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Two Sundays ago I played the evening HORSE tournament at the Orleans. Fairly deep into it, this woman got moved to my table, on my immediate left.

She fell asleep. All. The. Time.

If she wasn't in a hand, she'd fall asleep. If she was in a hand, she'd fall asleep while waiting for her turn.

I've seen people fall asleep at poker tables before, but never as many times as this woman did. And she had two additional characteristics that set her apart from other sleepers I've encountered in the past.

First, as soon as she woke up, she was able to perceive exactly what was going on. She didn't have to ask what game we were playing or how much the bet was. It's like this information sank into her consciousness by osmosis while she snoozed.

Second, she was winning nearly every pot she contested. She was one of the most astoundingly lucky card racks I've ever seen. She just could not lose. And since she fell asleep as soon as the dealer had pushed her a pot, she never had time to stack her chips, so they just kept accumulating in a ever-growing, ever-messier pile.

As far as I could tell, she was not drunk and she was not faking, though both possibilities seemed sufficiently plausible to me that I watched her carefully to see if I could detect signs of either one. I could not.

The dealers were annoyed with her, because--surprise--they don't consider it part of their job description to wake players up from naps. The floor guy did nothing more than occasionally ask her if she was OK, to which she would give an energetic "Yes, I'm fine." And then drop off again.

She eventually knocked me out, first one to bust at the final table, about three spots short of the money. In keeping with the rabbit's foot she must have had surgically implanted, we were playing stud, all in on 6th street, me ahead with a bigger two pair than hers, and she caught her four-outer to make a full house on 7th street.

This bizarre approach to the game worked so well for her that I'm tempted to take an Ambien right before my next tournament.

Old dog learns new trick

I was playing at the Orleans recently when a woman joined the table in the seat next to me. First thing she did when her chips came was jam one under the rail and hook the strap of her purse around it.

I've seen devices made for this same purpose--you anchor it under the rail and attach your purse to its hook--but I've never seen a poker chip put to use this way.

I tweeted this photo when it happened, and one follower suggested that this is actually fairly common, but I don't think I've ever seen it before.

By the skin of my teeth

After my success in Friday's HORSE tournament at Orleans, I decided to take a crack at their $100 Sunday night version. I have tried this one twice before, with nothing to show for it. But since then I've had the extra experience of three of the tough MGM Grand Tuesday night HORSE tournaments, plus the two Friday ones at Orleans, which I thought gave me enough additional practice at identifying live opponents' playing styles in the non-hold'em games that I might be due for a little success.

Things started off just the opposite of Friday. I sank like a stone. I was playing the same tight-aggressive style, but I had a never-ending string of missed draws and strong but second-best hands. We started at 7:00 with 10,000 chips, and by the first break I was down to 590o. At 8:50--4100. 9:00--2500. 9:10--2000. 9:30--1600. I think that was less than three big bets for that stage of the game.

But time after time when I found a spot to get all the chips in, my hand held up. By 10:00 I was up to 5000. 10:35: 6900. 10:40: 15,100, and above my starting stack for the first time all day.

By that point, the original 41 players had been whittled down to just 18, so I was still well below the average stack size of about 28K, but things were moving in the right direction.

Then at 11:00 I hit a monster, an ace-high crub flush in stud against two opponents, and zoomed up to 47,700 with 13 left, my first time above the tournament average.

At 11:40 I badly misplayed one stud hand, spewing half my chips on a draw that I should never have been chasing, but at 12:05 I got them all back when another club flush gave me the nuts in Omaha--back to 63,000, when the average stack, with seven people left in, was about 58,500. Next hand I hit something else that I didn't jot down, and was up to 87,000.

I stayed at about that stack while two more players were eliminated, and the final five of us were in the money.

The best player at the table was not me, but the guy on my right, who had an overwhelming chip lead. He was being smartly aggressive. Everybody was letting him run over them, because the other four of us had pretty much equal stacks and I assume we all wanted to climb up the pay ladder. He was appropriately taking advantage of our excessive caution.

I decided to play back at him, and doing so pushed me up to my peak of 116,000 at 12:50.

At that point, I should have backed off, changed gears back to tight, and let Mr. Big Stack knock out one or two of the shorties. But I didn't. I kept pressing it too long and too far, and paid the price. In quick succession I played two big hands where I was basically just playing on my table image, but--oops--was up against real hands (one against the guy on my left, and the coup de grace delivered by the big stack), and I was out.

So I'm unhappy with my end game, but very pleased that I exercised appropriate patience and spot selection when I was down so short. Fifth place brought me the minimum cash of $295, which is basically tripling my buy-in, and works out to about $32/hour for the six hours it took. It's far from life-changing money, but given how dismal things looked for me for so long, I deem the outcome an absolute success--nearly a miracle. Of course there is the question of what might have been, had I not overdone the aggression on those last two hands. But that's a lesson I can tuck away and remember for next time, without letting it defeat my pleasure at having snatch at least a partial victory from the jaws of defeat.

That was a close one

Today I played the weekly Friday noon tournament at Orleans, which is a $75 equestrian event--i.e., HORSE. I tried this for the first time last week, and though I went out mid-pack, I got the clear impression that this should be a hugely +EV event for me. With a handful of exceptions, the players are easily lumped into two categories: The uber-nits who fold everything except premium hands, and the passive, loose calling stations who play nearly everything they're dealt, and keep calling when there is any hope of improving. That makes playing against both types incredibly straightforward. Against the former, you stay out of their way when they proclaim themselves to have a real hand. Against the latter--who outnumber the nits something like 5:1, you play a significantly tighter starting range than they do, and value-bet the hell out of your hand as long as it appears you're good. Easy peasy.*

Note how different this is from the Tuesday night HORSE tournament at the MGM Grand. I've done that one three times, and you're lucky if you get one player per table who is so easily pigeonholed and conquered. That thing is mostly populated with the city's best lower-stakes mixed-game connoisseurs. I am not alone in this assessment. My friend Brad Willis, a.k.a. _Otis_, played it a few weeks ago. After a short time in the game, he tweeted, "It appears I grossly underestimated the quality of a $120 weekly HORSE tournament." A little while later, he added, "And I mean GROSSLY underestimated." As Bill Clinton might say, I feel his pain. I have never felt that I have any edge at all in that event.

The Orleans Friday noon, though--well, let's just say that it's a HORSE of a different color.

I started off like gangbusters today. I had a tricky tactical situation, with three of the passive calling stations on my right, but one of the rare ultra-aggro young guns on my immediate left. They called for completely different approaches, and when both were in the hand, it became challenging. But Mr. Aggro went away fairly early, after I got most of his chips in a razz hand in which I made a wheel while he had a 7-perfect. (His style was terribly ill-suited for the opponents he was up against. Trying to bully calling stations into folds is to commit tournament suicide.)

I was also getting clobbered by the deck: quads, flushes, wheels, etc. So 45 minutes in, I had doubled my starting stack, and I had nearly tripled it by the first break. That isn't terribly uncommon in big-bet games (no-limit and pot-limit), but in limit? Unheard of. This was the proverbial running like God.

But all good things must come to an end, and that 3x-stack benchmark seemed to be my upper limit. I couldn't exceed it for another two and a half hours. (When playing a tournament, I amuse myself by jotting down my chip count every ten minutes or so. It makes an interesting record of the ebbs and flows.) By then, I had long since stopped being chip leader, and was just a little above average with ten players left out of the original 25. That dropped to a little below average with eight left.

Then with just five left, disaster hit. I made a straight in stud and raised a guy who had been getting out of line more than his demographics would suggest likely. But he reraised me with a pair showing on 6th street. He could see my 6-7-8-9 plain as day, and it did not faze him in the least. I reluctantly concluded that he would only do this with a full house, and that I was therefore drawing dead. It hurt like hell to do so, but I folded, after having invested two-thirds of my stack. He gave me the courtesy show that I had been correct.

That made me the shortest stack with just five players remaining, and only three spots were to be paid today. It looked gloomy for me. I had that awful feeling of foreboding that I was going to be either bubble boy or bubble to the bubble.

I clamped down tight on starting hand requirements. With the blinds becoming huge relative to everybody's stacks, the chip lead was bouncing around the table, except for me. Finally, two huge hands collided, and one big stack knocked out another, putting us on the bubble.

At that point, somebody proposed a $75 save for the bubble boy; i.e., whoever went out next would get his entry fee taken out of the prize pool and returned to him. My stack was much, much shorter than the other three at this point, so I readily agreed to it. I would not ordinarily do so if I had a dominant or even reasonably competitive position, with somebody else's stack as crippled as mine was. Poker is not a game in which showing mercy is rewarded.

But I was not the one to take advantage of the save. I picked a couple of good spots to get the chips in and doubled up twice. Then I was the one to bust the bubble boy on my left, and we were in the money.

It was not immediately obvious who was ahead. All three stacks were comparable to a quick visual inspection without an actual count. We could guess that we all had between 60,000 and 70,000, and the limits were now 8,000 and 16,000--meaning that we all had around four big bets remaining. That in turn meant that it was almost purely luck as to who would go out in which position if we kept playing. I might get the $650 for first place, or the $390 for second, or the $260 for third, all with approximately equal likelihood.

With that understanding, we all quickly agreed to an even chop of the prize money. We decided that whoever had the biggest stack by actual count would get the odd extra dollar. That turned out to be me. I had 68,500 and both of the others were in the low 60s. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say that I won the tournament. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I got $434, the other two $433 each. We each put $20 into the dealer tip pool.

It was quite a ride, going from hitting everything early, to stagnant for a few hours, to critically short, to a miraculous rebirth just in time for the payout. It was kind of like, oh, I dunno, riding a bucking bronco?

I'm not about to commit to making this a weekly affair. But I'm pretty well convinced that there is a lot of value to be mined, if one can tolerate the large variance due to the luck factor, and I think I will keep it in mind for semi-regular sampling.

*Given the venue, the type of game, and that description of the most common players, you might form a general impression of the typical player demographic. You would be correct. At age 51, I was easily the youngest among the final five left in the tournament, and there were no women among the final ten or so. This is a geezer game.

Stud rule

Yesterday I played the weekly Friday noon HORSE tournament at the Orleans. Went out mid-pack, nothing exciting.

During one stud hand, the player to my right turned his up card face down, but then looked like he might be second-guessing himself and wishing he had played it. I ignored this and went on with my action, which was to complete the bring-in bet. The next player's cards were in the muck as soon as my chips were out.

At this point, the dealer held up his hand to stop further action, saying, "The action is still back here," pointing to the player to my right. I thought that was peculiar, but decided to wait until the hand was over to inquire about it. Player to my right folded, and the hand played out.

When it was over with, I asked the dealer, "Wasn't his hand dead as soon as he turned his up card face down?" The dealer said, "No, I don't think so. But I'll ask." He called the floor over, though appropriately continued dealing the next hand so as not to make everyone wait.

He was surprised that the floor confirmed my impression, and apologized for having been wrong.

So today I'm looking in my rule books to be sure that my memory on this point was indeed the standard rule. It is.

Krieger and Bykofsky, Rules of Poker, page 178:

7.3.10 MIXING OPEN AND CLOSED CARDS

Turning an open card or cards face down, or commingling open and closed cards together is tantamount to holding. The hand is dead.

Cooke and Bond, Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, page 25:

5.17. SEVEN-CARD STUD: TURNING UPCARDS DOWN; MIXING UPCARDS AND DOWNCARDS

A player who turns upcards facedown or mixes upcards and holecards together when facing a bet is deemed to have folded and his hand shall be declared dead.

So if you're ever playing seven-card stud (or razz, or stud-8) and are faced with the same kind of situation I was--the player on your right has turned his up card face down but has not yet returned his cards to the dealer for some reason--you can safely proceed as if it is your turn, because it is. His hand is as dead as if his cards were already in the muck.

Busybody

I have one more story from last night's post-tournament cash session at the Orleans.

I had been playing for an hour or so, and was down somewhat, due to a three-barrel bluff gone wrong. I was in Seat 7. Seat 6 was occupied by a young man obviously new to casino poker. The details of the hand don't matter; suffice it to say that on the turn I had top pair (king) with a queen kicker, plus a flush draw, and liked my situation very much. I was about 80% confident that I was already ahead, and I had the draw as backup in case I was wrong. Before my opponent acted, I had already decided to raise him all-in (about $110) if he bet, or bet about half of my stack if he checked.

He cut out some chips--$40 worth, in two stacks of four red chips. But he pushed them forward with two movements in rapid succession, a classic string bet. The dealer picked up one of the stacks, seemed to hesitate, not sure what to do, then put it back down and decided to say nothing. I don't know why. She clearly was a rather timid personality. But maybe she had looked away at the crucial moment and wasn't sure of what she had seen. Or maybe she had heard something before the young man's bet that made her think that perhaps he had announced an amount, though, in fact, he hadn't. (The latter is actually my best guess. The room was noisy, and her English was kind of shaky, so I imagine it's easy for her to be unsure of what she is or is not hearing.)

Of course, I was happy to have him bet $40 instead of $20, since I was hoping for a double-up. (He had me covered.) I did not protest the string bet and was glad that the dealer wasn't going to call it back.

But just as I started reaching for my chips, the guy in Seat 9 spoke up in protest. "He didn't announce an amount. That's a string bet." I said to the dealer, "It's OK, we can let it go." but Seat 9 would have none of that. "No! He can't do that! He has to take it back."

The dealer capitulated and reduced the bet to $20. I thought about reducing my raise to $50 or $60, but I thought that since he was obviously wiling to bet $40, there was a good chance he would call the all-in, so I continued with the original plan. But after my opponent thought it over for a minute, he folded.

Of course, maybe I was really behind (though that seems unlikely), or maybe if he had called he would have drawn out on me in some gross way. But the most likely thing is that the intervention of Seat 9 cost me at least $20, and may have cost me about $90 (the difference between the amount that I actually won and the amount that I probably would have won if Seat 6 had felt pot-committed with a $40 bet and therefore had called and lost).

I was understandably annoyed at him for sticking his nose in where it didn't belong and was neither needed nor welcome. Still, I wasn't going to say anything to him about it. But then he opened the subject: "Sorry if I cost you $20 there." This was not said in an apologetic manner at all. The clear sense I got from it was, "Tough luck for you, but I did what had to be done."

So I responded: "You know, between the dealer and the players who are actually in the hand, we can figure it out without you butting in." He said, "No, obviously you couldn't. The rule is clear, and his bet had to go back, and the dealer wasn't doing her job." I said, "How about this: You call the string bets on the hands that you're involved with, and I'll take care of the ones that I'm involved with."

The exchange concluded with him saying, "You can be mad at me if you want to, but if you had won that extra $20, it would have been by cheating. Just think about that."

There was no chance that I was going to change his mind, or he mine, so I dropped it and the game went on.


This incident raises some interesting questions, I think. The first is when and to what extent does one step into a problem in a hand that one is not involved in? This is a dilemma I've wrestled with many times. Just a couple of months ago I prevented a very large pot from being pushed to the wrong player when not a single other person at the table--player or dealer--noticed that there was a straight on the board and the pot should be chopped. I have no doubt that that was the right thing to do.

But other times I'm still not sure whether speaking up was (or would have been) correct, even after reflecting on it for a while later. I think the first time I wrote about this phenomenon was in a blog post in November, 2007, here. Most of that post was later incorporated into a piece in Card Player magazine by their former columnist Mike O'Malley, available here. In 2009 I wrote about an incident at the Venetian in which I intervened in order to clarify how much money a guy was playing, and essentially everybody who submitted a comment on that post thought that I should have kept out of it.

With that history, I'm not immune to a charge of hypocrisy in complaining about the busybody at the Orleans. Nevertheless, there are a couple of guidelines that I think should illuminate when to jump into the fray uninvited, which he was not following.

First, I see the main reason for speaking up to be to help protect the general integrity of the game and, more specifically, to help protect less-experienced players who may not know all the intricacies of the rules. In this case, Seat 9 was unquestionably a very experienced player who, after an hour of watching me, had to recognize that I was not a naif in need of sheltering. Just as obviously, Seat 6 was not an angle-shooter trying to take advantage of me.

Second, if it were to happen that after I pointed out what I perceived as a problem, those involved in the hand were all OK with the situation as it was, I think that I would back off and let them be. Here, Seat 6 wanted to bet $40, the dealer had, for whatever reason, decided to let him, and I expressed my assent to the small irregularity. Even if the interloper had justification to speak up initially, once those directly affected by the situation have all agreed to let it be, I think he should back off. As a similar example, a couple of years ago I wrote about a situation at Caesars Palace in which there was a question of whether one guy's cards had been mucked. The dealer thought the hand should still be live, as did both players involved. But an annoying guy at the table just wouldn't drop it, insisting that the hand be declared dead, even though he had no stake in the outcome.

The second point of possible interest is Seat 9's contention that if the bet had been allowed to stand, I would have been profiting from "cheating." I reject this out of hand, frankly. To include this requires a very different conception of what constitutes "cheating" from what the word means to me. I see it as comparable to a football team declining to enforce a penalty on the opposing team when it is to their advantage to do so. Of course I have the right to force the player to reduce his bet when it was made in a technically illegal fashion, but I don't think there is any grand principle that should require me to do so when I am not disadvantaged by his action. That is particularly true here when the reason for the existence of the rule (to prevent an angle-shooter from watching an opponent's reaction to the bet, then deciding whether to increase the size of the bet based on that reaction) is not even remotely in effect.

Almost four years ago I wrote about the problem of players who do some sort of tapping motion while thinking about a decision, and how hard it can be to tell sometimes if this is just idle, meaningless hand activity or is intended to signal a check. I stand by the conclusion that I had then: If I'm the one being put in an awkward position by the player's ambiguity (because I have to interpret his action and act on it in some way), it is my discretion whether to look the other way and let it go, or have it enforced as a binding action, the way the rules say that I can. I view an opponent's string bet in the same way, if I am on the receiving end of his violation: I can ask that the rule be enforced, or I can waive enforcement. And, of course, I can make that decision based on what is most to my advantage. That doesn't mean that I always will; believe it or not, I'm actually capable of extending grace and forbearance. But I submit that it is not cheating, not angle-shooting, not unethical to make the decision either way--to let the errant action stand, or to insist on the player being held to letter of the law--and to make that decision based on what is in my own best interest.

(Of course, most often the dealer takes the initiative and I don't have a choice to make, but I'm discounting those situations here. Had this dealer initially disallowed the second part of the bet, I probably would have said something like I did, and then if she had continued to insist on the reduced bet size, I would not have pushed the point further.)

Questions for readers to comment on: (1) Was the guy wrong to involve himself in the first place? (2) Was he wrong to continue to press the point after I had indicated that it was OK with me to let the string bet stand? (3) Was I being unethical/dishonest/cheating/angle-shooting to say that I was OK with overlooking the technical violation and attempt to let the bet stand?

Take all of it

After bombing out of the HORSE tournament at Orleans last night, I played in a cash game long enough to win back my tournament entry fee. I realize that it's completely irrational to look at poker results that way, but I ended up a net 30 bucks on the day, which made me feel a little better about not playing particularly well in the tournament.

During one hand that I watched, the table rock had flopped a set. He bet it and got called by a headphones-wearing kid. He bet the turn, and the kid min-raised him. Rock pushed out a stack that he must have thought was enough that a call would have the kid all in. But he had slightly misjudged the kid's stack, and when the kid called he still had three white chips ($3) behind.

To my surprise, the river went check-check. Rock won. Kid rebought.

I couldn't figure out why the kid wouldn't put in his last $3 when the action was on him, nor why the rock didn't bet $3 on the river. There's no question that he knew there was still money left behind; the dealer anticipated the situation and clearly announced that the kid wasn't all-in after the action on the turn.

A guy sitting next to the rock said to him, "It says a lot about a guy's character that he has a monster hand and won't take his opponent's last three bucks." The rock replied with something like, "I don't like it when you see somebody figure out how much a guy has left and bet exactly that much in order to get every last dollar."

I do not understand this mindset. I cannot imagine how it is somehow noble to win $200 from somebody, but immoral or a sign of some sort of character flaw to win his last $3. If I am sufficiently confident that I have the best hand and that my opponent will put all of his chips in, hell yeah I'll take them all. That is why I'm sitting at the table. It is the only reason I'm there. $3 isn't going to change my life, but it's not going to change his to lose it, either. The question comes down to whether those three white chips will stay in his stack or come to sit in mine, and I see no reason not to prefer them being in front of me.

My guess is that the rock on some level feels guilty about the win, and the tiny act of mercy helps him alleviate that feeling. But this is just flat-out denial about the cutthroat, selfish, dog-eat-dog nature of the game.

In the latest issue of Card Player magazine, Alan Schoonmaker covers this exact topic--how feeling guilty about the predatory nature of poker interferes with maximizing wins. It isn't available on the magazine's web site yet, but it's well worth reading if you are plagued with a sense of guilt about taking other people's money by winning at poker.

(Incidentally, it appears that Card Player has revamped their web site recently and in the process made it much less accessible and useful. I tend to remember points made in columns by who wrote them. I've always previously been able to search the site by author, but no longer (unless I'm missing something). Now the contents are organized only by issue, and those are viewable only via a Flash player. Way to go, Card Player--make your archives unsearchable by any efficient means. Brilliant!)

I realize that some people play poker primarily for the fun of the game and/or the social interactions, and genuinely don't care about how the win/loss accounting goes. That's fine. These remarks do not pertain to them. But last night's rock can't be among those. I've played with him several times before, and he's always nearly silent, not gregarious and interactive. He doesn't appear to be having fun. (However, I realize that people think the same of me even when it's not true, so I'll take my own assessment there with a grain of salt.) His style is to lay in wait with a big hand and trap an unwary opponent. By every appearance, he is there only in order to leave with more money than he came in with. Given that, I find it incongruous that he doesn't try to squeeze every chip out of the game that he can.

Got guilt?

Dumb rule at Orleans

For a few days now I have had a hankering for a live HORSE tournament. The Orleans has one every Sunday night that is reasonably priced ($75), so I decided to give it a go. I finished mid-field after playing not my best. But along the way I learned that the Orleans poker room has a very peculiar rule.

In the first orbit we had two dead stacks reserved for late entries. Blinds and antes were taken from them as needed. I had one of them on my left. The first time it was my small blind (and hence big blind from the dead stack), everybody folded to me. When the button folded, I assumed that that was the end of the matter and I would collect the big blind. But the dealer looked at me expectantly, clearly waiting for me to act. I said, "The hand's over." He replied, "No, you still have to act."

I thought it was stupid, but for the formality of it I added enough to call the amount of the big blind. Then and only then did the dealer push me the pot and collect my cards.

As the next hand was underway, I asked him about this. He was absolutely clear that this was the house rule and they always did it that way. He specifically said that if I had folded, he would have awarded the pot to the dead stack/big blind.

This makes no sense whatsoever. The absent player's hand is killed as soon as the last card is dealt and the seat is unoccupied. If there is any definition of a dead hand, it is one that cannot win the pot under any circumstances. As soon as the button folds, there is only one live hand left on the table--that of the small blind--and the small blind is therefore only player to whom the pot can possibly be awarded.

The dealer clarified that if I had actually folded, he would have called the floor to ask what to do, but he also said that every previous time it has come up, the dead stack gets the pot.

As partial explanation, he pointed out that when playing online tournaments, even if the big blind is sitting out, the small blind has to call in order to win the pot. This is a flawed analogy. First, I'm not completely sure that's true everywhere; I just haven't paid enough attention to the situation to know. But more importantly, during an online tournament there is no "butt in the seat" rule in play. If you have been sitting out, you still get dealt a hand, and you can click the "I'm back" button anytime before it's your turn to act. In other words, your hand is not dead before the other players are taking their turns. But under standard live tournament rules, your hand is declared dead and pulled into the muck by the dealer before the first player acts. That makes all the difference in the world. Even if an online player in the big blind is sitting out, his hand is live until/unless he fails to act on it when required, so if everybody folds to him, he can legitimately win the pot. The site is not awarding the pot to a dead hand, as the Orleans rule apparently says that they will do. Online tournaments do not use dead stacks to hold open places that might later be filled by late arrivals; they create stacks as needed when new players register.

The rule is also stupid because it benefits nobody. All it does is act as a trap for the unwary. The penalty for not knowing that this quirky rule exists is that you lose a pot if you perform the rather natural act of returning your cards to the dealer after everybody else has folded. There's nobody left to play with/against, so why wouldn't you? Worse, the pot is given to a phantom player who did nothing to earn it, didn't even have any cards when the last player mucked, and most likely won't ever collect it, as the stack is taken out of play whenever the entry deadline passes.

I'd like to speak to the poker room manager and ask him or her about this hypothetical situation: "Suppose that the big blind doesn't notice that he's the big blind and mucks his cards, quickly followed by the under-the-gun player doing the same. The discards get intermingled and are therefore irretrievable. Of course the errant player is still required to post the big blind. (Never mind that the dealer should have seen to that before pitching the cards.) Now everybody at the table folds around to the small blind, who has the last live hand. The small blind assumes that the hand is over and returns his cards to the dealer, expecting to be awarded both blinds. What is your house rule and/or floor decision about who gets this pot?" Following the logic of their rule about dead stacks, I think they would have to give the pot to the big blind, even though he mucked his cards before everybody else did.

The two situations are functionally identical, as far as I can discern. But surely everybody can see that it would be insane to give this hypothetical pot to the big blind. My point, in this imaginary conversation with the poker room manager, would be that it is equally insane to award the pot to a dead stack with a dead hand.

Frankly, I can't think of a single good argument for having such a rule in place. It's extremely minor in the big scope of things, but it's among the most ridiculous house rules I've ever encountered.

Anyone have a fork handy?

Last night at the Orleans I had a suited 7-8. Flop 8-8-J. I get it all in against a stupid woman (I don't say that lightly; she's a local that I have played with a few times before, and she's a terrible player) who has A-J. Turn: J.

Today I went to Mandalay Bay after failing to get a balloon ride across the street at Cloud Nine. (See below.) Early on, I pick up one of the statistically best ace-cracker hands, suited 7-8. I get it all in against, yes, A-A, on a flop of 10-7-8. Turn: 10, giving him a better two pair.

Rebuy. Play very patiently on a table with two certifiable maniacs and two semi-maniacs (i.e., they don't play every hand like the maniacs, but they grossly overbet everything when they do play). Maniac #1 open-raises from under the gun to $25. This means nothing; he does it for close to 50% of his starting hands, regardless of position. Maniac #2 raises to $75. This means he has some sort of hand, but by no means necessarily a premium. I have $206. I put it all in with my K-K, confident I'll get at least one call, because Maniac #2 has only about $65 more behind. I do. He has 6-6. I even have his suits covered. The board runs out A-4-5-7-8, giving him a straight.

A few hands later I have suited Q-10 in a seven-way limped pot (a rarity at this table). Flop is Q-8-4 rainbow. Maniac #2 bets $25, meaning he has something, but not necessarily much. I put in my remaining $60. He reluctantly calls, while saying that he knows he's beat. He has just a 4, no draw. Turn: 4. River: 4. Quads for him.

That's it. I have once again reached the limit of my tolerance for such things. I'm out $800 in the first four days of the month, and feel no interest in playing again anytime soon. It's time for another break of currently undetermined duration from the game.

An unusual day

Yesterday was a pretty strange day, full of one-of-a-kind experiences.

Car trouble

It started by dropping off my car for some repair work. I had grown suspicious of the shop I have usually used; it's under new management lately, and I think they are now both less competent and more prone to selling services I don't actually need. So I've been exploring other options. The one I tried yesterday is called Hondatronics. As the name implies, they deal almost exclusively in working on Hondas and Acuras.

Everybody I had consulted had agreed that the scary squeal emerging from under the hood was a failing power steering pump. Well, I'll spare you the details, but the Hondatronics guys did an impressive diagnostic job, eventually discovering that the trouble was, in fact, in the pulley that turns the belt that run the power steering pump, though that was not at all obvious. In fact, when it was all said and done and the mechanic showed me (with great enthusiasm, like a first-grader excitedly telling his mother about the first day of school) the parts he had replaced and how it all worked and fit together, I was mightily impressed with the acumen it took to figure this out. I thought about writing it all out here, but it would take too long and probably not interest anybody. But take my word for it--it was a serious piece of automotive detection to find out what the trouble really was. It took them 6 1/2 hours instead of the 2 that had been estimated for the pump repair, but it was perfectly understandable, under the circumstances. This place has quickly won my confidence in their skill and honesty, and will be the first place I turn for car work from now on.

Jackpot!

One of the other lovely coincidences of Hondatronics is that it's a five-minute walk from the Orleans. Now, the Orleans is not on my top ten or even top twenty favorite places to play. But it's pretty consistently profitable, so if I can spend the car-repair time making money playing poker instead of reading books and magazines, it's a bonus. (And with a car that's nearly 18 years old and has 170,000 miles on the ticker, time in the shop is just a given.)

So off to the Orleans I went. I got my name on the list and sat down. Within a minute or two I heard one of the dealers yell out, "Jackpot!" and pandemonium broke loose. The Orleans is one of the few places in town with a bad-beat jackpot. Lose with quads or better and you, the winner of the hand, and everybody else in the room playing the same game will share a jackpot that is kept at a minimum of $50,000. Yesterday it was at $58,650. Given that this was morning and there were only four tables running, the "room share" worked out to $1173 apiece. Not a bad bonus for just sitting in a game when the thing hit.

I snapped a photo of the jackpot hand, quad aces beating quad nines:





What I had not anticipated was how this event would bring the room to a complete standstill, as far as me getting into a game was concerned. I waited an hour and 45 minutes, almost all of which was because everything stopped while they worked out the horrendously complicated paperwork involved in that sum of money being shared by that many players. The room staff didn't even try to get anything else going in the meantime. At one point I counted 55 names on the lists waiting for games, but nothing was happening. It was about an hour before play resumed on any of the tables. During that time, all the players were just sitting around doing nothing, though they didn't seem as irritated as the people waiting to play. After all, they each had nearly $1200 free money coming, and we didn't.

If I had had any idea how long my car was going to take and how long this jackpot mess was going to take, I would have caught a shuttle bus to the Strip and played somewhere else. The delay was seriously aggravating. I attribute it to incompetent room management, that they were unwilling or unable to accommodate literally dozens of people wanting to play for an hour and a half.

This was the first time I've ever been in a poker room when a bad-beat jackpot hit. I'm not looking forward to it happening again, unless I'm going to be one of the ones to profit from it.

Tell me how to beat you

I did eventually get a seat and played for about five hours, making a little over $200. Not stellar, but certainly more profitable than anything else I could have been doing with the down time.

There was only one hand worth telling about. The donator at the table was a drunk guy who fancied himself an expert player, but was really not very good at all. He was highly unpredictable, however. As happens so often, he had been on a sick run of good luck before I got to the table and for the first hour or two thereafter (amassing so many chips that he stopped bothering to stack them, and just kept them in a big messy pile in front of him), but then had both luck and his own fatigue and overconfidence push his fortunes the other way, and he started to give them all back.

At one point I found the diamond A-K in second position, and raised to $8. Drunk guy was on the button and reraised to $23. This was the first 3-bet I had seen him make, so it gave me pause. On the other hand, he had sometimes raised with things like 9-3 offsuit, and he was overly fond of bluffing (I had snapped him off a couple of times myself), so I wasn't ready to credit him with just A-A/K-K, as I might with a local rock in the same situation. I called.

The flop was J-10-x. While I was deciding what to do, drunk guy bet $20 out of turn. (He did this a lot. He just wasn't paying attention, and was always overly eager for it to be his turn, as if he had ADD or something.) The dealer had him take it back. I checked. He put out $25. The dealer made him reduce it back to the $20 he had bet out of turn. I called, partly hoping to hit the nuts if a queen came, partly because he was most often just a one-barreller if he missed the flop and was up against somebody whose play he respected.

Turn was another jack. Once again while I was pondering my options, he bet out of turn: $50. The dealer made him take it back. I thought for a while about what to do, finally settling on a check. Strangely, he checked behind. The dealer pointed out that he had already committed himself to the out-of-turn bet. He protested, "I changed my mind. I don't want to bet now." This was an interesting development. I really would have been happy to take a free card with him, but I thought it was best to continue my usual policy of not talking during a hand and let the dealer sort it out. She called the floor. While we were waiting for the floor guy to come over, drunk guy started talking, and that proved to be his downfall.

Apparently my pause before checking had put a notion in his head that he couldn't shake. He said, "Come on, let's just check it down. I know you have a jack, and you checked to trap me. You want them to make me put that money in so you can raise." (I hadn't said anything along those lines, but that's apparently how he interpreted the situation.)

Now, some players are skillful enough in deception to make a speech like this when holding the stone-cold nuts in an effort to induce a bluff. But he was, frankly, too dumb and too drunk to pull that off. His mini-tirade continued for 30 seconds or so while we were waiting for a floor decision, and the longer it went, the more certain I was that he was calling it exactly as he saw it.

So, when the floor made the only possible decision--that his $50 bet had to stand--and drunk guy shook his head in disgust as he reluctantly put the chips back in, I did what he told me to do: I check-raised to $150! He immediately said that he couldn't call. He hemmed and hawed, but finally did as he said he would have to do, and folded. Then, as a last touch, he said, "Out of respect, I'm going to show you what I'm folding." He had A-K in hearts.

I sensed that he was hovering on the edge of some serious tilt and could be toppled right into the abyss with the smallest push, so as I was raking in the chips, I flipped up my cards and told him, "You had an excellent hand, sir."

I was right. That pushed every button he had. Among other things, he said, "I was just about to leave, but now I'm going to stay just so I can play against you again!"

Bring it on, dude! I love it when people target me for vengeance. They will nearly always try to force the issue with a lesser hand than they would usually bring to battle, because if you're zeroing in one just one opponent, it effectively means that you can't wait for your premium hands, or your target won't be there. You have to go with what you have when your target is playing. That automatically gives your target the huge advantage of choosing when to play for big pots. (For a story of a time another guy got mad at me and kept me in his sights for the rest of the session, see here. For another story of how a drunk opponent told me exactly how to beat him, see here.)

Sadly, he didn't follow through on his threat and I didn't get to tangle with him for a big pot again.

Social evening

They finished with my car just barely in time for me to make the dinner date I had previously set up with Jennifer, one of my playing partners from the blogger tournament in December. She was in town to work for the PokerStars blog on the big NAPT tournament at the Venetian. We were joined by C.K. for dinner at the Grand Lux at the V. (I see that Jen has already beaten me to writing about her evening, here.) They had to take off right after dinner to get ready for a big Stars party.

I played in the V poker room for about an hour, then headed off to the airport. Shamus was coming to town to work the same gig as Jen, and I had offered to pick him up at the airport. He unknowingly walked past me at the airport (I had my nose buried in a crossword puzzle to pass the time), and as we were talking on our cell phones, trying to determine our respective geographical positions, I had one of those weird moments when I realized I was hearing his voice through the phone and through the air simultaneously, and looked up to see him standing about six feet in front of me.

I waited while he got checked into his room at the Venetian. While doing so, I spotted an opportunity to catch a picture of him while still preserving his super-secret identity, which only, like, 7000 people know:





We then headed back downstairs to the Grand Lux (it's very strange to enter the same restaurant twice in one evening). He had dinner while I chowed down on the dessert I had skipped earlier. It was an item I haven't seen on the menu there before: "Cupcake Collision." It's three chocolate cupcakes with a bunch of vanilla ice cream and whipped cream:



Sorry for the bad picture--low light of a restaurant is to blame (and lack of flash on phone camera). Good stuff, keeping me fattened up for the slaughter.

It looks like Shamus, too, is ahead of me in posting about his arrival. See here.

Anyway, I had a lovely evening with three friends and finally headed home after what turned out to be a highly unusual but pleasant and interesting day in Las Vegas.

Odd card protector, with an odd story

I'm always curious about the objects people use as card protectors. Today at the Orleans I was sitting next to a older gentleman who had a doozy.

It caught my eye first because it was so big. You can't tell scale here (I should have included a poker chip for reference), but it's about three inches across and an inch thick. It's a gold-colored medal in Lucite. Yeah, I know--the gold color doesn't show up, either. Crummy camera in the hands of a crummy photographer.

The writing around the edge was quite difficult to read. It took me a while to put it together. The medal commemorates the 1967 capture of East Jerusalem (and subsequent reunification of the city). That's Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe Dayan in profile.

Without too much difficulty, I found a small (23 mm) gold medal of the same design online, here. But this one is bigger. There's a bronze version that's 59 mm in diameter (I found one sold recently on eBay here), and it seems likely that's what this is, except that somebody took the added steps of, apparently, electroplating the bronze with gold and embedding it in Lucite.

The oddest thing about this was that the coin's owner had no idea what it was. After I had been looking at it for a minute or two, he asked me if I knew what it was. I told him what I had been able to glean from it. I was embarrassed that I knew very little about that piece of history, and I thought I was going to get a lesson about it, or maybe a lecture about the heroism of the Israeli military forces, or something like that. (I'll admit that I was surprised to see what the subject of the medal was, because unless I'm severely mistaken, this guy was not Jewish.)

Turns out, he had no idea who was portrayed on it. He had noticed that there was some foreign writing, but didn't even know what language it was. (I told him it was Hebrew.) He told me that he had come to Vegas but left his usual card caps at home, so just "picked this one up somewhere." Why this particular thing? Just because it was big and heavy, which is how he likes his card protectors.

I tend to assume that the objects people use for this function are embued with some sort of meaning to them, unless they're clearly whimisical or commercial. There's another assumption shot down. It seems that people can have possessions with no meaning to them, just the way that they can make bets that have no relationship to the size of the pot, the strength of their hand, or anything else that most of us use for making poker decisions. We naturally assume that our fellow players have logical reasons for choosing to do the things that they do, but sometimes there just aren't any, and our efforts to understand them are utterly in vain.

Can we talk about something besides the jackpot?

Saturday I played for quite a while at the Orleans. They have a bad-beat jackpot, and it had climbed over $125,000. Two things happen at that point. First, the threshold hand for winning it drops to its lowest level: aces full of anything beaten by quads or better (both hole cards playing). Second, the room fills to capacity with people trying to get a share of it. Nothing wrong with that--that's presumably why the casino does it, to increase attendance.

I admit that I chose the place to play that day based on the jackpot. I thought it was highly likely to hit sometime over the weekend, with that low threshold and that many people making their hand selection mostly based on the potential for hitting the jackpot. (I was right; it hit some time Sunday morning.) And as long as I can play pretty much anywhere with roughly the same overall +EV, I might as well play when and where I might pick up some extra free money. At the Orleans, everybody playing in the same type of game as the one where the jackpot hits divides 5% of the jackpot. I estimated this at something like $600 each just for being there at the magic moment. Of course, it's quite a bit more likely to hit in a limit game than a no-limit game, but I'm not going to change what I play in an attempt to guess which limit will get it; I just play my regular game the regular way, and if somebody in one of the other $1-2 NLHE games hits it, great, and if not, nothing lost.

Anyway, the room was more jam-packed than I have ever seen it before. There were 23 cash tables in operation when I left, with long waiting lists for all of them. It was a madhouse.

At the table, there was, for all practical purposes, only one topic of conversation: the jackpot. It drove me batty after about ten minutes. People were repeatedly checking what the threshold requirements were. Players worked out elaborate signals and code words and betting patterns that they would use if they had a possible jackpot hand, in order to make sure that the pot size reached the minimum acceptable to qualify. Dealers passed on stories (possibly true, possibly urban legends) about there having been X number of hands that would have qualified, but the pot was just a dollar or two shy of the minimum. Players engaged in all sorts of shenanigans to be sure they were never dealt out, lest the jackpot hit during the two minutes they were in the restroom. When somebody was away from the table, somebody else would usually make a point of noting that he was out, so that if the jackpot hit right then, he wouldn't get a share. Every detail of the qualifying rules was hashed and rehashed and debated. One guy got a table change and told us that it was specifically so that he could be at a table with an autoshuffler, so he could get in more hands per hour and thus maximize his chances of making a jackpot hand. Stories of jackpots of yore were told and retold and retold. Whenever some combination of cards came even vaguely close, somebody would show his hand and say something idiotic like, "If only that had been a jack on the river instead of a six!" And, of course, every time that the board was such that it conceivably could yield the required kind of bad beat if two players held precisely the right hole cards, the chatter would heat up: "Oh, here we go!" "I hope somebody has the aces!" "This could be it!" Etc. Even the damn dealers couldn't keep their damn mouths shut, and would make comments just like the players were doing.

It was utterly maddening. These morons just had nothing else on their mind. I even sent a text message to a friend: "I'm in poker table small-talk hell!"

The most perplexing aspect of it was that all of this talk was doing the one thing that the casino's rules explicitly warn might void the jackpot, even if all other requirements are met! See rule #7 in the photo above. (Every casino that I know of with such a jackpot has a similar prohibition, because they don't want to queer the action and have people play in artificial ways just to try to hit it.) Now, I don't really know how strictly this would be enforced. But for heaven's sake--if you seek out a particular poker room because you want to try to hit the jackpot, and you stay in hands longer than you should (i.e., play in a -EV manner) because you're trying to hit the jackpot, why would you flagrantly engage in the conduct that might void your payment if you do manage to get lucky and hit it? It's just insane!

I was definitely using the non-iPod yesterday, with the volume turned up quite a bit louder than usual. I had to muster up every bit of self-restraint I had in order not to stand up and channel Sister Mary Elephant for them:






Oh, and by the way, the Orleans poker room is WAY too big to still be relying on dealers yelling at the desk person, chip runner, floor person, etc. When the room is busy, it's almost impossible for them to be heard. It's a horribly inefficient and unprofessional way to run things. And for those sitting in the seats next to the dealer, it's deafening to repeatedly be assaulted with "FLOOR on 17!" "PLAYER'S CHECKS ON 17!" "SEAT OPEN ON 17!"

Get with the program, and install a computerized player management system already.

Overheard at the Orleans

Orleans today. Player A has pocket jacks. Flop and turn are four unconnected smaller cards. Player B shoves. Player A tanks for quite a while, finally calls. The turn had made a random two pair for Player B (something like 9s and 6s), and they hold up.

So after the hand is over, A (who is sitting next to me; B is at the far end of the table) wonders out loud whether he should have called the all-in bet. A guy two to my right says of Player B, "He's an Asian guy and he got lucky. That's what Asian guys do--they get lucky. It happens all the time."

He is neither joking nor being ironic. He is dead serious, and more than a little disgusted at the whole lot of them, unless I'm badly mistaken in my read.

I think I will have to simply withhold futher comments, because I can think of nothing that sufficiently skewers the idiocy on display here.

I think he might be a poker player

Spotted in the parking lot near the poker room entrance at Orleans.

Know when to walk away, and know when to run

I started my session at the Orleans tonight at 6:45. On about the fourth hand I had A-J suited in middle position and raised to $13. Had two callers. The flop came jack-high (don't remember the other cards, but nothing scary in terms of straight or flush draws). I bet almost the pot, $35. Player A (who had me covered) called, but looked uncertain about whether she should. Player B was short-stacked, and went all-in for $65. I couldn't reraise there, of course. I called, as did Player A. I had only $25 left behind. So when the turn card was another baby and the fourth suit, I put it all in and got called. River was another blank. I showed my A-J. Both opponents flashed a jack before mucking, but apparently they didn't hit their kickers. So five minutes into my session, I had more than doubled up.

Maybe 15 or 20 minutes later I had lost a little because of raises or calls that had to be aborted. I was sitting on about $230 when I found A-10 offsuit in late position (two off the button, I think). I raised to $13, had three callers. Flop was Kc-5d-Jc. Ick. With that many people in, somebody surely has my ace-high beat and will call if I bet. There's even a significant risk of getting check-raised. So when it's checked to me, I check behind. I'm prepared to abandon ship if I don't get help.

But the dealer, bless her little heart, puts out the Qd, instantly turning my nothing hand into the nuts. The small blind bets $20. Next two players fold. It's to me. I raise to $65. Don't want to scare him off yet, but, conversely, in case he's on a flush draw, I want him to pay too much for it mathematically. He calls. River is the 9h--no flush to worry about, fortunately. Turns out that is the worst possible card that could come for my opponent. He bets $50, and it looks to me like he's very much wanting a call, whereas on the turn he had seemed wary about calling my raise. Something about that river 9 changed his mind about this hand. The obvious conclusion is that he has a 10 and made his straight. I kind of doubt that he matches my A-10, because of his demeanor on the turn and the fact that he didn't shove to my turn reraise. So I think he'll go all the way with this one, and I move all in. Sure enough, he calls almost immediately and turns over his K-10.

Nice hand, sir, but not quite good enough. As Maxwell Smart was fond of saying, "Missed it by THAT much!"

Turns out our stacks were very nearly equal. He had me covered by about $7. He didn't stick around. He just said, "Nice hand," then said, "That's it for me," and took his last few chips and left.

I decided to take the money and run; since my main victim was no longer there, I didn't have an issue of giving him a sporting chance to win his chips back. So I played one more orbit, losing a bit when a couple more hands couldn't connect (including a suited A-K on my last hand). But I left the table at exactly 7:15, 30 minutes after I started, cashing out for $507, a profit of $407, or a win rate of $814/hour. I can live with that!

The beautiful final chapter of the story is this: I needed to talk to somebody at the Orleans poker room while I was there (in fact, that was the reason I chose to go there in the first place). When I was done and finally walking out, a woman who had been sitting two seats to my left stopped me. She told me that the young man who had taken over my seat when I left lost his entire $200 buy-in less than five minutes into his session when he got on the bad end of a set-over-set flop (his queens, somebody else's aces). That would have been me!

In short, I sat down at the perfect time, and stood up at the perfect time. Now if only I could manage that difficult feat every time I played....

A compliment unique to poker

I had an unusual experience last night with my two-fer, playing first at South Point and then at the Orleans: In both places, an opponent that I had spanked made a quite conspicuous move to take a seat to my left.


South Point: An early-position player (the guy on the right in the Esfandiari picture a couple of posts down), whom I had quickly pegged as being the smartest, trickiest opponent I had to deal with at this table, raised. I was on the button with 4-6 offsuit and called, hoping to hit something entirely disguised.

The flop was K-K-4, rainbow. My opponent bet $25. I called. My initial thought was that he probably didn't have a king, and a smooth call here would lead him to think that I did have one and that I was therefore trying to let him bluff again. In games at this level, most players in early position in such a situation will fire once on the flop, but not again on the turn unless they actually have a king. Basically, I was floating him, hoping to take the pot away when he couldn't keep firing at it. However, pairing the 4 did give me some "plan B" alternatives if needed.

The turn was an offsuit 10. My opponent pushed out a stack of $100, which was just enough to put me all in if I called. This was not what I had expected, and it made for a very difficult situation. With one of the more straightforward opponents at the table, I would pretty much have to conclude that he did, in fact, have a king. But this guy was definitely smart enough to get inside my head and, recognizing me as a fellow smart and potentially tricky player, know that I could make that flop call very light with an eye toward stealing on a later street. Therefore, he could simply be countering that move, even though he missed the flop.

Look at it from his point of view. He could expect me to have one of the following:

1) A true monster, like K-K or 4-4.

2) A nearly certain winner, especially A-K, with which I'm hoping he'll put in more money.

3) A king with a weaker kicker (K-Q, K-J, K-10), in which case my flop call was saying, "I like the trips, but I'm worried that you have A-K, so I'm reluctant to put it all in."

4) A pocket pair lower than the kings--maybe 8s or 9s, in which case my flop call was saying, "I want to see if you really have a king by watching to see what you do on the turn." An A-4 in the hole might be similar.

5) Complete air, floating him.

He understandably would have discounted (1) and (2) as improbable. Once he limited my range to (3), (4), and (5), putting me to a test for all of my chips was a very smart and bold move, because if I made my decision based on card strength alone, it was more likely that I couldn't call than that I could.

I took what I'm sure was at least two full minutes to think about this--maybe the longest I've ever kept a table waiting. It was one of the rare situations in which I had to do the thinking-one-level-deeper-than-one's-opponent thing. I finally concluded essentially what I just outlined above about what he would be thinking about me, and why he did what he did.

I didn't think he had a king, because if he had a king it would almost have to be K-K, A-K, or maybe suited K-Q to explain his early-position pre-flop raise, and with those big hands I doubted that he would lead out betting. Rather, he would check and either check-raise if I bet or let me have a free card to get something that I could call him with on the turn. I thought that A-Q or A-J was his most likely holding. I did have to worry some about Q-Q or J-J, etc. However, I thought it more likely that after my flop call he would try to keep the pot smaller and go passive to try to get to a cheap showdown with such hands.

It was risky, but I finally felt best about assigning him A-Q or A-J, a standard continuation bet on the flop, and a smart analysis of what I would be holding and thinking in order to make the big bet on the turn. If I was right, then calling was the thing to do. It took a lot of courage, and was one of the most difficult hero calls I've made since living here, but I pushed my chips out.

The dealer put a blank out on the river (a 7, I think). My opponent said "ace-queen," and then showed the same. I flipped over my cards--bottom pair with no kicker--and tapped the 4. The chorus from the table of "Wow" and "Great call" was almost as rewarding as the money. OK, not really, but it was nice anyway. Actually, now that I reflect on it, I think my own personal satisfaction at having analyzed the situation so well and having had the stones to act on it was better than the admiration of the table. (Hey, nobody can admire me as well as I can admire myself!)

What's weird is how this hand would look to an player with a little experience--maybe one who has watched a fair amount of televised poker but not played a lot. Except for the long thinking pause, it would look exactly like a donkey call: idiot sees a big pair and an overcard on the board, with an opponent showing strength, and still thinks his bottom pair might be good.

The truth is that it was a deeper level of play than is usually seen (or is usually profitable) at these limits. My opponent made an excellent read of what my range of cards could be and what I would be thinking he might have, and made a strong attempt to exploit the card weakness that he correctly guessed I was stuck with. (At least I think that's what happened. Of course, I don't really know what he was thinking. It's possible he wasn't thinking much at all. But based on watching him for a couple of hours, I'm comfortable attributing to him a pretty sophisticated game.) I, in turn, was able to make a slightly better play based on figuring out what he thought I would be thinking. I earned the pot not only by having a better hand, but by getting inside his head a little bit better than he got inside mine.

But now I'm straying from my original point. I didn't really mean to get into a deep analysis of the hand (though I think it's an unusually interesting one). Getting back to the story, it was just a few minutes later that I busted Mr. Esfandiari, and my opponent in the hand in this story quickly got up to claim that seat, two to my left. I assume that he decided that I was a player on whom he wanted to have good position.


Orleans: I started off at a must-move table. My second hand after moving to a regular game I had J-Q in late position. A middle-position player put in a standard raise. He's somebody I've played with once before at the Orleans. (By the way, I don't have a phenomenal general memory, but I'm pleased that my ability to remember specific opponents and their tendencies has grown tremendously since I've started this gig. I have a long way to go in that department still, but the fact that I can remember this guy from a single session several months ago is a lot more than I would have been capable of two years ago.) He's smart, aggressive, and potentially tricky. He's a poker dealer somewhere else (can't remember where), but not very prone to the common maladies of play that I see most dealers succumb to. I called, though not really liking the situation. J-Q is way too prone to being second-best and it too often makes for painful decisions later in the hand, because it's close to but slightly behind the range of cards commonly used for making the initial raise.

Flop was 9-10-x, giving me an open-ended straight draw. He bet again. I called. The turn was a brick. He checked and looked concerned. I bet about 3/4 of the pot. He thought a long time, tried to ask me questions about what I had, etc. He finally folded.

A few minutes later, the guy on my immediate left packed up and went home. The player I had just beaten in this pot made a beeline for the now-open seat. It's hard not to conclude that he moved because of me. After all, if he just hated the 10 seat, he would have moved to the 2 seat (where I was) before I got to the table.

Maybe 30 minutes later, he was obviously still obsessing over the pot we had contested, and he asked me what I had had. I remember him as being a pleasant, polite, and friendly guy from our previous session, and, besides, I knew I would be leaving soon, so I decided it was OK to tell him the truth: I had a good draw, position, and a bit of moxie. He believably told me that he had had 8-8 in the hole. Assuming that's true, I had 12 outs (four kings and two more 8s to make a straight plus six cards that would make me a bigger pair), so I probably would have played it the same if his cards had been face up, which is always a nice thing to realize after the fact. Rather than either berate me for a stupid bluff or kick himself for not calling with his better hand, he said, in what struck me as a sincere voice, "Then it was a really nice move. I wanted to call, but there were too many ways you could have had me beat. I thought you probably had jacks."


So there you have it. One of the highest compliments one poker player can pay another is both silent and unparalleled in any other area of human activity: Moving to a different seat so as to gain a positional advantage. It is, in effect, saying, "Sir, you are a handful to deal with, and I'm going to need whatever edge I can get on you."

Thanks, guys. I'm flattered!


(It has not escaped my attention that another reason one might move to a particular player's left is that chips tend to flow clockwise, so, all else being equal, one would like to have the seat to the immediate left of the biggest donkey at the table, in order to catch as much of his chip-spewing as possible. It's possible that I'm suffering from a self-delusion of being pretty good at this game, when I'm actually the live one at the table. That seems objectively doubtful, though, based on a couple of years of a winning record. But it is certainly possible that one or both of the players in these two stories were thinking not so much, "He's the best player and I need to get a positional advantage on him," but more like, "What a moron--let me move to where I can best profit from his idiocy." It's better for my ego, though, not to consider this possibility too strongly.)

Upgrades at the Orleans

Yesterday was my first trip to the Orleans in a long time--since July 15, to be exact. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they've done a few upgrades.

They used to have what appeared to me to be the second-oldest and second-crummiest tables in town, with bottom honors going to the El Cortez (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/04/armpit-of-las-vegas-poker.html). But now they have nice new ones, with a nicely padded edge. I wish they had also gone for built-in cup holders. More importantly, I can't figure out why they are still hit-and-miss on the Shufflemasters, some tables having them and others not.

They also spent some $$ on new chairs. These are very comfortable office-style seats with wheels, height adjustments, and backrest adjustments. For those who don't play poker a lot, it probably sounds like making a big deal out of nothing, but when spending an average of 120+ hours a month at a poker table, having a comfy place to park one's behind can make a huge difference in how pleasant or unpleasant the time is.

There is also now at the Orleans a half-wall around most of the poker room. It's possible that was there before, but I don't remember it, so I think that it's new. Too bad they didn't extend it all the way to the ceiling with plexiglas, the way that Harrah's is, to keep out noise and smoke from the slots area. Perhaps some day....

Cruelest game ever invented

The poker gods have a sick, sick sense of humor sometimes.

I was playing at the Orleans yesterday. I picked up A-10 on the button, so I raised in order to thin the field a bit. The guy in the big blind had just recently caught me bluffing, and he called with the A-3 of spades, presumably thinking I might be on a steal again.

Flop was K-3-3. The BB slow-plays his three-of-a-kind. I check behind, rather than put in a continuation bet, primarily because of the recent failed bluff attempt. Turn card is a Q. Now the BB bets. I think he might be pretty weak and just trying to buy it--again because of the table image I've created for myself. Besides, I suspect that any ace or jack on the river wins it for me. So I call. The river is a lovely jack. With no possible flush, my Broadway straight (A-K-Q-J-10) ought to be good, because I think it's highly unlikely my opponent has quads or a full house.

To my astonishment, he moves all-in! I nearly beat him into the pot with my chips. He shows me the flopped trips that he unwisely slow-played. I show him the runner-runner straight that I managed to catch. He is disgusted, stands up, starts to walk away. The dealer calls him back, though, because it turns out that he had $10 more than I did.

On the next hand, I look down at the A-3 of spades--the same two cards my opponent had in the last hand. Literally the same two cards, because this table is not using an auto-shuffler, so it's the same deck. That's just too delicious to throw away, because I suspect that my former opponent is going to push his last $10 in with any two cards from the small blind. Sure enough, he does. I call and show him that I now have the very cards he just lost with.

He has--get this--the same A-10 that I had on the previous hand! So he is way ahead, right? He's about 3:1 to win this one. Or at least he is until the flop is A-3-x, giving me two pair. He doesn't improve, and I felt him. He calls me by a very rude term that involves my mother, and storms off. I can't help laughing.

That one-two punch is among the sickest, cruelest things I've ever witnessed.

But I'm keeping the money.

Some poker stories (non-grumpy content)

While looking for a story I wrote up for a friend last year (which I hope will be in my next entry), I came across this email (now slightly edited for clarity) with what I thought were pretty amusing stories that all happened to me in one crazy week last October. Enjoy.

1. "That guy couldn't feel any better..."

This week a California couple has been putting in mega-hours at Suncoast. They both get drunk early and stay that way the whole time they play. They’re really pretty annoying, because they flagrantly talk about the hand while it’s in progress and coach each other, and the casino staff won’t do anything about it, because they’re dropping thousands of dollars a day. They’re never paying attention, so they slow the game down terribly, because every time it’s their turn, the dealer has to catch them up on what’s happening. The woman, Kelly, is actually a decent player. But the guy, Rob, is awful—he’s never paying attention, and thinks the way to play is to make ridiculous bets and raises every time, because occasionally he’ll get a call when he has a monster hand, or pull off a big suckout with lucky cards coming. He must get such an adrenaline rush when those huge pots are pushed to him, because he’s willing to lose tons of money in the process. Obviously, decent players will just wait for a big hand, and when the stars are all lined up right, spring the trap on him.

So Monday night, I think it was, Player A is a guy who, I swear, talks exactly like Paulie Walnuts on the Sopranos. Player B is somebody I haven’t seen before, but he has been waiting and waiting and waiting for a chance to nail Rob for all his chips, and he finally does it. B quickly declares that he’s done playing for the day, because he just doubled his money. He packs up his chips and leaves. After he leaves the table, Player A says (and remember, you must hear the Paulie Walnuts voice in your head when you read this), “That guy couldn’t feel any better if he had just gotten a blow job!”

I usually try not to laugh at or otherwise encourage the many crudities and vulgarities that low-class poker players engage in, but it was just too perfect a line, in too funny a voice, and I almost fell out of my chair laughing so hard.


2. Inflicting a bad beat

I have put some truly sick beats on people for big pots recently. Last night, when one of three ultra-drunks sat down, he started throwing in big raises nearly every hand, and scaring people off. I picked up A-J on the button, and decided to play back hard at him to see if I could cool his jets. He raised, and I reraised. He called. Flop had a Q and two little cards--nothing to help me, really, but he checked, so I put in a pot-sized bet. He hesitated quite a bit (and he was way too drunk to be consciously doing that to disguise a big hand), but called. Turn was a 10, which I didn’t like at all, because he could easily have either a Q or 10 in his hand, and any pair would be ahead of me at this point. But he looked at the board for a long time, as though he didn’t like it much, and checked, so I pushed all-in. To my considerable surprise and consternation, he thought a while, then said, “Fuck it, I’m calling!” and pushed his chips in. Then the blessed K came on the river, giving me the highest possible straight. Turns out he had Q-9, so he had flopped top pair, which explains why he was willing to call. So because I caught one of the few cards left in the deck (any of four kings or three remaining aces) that could save me, I made over $200 on that hand instead of losing the same amount.

There was an audible gasp from the table when we turned over our hands at the end (in a tournament, you have to both turn over your hands as soon as the betting is complete, but in cash games you can wait until all the cards have been put out), and they realized that I had moved all-in with basically nothing, and sucked out. This was obviously startling because they had only seen me bet strong with strong, made hands. Several people all at once were saying, “I would have sworn he had pocket aces,” “I thought he must have flopped a set,” etc. But somewhat surprisingly, there was general approval and admiration: the consensus was “You’ve got a helluva lot of guts to do that,” rather than “Boy, that was stupid—don’t you know you can’t bluff a drunk, bad player off a hand?” I certainly should know that by now—it’s one of those lessons I’ve had to pay to learn more than a few times.


3. Inflicting another bad beat

I didn’t get enough sleep last night because I was playing so late, so around 8 pm tonight I was really hitting the wall. I was at the Orleans again, had started with $100, doubled it up, then lost a big hand when I had A-J and another A on the flop, but I didn’t recognize that an opponent had made two pair, so got knocked back down to about $100 again. I decided I’d play one more big hand, and then win or lose, I’d go home. But then I went card-dead. I waited 45 minutes for any decent hand to play, and nothing came. I was down to about $75, because of paying the blinds and calling a few pre-flop raises, only to have to dump the hand when nothing developed. Finally I decided that I would just have to pick two cards and play them as if they were aces, and hope for the best. I got J-3 of diamonds in late position, a real crap hand. But sometimes—especially if you have a strong, tight reputation and haven’t raised in a long time—you can get away with playing like you’re holding a big pair, even when you’re not. That’s what I decided to go for.

I raised to $12 and got five callers. Yikes! That’s not what I wanted! With five others seeing the flop, it’s going to help one of them for sure, and it will be hard to push him off the hand. Oh well—the pot was now big enough that it was worth taking a major gamble on winning it.

The flop is 10-8-3. I’ve got a crummy pair of 3s, and nothing more. But it’s checked around to me, so apparently nobody else liked it very much either, and I decide to go for it. I push in my last $60 or so. One guy calls. Crap! No matter what he has, it’s got to have me beat, because nobody would call that bet with a worse hand. Oh well, I went into this hand knowing that it might blow up on me, but I had made enough at the Hilton earlier that even if I bombed out here, I’d still be up for the day. Turn card was a 7, and the river a 9. I sheepishly turned over my cards to show that I just had the 3s.

I didn’t even realize what had happened until another player said, “Oh my God, he hit runner-runner straight!” Sure enough, there was a 7, 8, 9, and 10 on the board, plus my J for the straight. The other guy had had ace-ten, giving him top pair and top kicker on the flop—a pretty good hand for him to gamble on. He was, shall we say, unhappy when he saw how it had gone down. Oh well—as they say, that’s poker, and I’ve been on the bad end of crap just like that enough times that I don’t mind a little excessively good luck flowing my way now and then.

Besides, hands like that have powerful future value, even if I lose them. To the extent that I’m known just as a rock that only plays premium hands, it’s hard to get action. When people see that I can push just as hard with nothing as I do when I’ve got the goods, it makes them more likely to call me the next time I actually have the best hand. Having opponents completely unsure what I have is at least as good as, if not better than, just having them habitually run away because they’re convinced I have the nuts.

Worst call ever (non-grumpy content)

Orleans tonight, $1-2 no limit hold'em game. Player A, on my right, is a smart, rock-solid guy who plays true tight-aggressive style. I don't think I ever saw him show down a losing hand. Player B, on my left, is a tourist, probably from Australia, judging by the accent. He appears barely old enough to gamble. He's playing an "any two cards" style, and for the first hour or so it's wildly successful; he hits at least 4 full houses in that time with completely junk hands. He has at least doubled his original $100 buy-in. He's obviously feeling like the poker gods are going to be on his side all night.

I'm in late position with K-Q offsuit. I put in a raise. Player B calls from the button, as does Player A from one of the blinds. The flop is A-10-7 rainbow. I don't like that much, but when A checks, I put in a standard continuation bet, hoping both opponents will credit me with an ace and go away--and even if they don't, I might get really lucky and catch a jack for the straight. B calls. Dammit. Then A check-raises all-in. I've seen him check-raise a couple of times before, but never all-in, and never against two opponents. (He's sitting on $400+ and has both of us covered.)

I'm outta there as fast as I can throw my cards away. But B is seriously contemplating a call. After maybe 30 seconds, A throws him a bone. He spreads out his two hole cards face down and tells B, "You can pick either one to look at." B picks the one on his left. It's a 10.

Let's review the evidence at this point. A has been playing absolutely no-nonsense poker, showing down only winners. He called a pre-flop raise from out of position, then followed that with an all-in check-raise of two opponents. To top it off, he's confident enough of his hand to let an opponent pick one to look at, and it's a pair to the board. Unless Player A has just had a stroke, or ingested LSD with his last Perrier, the bare minimum he has here is two pair, and it shouldn't surprise anybody if he were to turn over pocket 10s for a set.

In fact, Player B seems to recognize this, and says, "Oh, damn--I bet the other one is a 10, too." But then he thinks a bit more and says, "To hell with it. Let's gamble. I call."

And with that, he flips over Q-2 of diamonds.

Let that sink in for a moment. Q-2 of diamonds. There is one diamond sitting out there in the flop.

Not surprisingly, Player A turns over A-10, for top two pairs. The only way B can win is runner-runner straight, runner-runner flush, or Q-Q or 2-2 for trips. According to an online odds calculator, he just under 6% to win--and that's not even accounting for the fact that I folded one of the jacks he would need for the straight and one of the diamonds he would need for the flush. If Player A actually held a set of 10s, as B seemed to believe, he would be only about 4% to win.

In other words, B put in roughly $200 believing that he was worse than a 20:1 underdog.

Just astonishing. I'm not sure I've ever seen a more jaw-droppingly bone-headed call.

When B didn't catch his miracle cards--surprise, surprise, eh?--he swore and got up from the table. The dealer asked if he would be coming back. He said he would, but not for a while, so don't hold the seat for him.

After he was respectably out of earshot, the chatter and laughter began. One player thanked the dealer for asking that question: "We all wanted to hear that he was coming back, but I didn't want to appear too eager." Somebody else closed his eyes as if in prayer and started chanting, "Please come back with more money. Please come back with more money."

I hoped the same thing, but didn't see Mr. B return during the time remaining before I called it a night.

I sincerely hope to run into him again while he's here on vacation, though.