Poker gems, #441

Matt Lessinger, in Card Player magazine column, October 5, 2011 (vol. 24, #20), page 46.

[I]f an LPP [loose passive player] catches a strong enough piece of the flop, he will call--plain and simple. In most cases, the size of your bet won't affect his decision. Also, since LPPs are passive, they rarely will check-raise. With all that in mind, why make a pot-sized bet when a bet of one-third the pot can accomplish the same thing?

...Betting $20 into a roughly $60 pot, with the hope of getting your opponents to fold, can seem ...counterintuitive..., but against the right opponents, it's clearly the correct play. Whether you bet $20 or $60, they will fold the hands that missed and call with the ones that connected, so there's no sense in betting more than is necessary.

Which seat is best?

I've mentioned many times that Seat 1 is my usual favorite. A couple of years ago I did as detailed an explanation as could about the reasons why I prefer it, here. In that post I mentioned that I had first started thinking about the advantages of Seat 1 after reading a column in Card Player magazine touting the strategic advantages of that position, but I wasn't able to find it or remember who had written it.

Well, now I know. It was Matt Lessinger, and his column, from 2004, can be found here. I figured it out because in a recent issue of the magazine he revisits the question (for the benefit of online players forced to play live for the first time after Black Friday), with basically the same arguments. The newer column hasn't been made available online yet, so I can't link to it, but I'm happy to finally pin down and give credit to the source that seven years ago got me started on a habit that has served me well.

Poker gems, #398

Matt Lessinger, in Card Player magazine column, December 1, 2010 (vol. 23, #24), p.58.


At a given buy-in level... you're not going to be that much better than your opponents. if you were, you'd be playing for higher stakes. If they were that bad, they'd soon get tired of losing and play something else. It's the small differences in skill that set you apart from your opponents. You're not going to win every time, but it's an extra win here and there and a few extra in-the-money finishes that will generate your long-term profits.

For the most part, you need to give your opponents credit for having a skill set similar to yours. That's something that a surprising number of players refuse to do, or they don't give it enough thought.

Call or fold? (Conclusion)

It took me a minute or so to process all of the possibilities. I finally decided that it was more likely that it was a situation in which I'd want to get my money in than one in which I wouldn't.

It was ultimately the speed and size of his bet that made me conclude that he probably did not have one of the three monsters I had to worry about (A-8, 8-7, or 7-7). The speed and size didn't ring true for those hands. I decided that it was quite a bit more likely that he had one of these: (1) the same hand as me; (2) a flush or straight draw that he was trying not to have to hit; (3) a straight-flush draw on which he was willing to gamble his stack*; (4) an 8 with a worse kicker. With any of those, I would be OK with playing for stacks. My very, very rough guess to myself was that the sum of these combinations was about twice as likely as that he had one of the monsters.

I don't like making big calls like that just verbally. I prefer to get the right number of chips and move it forward. The reason for this is purely psychological and irrational: I really hate counting out a big bunch of chips after I have learned that I have lost. I'd rather put them in the middle when I still have reason to believe they will be coming back to me, with interest. It's stupid, but that's how my mind works.

So after settling on the call, I put four red chips on top of a cluster of four stacks of $50 and pushed them all across the line.

The instant I released those stacks, my opponent said, "He's got me outkicked." A great relief washed over me.

It didn't last long. The dealer put out a deuce on the turn, and the guy added, "Oh, not any more." He flipped over 8s-2s.

I was down to three outs, and the dealer couldn't find me a king.

I wanted to barf, but that is frowned upon at Mandalay Bay, what with their quirky house rules and all.

As you can see, I was way off base in my assessment of him. I would never have guessed him as one who would have played 8-2 from UTG. That was based purely on a sense of what percentage of starting hands he played, which was nowhere near high enough to include 8-2 in his EP range. I don't know why he played it. Maybe it's his favorite hand.

Why did he raise so much? Again, I just don't know. It makes almost no sense. He obviously knew the instant I called that he was way behind. He had a decently strong hand, and with that bet turned it into a bluff, because he could only get a call when he was beaten. He had no reason to think I was bluffing; I had bluffed exactly once in that session, and it was long before he arrived. He had seen nothing but solid play from me. He should not have thought I was just on a draw after my reraise.

My best guess about this thought process is this: The reraise convinced him that I had an 8, so he knew he was impossibly far behind. He didn't want to have to make crying calls on the turn and river, so he made a snap decision to gamble that my kicker was small enough that I wouldn't dare call.

But whatever his reasoning (or lack thereof), I got the big money in as a better than 6:1 favorite (71% win for me, 11% win for him, 18% chop). As they say, there's not much more I can do than that.

I have previously quoted this excellent paragraph from one of Matt Lessinger's old Card Player columns, and it remains one of my go-to mental solaces when Bad Things like this happen to me:

I don't care if you are a rank novice or a world champion. It doesn't matter whether you are in a tournament or a cash game. You could be playing for pennies or Porsches. It's all the same. If you can get all of your money in as a 4-1 favorite, do it. And if you lose, live with it. It happens. Wait for the next opportunity to arise, and then do it again. If you are able to consistently create that scenario, you will be a successful player--end of story.

*It did not occur to me in the heat of the moment, but in retrospect this is a situation in which the existence of the high-hand jackpot probably weighed against his having the straight-flush draw. I think most $1-2 NLHE players would not want to pass up the chance to hit it and collect the bonus, and consequently they wouldn't be so eager to end the hand on the flop when only 4/5 of the way there. That is mathematically a fallacious decision, because the size of the bonus, combined with having only a roughly 8% chance of hitting one of the two needed cards, means that the effective pot odds are only marginally altered in a deep-stacked situation like this.

Poker gems, #348

Matt Lessinger, in Card Player magazine column, February 24, 2010 (vol. 23, #4), p. 60.


[U]nless your name is Phil Ivey, you aren't going to scare your opponents just by staring at them.

But if we can't get our opponents to fear us, we can at least make sure that they don't start getting brave against us. There are always opponents who make me think to myself, "When they're in the blinds, I'm going to look to raise." It's not just because they are tight, but because they are tight-passive. They are either going to fold to me or not punish me for getting out of line. Their style inspires me to get aggressive. They inspire anti-fear. That's instant death in the poker world, and something that you must avoid at all costs.

A reconsideration

Last week I described a heartbreaker of a hand against Spewtard. The story, in short, is that I had Qd-Qh, and I knew that he had exactly Ad-Jd. I raised (to $16, as I recall). He reraised to $40. I raised another $100 on top of that. He shoved for a total of what proved to be $435. I had him covered and called. The flop and turn were safe, but he caught an ace on the river to win.

In the comments, somebody asked about the alternative strategy I could have taken: Just call the reraise to $40, then decide on the flop whether to commit. I had, in fact, briefly considered that option as the hand played out, but made the instantaneous decision that I knew I was roughly a 2:1 favorite, and I should get in as much money as possible with those odds.

However, I've been debating this on and off ever since, and I wondered if I could work out the expected value of each strategy. I think I have done it, to a reasonable approximation.


Strategy 1

This is what I actually did. I was a 68.3% to 31.7% favorite to win. So if we did the hand 1000 times, I would win $435 683 times for a total profit of $297,105. I would lose $435 317 times, for a total loss of $137,895. Net gain would be $159,210. So my expected value (EV) for this strategy is approximately +$159 for each time we play the hand this way.


Strategy 2

The particular Spewtard was so bad that he very well might have been willing to shove on the flop no matter what cards came, and whether I checked to him, bet small, bet big, or shoved myself. I'm using that assumption here.

Let's suppose that I decide to shove (anticipating a call) on any flop where I'm ahead, and check-fold on any flop where I'm behind. How would that work out mathematically?

Here are the types of flop where I'm behind, and the number of possible flops that would fit each category, given the four known hole cards:

3 aces: 1

2 aces: 135

1 ace: 5440

3 jacks: 1

2 jacks (no ace): 126

K-Q-T: 32

3 diamonds: 56

Note that I don't have to account separately for two-pair combinations, because any flop that pairs both of his hole cards necessarily contains an ace, which alone is enough to beat me and cause me to fold.

That's a total of 6291 flops in which I'm behind and will fold, thus losing $40.

There are also 1008 additional flops that contain two diamonds (and no aces). I'm still ahead, so I'm shoving, but he has 11 outs (8 diamonds and 3 aces) twice, or roughly a 44% chance of winning. I know this isn't exact, but working it out precisely (i.e., taking account of the hands that would result in straights for me but not him, or give me a full house, etc.) would be way too complicated.

Finally, there are 9997 flops that are dry for him and look safe for me--he misses his aces, his jacks, his straights, his flushes, and even his flush draws. In most of these, he will have just 3 outs (the remaining aces) twice, or approximately 12% chance of winning. Again, this is imprecise because there will be some straight draws unaccounted for here that might hit, as well as some runner-runner combinations. But, again, it isn't all one-sided, because some of these I'm lumping all together will also improve me even more than they improve him.

I'll spare you the arithmetic, and just jump to the conclusion: The average EV for this strategy works out to about +$180.


Strategy 3

Suppose I wanted to reduce variance even further, and not put the big money in when he flops a flush draw, even though I'm a favorite. That is, I fold in all of the situations listed in Strategy 2, plus every time two diamonds flop. Again, I'll skip over the boring math and just tell you the result I got: Average EV is +$165. It's obviously lower than the EV for Strategy 2, because I'm passing on situations in which I'm a favorite.

Interestingly, though, it's a slightly better strategy (though only by a small margin) than my pre-flop shove--if the assumption about Spewtard's conduct is correct.


Conclusion

If I could know for sure that Spewtard would put all his chips in on the flop no matter what came, then it would be smarter to wait for the flop, then either fold or shove according to whether I'm ahead or behind.

As I mentioned, this possibility did occur to me in the heat of the moment. I dismissed it because of the potential for losing the chance at stacking him if he were smart enough to fold upon missing the flop. That is a possibility, especially after I told him that I had seen his cards. But he just might have been so drunk and so uncaring about the money that he would shove regardless. The only way to know the true optimal approach would require being inside his head enough to know how he'd react. Unfortunately, we don't have that information. Because Strategy 2 is only about 13% better than Strategy 1 when we're making the assumption that he will shove on any flop, if he has much of any propensity to get scared and fold when he doesn't improve and I bet the flop, then Strategy 1 probably comes out ahead. It is, sadly, unknowable.

The way things came out, even if he had been willing to shove on the dry flop that came, I still would have lost to that damned ace on the river. My only consolation would have been that I got the big money in as an 88% favorite (i.e., on the flop when he had just 3 outs twice) instead of "merely" as a 68% favorite. I don't think that would have stung any less. Heck, it might have hurt even more.

But I'll have to admit, waiting for the flop before deciding whether to commit is a more interesting option than I initially gave it credit for being. Against a typical bad opponent, I'm confident that my approach was the highest possible EV. But against this particular bad opponent, I really don't know.

I find some consolation in this excellent paragraph from one of Matt Lessinger's Card Player magazine columns (which I have quoted before here):

I don't care if you are a rank novice or a world champion. It doesn't matter
whether you are in a tournament or a cash game. You could be playing for pennies
or Porsches. It's all the same. If you can get all of your money in as a 4-1
favorite, do it. And if you lose, live with it. It happens. Wait for
the next opportunity to arise, and then do it again. If you are able to
consistently create that scenario, you will be a successful player--end of
story.

Folding K-K

I was struck by the juxtaposition and similarity of two things I've read within the last 24 hours from completely different sources.

First was this from Doyle Brunson's blog, October 22, 2008:

The Bellagio tournament is the greatest! There is no dinner break and
you can be home in bed by 10:00 pm if you choose. It is really good if you
are a little long in the tooth. I had a decent 1st day and am sitting with
$95,000 in chips. I could have had 50,000 more but I threw away 2 kings
preflop. I was convinced the other player had two aces and couldn’t
believe when he showed two jacks after I passed. That is the fifth time I
have passed two kings preflop in tournaments. I think this was the first
time I’ve been wrong. Oh well, who knows, he might have caught a jack and
really crippled me.

Then I was reading Matt Lessinger's column in the November 5, 2008, issue of Card Player magazine. He writes:

The point I am making is that going all in preflop with K-K against A-A is
clearly an acceptable way to lose a tournament. There are some rare instances
when you can get away from K-K preflop, perhaps very early in a major
tournament, but not often. For what it's worth, I've folded K-K preflop three
times in 12 years, and each time I was correct, but that demonstrates how rare
you can expect to do it. If you start looking for too many situations to fold K-K
preflop, not only will you end up folding it as the best hand too often, but you
will be adopting a mindset that virtually guarantees terrible tournament
results.

One of the best K-K laydown stories comes from Phil Gordon. In his Little Green Book, he describes in great detail the considerations that led him to fold K-K at the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event. It's such a good story that I scanned it in above. (It's too long to type, and if it's within the "fair use" copyright exception to type it in--as I believe it is--it should also be OK to scan it in.) Go read.

And here's one more Main Event K-K laydown story, this one from 1992, as told in All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker, by Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback, p. 170:

As was becoming increasingly common, the most exciting poker of the entire
tournament was played when there were seven players left, all desperately hoping
to make it to the final televised table, which only had room for six. Hamid
Dastmalchi, a longtime professional who moved from his native Iran to San Diego
when he was seventeen, was the chip leader. Dealt pocket kings, he raised before
the flop, only to be reraised by Mike Alsaadi, a professional from Las Vegas,
who pushed all of his chips into the middle.

Hamid stared across the table at his opponent. Most players, especially
those blessed with the chip lead, would call such a bet without thinking twice.
Pocket kings, after all, are the second most powerful hand in Texas hold'em.
Hamid, however, thought back to a comment Mike had made earlier about how badly he wanted to make it to final day. And Mike wasn't just reraising, he was
reraising the chip leader, who was more than likely to call his bet.

"What do you think I've got?" Mike asked him.

"I know you've got two aces," Hamid replied as he threw his two kings into
the muck.

It was an incredible laydown, one that only the top professionals are
capable of making. Confirming the brilliance of the move, Mike showed his two
aces to the crowd.

How many times have I folded K-K before the flop? Zero. How many times should I have done so? Two. That's because in both situations I had enough information to reach the right conclusion from (1) the pattern of raising and reraising, (2) the demeanor of my opponent, (3) the knowledge that he or she had been playing tight and solid, (4) the knowledge that these opponents both knew the same about me, and therefore wouldn't be making a move on me after I was showing such strength.

In one case, at the Orleans, I lost about $200. The one that really sticks in my craw, though, was at the Golden Nugget. I was sitting on about $600 at the time, and was literally about to stand up and go get a couple of chip racks to cash out my bounty when I saw the kings, and the only player at the table who had me covered was the one who had the aces. I don't remember for sure how the raising went, but he was the one that moved all-in first, a big overbet to the $100 or so that had been my previous raise. I had such confidence that he would not do that with anything except aces that I could and should have written off the $100 and saved myself $500. But I didn't, and when I lost all of that in one fell swoop--the most I've ever lost in a single hand--it was as close as I've ever come to throwing up on a poker table.

In both of those cases, I can clearly remember thinking that there is no way that this particular person would be doing this with any hand except exactly A-A. And my rationale for calling in both cases went no deeper than "I can't fold K-K preflop."

(Note that these were both cash games. I play very few tournaments, and can't remember any tournament situation where folding K-K before the flop would have been reasonable.)

To be clear, there have been plenty of times when I've had kings and knew that I might be up against aces, but the situations were such that calling or pushing (depending on whose turn it was) was still reasonable. That's because of one of us having a relatively short stack, or facing a pretty loose/aggressive opponent who would push lesser hands, or whatever. In those cases, although I haven't kept careful track, my impression is that I'm about 50/50 in the long run--roughly half the time seeing the aces, but the other half seeing queens or A-K or occasionally even jacks. One time it was the other two kings. Those situations don't bother me, because calling or shoving was still the right move under the specific circumstances. They didn't feature the compelling, resounding, tidal wave of you're-in-trouble information that I had with the two instances in which I believe I could and should have folded.

But I've learned from those mistakes, I think. I've thought about them a lot, naturally, and tried to sear into my memory the overwhelming sense I had of confidence that I was behind. My hope is that the next time I get that same sickening realization that A-A is the only hand this particular opponent could have in this situation, I'll have the fortitude to act on that conviction and push my lovely but second-best cards back to the dealer.

Whether I succeed or fail at doing that difficult thing the next time the occasion arises, I shall dutifully report it here.

Just give me the small piece

Playing $1-$2 no-limit hold'em at Mandalay Bay this afternoon, I saw a move that makes perfect emotional sense, but is completely insane from a profit-maximizing perspective.

On my left was a retiree, obviously local and well known to all of the dealers and floor personnel. His name is Sammy. He is a stereotypical--maybe even archetypal--local "rock." On the hand in question, a middle-position player raised to $10 after a couple of limpers. Nobody called behind him. Sammy was in the small blind. He put in a curiously large reraise, to about $55. The big blind and limpers folded.

The original raiser was the only one left with a decision, and he looked unsure what to do. As he was contemplating his options, Sammy deliberately turned face up his two red aces, and said, "Does that make your decision any easier?" His lone remaining opponent smirked, then said, "I suppose I could go in with a 9% chance of winning," but then folded. (I'm guessing from this comment and the fact that he apparently had a genuinely difficult decision that he most likely had A-K, which is indeed in the ballpark of a 10:1 dog to pocket aces.) As Sammy was scooping up the itty-bitty pot, he said, "Good. The last thing I need is you drawing out on me."

As I said, on an emotional level I can understand perfectly what was going on there. Sammy has played poker for a long time and has seen his aces cracked by inferior hands too many times. The sting of those memories weighs heavily on him, and he has devised a strategy to reduce the chance that he will have to feel that hurt again: He bets so big that nobody will call. And if it looks like that didn't do the trick by itself, and somebody might call anyway, he shows them the aces to dissuade them. He collects the small pot, quite content with the outcome, because he didn't lose.

It's obvious that that last phrase is the key to the whole thing. Never losing with aces has become his primary focus.

But it's a completely irrational way to play the hand if your goal is to maximize your lifetime profit from all of the times you are dealt pocket aces. In order to do that, you somehow have to get opponents to put as much money as possible into the pot when they are 4:1 or even 10:1 underdogs to win. If maximizing long-term profit were Sammy's goal, he should bet an amount that he thinks is the most that will be called by a player with A-K. (Exactly what that amount might be will vary with the opponent, relative table position, chip stacks, etc.) The question he should be silently asking himself is, "What is the most that this guy will be willing to call?" Sammy, contrarily, is asking himself, "How much will it take to make this guy fold?"

Given that that is his goal, one might wonder why he doesn't just move all in. My guess is that the psychological pain of possibly losing his entire stack if he fails to chase somebody away (e.g., somebody sitting on K-K, or a player who is drunk or otherwise entirely carefree, or one who is stuck badly and willing to gamble it up) and his aces get cracked is just too much to bear. So he instead has evolved this one-two punch of a big over-raise, followed by showing his cards, if necessary, to complete the effect without putting his entire stack at risk.

Most players, though, understand that being a winning player means getting maximum value from the rare occasion of being delivered a prize such as A-A. That, in turn, means coaxing opponents into the pot with more money. Yeah, it also means that you'll occasionally lose--and the amount may well be large, even one's entire stack. But the math doesn't lie: over the long run you really will make a lot more than you lose if you somehow manage to get opponents to put as many chips as possible into the pot when they have only a 10% or 20% chance of winning it.

I'll take A-A over A-K for as much money as I have in front of me, if my opponent is willing, and eagerly step up to do it again and again and again, as many times as possible. I know that this means losing that stake one out of ten times or so. I also know that I don't get to choose when the loaded chamber on that ten-round revolver pointed at my head will be the one under the firing pin. In a lifetime, it will sometimes happen three or four times in a row, and I'll feel like I got run over by a truck, and may start whining like Phil Hellmuth or Mike Matusow about how the universe is stacked against me. (See here for my personally most painful story of aces cracked for large pots nearly back-to-back.) But I understand that that is the price one necessarily must pay in order to reap the most long-term profit. It is not optional. It is literally impossible to get the greater reward without taking the risk.

There is a theorem in economics and game theory about something called "minimax" strategy. It involves picking a strategy that minimizes one's maximum possible loss. This isn't quite that, because Sammy could still lose everything on the hand (unless he secretly has a third component to his strategy, which is to fold if he gets reraised--I kind of doubt that he would, but with a set of values so distorted, it's hard to say for sure). Instead, he is trying to minimize the probability of losing anything at all. If there's a specific name for that in game theory, I don't know what it is.

But regardless of the label we might put on it, Sammy's strategy is essentially the equivalent of accepting a virtual certainty of walking away with the tiny slice of pie in the illustration above, rather than go for the whole pie, because he's unwilling to take the chance of losing everything, even when he is, at minimum, a 3:1 favorite. (Statistically, the best hand to put up against A-A is something like 7-8 of a suit not held by Mr. Aces. You're only about a 3:1 underdog in that scenario.)

It's not necessarily irrational, if one values avoiding the pain of a loss more than one values maximizing long-term profit. But I have to admit that that is an ordering of values and priorities that is utterly foreign to me.

Matt Lessinger, who I think is one of the finest columnists in Card Player magazine's stable, wrote an enlightening and clear-headed piece on the Sammy mindset a couple of years ago. I recommend reading (or re-reading) the whole thing here. I'll leave you with the excellent mini-lecture embodied in just one of his paragraphs:

I don't care if you are a rank novice or a world champion. It doesn't
matter whether you are in a tournament or a cash game. You could be playing for
pennies or Porsches. It's all the same. If you can get all of your money in as a
4-1 favorite, do it. And if you lose, live with it. It happens. Wait
for the next opportunity to arise, and then do it again. If you are
able to consistently create that scenario, you will be a successful player--end
of story.

Article in Card Player magazine (non-grumpy content)

For those who just can't get enough of my writing about poker (ha!), I sort of had a thing in Card Player magazine a couple of issues back. It's now available online, at http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/127/9249. It's just the story of a bluff that I was unduly proud of, and wrote up and sent to Matt Lessinger, one of the CP columnists. He liked it enough to use it in his monthly column. Spoiler warning: reading it will reveal my ultra-secret real-world identity. (Shockingly, neither "Poker Grump" nor "Rakewell" appears on my birth certificate.)


Addendum, February 5, 2010

I see that the link no longer works. But this one should:

http://www.cardplayer.com/cardplayer-magazines/65671-erick-lindgren-20-12/articles/16822-nice-play-dude

Just show your cards already

Another incident from yesterday's session at Mandalay Bay:

Another no-limit table breaks up and we inherit 3 new players. One of them quickly shows himself to be a loose-aggressive type, in almost every hand, betting and raising at nearly every opportunity. When there's a showdown, he always tries to hesitate to see if the other player(s) will show first, and he mucks without showing if he doesn't have the winner. In other words, even though he's playing a lot of hands, I'm not getting a lot of feedback on what he's playing, and he's the hardest kind of opponent to put on a specific hand.

I decide to test the waters against him when I'm on the button with Q-10 offsuit.* I call his raise, and have him heads-up with position on my side. Flop is A-Q-x. He bets. My decision basically comes down to whether I believe he has an ace or not. For all practical purposes, if he does, I'm beat, and if he doesn't, I'm ahead. I think it's most likely that he doesn't have it, so I re-raise all-in. He calls. The turn and river cards are blanks.

The dealer asks to see the hands. Normally, I'm not at all reluctant to show--in fact, that's the whole point of this rant, how some players try to protect their hole cards as if they were top-secret classified documents, which just slows down the game and irritates everybody. But once in a while there is good reason to use the rules to force an opponent to show first--and this was one of them. I wanted to know what he had played that way, and if I showed first and won, I knew he would muck, and I'd win the pot but not the information. I wanted both, if I could have them.

So I said to him, "You're first." He countered, "No, I called your raise." I told him that was irrelevant, because it was on a previous street, not on the last round. The dealer, to my surprise, told me I had to show first. As it turns out, the guy did have an ace, and won the hand. But that's beside the point here.

The standard rule is this: if there is action on the last street, then the last player to make a bet or raise has the obligation to show first. But if there is no action on the last street, then the compelled showdown (if nobody voluntarily goes first) is in the same order as everything else would be: from the small blind clockwise around to the button. (I have read that there are a few casinos with house rules otherwise, but if so, I don't know which ones they are.) Many players believe, incorrectly, that if there is no action on the last round of betting, the obligatory showdown order reverts to who bet or raised on a previous street. Not so.

I'm never surprised to run into even fairly experienced players who don't know the rules of poker well. Furthermore, it's not being stupid not to know something. But it is being stupid to assert, loudly and confidently, something that just ain't so. And that's what this guy was doing.

I was also surprised that the dealer didn't know the rule. After all, this is a situation that must come up a dozen times in every shift, if not more. I complied with his request, however, because there was always the possibility that Mandalay Bay has a idiosyncratic house rule (or at least some instruction to their dealers) that he was following. But after the fact, I approached the shift supervisor to ask him, and he confirmed my impression that M.B. follows the standard rule, and the dealer should have instructed my opponent to show first.

After the hand, there was quite a bit of debate at the table about the rule. Several people sided with the other guy: since he called me, the obligation was on me. Well, folks, you're just plain wrong about that. Here's the rule as written in "Cooke's Rules of Real Poker" (in my view, the best poker rule book available), p. 72, rule 11.01:

If there has been a bet and raise or multiple raises on the final betting
round, then the person who made the final raise shall show his hand first,
followed by all remaining players in a clockwise rotation. If there has been no
bet on the final round then the showdown begins with the player who had the
obligation of first action on the final betting round--the player under the gun
in draw and board games [which includes hold'em] or the player with the highest
board in stud games.

I always comply with this rule. If I'm in worst position and there is no action on the river, I flip over my cards without waiting for anybody else. I expect others to do the same. And if I bet or raise on the last round of betting, when the action is done I flip 'em over, without waiting to see if maybe I can get away without showing. Them's the rules. Not too complicated, really. It's incredibly irritating to have the situation where everybody stalls, nobody turns, and the dealer is left to beg and plead for somebody to please show. Cut it out, people. The rules prescribe a simple and straightforward manner of proceding. Just follow it.

And dealers, if one general request, such as "Show me the winner" doesn't get results, don't futz around--turn to the player whose obligation it is (whether by position or by dint of having put in the last bet or raise), and tell him, "You have to either show first or muck your hand." Way too much time gets wasted because both players and dealers either don't know or won't follow the rules on this matter.

As a side note, there is also a point of courtesy and etiquette that goes beyond the rules: anybody who has a likely winner should expose his cards immediately, without waiting. As Roy Cooke states it (p. 72 again):

In the interests of efficiency and speeding up the game, a player who is
reasonably certain he has the winning hand should turn over his hand
immediately, regardess of the order of showdown. If a player does so, then other
players at the showdown who can beat that hand should also turn their hands over
immediately.

There are occasionally valid strategic reasons for going by the rules rather than by this nicety, but they really should be the exception.

So, c'mon, folks--just show your hand already.




*Q-10 offsuit is a hand I would ordinarily either toss or try to play very cheaply, with a high willingness to throw it away unless I get a lot of help from the community cards, or a good bluffing situation arises. And against a loose-aggressive player, my usual reaction has been to re-tighten my already fairly tight game. Recently, however, I've read two things that are making me re-think that strategy. I include them here for the possible benefit of readers, though I didn't want to interrupt the story above.

First, I finished Barry Greenstein's superb book, "Ace on the River." On p. 204, he has a table of "opponent's tactics," the "typical incorrect adjustment" that we mediocre players make, and the "Better adjustment" that he recommends. The first entry in the table is "Extremely loose play." The incorrect adjustment is listed as "Wait for a good hand." The better reaction is given as "Loosen your standards and reraise frequently." Seems like cogent advice, though it takes more nerve than I've usually been willing to bring to bear. I'm trying to change that, a little at a time.

Second, just a few days after reading that, I read a column in Card Player magazine by Matt Lessinger, who I think is one of their best writers. He wrote,

Overaggressive Ozzie sits down in the same game, and in six of his first 10
hands, he raises to $20 preflop. Five times, he wins the blinds uncontested. One
time, someone calls him and the hand goes to the river, at which point Ozzie
produces Q-8 and wins with a pair of eights. I don't have to be Phil Ivey to put
two and two together, and conclude that he probably did not have premium hands
when he made his other raises. Therefore, I'm going to wait for something good
and try to pick him off.

But am I going to wait for pocket aces or kings? I could, but why would I
want to play so timidly? In a cash game, I want to take advantage of all
favorable opportunities that come along. Here, I have an opponent who is making
oversized preflop raises with substandard values. If I pick up a hand such as
9-9, or even A-J, and think I can get heads up with Ozzie, I'm probably going to
play it, because it figures to be the best hand against his typical raising
values. And I'm certainly not going to be deterred by the fact that he is
raising to $20 rather than a more normal raise to $6 or $8.

http://www.cardplayer.com/magazine/article/15718