Bluffing Rob, a reconsideration

I've been thinking quite a bit more about that hand I played with Rob at Planet Hollywood, written up here. He describes it from his perspective here. Specifically, I've been going over what I would have done if I were in Rob's seat, playing his cards, against an opponent like me. My thought process got churning because of a series of comments posted to Rob's blog.

First, a reader calling himself "ohcowboy12go" said:

Rob, I think your better play would have been to take advantage of your position and use some pot control by checking the turn. This way you can turn your hand into a bluff catcher on the river or bet for value if they check again.

Rob's response was basically the same as mine would have been:

Well, ohcowboy, I never really considered that. With so many draws out there, giving a free card seemed way too dangerous. Of course, if he already had made his draw, that wouldn't matter, but, I thought protecting my hand was the way to go.

But then along came Vookenmeister with a more complete argument for the same point:

it's actually a valid suggestion by ohcowboy. Here's why!  

If you're planning on folding to a check raise knowing that Grump is highly capable of making this play with a wide range of hands that include a lot of semi-bluffs then basically you are making your own hand meaningless. 

Thus your bet now becomes a bluff if you are willing to fold in a spot where grump is often going to check/raise his draws. 

Against this particular crafty opponent it might be better for you to outcraft him. Go for pot control on the turn here (which makes your hand look like AK/AQ) and be prepared to call almost any river bet. 

Sure you might give him some free river cards to his outs but if he is so likely to bluff then it's worth it. You can also bet the river for value if he checks. 

Against clever opponents you need to mix up your plays and go another level. don't let grump put you on a polarized range of hands. 

Don't be predictable against him. Of course make sure you keep these plays to those spots where you are mostly heads up against him. Other players will not comply. 

In other words, go a level up. Think about what he thinks you might have based on your play and take a step higher. If you do this every once in a while then Grump will not be able to read you as easily and make plays like this. 

cat and mouse. 

PS. I look forward to a blog post where you try this and it fails and you curse my name. There are no rebates on my silly advice. 

I have read Vook's thoughts on his own blogs (here and here), and when commenting on other people's blogs. I have also met and played in a cash game with him. Through all these means, I have come to respect him as an analyst of tough situations.

And you know what? I think he's right. On a board where there can already be completed straights and flushes, unimproved pocket kings really is not much more than a bluff-catcher, so you might as well treat it that way.

Suppose Rob had checked back on the turn. I would still be unsure whether he had an overpair that feared the straight and flush, or an A-K type of hand that had missed completely. Assuming that the river card is not a fourth diamond and not an ace or king, I would indeed be very likely to bet. It would be some odd mixture of a bluff (hoping he would fold an overpair if that's what he had) and a value bet (hoping he would hero-call with ace-high, which my pair of 6s would beat).

How much would I bet? Probably right around $40, the same amount that Rob bet on the turn. So for the same $40 he bet and lost on the turn, he would instead get a showdown in a situation where he well might win, if my river bet is a bluff or a value bet with a pair lower than his kings.

Suppose a diamond came on the river. What then? Would I bet? I think I probably would. A $40 bet to win what's in the pot is well worth a shot, because (A) there's only about a 50/50 chance that Rob has a diamond in his hand, and without one he will never call, and (B) if he has any diamond other than the ace, he still might fold, fearing that I have the ace.

If an ace or king had come on the river, I think I would be much less prone to bet, for two reasons. First, any component of value bet is now gone, and what would have been a semi-bluff on the turn is now a pure bluff, which is harder to make profitable. Second, I would have to worry that Rob had just made a set. He would then be much less likely to fold, because it would remove all the two-pair and sets from my range of hands that he would have to worry about. If he only has to worry about being beat by a straight or flush, he'll be far more likely to call than if he has to worry about everything I might have that can beat one pair. Therefore, a bluff is much less likely to succeed.

The obvious objection to this line is the one Rob expressed--checking behind on the turn may give a free card that completes a draw to beat him, when a bet on the turn might win the pot. That's true, and David Sklansky says that in mathematical terms one of the worst mistakes you can make in poker is failing to bet when doing so would win the pot.

But weighted against that consideration is this one: You want to play big pots with big hands, and an overpair simply is not a big hand when the board is as scary as the one we're talking about. It took me a while to come around to Vook's point of view, but I have. I think the balance comes down on the side of playing conservatively and defensively rather than aggressively in this specific situation. A $40 investment is more likely to win the pot as a bluff-catching call on the river than as a bet on the turn, given the specifics of this board and this opponent (i.e., me), and it doesn't risk getting you pushed off of the winning hand.

Very early in learning about poker, I heard that when you bet or raise, you should always know in advance what you will do if an opponent raises back. You don't necessarily have to have a plan for what you'll do in case he calls, because you'll get another card and can re-evaluate then. And obviously you don't have to plan what you'll do if he folds, because the hand ends. But you should know what you'll do if he raises--whether it will be to fold, call, or reraise.

I doubt that any of us manages to do this every time, but I think it's a worthwhile aspiration. From Rob's reaction to my check-raise, it was clear that he had not thought through what he would do if I raised. (I don't say that as a criticism; I'm as guilty of stumbling into such "now what do I do?" moments as he is.) If he had, he might have realized that it was a situation in which a check-raise from me would put him to a very difficult decision, since my range would be an indecipherable mix of made hands (straights, flushes, and sets), semi-bluffs, and pure bluffs. Given that, he might have then realized that $40 or so would be better invested on an easy, automatic river call--no matter what came--than on a turn bet that could lead to a costly mistake.

For the last 24 hours or so, when my mind has drifted back to the question, I've asked myself whether I would have made what I now think is the right play (i.e., checking) had I been in Rob's shoes. And I honestly don't know. I think maybe I would have on my best, most analytical, A-game days. But I spend a lot of time playing on what amounts to auto-pilot, and the auto-pilot mode says to keep betting a hand like pocket kings--especially in position--until something grabs me by the throat and makes me stop. So I might well have done exactly what Rob did, and ended up in the agonizing no-man's-land that he did, unsure of where I was or what I should do.

Anyway, the more I've thought about it, the more I think it's an interesting hand, full of potential for learning and debate.

Bluffy McBlufferson

I just got home from 4 1/2 hours at Planet Hollywood, where I was playing with Rob and his friend Prudence. I had a good night--one of my best in several months, actually. Most of what I won came from pots where I had the best hand, but two sizeable ones were out-and-out thievery. The latter is always more fun to talk about, so I will.


1. 

Villain is a tourist, quite a bit tighter and more disciplined than most of them. Completely ABC, transparent. I had noticed that he was reluctant to put a lot of money in with one-pair hands. This is mostly a commendable and appropriate thing, but it also makes him a good target for bluffing. I had been playing tight and was getting respect when I showed any aggression.

He raised to $7 from under the gun plus one, which immediately narrowed his hand range enormously--certainly nothing outside of the top ten list, and probably only A-K, A-Q, and pocket jacks or better. I was in the small blind with 4-5 offsuit. This is a situation where I would normally fold, but some internal imp prompted me to take a flyer and see what might happen. I was the only customer he hooked.

Flop was J-7-8 rainbow. I checked, he bet $15, and I called with just a gutshot. It would have been nice to hit that, but mainly I was hoping that he was on A-K and would check behind on the turn in surrender, setting me up to steal if the river was not an ace or a king--an out-of-position float, basically.

But fourth street made it more interesting--another jack. I checked again. He bet again, $30. I decided to represent the jack, and check-raised to $80.

I'll interrupt the story to note that just a bit under 3x is my favorite check-raising amount. I mentally think of it as "3x-minus." My observation has been that 3x or more blows too many mediocre and drawing hands out of the water when I have the goods and want a call. 3x-minus does that less, yet it usually does not give the correct odds for a draw to call, the way a minimum (2x) raise would. Naturally, when I'm bluffing, I try to follow the same pattern. It's not really that I expect most players at this level to be paying enough attention to my check-raise sizes to notice if I were to deviate from my norm--I'm not doing it often enough for that. Instead, the reasoning is that a 3x check-raise is so standard that making it just a little less than that looks like I'm trying to get a call, without being the minimum raise that actually is easy for an opponent to call. To put it another way, it's either a good amount to value bet, or a good amount to look like a value-bet.

Back to the story. He thought quite a while, but eventually called. This was the first time I had seen a significant crack in his demeanor, and he looked seriously uncomfortable. I imagined that he was thinking something like, "What have I gotten myself into?"

The turn card had put a second diamond out, so I now believed that he either had an overpair, or he had the A-K or A-Q of diamonds and was calling in the hope of hitting the nuts on the river. For that reason, if another diamond had come, I probably would have had to shut down.

River was the ace of spades. I quickly moved all-in for about $120. He thought only a few seconds before mucking.

The best part was when the guy on my left, a very experienced player (and, I think, an off-duty dealer) told the villain, "I don't know what you had sir, but that was definitely a good laydown." Hee hee!

I take it back. That was the second-best part. The best part was winning the pot with complete air, and with what was very nearly the worst possible hand one could have for that board.


2. 

Much later, I had moved seats to be between Rob (on my immediate left) and Prudence (two to my right) for convenience of chatting. That seat also put me on the immediate left of the table's live one, a young man who had gotten lucky to build his stack to about $500, and was now in the inevitable process of redistributing it back to the other players.

Rob and I both had in the vicinity of $400 stacks, I believe. It is important to note that Rob had been basically spinning his wheels for most of nearly three hours at this point. He was two seats to the left of the table maniac, but had not been able to take advantage of that prime spot. He was just up and down relatively small amounts, never able to make a big score--until just a few minutes before the hand in question occurred, when he nearly tripled up in one hand. This meant that he was sitting on a meaningful profit that had not yet settled in emotionally. I judged that he would be less willing to risk losing it than usual, because his mindset would be, "I finally got ahead after three hours of nothing, I'm not going to give it away lightly."

There is a second important piece of back story. One of the disadvantages of being a poker blogger is that people who pay attention to your writing will have an enormous amount of information about how you play. I had a bit of insight about Rob that I thought would be relevant. About a month ago, he did a long post in which he talked about how reading an old post of mine (here)--which makes the point that playing scared in no-limit poker is going to lose you money--had caused him to rethink his approach to no-limit poker. In his post, Rob admitted that he had a tendency to see a significant profit in front of him and go into lockdown mode to prevent losing it. All of which meant that I thought Rob was a ripe target for stealing, because his new-found wealth should cause an exaggeration of what was already a tendency he struggles with.

With that in mind, I did something that was admittedly daring. OK, it might be more honest to call it reckless. I limped in with 6h-8d from early position, then called Rob's pre-flop raise. ("It's a position call," I told him. It took him a few seconds to get that I was joking.)

Now, I didn't take notes in the immediate aftermath of this hand, because it wasn't until on my drive home that I began thinking it might make good blog material. So I'm a little fuzzy on the details. But the flop had a 6 and two diamonds, and I believe it was 10-high. I think it might have been 6-9-10, because I recall that it had given me bottom pair, a gutshot straight draw, and the backdoor flush draw. That's pretty close, anyway.

I checked. Rob bet $20, I think. I called.

The turn was a small diamond--deuce, maybe? I checked again, though with deliberate hesitation. I had not yet decided what I would do if he bet, but if he felt inclined to give me a free card, I'd take it, and if he bet, I wanted him to have noticed the deviation from my usual rhythm, and possibly interpret it to mean that I had been wavering between betting out and going for a check-raise. I thought that impression, if I had reason to call on it, would look more like a flush had gotten there.

He bet $40. I thought a bit and check-raised to $110--the logic of the amount being the same as described in Hand #1 above. I wanted Rob to read me for the flush, because a check-call/check-raise was entirely consistent with having made a small or medium flush. I guessed that he did not like seeing that third diamond peel off, and that fact, coupled with the already-identified tendencies to protect a nice win (the acute one compounding the chronic one), would make this a convincing line.

He took a very long time to decide what to do--at least three full minutes. The longer it went on, the more obvious it became that he had either aces or kings, with one of them being the diamond. I hoped that it was kings, for two reasons. First, Rob has post after post after post about how he hates pocket kings and how he always seems to lose with them--his personal kryptonite hand. Feeding into a player's pre-existing belief system makes it that much easier to manipulate him. Second, if he had only the king of diamonds, he would have to worry that I had limp-called pre-flop with something like the A-2 of diamonds and he was already drawing dead.

There was yet another psychological factor at work. Right after Hand #1, I had texted Rob to gloat privately about having pulled off the big bluff. I wasn't sure if that fact would now cause him to think, "He's doing it again," or, conversely, "He wouldn't dare do that again after having told me about the earlier bluff." That could have worked either for or against me, and I didn't know which would predominate.

But finally Rob folded. He was visibly perturbed, and left the table for a few minutes--to clear his head, I assume. I felt bad about that. I don't like inflicting distress on my friends. But I trust that he understands and accepts the terms of the game. Chief among those is this premise: that we will all be using every legal tactic and stratagem we know, every scrap of information we have at our disposal, every bit of skill and reasoning we can muster, every means of deception and psychological trick we can pull off, in order to take each other's money. It is ruthless and cutthroat, but that is the essence of the game. When friends are involved, I will occasionally do a few playful things just for fun that I wouldn't ordinarily do, especially in small pots--play a goofy hand, show a bluff to rub it in, or whatever. But when there's a big pot brewing, I am going to try to win the money by any legitimate means available to me. Because I have more information about my friends' tendencies, I can more accurately tailor my line to maximize my chances of winning. This works both ways, naturally, since they know a lot about what I am and am not capable of doing. Which is a long way of saying this: I definitely don't soft-play friends (and I would be appalled if any of them soft-played me). I don't play them harder or in a more tricky way than I would play other opponents just because they are my friends and I'm specifically targeting them, but at the same time, knowing more about them means that I can often exploit them more than mercilessly than I can strangers. And that, in turn, means that I should exploit them more mercilessly. That might seem antithetical to friendship, but in the insular sphere of a poker game, it is not.

When Rob had had a chance to get back in the game mindset (and after he had won another good pot, which always helps remove the sting of a lost one), I offered him an honest exchange of information about the hand. He agreed, and I explained my cards and my rationale. He told me that I had it nailed--he had had pocket kings, including the diamond.

After a few seconds' pause, he realized the implication of what I had told him. "You mean, you called my raise from out of position with 8-6 offsuit?" Yes. Yes, I did.

In this case, obviously, I was not running a pure bluff as in Hand #1. It was a semi-bluff. Even if he had called me, I could have caught either of two 6s for trips, any of three 8s for two pair, any of three non-diamond 7s for a straight. At the time I made the raise, I also thought there was about a 50-50 chance that any diamond would also give me a winning flush, though this turned out not to be so.

As a side note, had Rob pushed all-in over the top of my check-raise, I would almost surely have folded. But I knew that my line put him in a difficult position, one in which it would have been hard for him to do that unless he happened to have made the nut flush, an unlikely occurrence. One of the things I was taking advantage of was the knowledge that he knew me to be capable of some way-off-the-beaten-path moves. I knew that he perceived me as a difficult-to-read and potentially dangerous opponent. He would know that I might be running a total bluff, but that I also might have him crushed, with a set, a flopped straight, a turned nut flush, or whatever. When my range contains so many hands that could cost him his entire stack if he guessed wrong, I was betting that he would not want to risk that much money in the face of that much uncertainty.

Here's the pithy lesson I take from this second hand: Know your enemy, especially when he is your friend.


Addendum, December 31, 2012 

See Rob's version of the story here.

40 to 740 in nothing flat

I played at Planet Hollywood last night. I started with $200, and within 15 minutes or so was down to about $50. I was playing horribly--as badly as I ever do. Apparently somebody had slipped a drug into my water bottle which transformed me into the world's worst calling station. I was playing every hand and calling every bet when I had any piece of the board, under the misguided impression that everybody else was bluffing. These weren't huge bets, but I frittered away the money $10 and $20 at a time. It was embarrassing and not at all my usual style.

The first thing I did was make a firm determination not to rebuy. On the rare occasions that I play that badly, at least I have the good sense not to keep at it until my wallet is empty. I recognized that I was being a doofus and had no business throwing good money after bad.

With that decision made, I told myself that I had three options: (1) Give up now, preserving the last $50 against further awful play. (2) Keep playing badly for one or two more hands, at which time the chips would all be gone and I could drive myself home feeling stupid and miserable, with a giant "L" visible on my forehead in the car mirror. (3) Buck up, play right, and see if I could turn things around. If I could find good spots to put in my short stack, then even if I didn't grind my way back to a profit, I could at least go home feeling good about having played smart with my last couple of bullets.

#3 being clearly the best choice, I mentally slapped myself for having stupidly given away $150, then let it go and settled in to play the best that I could.

My first opportunity came with an A-J offsuit. Raised to $10, three callers. Missed the flop completely. Out of position against three people who all see me as wounded, vulnerable, and possibly desperate is not the spot for a continuation-bet bluff, so I check-folded. Down to $40.

I no longer remember any of the specific hands, but I slowly worked that $40 up to $91 over the course of an hour or so, at which time came a remarkable series of three hands.

1) Three seats to my left was a fast-and-loose player. He played every hand, called light, bet at every orphan pot, straddled every opportunity, etc. He was doing a button straddle of $10 every time he was dealer. Surprisingly, nobody had ever tried to raise him when he did this. I had Q-T offsuit. The big blind and one other person had called the $10 straddle. To my left I could see both of the players between me and the button with their cards cocked, ready to fling into the muck. By this point, my table image had been adequately rehabilitated, so it seemed like a likely spot to pick up the dead money. I declared myself all in. Mr. Fast-and-Loose called, the others folded. Flop was 2-2-2 (oh, to have my beloved 2-4!), turn 7, river queen, miraculously turning my trashy hand into deuces full of queens. It was good for the pot. I never saw the other guy's cards. This put me up to $200, plus or minus a few bucks. Back to even, which was in itself something of a victory. But I was feeling good about my ability to play well, the table was soft and juicy, and so I decided to keep going.

2) A short time later, I had 8-8 under the gun, limped, and then became the last of five players paying $25 to see the flop. It came 8-3-4 rainbow, which was the loveliest sight I had seen the whole session. I was first to act and checked, knowing that there would be plenty of action that I could check-raise. Sure enough, there was a $30 bet and two calls before it was back to me. Raising all-in to about $175 from $30 is a big leap. I very much wanted at least one call, and wasn't sure I would get one if I went all the way like that. I considered a smaller raise, hoping to lure in two or three callers, who might all then feel pot-committed to my inevitable push on any turn card. That might have been better, but in the end I went for shove-and-pray, hoping that at least one would look me up. And one did. I never saw his hand, but when another 3 hit fourth street, giving me top full house, he must have been drawing dead, or nearly so. That put me up to about $530.

3) On the very next hand, I looked down at Ad-As in the big blind. Practically the whole table limped in, so I raised to $17. Three callers. Flop was 7-8-10 with two clubs. I bet $60. The player two to my left moved all-in for $90 more, followed by folds. Of course he might have me beat here with a flopped set, straight, or two pair. But I thought it more likely that he was semi-bluffing with either a pair and a draw (straight draw or flush draw), or some sort of a combo straight/flush draw. Against such a hand, a call should be mathematically correct. My read was right; he had 9-10 for top pair and an open-ended straight draw. It was a good move on his part, given that he should have decent fold equity against my range, and, failing that, an excellent chance of improving to the winner. Sadly for him, he caught no help with the last two cards, and another pot was pushed my way before I had even finished stacking the previous monster one.

When I finally got the chips straightened out, they looked like this:

I never did an exact count, but it must have been right around $730. Over the course of the next couple of orbits, I won one small pot with a pre-flop raise, peaking at about $740, then lost about $20 before deciding that I had probably gotten as lucky as I was going to get, and cashing out for $718.

Of course there was a hefty dose of luck here: an all-in steal shove that turned into a full house, then flopping top set in a bloated pot and managing to find somebody who had caught enough of the ragged flop to call my all-in check-raise, then dodging 13 outs twice to have my aces hold up. But in spite of that nice streak of good fortune, I was proud of having started off playing so wretchedly and yet finding the discipline to snap out of it and play smart.

It won't be every day that making that kind of mental turnaround will be so richly rewarded, but I'm happy to pocket the results when it does.

It's so nice when a plan comes together

It's nice to win by getting luckier than the other guy. It's even nicer to win by outplaying the other guy. But I think the nicest of all ways to win is when you pay enough attention to figure out an opponent's specific weaknesses, bide your time waiting for a spot in which to exploit them, pull the trigger when the time comes, and have it pay off. I got one of those tonight.

I was at Planet Hollywood. One player was particularly easy to start getting a read on, because he had the horrible habit of showing his cards after most hands were over. He also egged other players to show, clearly feeling that this was part of good poker sportsmanship. Within an hour, I had a crystal-clear picture of how this guy played. He had four notable characteristics:

1) He played almost every hand, for whatever price anybody made it.

2) He played as if top pair/any kicker was the nuts. He would always raise the pre-flop raiser when he caught top pair on the flop, either raising in position or check-raising if he was first to act. He had obviously learned--whether through books, TV, or perhaps his own experience--that most of the time the pre-flop raiser will not have a hand as good as top pair on the flop, so this tactic will, in fact, work more often than not. But it's also obviously (A) expensive when you're wrong, and (B) easily exploitable when it is carried out so predictably. And he was remarkably predictable about it. He seemed not to care one bit whether the texture of the flop was draw-heavy or dry, nor how many other people were still in the hand. If his flop raise got reraised, he'd go all in. Top pair? He's going with it! I never saw him with a shown two-pair or better hand, so it wasn't clear to me whether he would act the same way with even stronger hands. He apparently didn't try to take any heat with hands worse than top pair.

3) His bets and raises were prohibitively large, both pre-flop and on the flop. When he raised, he wanted the pot right then and there, no monkeying around. The concept of sizing his bets so as to tempt an opponent to draw with incorrect odds would have sounded to him like the ravings of a madman.

4) He was terribly uncomfortable making decisions later in the hand than the flop. This tendency was so pronounced that if there was still somebody in the hand with him after the flop betting (either because he called, or the opponent called, or it went check-check), he would routinely offer to just check it down the rest of the way. The natural inference from this is that he knew that he was not very good at the more complex decisions that are required on the later betting rounds. That, obviously, is where more costly mistakes can be made, and he wanted to steer clear of them as much as possible.

With this picture of his play in mind, I kept looking for opportunities to take advantage of it.

I was in the big blind with A-J offsuit. Young woman second to act raised to $12 after an under-the-gun limp. Early in my time at the table she had been playing tight, but lately had been raising more often than was plausible for genuinely big hands. Apparently before I arrived she had been on a heater of premium starting hands, and had convinced the table that they should respect her opening raises. It seems that finding out that she could get away with that was going to her head a little. I thought she was starting to push it beyond the point of credibility. Apparently others concurred in this judgment, because rather than triggering a cascade of folds, this time three of us called. I wasn't thrilled about playing A-J from out of position against multiple opponents, but I prepared myself to just toss it if I didn't connect solidly.

Flop was J-7-2 with two diamonds. I checked. UTG checked. Young woman bet $15--not very convincing of real strength when the pot sits at about $45. My target player quickly raised to $65. Raising the pre-flop raiser with an overbet? That's his "I have top pair" theme song playing loud and clear. And if he has top pair, it is much more likely to be with a worse kicker (especially a king, queen, or ten) than it is to be on equal footing with my ace kicker. Ding! We seem to have us a situation!

My usual reaction here would be either to fold or just call, the latter being a way to be sure that there wasn't going to be either a check-raise from UTG or an all-in reraise from the young woman before getting myself pot-committed. But this was not the usual situation. This was the kind of spot I had been deliberately trying to get to develop--one where this exact player was doing this exact thing, and I had a hand that could beat (or, at worst, tie) his top pair. If he stayed true to form, he would be willing to commit his stack here with what was likely to be far the worst of it. Because the young woman's flop bet was so small--not the way I had seen her play her big-pair hands--I was reasonably confident she had something like A-K or A-Q that was good enough to open with from early position pre-flop, but she had not improved and would likely not want to put a lot more money in. There was always some small chance that the UTG guy had flopped a set and was ready to spring his trap, but that was a risk I would just have to take in order to exploit the opportunity to win much more from my target than most players would be willing to lose in his situation.

I also had this consideration: If I just called and got heads-up with him, he might not be willing to put more chips into the pot on the turn and river, given how gun-shy he was about those later-street decisions. He might decide that I had slow-played a set or had caught a lucky second pair, and fold on that basis. Also, a call might suggest "flush draw" to him, and if a third diamond came, he would suddenly have an easy fold. In other words, the fish might manage to slip off the hook if he had to make decisions out of his comfort zone. Worse, he might actually catch his lucky second pair and I'd be stuck putting in a lot of money drawing nearly dead.

With those thoughts rattling in my head, I decided that I had to, as the old Schlitz Beer commercials put it, go for the gusto. I announced "all in." I had some relief of anxiety when both UTG and the original raiser quickly folded. I had even more relief when, action back on him, the target slumped his shoulders, looked unhappy, and asked for a count. It was about $110 more back to him. He took maybe ten seconds to think, but then he announced a call, with obvious reluctance and resignation in his voice. Since he had been eager in the past to get it all in with top pair, I was a little puzzled by his hesitation here. Perhaps he recognized that my play was generally solid, and he might be in more trouble against me than against other, looser players.

I showed my A-J, and he shook his head as if I had just confirmed his worst fear. Sure enough, he turned over K-J for top pair/second kicker, a hand that must have seemed to him like the stone-cold nuts just a minute earlier.

The turn and river changed nothing, and I scored my double-up. He was very sporting about it, despite clearly feeling dejected. He kept saying, "Nice hand." I thanked him, and assured him that I had just gotten lucky on him--it was a cold deck, and he couldn't have gotten away from his hand. That was a pretty flagrant lie, but I wanted him to keep playing exactly the same way, as far as it was in my power to convince him do so.

Back in May, 2008, I composed what might still be the best single piece I've ever written for this blog, here. (And, as Henry Kissinger might say, it has the added advantage of being true.) Long story short: I did something stupid, got lucky, thought about what table image the stupid move had given me, looked for a situation in which it would look like I was doing the same thing but wasn't, and it worked to perfection. I still like the concluding paragraph I put on that story, and it seems applicable here:

I think the one thing that more than any other makes me occasionally feel like a honest-to-goodness professional at this game is the rare occasion when I'm able to figure out what an opponent's thoughts and/or weaknesses are, to get inside his head, then either design or exploit a situation in a way that takes maximal advantage of what I have concluded about him. This was one of those moments. They don't happen every day--not by a long shot.

"I'm dealing the game"

Last night I was playing at Planet Hollywood. At one point there was a hand with strange action starting with a straddle, several calls, then a big raise, call, min-reraise, couple of calls, and a shove. In the process, I thought that the guy shoving was illegitimately raising himself, because I momentarily lost track of where the raises had come from. I started to point out the problem to the dealer, but after about four words got out of my mouth, I realized my error, and said, "Oh, sorry--never mind." The dealer's response was unusual, in my experience. He said, rather pointedly, "I'm dealing the game here, guy."

It's hard to interpret this as anything other than, "Shut up. I don't need your help. I don't make mistakes."

The fact is, when I speak up to point out a problem in the game, I'm right most of the time. I don't keep track exactly, but it's probably in the neighborhood of 90%. The most common kinds of problems I spot are button location, hands being misread/pot going to wrong player, and illegal raises. Most of the time, dealers appear grateful to have somebody helping get things right.

For example, just last week, at the table next to the one I was at last night (different dealer), there was almost a catastrophe when an all-in on the flop was a set against an overpair. On the turn and river, it seems that everybody was just watching to see if the player with the overpair would catch his miracle two-outer. When he didn't, he started to leave the table, and the dealer started to push the pot to the guy with the set. What nobody except me had noticed was that the final board was a 2-6 straight, though completely jumbled so that it wasn't obvious at a glance. I stopped the dealer and pointed out that it was a chopped pot.

Maybe 10% of the time that I speak up, though, there is something akin to what happened last night: I think there's an error when there isn't. I pretty quickly figure it out and retract my objection with an apology. By far the most common reaction from dealers is along these lines: "No problem. I'm glad you're watching, because I do mess it up once in a while."

So I admit to being a bit miffed at effectively being rebuked by the dealer last night for starting to interject myself. He's somebody who has dealt to me dozens of times, and surely recognizes that I'm a regular and have at least some idea what's going on. I'm not exactly a chatterbox or busybody, trying to wrest control of the game from the dealers at every opportunity.

But beyond that, even if he had never seen me before, it strikes me as both arrogant and unwise to squelch players' attempts to point out and correct errors. The attitude that one doesn't make mistakes and/or that players' vigilance to help prevent problems is unnecessary and unwanted seems to me an invitation to disaster. I told the story of an even more obnoxiously arrogant dealer at the Imperial Palace here. The fact is, dealers make mistakes with some regularity. There's a lot going on, and lots of ways to screw it up, and usually only one way to get it right. Getting everything right all the time is hard. No, not hard--impossible. Dealers should welcome players who are paying enough attention to notice when something gets out of whack, and who care enough to point it out and keep everything kosher, even if it means sometimes having to reassure such a player that things are, in fact, right this time, and the apparent error really isn't one.

About ten minutes after my verbal slap on the wrist, there was a big two-way all-in hand. I was in seat 9 (of 9, to the right of the dealer) and on the button. I noticed that in the commotion of declaring the winner, shoving all the chips his way, etc., the button did not get moved from its place in front of me. The dealer changed decks, made the cut, and dealt the first card to seat 1--at which point I stopped him and pointed out the problem. (The big blind didn't notice that he was going to be paying the big blind for the second time in a row, because he was busy stacking up his new mound of chips.) The two players in the blinds quickly agreed that they had just been the blinds on the previous hand. The dealer set things right and went on with pitching the cards.

I admit that I was deeply, strongly, mightily, intensely tempted to rub his face in it: "Hey, I thought you were dealing this game."

But I didn't.

Karma, or lack thereof

Last night I was playing at Planet Hollywood. Or, to judge by the Halloween costumes that kept going by, Planet Ho.

I was in seat 1. The wife of the guy in seat 2 came up to see him. They chatted a bit. He coaxed her to join the game, as seat 9 (of 9) was open. She agreed, and was preparing to sit down. I really have no preference between these two positions, so I asked her if she would prefer changing with me so that she could sit next to her husband. She was eager to do so, but asked, "Are you sure?" I told her it was fine. She said, "So you're not superstitious?" Me: "Not even a little bit."

I got my stuff moved over, and was prepared for the universe to reward me for going out of my way to be nice to a stranger. I looked down at my first hand and saw the two red jacks. Ah! That's good! The player to my right open-shoved for his last $20. I called. The woman to whom I had given up my seat instantly moved in her entire buy-in of $100.

It folded back around to me. I thought for a while. The obvious conclusion is that she has aces or kings. I had zero read on her level of skill or experience, obviously, so I had to wonder whether she would do this with A-K. If we expand her range from just A-A and K-K to include A-K, then my equity jumps from 19% to 40%, which at least approaches being a good call, with what is already in the pot. But after pondering it for a minute, I decided that at a minimum she would have taken a while to think about whether to shove or just call if she had A-K. So I reluctantly folded.

Sure enough, she had A-A, which had the A-8 of the short stack in horrible shape.

The flop came jack-high. The aces held two ways, but I would have stacked them both if I had stayed in.

In poker, no good deed goes unpunished.


Oh--the picture? That's a Fisker Karma. See other photos of this gorgeous machine here. And no, I don't have that kind of Karma either.

Ed Miller is obviously clueless

In a recent column for Card Player magazine, available here, the demonstrably idiotic Ed Miller* writes:

The “Cold Decked By A Drunk” Beat

There is a loud, drunk person at your $1-$2 table. Every third hand or
so, he moves all-in before the flop. Usually he wins the blinds and a $2 limp or
two. When this happens, he taunts everyone at the table for being scared of him.
Every once in a while he gets called. When that has happened he has shown hands like Jd 5s and 4c 2c . He’s usually up against a big hand, but so far he’s been lucky to win about half of these pots. Whenever he wins, he cackles gleefully. Whenever he loses, he rebuys for $100 from a thick wad of bills.

Ahem! In what conceivable way is J-5 anything like the most powerful hand in poker, the 2-4 (in crubs, no less!)?

On behalf of the Holy Order of the Mighty Deuce-Four, I demand an apology and retraction!


Incidentally, Miller's column continues the hypothetical story like this:

Last time around, drunk guy lost with Qd 4d when his flush
draw missed. He’s sitting on $100, and he moves all-in. Everyone folds to you in
the big blind, and you have Qs Qc . You call. He starts laughing
and says to you, “You’re going to love this one,” and tables Ad Ah.
No queen hits the board, and you lose.

For me, that's no hypothetical. It actually happened. This was back when the Aladdin was in transition to becoming Planet Hollywood and the poker room was temporarily upstairs, at the top of the escalator. There was a drunk Irish guy who was shoving blind every hand. I watched him to be sure he wasn't peeking at his cards first, and he wasn't. About the fifth time in a row that he did that, I picked up J-J. Plenty good enough to call a blind shove. Yep--the luckbox flipped up A-A that time. Arrrggghhh!


*I'm just funnin' here. I actually like Miller's writing a lot. Of all the columnists that churn out stuff for Card Player, Miller is by far the most likely to present a specific tactic or idea that I can actually remember and use the next time I'm going out to play. His book with Sklansky on NLHE also probably did more to change how I think about the game than any other.

The eyes have it--or not

I did not take these photos surreptitiously. I simply walked up to these two gentlemen and asked if I could take a picture of their glasses, and both readily agreed. (I was playing at Planet Hollywood, and I noticed these guys at nearby tables.) What I didn't tell them was that they were becoming contestants in a reader poll: Which one is wearing the more embarrassing glasses?







For earlier posts on ugly sunglasses seen at the poker table, see here, here, here, here, and here. And, OK, I'll admit it, here.

What's your sign?

Another first for me today at the Planet Hollywood game was that two deaf friends joined the game at the same time, on opposite sides of the table. They were frequently signing to each other between hands, though I never noticed it during hands.

All poker rooms that I know of have an "English only" rule. However, some say the rule is in effect only when a hand is in progress, others say it is in effect for everybody at the table all the time. There are cogent arguments to be made either way, and I don't have a strong opinion about one being clearly preferable to the other, as long as it is enforced consistently.

But whichever way the rule is to be enforced in a particular place, the question is this: Should American Sign Language--or any other form of sign language (other spoken languages have their signing parallels, and deaf friends/siblings, I'm told, often concoct their own)--be considered a non-English language the same way that, say, Japanese would be?

It seems to me that it surely must be, for logical consistency, though the rules seem always to be written in terms of what language is spoken during the game, so there might be a loophole that a table lawyer could argue about.

Money in or out?

I was playing at Planet Hollywood today. Here's the situation that came up:

Four players to the flop. Player A goes all-in for $55. Dealer announces the all-in and tosses the little "all-in" button in front of A.

Player B pushes all his chips in, total of $17. Again, dealer announces it and tosses another all-in button to B.

Player C is the table big stack. He verbally announces call.

Player D says nothing, but puts out $17.

The dealer points out to him that because of A's action, it is $55 to call. (Player D is in seat 9 of 9, next to the dealer, while A is in seat 2, less easily in his field of view.) D reconsiders, decides to fold instead, takes back his $17.

Player A says that those chips have to stay in the pot.

The floor is called, situation explained. Ruling is that the $17 has to stay in the pot.

I think this is wrong. Yes, Player D certainly should have been following the action. He had plenty of warning that the bet was $55 to him: the chip stack, the dealer's verbal announcement of two all-ins, plus two buttons tossed out. Also, he could have asked what a call would cost if he had any doubt. I am generally unsympathetic to people not paying attention, not doing their due diligence, etc., and believe that if the mistake costs them money they will be more inclined to learn to do things right.

Still, in this particular situation, nobody had acted behind him. In fact, nobody could act behind him (unless he raised), since he was the last one in order. Nobody was misled by his mistake. There is no way he could have gained any advantage by doing this intentionally as some sort of angle-shooting; if there were, I would consider that a decent argument for making the bet stand, as a deterrent to such shenanigans. But here, I think it's a "no harm, no foul" situation.

My rule books don't seem to be especially clear on this point. The best I can find is from Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, p. 66, rule 10.06:

A player who bets or calls by making a forward motion and releasing chips
into the pot is bound by that action. However, when facing a raise, if a player is unaware that a pot has been raised and places enough chips in the pot to call an unraised bet only, the dealer shall advise the player that the pot has been raised, whereupon the player may reconsider and change his action, provided that no one has acted behind the player. If someone has acted behind that player, that player has the option of forfeiting the chips he has released into the pot and surrendering his hand, or calling the raise he faces.

Admittedly, this doesn't exactly fit what happened here, but I think the general idea is the same. Misunderstanding the amount of a call is conceptually no different from misunderstanding a raise as a bet. (Cooke doesn't explicitly say that he's talking about limit games, but you can sort of guess that that's what he's thinking about. After all, he is almost exclusively a limit player himself.)

I can't see that it should make any difference whether the $17 all-in came before or after the $55 all-in. Either way, the guy misunderstood the amount of the bet, changed his mind when the action was pointed out to him, and the result was no different in any way than if he had correctly understood the bet and just decided to fold in the first place.

I didn't speak up, because (1) this is not a situation in which I'm confident of what the standard rule would be, and (2) floor people are not generally inclined to care what my opinion is, especially when I'm not involved in the hand.

But I'm curious what others think the best ruling would be.

Sisyphus in Vegas

As I was entering Planet Hollywood yesterday from the Strip (having just been across the street at Bellagio), I noticed this poor guy.

His job is cleaning the fingerprints off the glass doors. PH provides big handles, but lots of people push or pull on the door itself instead.* As soon as he finishes getting one door back to its pristine state and steps to the next, somebody comes along and smudges the one he just did. (I was going to make a reference to the Golden Gate bridge painters having to start over again as soon as they finish, but it turns out that that's not true.)

He is more patient than I would be. I would lose my job within the first hour, because I'd be yelling at people, "Hey, I just cleaned that! Can't you use the handle, you twit?"

There are many unpleasant, thankless jobs in this city. His is one of them. Tip o' the grumpy hat for doing it well and without complaint (as far as I know).



*I'm not necessarily faulting them. There are sometimes good reasons, such as the metal door pulls becoming literally too hot to touch when in direct sunlight.

I'll show you mine, you show me yours

By interesting coincidence, this afternoon at Planet Hollywood I encountered a situation in which I vountarily showed my cards, quite apart from the various circumstances and categories I mentioned in the post earlier today.

I had been at the table only about ten minutes, so was still figuring out who did what. But within my first couple of hands, I had easily spotted the most dangerous player at the table. He had obviously played a ton of poker, and had a mien of strong, quiet confidence about his play. The first hand I watched him play, I thought he was just trying to blow his opponent off of a hand, until he turned over the nuts. When I'm that far wrong about another player, it's a big red flag that I'm going to have to handle him carefully.

So, of course, that's who I am in the hand with when I have to make my first big decision. I have 8-9 offsuit in the small blind. There are three limpers ahead, so I join in, as does the big blind. Flop is Q-8-9, with two spades. (I have none.) I bet $8, about the size of the pot. It folds around to Mr. Dangerous, who raises to $20.

My choices here are to reraise or just call. Calling is pretty cheap, and gives me a pull at one of the four cards I would most like to see on the turn. However, it doesn't give me any more information, and if I don't hit one of those four cards, I'm going to have a problem on the turn: If I check and he bets, or if I bet again and he raises again, then what do I do? I won't be able to tell if he is just playing a top-pair hand (e.g., K-Q), two pair, a set, or a straight, and my decision will be both difficult and potentially expensive.

I decided instead to reraise. I thought that he was smart enough that he would not continue any one-pair hands past that point. If he flat-called, a draw would seem most likely--perhaps a combination straight and flush draw. If he reraised me back, I could then be highly confident that the minimum he had was a better two pair. Most likely in that scenario he would have flopped a straight, since my holding 8-9 made all of the two-pair combinations and sets less likely. (I assumed that a set of queens was basically out of the question, with no pre-flop raise.) Besides, I learned a long time ago that people have an abnormal fondness for J-10, and anytime the board makes that a strong hand, I am on the lookout for it being hidden away under somebody's card cap.

So I made it $60. (I had started the hand with nearly all of my original $300 buy-in.) He thought for about ten seconds before moving all-in. It would cost me about $130 more to call.

Just about the only hand that he could plausibly be holding that I would currently be beating was something like Q-10 of spades, giving him top pair, flush draw, and gutshot straight draw--and even if he had that, I'm not thrilled about getting a lot of money in with that many bullets to dodge twice. Furthermore, his radar on me is probably as alerted as mine is on him. If so, he would have to peg me for being solid enough to have a minimum of two pair with the reraise. Given that, his willingness to shove speaks volumes. Most likely I have four outs, and it might be just two. In fact, should he have 9-9, I'd be drawing virtually dead. Not a good spot.

I stuck with my plan and folded. But I thought it was worth seeing if I could get some confirmatory information out of him. For the reasons explained in my earlier post, I don't like to verbally request somebody to show. Once in a while, though, I will silently invite it by showing my own hand. This was one such occasion.

I turned my cards in to the dealer face up. I didn't fire them in with anger or frustration, or make any face or sigh that would tend to say, "I just want you all to see how screwed I got in this hand." I have no respect for that kind of pathetic, sympathy-seeking display, and wouldn't think somebody else would either.

It worked. He nodded my way and flashed his J-10 before mucking. I gave the table a couple of quick knuckles in acknowledgement. I was pleased to learn that my read on him was better than it had been in the first hand I had watched him play. I thought I got the more valuable side of this information exchange.

I like that kind of transaction. This may not be rational, but I'm much more inclined to reciprocate, just as Mr. Dangerous did today, to a silent revelation than I am to somebody who verbally makes the request. I'm not entirely sure why, but the former seems more mutually respectful to me. It doesn't always work, being on the initiating side, but I don't think I'm giving away too much in the attempt.

"There is a figure, an exact figure"

A poker hand that I played the other night at Planet Hollywood got me thinking about a great episode of the great sitcom "Taxi." It took me a while, but with the wonders of the web, I was able to track down the episode from some key words in the plot, and actually found it online. It's season 4, episode 22 (the 88th episode of the series), first aired on April 8, 1982.

Jim (Christopher Lloyd, who is funny every second he is on screen) accidentally burns up Louie's (Danny DeVito) apartment and everything in it. But Jim's millionaire father is willing to make good on the damages, writing Louie a blank check, with the instruction to fill it out for whatever amount he feels is fair compensation. The greedy Louie is tormented by the problem of what dollar amount to write on the check, which he wants to be as big as will be accepted, dismissing the laughable (to him) suggestion that he make it merely for the actual amount of his losses. "If I fill this check out for a million bucks, his dad would never cover it. But there is a figure, an exact figure, one big enough so that he'll go, 'brrrrrrr' [shudders], but not so big that he won't say, 'ehhhhhh' [shrugging dismissively]." (Sorry for the vagueness. It's all conveyed with voice tone and body language.) After much hand-wringing, Louie finally settles on $29,542. Jim calls his father, who OKs the amount. Louie is at first ecstatic at his windfall, but then nearly has a heart attack when Jim relays the news that his father had been expecting--and prepared to pay--a figure of about $200,000.

(You can watch the "Taxi" episode in three parts on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. )

I think of this conundrum every time I'm faced with the situation of a river bet when I have a hand I'm sure is a winner and an opponent who shows willingness to call. The problem is trying to guess the figure, the exact figure, that is the maximum that he will decide to call. Make it too big and he folds, leaving you with no further profit on the hand. Make it too small, and you leave money in his stack that should be in yours.

Thursday night I had been playing at Planet Hollywood for about five hours, without much to show for it. I had started with the maximum buy-in of $300, and had only increased it to about $400. I was thinking that this was going to be kind of a disappointment of a night and maybe I should pack it in. But about that time, I found the two red jacks in the small blind. Now, a lot of people hate jacks, but I have found them to play very profitably, for the most part.

One of the few decent players at the table--very solid, classic tight-aggressive style--raised to $15 from the cutoff seat. I happily called, even though I knew he could easily have a bigger pair. It was just us to the flop, which was a lovely Q-J-x with two spades. I checked. He bet $20. I called. The turn was the 7c. I checked again. He bet $30. This was significant, because he had previously shown a tendency to fire only once if he missed the flop, so his bet told me that his minimum hand here was an top pair (e.g., A-Q), and more likely he had an overpair to the board. Of course, there was a chance that he had me in a horrible set-over-set situation, but you just have to accept that possible fate once in a while and not let it hamper you. I check-raised to $90. He called with almost no hesitation, again suggesting that he genuinely liked his hand.

The river was maybe the best card I could have asked for: the 7s. It gave me a full house. If perchance he had something like the As-Ks, he would have made his nut flush. More realistically, though, if he had an overpair, he would have improved to two pair, and thus think that perhaps I had hit the flop with Q-J and had now been counterfeited by his better two pair. My check-raise on the turn would not be consistent with how he would expect me to play a flush draw, so I didn't think he would put me on that and be scared by a third spade.

So now I had the dilemma of how much to bet. There was about $245 in the pot. I had about $275 left, and he was roughly equally deep. How much would he call with just an overpair, which I had concluded was his most likely holding? I took a little more time than usual on this, both because I was sincerely pondering how much I could charge him, but also because I was hoping that the Hollywooding would make him think that I was falsely representing the flush with just top pair (e.g., A-Q in the hole), or that I had been playing Q-J, realized the dilemma that the paired board gave me, and was trying to decide whether to give up or go for it. I have no idea if my hesitation actually got him thinking that way, but that was the goal. Anyway, I finally landed on $140 as my amount. To give it a finishing touch, I did some little mannerisms that were different from the way I had bet every previous time (like announce the amount verbally before putting it in), because he was one of the few who might have been paying attention; I hadn't been caught bluffing all night, so he might notice changes and think they indicated something was different this time. Again, I can't know whether that bit of trickery really did anything, but it couldn't hurt.

He took nearly two minutes to think. He counted out the amount, separated it from the rest of his chips, looked at what he would have left, appeared to be trying to estimate the pot, rechecked the board and his down cards a couple of times, etc. He finally pushed it forward. I showed my boat. He nodded grimly, knocked the table, and quietly said, "Nice hand" before tossing his cards away unseen. (I'm left with the conviction that he had either A-A or K-K for the overpair, or, less likely, Q-J for top two pair.)

His reaction makes me think that my river bet probably got very close to that elusive "exact figure" that is the most that he would be willing to put out as a crying call without being so excruciatingly painful that he decides to fold. That's rare. Usually in those situations I'm left with the feeling that I blew it one direction or the other.

But still, could I have gotten more? Ed Miller recently wrote a Card Player magazine column on how no-limit players tend to bet too small with their strong hands, missing opportunities to take an opponent's whole stack. (See here.) Similarly, the book he co-wrote with David Sklansky, No Limit Hold'em: Theory and Practice, emphasizes the need to plan bet sizing so as to capture entire stacks. So even though I think I extracted the maximum on the river, I'm left wondering if I could have done better on earlier streets. Would I have gotten more by betting out on the flop and hoping for a raise? Would a check-raise on the flop have set up a bigger pot by the end of the hand? I suppose there is no way to know. I will just have to be satisfied with the roughly $260 I made from him, and continue to wonder if it could have been more, or if a different line would have scared him off before he became married to his hand.

What do you think?

Did I get leveled?

I played at Planet Hollywood last night. An hour or so into my session, we were joined by a new player. He brought only $60 in chips to the table, and minimum buy-in is $100. So first there was some delay in explaining to him why he had to get more chips. He was Asian, with a thick accent, and seemed inexperienced in how poker rooms work, so it all took some explaining and negotiating.

Once that was settled, he asked the dealer, "This is like video poker, right?" Because of his accent, nobody understood him at first. I think I was the first one to decipher his question (after the third iteration) and restate it for the dealer. The dealer understandably laughed, because the guy was smiling, as if he were asking this as an "I'm so dumb" joke. He answered sarcastically, "Yeah, just like video poker." This may seem unprofessional as I've told it, but I think everybody assumed the question was only in jest, so a jokey answer was not out of place. After all, if he were serious, then he was sitting down with $100 in play, not even knowing that he was playing against other players instead of against the house. I have never seen a player that green at a no-limit hold'em table. But then the guy followed it up by asking whether you trade in cards to try to make quads and royal flush like video poker. Then we understood that he was not kidding about his question, and the dealer appropriately changed the nature of his answer, and explained the whole process and structure of hold'em.

In fitting with never having played hold'em before, it took the player a couple of rounds to figure out about paying blinds, acting in turn, etc. He lost his first buy in making a couple of ridiculously bad calls. He left to hit the ATM and asked the dealer to save his seat. You would usually expect a couple of unkind comments about his skill level after he left the table, but there were none here, because this entire table was overall the most inexperienced I've ever sat at. It was like sitting at one of the instructional tables where they use tournament chips just to illustrate how the game works--except that we were playing for hundreds of dollars. I posted a couple of notes on Twitter about the table generally and this player in particular.

The guy came back with another $100. The game continued. He was chatting a lot with the player next to him. I missed most of it because of his nearly incomprehensible accent, the general noise level of the PH poker room, and the music in my earphones. I wish now I had listened in more, to have gotten more clues about his understanding of the game.

Over time, I began to wonder whether his whole extreme-newbie thing was an elaborate act. The first thing that was out of character was that he was rather facile with handling chips. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time observing players new to casino poker, and most often they keep their hands completely away from their chip stacks until they need to put money into the pot. There are exceptions, such as those with a lot of home game experience, but not many. I couldn't assume this Asian guy had home game practice, or else he wouldn't have mistaken hold'em for 5-card draw. But, I reasoned, maybe he played a lot of blackjack and became adept at handling chips there. On the other hand, not everything that I noticed him doing was consistent with how a blackjack player would handle chips. For example, most new players making a bet with, say, five chips will stack them neatly and push or place that stack just across the betting line. This guy, though, would casually lay such a stack across the felt with an apparently practiced motion that left the chips in a neat row. Hmmmm.

The second thing that drew my skepticism, though, was the relative speed with which he acted. Again, my experience with true beginners is that they take forever for even the simplest decisions. He didn't. He was able to come to very quick decisions about calls and folds and raises. For example, in the only pot of any size that I contested with him, I had 9-9, and the flop was 8-high. He bet $5. I raised to $20. When it got back to him, he didn't hesitate at all to move all in for an additional $56. I called, not putting him on a higher pair, since there had been no pre-flop raise. There are so many $1-2 players who will commit their stacks (especially relative small stacks like his) with just top pair in that spot that I thought a call was warranted. He turned over 10-10. I was immediately struck by the fact that he required no deliberation at all to make this all-in raise. If he were really playing hold'em for the first time, wouldn't he be expected to stop and think about whether he had the best hand? Of course, maybe he's just naturally an impulsive person. Or maybe he's just so green that it doesn't occur to him that his tens might be no good there. Still, it definitely caught my attention that he showed none of the mental wavering that is usually seen in inexperienced players.

He left after an hour or two, cashing out something around $350. I noticed that he knew, without asking, where to go to fetch himself a chip rack and how and where to cash out. Those are the kind of things that new players usually ask about, or at least you can see them turning their heads around as they try to figure it out without asking. Also, along the way, after taking a restroom break, he knew what to do when the dealer asked him whether he wanted to make up his blinds or wait; most new players would require specific instructions about what that meant.

As he was racking up, I realized that after the first buy-in, which he donked off badly, he had never got his chips in with the worst of it. His calls were correct. He raised where he should have. He folded to strength--and without hesitation. None of these things can be said for the play of a typical tourist hitting a Vegas poker table for the first time. Even the fact of him leaving when he was up, instead of staying to give it all back, was atypical for a new player.

I was left completely unsure of what I had witnessed. If the first part of his time at the table was an act, it was the most convincing one I've seen--including throwing away $100 as part of the gig. (Well, I guess I should qualify that. Obviously if somebody else has played the role of a rube so thoroughly that I never even suspected it was an act, that would have to top this performance. But I kind of doubt that. I'm pretty observant about picking up on clues and inconsistencies, and I'd like to think that I can sniff out the pretenders.) For 15 minutes or so, I was absolutely confident (and, I admit, salivating more than a little) that I was dealing with the first person I had ever seen sit down at a no-limit hold'em table not even knowing what hold'em was. But by the end of his session, I had seen enough from him that was not consistent with that status to have grave doubts.

My best guess in retrospect is that he is a more experienced than average player who decided to try the dumb role, but just couldn't pull it off for more than a short time. He hadn't thought through all of the things that mark inexperienced players as new and how to imitate them, and thus tipped his hand. I think it is unlikely that what I observed could be found in one who was genuinely so naive that he thought poker and video poker were the same game. But I'm still not entirely sure. It is well within the realm of possibility that he was just was he first appeared to be, and the traces of fluency and lack of hesitation that I saw were borne of a natural generalized confidence and/or aided by the booze he had been drinking, plus some experience at other games.

I feel like I've been in a real-world version of "To Tell the Truth." I'm not writing down his number on my card as the genuine article--i.e., the real inexperienced player--but without the reveal at the end of the show, I'll never know for sure.

Problem dealer at Planet Hollywood

In early December, Las Vegas Michael, editor of the wonderful allvegaspoker.com site, posted some notes about the Planet Hollywood poker room, after playing a few sessions there for the first time in a while. Among other things, he wrote:

Many Dealers, though friendly, seem to not be knowledgeable on proper
mechanics. I have too often seen dealers matching stacks on all ins, rolling the
deck, squaring the muck, and significant amounts of extraneous talking and
theatrics. I will grant that the theatrics and talking might be a venue driven
situation, since at PH, the atmosphere is significantly more casual than other
properties, but the procedural issues with stack matching, etc, are
unacceptable.

In reply, I posted this quick observation:

Strange--my experience with the PH dealers is almost 100% positive. There
is one that I would deem genuinely incompetent. A couple of weeks ago I was
involved in a big three-way all-in with a side pot, and she attempted to
completely screw it up. Fortunately, I was paying close attention, and THREE
TIMES in the same pot kept her from making what would have been disastrous
errors (first reading the hands wrong, then trying to shove the whole pot to one
player, then counting out an amount for the side pot from the biggest stack, but
LEAVING that with the player and trying to take the other part of the stack).
She just doesn't pay attention to what's going on. But other than her, I think
the PH dealers are a good bunch. I do notice the technical flaws, but they don't
bother me as much as they do LVM. Keeping things (1) moving, (2) enjoyable, and
(3) under control (i.e., in terms of enforcing rules) are generally done quite
well.

I was there playing again last night, and again had problems with this same dealer--enough now that I'm ready to label her as among the worst in the whole city.

The setup

First I need to tell you how we got to the situations that provoked this post.

My first hand at the table (before the dealer in question joined us) was AA, one off the button. This is only the third time that I can recall getting dealt aces in my first hand in a session. It's a bit of a rush, but also somewhat problematic, in that I have no sense for how people are playing and hence how to get maximum value. I put in a raise to $15. Only the small blind called. The flop was K-10-x rainbow. He checked to me. I bet $25. He check-raised to $105. He was the big stack at the table, and I had to wonder whether he was just bullying. Alternatively, he might have thought that I was trying to take control of the table by raising my first hand with any two cards, and had decided to quash that effort. I'm perfectly capable of folding aces when I'm convinced I'm beat, but he wasn't convincing me. I called. The turn was check-check. On an apparently innocuous river, he bet $100. I still wasn't persuaded. I thought a while, then called. He instantly mucked without showing, so apparently my read was correct. I moved from my $300 buy-in to about $520 in one hand.

Just a few hands later I was in the big blind with the horrible 6-10 offsuit. But the pot was unraised and I flopped two pair. I bet it and got called on the flop and turn by two players, taking my stack to about $590.

First offense

At this point, the former big stack two seats to my left went on an extended break (he didn't return until just before I cashed out), and we were joined by a nice young married couple. I was in seat one, she took seat two, and her husband took seat four, so they were effectively the two positions to my immediate left.

As I've reported here many time, I usually don't talk much at the table--or in any other social situations, either. But I was in an unusually good mood, and I do keep reminding myself that being Mr. Nice Guy is something I really need to work on, for reasons of increased profit. I could tell in a heartbeat that these two were novices to casino poker. They were unsure about all the rules and procedures, and each bought in for the minimum of $50. But they were smiling and laughing, clearly there to have a good time. So I decided that this was a fine opportunity to channel Mike Caro and pour on the Mr. Friendly act.

I chatted them up, asked about their trip, made dumb jokes that they laughed at, etc. Almost as soon as they sat down, the husband noted my chips and said, "Looks like you're doing well." I brushed it off: "Just got really lucky in a couple of good spots."

Maybe one orbit into their time at the table, we now have Bad Dealer in the box. I'm in the big blind. Wife limps from under the gun. Husband raises to $6. There's a couple of other callers. I have K-6 offsuit. I call. Flop is J-7-6, giving me bottom pair. I check. Wife checks. Husband bets $6. It's folded around to me. I call. Wife calls. Turn is a king, giving me two pair and the likely winner. I check. Wife checks. Husband bets $12. He's now into the hand for $24, has only about that much left, and there is about $55 in the pot. I assume he'll feel pot-committed, so I check-raise to $50, which, of course, is enough to cover both of them. Wife folds. Husband folds, surprisingly.

I don't want to look like a bully, so I show the two pair. While doing so, I say, "I'm sorry--I just got ridiculously lucky on you. This is a terrible hand. I should have folded before the flop, and I should have folded again on the flop."

I meant it as a phony self-deprecating remark.* I specifically had in mind Caro's suggested script, which I liked and remembered from having posted it here:

You should never deliberately upset opponents.... So, immediately after
you've tricked an opponent and won a pot, utter something friendly that
indicates you were just having fun. I like to say things that suggest I played
the hand badly and simultaneously enhance my loose image, such as, "I was hoping
you'd call, because I've been out of line so many times. You're way ahead of me
overall, but I'm still trying the same stupid tricks." Just giggle and move on.
Your opponent isn't likely to be offended, because you're talking about your bad
plays, not how superior you were with this one.

The husband took it well, smiled, and said, "Oh, nice hand!"

To my shock and chagrin, at this point the dealer injected herself into the conversation. She turned to me and said, "But he didn't raise before the flop." Before I could regain my composure and figure out how to respond, she corrected herself. "No, wait--he did, but it was only a small raise, so it was OK for you to call."

GAAAAAAAAA! Is she really this clueless? Well, yes, apparently she is. First, she has no business commenting on the play of a hand, whether it's in progress or completed, period. Editorializing is not in the job description. It is virtually certain to annoy somebody who was in the hand. Second, she's trying to assuage me, apparently, because I'm saying that I played the hand badly. But the result is that she is implicitly--and darn near explicitly--criticizing the guy that I'm trying to assuage and be friendly with! Her remarks serve to (1) alert him to raise more to prevent the kind of play I made, and (2) make him feel that he misplayed the hand. How can she think this is a good thing to be doing?

Second offense

A short time later I'm on the button with A-10 offsuit. There are a few limpers. Sometimes I'll limp along in this kind of situation, but this time I decided to raise, maybe pick up dead money, maybe narrow the field. I made it $14. An early-position player (let's call him A) called. A middle-position player (let's call him B) looked at his diminished stack and decided to move all in, for a total of $27. I quickly did the math to confirm that I could legally raise. I preferred to isolate and play against just the all-in guy, without having to be faced with more decisions to make with such a mediocre hand. I also didn't think that A would want to keep putting more money in. So I announced a raise: another $30 on top of B's all-in bet.

I put in the amount of the call, but before I could add the extra $30, the dealer stopped me. She said I couldn't raise because my original bet was $14 and the all-in was $27, which wasn't quite double.

I wasn't too surprised by this. It's an easy mistake to make, and the amount was so close that I had had to silently double-check myself before I was certain that a raise was legal. I pointed out that my original raise was $12, and B's reraise was $13 more, so that reopened the action to me.

This kind of situation has happened a few times before, and every previous time that I can recall, the dealers immediately recognize their mistake and we go on. Not this time. She continued to argue with me. She wasn't even a little bit uncertain, as far as I could tell from her words and tone. She was absolutely positive that all that mattered was that my bet was $14, and B's raise was to $27, which wasn't a full raise, so I was not eligible to reraise. I had to go through the whole thing twice more, explaining that my $14 bet was a raise increment of only $12 over the big blind, which was what mattered. She finally caught on and allowed the raise, as I was on the verge of asking her to call the floor over, on the assumption that she was too thick-skulled to ever figure it out.

This seriously annoyed me, her insistence on sticking to an incorrect conclusion even in the face of being told differently by somebody who, if she had a lick of sense, she would realize seemed like he might actually know what he was talking about. I also resented that I basically had to come out of "hiding"; the interaction made it perfectly clear to everybody at the table that I was very experienced and understood the rules of the game better than the dealer did. That is not the image I was shooting for.

I'm pretty forgiving of occasional dealer errors. Nobody's perfect. I don't ask that dealers never make mistakes. I only ask that they respond appropriately after making one: fix it, call the floor if necessary, apologize, and move on. But this particular dealer has now exhausted my tolerance. She doesn't pay attention to the game and she makes critical errors at a much higher frequency than anybody else that works there. Now, on top of that, she goes out of her way to interfere with me trying to make another player feel good about his play, then irritates the bejesus out of me by refusing to acknowledge that she was wrong until I finally had to badger her into recognizing the situation for what it was.

(Incidentally, here's how the hand played out: Player A surprised me by moving all-in. It was only $11 more than my $30 reraise, so of course I called. I showed my cards, as did my opponents. I was up against K-Q and K-J. It hardly mattered, though. The flop came an incredible A-10-10, giving me a full house, and leaving both opponents drawing almost dead. This not only won me a nice little pot, but gave me a chance to make further jokes with my target couple about how skilled I was to be able to flop full houses when I needed to.)

In general, I think that the team of dealers Planet Hollywood has on staff is one of its strongest assets. But this one dealer is a black mark on a room that I otherwise like quite a bit. I don't like the thought of anybody losing his or her job, but she just isn't up to the task, and there are scads and scads of unemployed dealers who would handle the responsibility far more professionally than she does. I hope she is replaced by one of them.



*In retrospect, however, what I said was probably true. In light of the low implied odds being offered by the short stacks this couple had, I really should have folded that crap.


Addendum, April 14, 2010

In retrospect, I should not have check-raised the tourist couple. Another of Caro's frequent teachings is that check-raising carries a high risk of destroying the light spirit of a friendly game. It's too war-like and aggressive. It might maximize profit for that one hand, but it will tend to make the opponents much more wary of you thereafter, thus reducing profits for the whole session. He suggests betting out or check-calling instead. That rings true with me, and if I had it to do over again, I would just bet out on the turn, after having made two pair.

It's not my birthday, but I'll cry if I want to anyway

Saturday I wrote about a difficult hand at Caesars Palace in which I arguably could and/or should have folded a set on the flop, and lost all my chips because I didn't. (The most common reaction from commenters seems to be approximately, "Yeah, maybe you could fold, but I would have gone broke, too.")

I went back to Caesars yesterday (Sunday) and tried again. Here's how that session ended: I'm sitting on about $250 in a $1/3 NLHE game. I've had a long dry spell, so when I find Ks-Js one off the button, I put in my standard-for-the-day raise to $13. The big blind calls, as do two of the previous limpers, making a pot of about $47 after the rake.

Flop is J-9-5 rainbow. It gets checked around to me. I bet $35. The only caller is an older, quirky gentleman that I've played with a few times before. He could call here with any piece of this flop, so I'm not worried. Turn is the jack of the fourth suit, giving me trips with a king kicker, no straights or flushes, no flush draws, and only minimal straight draw potential. The guy checks. This time I bet $95. He calls. This greatly narrows his range. He either has the case jack--almost certainly with a worse kicker--or a full house. The river is a blank--a deuce, I think. He moves all in. I have only a little over $100 left, and the pot is effectively about $305. I believe that he would make this move with a jack with any kicker, thinking it's good. Since I have no way to distinguish that from a full house, and I'm getting 3:1, it's an easy call. He turns over 5-5. He flopped a set, turned a boat.

Today I was playing at Planet Hollywood, playing $1/$2 NLHE. It was the first time I've made a point to get there during one of their aces-cracked promotional periods (Monday, 2 to 4 p.m.). I was curious about the flow of bodies into and out of the room around the time that the promotion begins and ends. As it turned out, my back was to the podium, and Holly Madison was doing a photo shoot just to my right (see immediately preceding post), so I was kind of distracted and didn't pay much attention to the ebb and flow of the room. Can't tell you anything about it.

There was an odd series of hands in which I had pocket pairs four consecutive times, and each time the guy on my left raised to $10 after I had limped. He was a very typical tourist--not horrible, but making the most common mistakes that are endemic to the species (playing too many hands, making too many loose calls, being predictable). On the first of these four, I correctly called him down with pocket 9s when he continued betting small after missing the flop. On the second and third, I had to let go (but with only the $10 pre-flop loss) after flopping overcards and other players seeming to like what the board gave them more than I did.

On the fateful fourth of these in a row, I had the red 5s. Mr. Tourist raised to $10 for the fourth consecutive time. This sequence was highly unusual for him. He had not had good results with the previous three, so I didn't think he was raising with air, but he could have just about any pair, any half-decent ace, any two Broadway cards. I called.

Flop was K-8-5 with two clubs. I checked. He bet $15, I think. There had been one other pre-flop caller, who now folded. I just called. I wasn't worried about him holding two clubs. He tended to c-bet once on a missed flop, then shut down or bet very small on the turn. I thought he would bet small if a blank came, big if he got a card he liked, and either way I could go for a check-raise.

Turn was the ace of spades. If the king wasn't the money card for me, that ace very likely was--especially if I were lucky enough for him to have had A-K to start with. I checked again. He bet $20. I was a little disappointed in that, because the weak turn bet suggested, from his previously established pattern, that he was not very strong, and therefore might not put any more money in. So I did just over a min-raise, making it $45. I thought that amount would be irresistible if he had any piece of the board, and a call would get him feeling sucked in for a big bet on the river. (I had started the hand with about $350; he with about $300.)

To my surprise, he responded by moving all-in. But that was fine with me. I thought it was most likely that he had made two pair, especially with A-K. Sadly for me, though, this time he had A-A, making his bigger set on the turn, and there was no one-outer rescue for me.

(The anti-climactic end of the session's story was this: I was left with about $50. That went away when I followed a bunch of limpers on the button with K-8 of diamonds and flopped the second nut flush. I called a small bet on the flop, then raised all-in for only a little more than my opponent's turn bet. She had just the nut flush draw with the ace of diamonds. A fourth diamond hit the board on the river, obviously.)

The long and short of it is this: in three days, I have been felted twice and very nearly so a third time with and/or by sets--twice with the bad end of set-over-set situations, and once with strong trips losing to a set-cum-boat. Total damages from these three hands: about $825. Twice during that three-day stretch I have flopped sets and won with them--both times just a small pot, with everybody folding immediately.

Combine all that with the still-recent memory of my biggest-ever loss with a flopped set last month (to C.K.), and you may understand me harboring this sentiment: I never want to see another set as long as I live, not in my opponents' hands, and not even in my own.

Celebrity sighting

I was playing at Planet Hollywood this afternoon when a bunch of people started coming in and setting up equipment around the next table over. Lots of cameras and lighting equipment was being brought out, so clearly some sort of shoot was about to get underway. I asked the dealer what was on the agenda. He didn't know.

A short time later I looked over my shoulder again, and saw Holly Madison sitting at the table--clearly the object of the shoot. She had a couple of her dogs with her. Over time, I deduced from wisps of overheard conversation that she is promoting "I Love Dogs Diamonds," boutique jewelry for canines.

All I know is this: when C.M. Coolidge painted his famous pictures, the dogs playing poker were NOT wearing diamonds.