regret how I dribbled away chips during that last two hours. But as Willie Nelson would say, there's nothing I can do about it now. I just have to start from where I am, making the best possible decision on every hand going forward.

PeeGee's Big Adventure, Part 6: Day 1, the lineup

Photos courtesy of Wolynski. (And in case you're wondering what I'm doing with my left arm in that last shot, well, both Wolynski and I are wondering, too. My best guess after looking at it for a while is that I was pushing up my shirt sleeve, but I really don't know.)

Last night I dreamed that I was back at my WSOP Main Event Day 1 table, just as I had been all day Thursday--except that in the dream I had horrendous body odor. Everybody at the table had their noses wrinkled up in disgust at the stench, and they were all trying to figure out who smelled so bad. I knew it was me, but rather than confess that I had forgotten my deodorant, I tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong.

I don't usually put much stock in dream interpretation, but in this particular case there is undoubtedly something profoundly symbolic going on. Even if I consciously tried to conjure up a literary device to convey how I felt at that table, I doubt I could make up anything so perfect. I have never felt so out of place and outclassed at a poker table. I have never had any illusions about being a great player, but it is nevertheless deeply humbling to be faced, in such an up-close and personal way, with the reality of how much better some other people are at the game. I'm used to being the best player at the table--not because I'm exceptionally good, but for the simple reason that anybody who is significantly better would play higher than $1-2 NLHE, my bread-and-butter game. It is, therefore, quite a novel and unsettling experience to feel like the one who is not only the fish, but the fish that has begun to stink.

As most readers will have heard by now, either from my Twitter feed, PokerNews coverage, or other sources that were reporting on the day, I got unbelievably unlucky in my table draw. I was in Seat 2. In Seat 3 was David "The Maven" Chicotsky, Bluff Magazine Online Player of the Year for 2008. In Seat 4 was Tom Schneider, who won two bracelets and WSOP Player of the Year honors in 2007. In Seat 5 was Eugene Yanayt, whom I had not heard of before, but is definitely on my radar screen now. He is a 2-7 triple-draw specialist, apparently playing online under the names "FishosaurusREX" and "Oogee." In Seat 8 was Greg Raymer, 2004 Main Event champion. Finally, in Seat 10 was Olivier Busquet, widely considered one of the top handful of high-stakes, heads-up, online players in the world.

To be blunt, this table was an assemblage of just completely ridiculous, phenomenal poker talent. It got the dreaded label of "table of death" from PokerNews. Raymer commented at one point that it was the single toughest Main Event table he had ever been seated at. He then paused a beat to consider his words, and added a qualification: "If it's not the toughest of any Main Event table I've ever had, it's definitely the toughest Day 1 table." After the first level, he Tweeted, "1st break #wsop58. Somehow only up to 33K at this ridic soft table @DonkeyBomber livB Maven pokergrump oogee. #sarcasm" (He surely didn't know or care who I was when he sat down. He probably learned my moniker by checking PokerNews coverage and/or by overhearing me introduce myself to Schneider, with whom I have several mutual friends. Furthermore, I'm certain that his inclusion of me in that list was sheer politeness, not an objective assessment that I was one of their peers. The mention did skyrocket my Twitter followers, though!)

Funny story: I didn't recognize Chicotsky at first, even though I certainly should have. (E.g., I recognized him and took his picture at a charity tournament at the Venetian over a year ago, as reported here.) He had briefly introduced himself as "David" when he sat down, and I was kinda busy futzing with all my stuff at the time and wasn't really paying attention. After that, when I looked at him it was in profile and from about 12 inches away, so it didn't trigger my facial recognition from photographs. I sent a message on Twitter about the stars at my table, not mentioning him. One of my readers is Donna Lawton (@Cure _MTM on Twitter), who is head of the Utah chapter of the Poker Players Alliance. She and I have met on some of her Vegas trips, and even played a cash session in adjacent seats at the Venetian on one of them. Anyway, she sent me a private message via Twitter: "Hey it looks like the Maven is at ur table too yes?" I brushed it off with my reply: "Don't think so." I mean, I would have noticed that, right? Duh! But she was persistent and pointed me to Chicotsky's own Twitter feed (which I wasn't following), where he had commented on having Raymer, Schneider, and Busquet at his table. Well, that evidence was pretty hard to ignore, so I took another hard look around the table at the people I hadn't recognized. I had to stifle a laugh when it finally dawned on me that not only was he sitting right next to me, but he had introduced himself and shaken my hand earlier! Sometimes I can be unbelievably oblivious to my surroundings.

Of the star players at my table, I was most bowled over by Busquet in terms of who most consistently had a nose for the right play. He was just dominatingly good. I saw him lose a few small pots, but never a big one. I tussled with him a few times and could never win, no matter what I tried. He also had the advantage of running like God yesterday (e.g., cracking one player's aces with a flopped flush, starting with Jd-9d, and elsewhere calling Maven's four-bet with 5-8 suited and flopping another flush). He ended the day as one of the overall chip leaders. Watching him play I had weird flashbacks of the lyrics of "Pinball Wizard":

Even on my usual table
He can beat my best
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest
He's got crazy flipper fingers
Never seen him fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

Tom Schneider had a lousy day in spite of playing well. The most impressive thing I saw all day--in fact, one of the most impressive things I've ever witnessed at a poker table--was him face-up folding pocket tens after flopping a set, and being proven correct to have done so when Raymer showed him a flopped set of queens. He was in the tank for a long time on that decision (politely apologizing to the other players a couple of times for taking so long). It gave me time to send up the Bat-signal to my buddy Shamus, who was reporting for PokerNews. I knew that whatever the outcome, this was likely to be a newsworthy hand, and I also knew that Shamus trusted my judgment and would just come without question when he caught my eye. I cannot improve on the excellent way he told the story here.

We usually think of the best moves in poker being the audacious bluff, the razor-thin hero call, or the perfectly sized value bet. Folds aren't sexy. But I tell you, this was a world-class move by a world-class player. Not reported by Shamus was the fact that Schneider talked a bit as he was thinking. He said, "I just think you have me beat here," and, after a while longer, "I can't get over the feeling that I need to fold this." Logically, he was only beaten by Raymer having pocket queens or pocket aces (the flopped straight not fitting the action well). Furthermore, Raymer is easily capable of putting Schneider to the test in that spot with just a big ace, just a draw, or even as a pure bluff. For Schneider to get that sharp a read on Raymer's actual holding by nothing more than feel, and trust it enough to fold, after having already put a substantial percentage of his dwindling stack into the pot, well, I cannot adequately express how much it impressed me. As Raymer said, with sincere admiration in his voice, "That's a helluva fold."

Very early in my learning about poker, I heard somebody famous say that what separated the great players from the merely good players was not how much they win when they have the best hand, but how little they lose when they have the second-best hand. (I think it was Mike Sexton on an early World Poker Tour broadcast, quoting Doyle Brunson, but I'm unsure of that attribution.) At the time, I dismissed it as a cute but not terribly important observation. The longer I play, though, the more I come to appreciate it as a profound truth of the game. Schneider's fold becomes a foremost example of this principle for me. His tournament would have been over if he had not trusted his finely tuned Spidey senses there.

You've probably heard that I later took the last of Schneider's chips. I certainly didn't outplay him. It was a pure cold-deck situation, my aces against his kings. Again, I had managed to catch Shamus's attention in time for him to witness the outcome, as reported here.

In an opinion shared, apparently, by nearly everyone who has contact with him, Raymer is a smart, interesting, funny guy. He's very chatty, and an excellent raconteur of his many poker stories. But he's also willing to let the conversation veer off into the bizarro world. For a while, he got the table discussing correct strategy for playing poker heads-up with an omniscient being. Later in the day, after he had pre-ordered some sushi for his dinner break, he went on a riff about lobsters, and whether it would be worth being basically anencephalic as a trade-off for the ability to regrow severed limbs. That one thoroughly cracked me up.

More times than I could count during the day, Raymer was approached by people from one poker media outlet or another to chat. These weren't full-out interviews, but they still constituted frequent distractions from the game. He was unfailingly welcoming and respectful with them. Furthermore, I happened to see him on breaks in the halls, and he could barely take three steps in a row without a fan stopping him to ask for an autograph or to pose for a photo. With every one of them he smiled and did as requested, showing not a trace of boredom or resentment, as far as I could detect. I don't think I could pull that off for five minutes before I started going postal and yelling at strangers to leave me alone, but he has managed it for seven years straight. My hat's off to him for his patience and good will with the public--not to mention his tireless efforts on the poker political front. (He's a fellow libertarian, doncha know. We're all saints, obviously!)

The only blemish in my admiration of Raymer came when I rivered a lucky second pair to beat him in a very early pot, and he gave me the disdainful "Nice catch" line used to not-so-subtly tell an opponent, "You stupidly stayed in when you were behind." It's far from the most insulting thing I've ever been told, but I consider it slightly unclassy--whether or not the underlying message is true. It sounds dismissive and sarcastic, which, in my view, isn't cricket at the poker table. But it's not awful, either, and I'm not inclined to be overly judgmental about one stray comment in a moment of irritation. It just isn't my style, and I was a little surprised to see that tiny crack in his otherwise uniformly deserved good-guy image.

His bust-out hand got paused in the middle while the TV cameras and other media swooped down on the table like vultures. If ESPN does any coverage of Days 1A through 1D (there seems to be some disagreement among poker reporters as to their plans), this hand will surely be included, because it had a dramatic river suckout. I was pleased to be able to help my PokerNews friends reconstruct the action, as they had not been there when it began. Read about it here. From a strategic perspective, Raymer made a cagey move to open-limp-reraise, representing possible aces, as Yanayt (unnamed in the blog post) could easily have been just stealing from the limpers). But when the field folded and Yanayt reraised, Raymer's subsequent call with just 2-2 was highly questionable, a fact that he admitted when it was all over and he was packing up his things. He signed for Yanayt a large, beautiful fossil with a gracious note (which I looked at closely, but stupidly forgot to photograph for you all).

Yanayt was with me until the end of the day, but one by one we lost the others. Chicotsky was the first of them to go broke, then Schneider. Busquet got randomly chosen to be moved to balance tables, and Raymer went out. The only semi-name-brand player to join us subsequently was Nachman Berlin, who had a $419K score for second place in Event #43 just about a week ago. (Thanks again to Donna for remotely helping me quickly figure out who he was--though as it turned out, he talked about himself so much that with a little more time I would have put the pieces together.) Unlike all the others I've named, Berlin was, frankly, an arrogant ass. While I was deeply impressed with Busquet, Schneider, and Raymer's play, Berlin is deeply impressed only with himself. His assessment of his opposition on his Twitter feed after he got moved to ol' #376: "Table is real soft. 2 good players." He's one of those who is convinced he's the best there's ever been, and likes to pretend, when a hand is over, that he knew exactly what everybody had and what everybody was thinking and doing. Moreover, he's perfectly willing to tell others, without invitation, how they should have played a hand differently. But as far as I could tell, his talent did not match his inflated sense of self. He seemed to get in trouble as often as he succeeded. His aggression was not nearly as smartly controlled as what I had seen from the others. My guess is that he is not going to become a poker commodity over the ensuing years. (Of course, I won't either, but I've never claimed or pretended greatness.)

Berlin aside, the others I've mentioned (as well as the no-names, none of whom were incompetent, and all of whom were unfailingly polite and friendly) contributed to making yesterday far more memorable than it might otherwise have been. It was an exhilarating experience. Even if my killer table draw hampered my chances at a big cash, it was sure one hell of a lot more interesting than if I had been assigned to a table full of silent hooded Internet players, and a lot more educational than if I had landed at a soft table full of donkeys. For that, I can feel genuinely grateful, even if the draw proves to have doomed me to an early flame-out.

Well, I have a ton more to tell you from my Day 1, but it has already taken me a couple of hours to write this much, and I have some other stuff I have to finish up today. I might get to another post later tonight or maybe not until tomorrow, but I promise there is more.