Who would make the better poker player--Special Agent Seely Booth, or Dr. Temperance Brennan? Booth: Wily, suspicious, ruthless, and psychologically insightful, but emotionally volatile, easily tilted. Brennan: Wicked smart, cool under pressure, unflappable, analytical, calculating, fearless, but with no insight into others' feelings and motivations, uncomfortable using deception.
A recurring question in comments and emails is why I favor seats 1 and 10 (or 9, at nine-handed tables; for this post, I'm just going to always call them 1 and 10), next to the dealer. I've mentioned this preference many times in my stories, and for most players those are the least favorite positions, so it's a natural question.
Let me start by asking you to ponder this question: Is there any position at the table that has an intrinsic strategic or tactical advantage over the others?
I first came across this concept in a column in Card Player magazine when I was still living in Minnesota--probably early 2006, though I've searched for it in the online C.P. archives and can't find it, so I can't give proper credit. The answer is yes: Seat 1 has the clear advantage. That's because you want to be looking at the players on your left to see if they are telegraphing information about their intentions. Because of the curve of the table, you can do that from seat 1 more easily and naturally (i.e., without craning your neck and otherwise being obvious about it) than from any other position. Depending on the exact size and shape of the table and positioning of the seats, seat 7 or 8 might offer a similar advantage, but it's less consistent, and the angle usually isn't quite as good.
After that one objective advantage, all of the rest of my reasons are purely subjective personal preferences. In no particular order, they include:
--There are many dealers that I like, and it's much easier to chat quietly and semi-privately with them from one foot away than from across the table.
--I fairly often find a need to point out something to the dealer (pot not right, button not right, foreign language being spoken, improper talk about the hand in progress, etc.), and it's easier to do so from close at hand. Again, I like being quiet and discreet when possible, rather than having to make myself heard above the din of the casino and voices of the other players.
--With the exception of the player on the other side of the dealer, I usually have an excellent view of everybody else.
--For reasons not entirely clear to me, players in the 1 and 10 seats sort of disappear from the sight--at least the conscious sight--of the other players. From a couple of seats (2 and 9, especially) this is partly a function of blocked sightlines. But there's something weird psychologically, too, that I can't really put my finger on. I can tell you this for certain, after many, many hours of observation: The players who most often get skipped in the action are those in the 1 and 10 seats. I.e., seat 1 will tend to act before seat 10 has, seat 2 will tend to act before seat 1 has, etc. It seems that the occupants of those positions just fade into the background. Since being unnoticed is the effect I want most of the time, those two seats are a natural match.
--Because most other people ditch seats 1 and 10 as soon as something else opens up, they are the two most likely to be the open ones when you join a table. It's convenient to like the thing that you will most often be forced to take.
--As a corollary of that, you can often get seat 1 or seat 10 even if there are no vacancies. (This happens if, e.g., one of the players in them wanted to change, but didn't notice or was away from the table when another seat became available, so he missed his opportunity.) You just ask their current occupants if they'd prefer to sit where you are, and if the answer is yes (as it often is), make the swap.
--I have the shortest possible distance for mucking cards, for putting chips within reach of the dealer, passing tips, etc. No overshooting, no undershooting, no accidentally flipped cards while mucking.
--Nearly every poker room has the tables oriented so that the dealer is facing the front desk, to facilitate communication with the floor, brush, etc. I like kind of keeping an eye on what's going on in the whole room (well, not the big rooms, but the smaller ones), so picking the 1 and 10 seats automatically puts me where I can see what's happening.
--Conversely, if there are any disadvantaged seats for watching television, it will tend to be those two. The casino doesn't need its dealers watching football. I don't care what's on, and it's better for me not to be distracted anyway.
--Seats 1 and 10 nearly always have the most elbow room at the table, the least chance of that awkward, silent struggle for control of the no-man's-land between seats. Similarly, unless you get somebody with unusually long legs in the adjacent seat, the foot area tends to be less contested than other table positions.
--You only have to sit next to one other player. Since poker players frequently smell of B.O., stale cigarette smoke, booze, bad breath, etc., cutting in half the number of them you have to share personal space with is a boon. You also halve your chance of sitting next to a chatterbox who will want to prattle in your ear about every thought that passes through his feeble and/or drunken brain. In those two respects, it's a lot like the advantage of a window or aisle seat in a commercial jet, compared to the center seat. We misanthropes leap at the chance to cut in half the number of our unwanted contacts with the great unwashed.
--When the dealer isn't looking, it's easy to reach into the tray and steal a few chips.
(Just kidding! Relax!)
To be fair, there are also some disadvantages that you have to put up with:
--I have banged my knee on the damn rake collection boxes more times than I can count.
--If you're playing when security comes around to change those boxes, you'll probably have to move out of their way.
--Other players will muck their cards in your direction and accidentally kill your hand if you don't keep it well protected.
--Similarly, unprotected cards sitting that close to the dealer are in greater danger of being prematurely scooped up into the muck if you don't cap them.
--You have one other player that is really difficult to see when you need or want to. The guy in the 1 seat often has to rely on the dealer to indicate when it's his turn, because sometimes you just can't see anything of what the 10 seat is doing.
Overall, I find that the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages, and I'm rather glad that mine is the minority view. It is rare that I have to compete with anybody else to claim one of my two preferred spots.
I'm going to stop short of encouraging readers to try the unfamiliar positions with an open mind, because I'm afraid everybody will discover that they really are superior, and it will foul up my little secret. So just forget everything I've told you, OK?
So where was #2 in this series of things I frequently get asked via email and comments? Well, I kind of forgot to label it as such, but it's the post called "Where I play." All of them can be found through the label "questions."
I've mentioned many times that I almost always buy in to my $1-2/$1-3 NLHE games for $100, which isn't always the minimum (a few places set the min at $50, and Bill's $1 game has a buy-in of $20 minimum), but is also never the maximum. Conventional wisdom is that you have a strategic advantage if you always buy in for the maximum, particularly if you figure to be a better player than most of your opposition. So people naturally wonder why I go the other way. (It's technically not "short" in the sense of being below the table minimum, but I'll call it that, since it is below the table maximum.)
To be honest, the habit started because I was new to playing, trying to just get a feel for the Vegas games, I was scared money, and I didn't have any real bankroll to speak of. As you may know by now, I wasn't planning to play for a living when I moved here; I was planning to get a job dealing and play on the side until I got good enough to go pro. But the dealing job never panned out, and I found that I was winning from the get-go, so I just sort of fell into it.
During that period, I discovered that I liked buying in short. It allowed me to feel out the table without having too much at risk. My liking for it continues, for much the same reason. I think of it as taking the temperture of the table by sticking my toe in the water, rather than diving in. The first buy-in is expendable--not that I'm seeking to just give it away, but I'm willing to let it be an investment in learning how the table plays and reacts to me, if need be.
Suppose in the first few orbits I find prime bluffing opportunities. I can make the all-in move. I either get away with it and win the pot and learn that this table might be one I can push around, or I get caught, lose not too much money, and learn that this table might be one for value-betting my strong hands to make my nut, rather than blustering my way to a win.
Similarly, it allows me to discover if I have an exceptionally smart and/or tricky opponent who has trapped me with a second-best hand without losing a ton. Occasionally, I find myself at an unusually sharky table, and when I have to pull out that next Benjamin after losing the first, it occurs to me, "I don't have an edge against this table." That prompts me (if I don't let my ego get in the way) to move to a different table or a different poker room, before I lose more.
There's also an emotional component to it. I find it extraordinarily satisfying to start with $100 and watch it grow to, say, $500. Sitting on $500 feels oodles better if I started with $100 than if I started with $400. And in the worst-case scenario, if I lose it all in one hand, and it's either too late or I'm too tired or discouraged to keep playing, my net loss is still only $100 in the former case versus $400 in the latter.
Starting somewhat on the short side also usually forces me to play tight at first, which is a bit of imposed discipline that I definitely sometimes need. To be profitable with a shorter stack, you just have to be more picky about starting hand requirements, less inclined to chase draws, etc., because you don't have the implied odds to play a broad range of speculative hands. That imposed discipline also has the lovely side effect of creating a certain table image.
To the extent that there is any typical session of poker, I'd say that my most common pattern is this: I buy in for $100, play tight and solid, establish a rocky image, and gradually build up to around $200 or $250. That's when I either leave the game or seriously change gears, depending on how long it has taken me, what I think of the table and my edge over it, where I am on the mental tiredness/alertness scale, and various other factors. I love it when indicators are to do the latter. That's when I start bobbing and weaving, making the tricky plays, playing the speculative hands. By that point, I have a much better feel for which players I can push, which to avoid, which ones will pay me off when I have the goods, and so on. My opponents will also have developed a false impression of my playing tendencies, which I can now exploit. I can also absorb the impact of a bad beat (or a bad move or a bad read on my part) or two without turning my W into an L for the day. Finally, if all is going well, there will be one or two bad players who are in the hole and trying to climb out (a process I will have witnessed step by step), and I can take full advantage of their growing desperation.
Of course, it doesn't always work out that way. Lots of things can muck up the game plan. But by far my most profitable and satisfying sessions are the ones where this pans out: I buy in for $100, play tight and solid, build the stack slowly while simultaneously building a reputation, then turn up the heat when I've got more in front of me, and accelerate the profit-making, finally leaving with a tidy profit. Ain't much in this world that makes me happier than the cash-out and drive home after such a day at the tables.
To be sure, there are at least two major advantages that buying in for the maximum would convey, which I am sacrificing by this choice. First, if I am actually the best or one of the best players at the table, my edge is greater against weaker players when we both have big stacks, because deep-stacked decisions are more complicated, risky, and error-prone. A less experienced opponent is more likely than I am to make a very expensive mistake, to my profit. Second, it's great to be on the good side of a nuts versus second-nuts situation and make the most money possible from it, which I can't do if it happens near the beginning of a session and I have only $100 in front of me. I might be missing out on, say, another $300 that I would have made on the hand if I could have gotten the opponent to commit his stack when we were both equally deep. (Of course, the flip side of that is that when I'm on the second-nuts side of it, I don't lose as much. But presumably I'm better than my average opponent in escaping that kind of trap when necessary.)
Those are not small considerations. They are, in fact, the main basis for the conventional advice to buy in for the maximum. And maybe I should. I don't preach this as gospel. I'm just telling you what works for me. It has been a successful pattern for a couple of years now, and I'm content with it.
For further reading, Daniel Negreanu wrote a nice blog post debunking the myth of the strategic advantage of the big stack here. And in his first columns for Card Player magazine about a year ago, Ed Miller did a bang-up job explaining the same concept:
http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/273/9869
http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/273/11158
He then proceeded to show how starting with a shorter stack provides a particular strategic advantage against a wild table:
http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/273/11211
http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/273/11226
In apparent response to Miller's series, fellow Card Player columnist Bob Ciaffone penned a jeremiad in which he grudgingly acknowledges the strategic advantage of the short stack in no-limit poker, but decries it as "a poker pestilence" (great phrase!), rather than something to be desired and/or attempted by his students or readers. In this piece, Ciaffone unleashes on habitual short-stack, hit-and-run players (and the casinos with buy-in rules that encourage them) a heaping helping of vitriol that I don't recall ever seeing come out in his writing before or since. It's a must-read column: http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/4/11117
So consider all sides of the matter; don't just take my advice. In fact, I wouldn't even call what I've written here "advice." As I said earlier, it's just what I have found works well for me. Your mileage may vary.
One of the questions that sometimes pops up in emails or the comments is where I play most frequently. So as I was entering some data in my spreadsheets just now, I thought I'd check the records and see.
The place where I have played the most turns out still to be the Hilton, even though it closed its poker room over a year ago. Moreover, my total number of sessions there dwarfs the nearest competitor by a factor of five! That gives you some idea of how concentrated my play was there prior to its closing, and why it felt like a home away from home. Because my play is now so much more spread out over the city's 50+ rooms, it will probably be two or three years before any other place catches up to the total number of Hilton sessions.
Second place is a tie between the Venetian and the Palms. Third place is the Golden Nugget (though the bulk of my sessions there were early on in my Vegas life; I'm there less often now). Fourth place is a tie between the Orleans and the Rio. Fifth place is a tie between Planet Hollywood and Caesars Palace.
Following those, we have, in descending order:
Binion's
Bill's, Mandalay Bay, and Treasure Island (three-way tie)
Excalibur, Flamingo, and Stratosphere (another three-way tie)
Suncoast
Sahara
Harrah's, Hard Rock, and Luxor (tie)
Riviera
There are a bunch more, of course, but the rest are all fewer than ten sessions each, so I didn't bother putting them into the order here.
So there you have it.
A related question, while I'm looking at the spreadsheet, is which places have been most profitable for me? That depends on how you do the accounting. In total dollars won, Hilton is first. But that's not a very useful figure, given its huge lead in number of hours and sessions. The purest read would be in dollars per hour, but, though this may seem strange, I actually don't keep track of that separately for each casino. Figuring it out would mean going through every session I have put in at a given casino and then going back through another spreadsheet to look up how many hours I put in there that day, and add them all up. Way too much work. I do, however, keep track of average profit or loss per session, so let's check that.
In order to eliminate outliers, I'm limiting this to places I've played at least five times. If I didn't, then Boulder Station would be in the lead, with an average per-session gain of $320--but since I have played there only once, that's not a fair representation. So with that limitation in mind, here's my top ten list (giving you the order only, and keeping the actual figures private):
1: Tuscany
2: Sahara
3: Suncoast
4: Bill's
5: Planet Hollywood
6: Binion's
7: Caesars Palace
8: Palms
9: Venetian
10: Imperial Palace
Kind of an odd assortment, eh? There is no logical overall explanation for the ordering, as far as I can tell. I mean, Bill's and Tuscany and Sahara definitely have among the worst players in town. But I'd put Imperial Palace right alongside Tuscany and Sahara in that regard, yet it's several notches down the profitability list. That may be because I haven't had many sessions there, and its average is therefore pulled down by a couple of times when I've played the I.P. mixed game and been a net loser (as I expected to be going in).
Players at Suncoast are not, on average, terrible. Its place on the list might be kind of a quirk, skewed by a few really enormous sessions there where I either got completely run over by the deck or had a maniac at the table just giving away his chips, or both. For example, one memorable day there I made $903 in an hour and a half--just completely off the charts in dollars per hour. I was winning an absolutely absurd percentages of the pots with a string of big hands that should have alerted security to check for collusion between me and the dealers, including quad 8s that busted two other players and got me a high-hand jackpot to boot. The other players that day might have been tempted to go with Worm's line from "Rounders": "F--- you and your never-ending string of boats!"
The typical quality of play at Binion's, Caesars, Palms, and Venetian is unquestionably higher than that at the names toward the top of this list, so it's not surprising that they average less profit per session. On the other hand, I can't explain why they have been more profitable for me than many of the ones that didn't make my top ten, such as Harrah's, Orleans, or Stratosphere, where the average opponent is clearly inferior to the Binion's/Caesars/Palms/Venetian level. It's mostly a mystery to me.
I get asked a lot of questions via email and the comments sections. I pretty much have to ignore most of them, or give only cursory answers, because of time limitations. Besides, in order to write sometime interesting, I have to feel like writing about it. It's hard enough to write something interesting when I have a desire to write about it; trying without that desire is, I think, doomed to failure.
Still, some things get asked often enough that I feel some sense of obligation to post an answer eventually. So I'm starting this occasional series of posts. Other questions high on the list that I'll probably get around to answering sooner or later are things like why I tend to buy in short rather than for the maximum allowed, why I still play $1-2 rather than moving up, where I like to play most, where should somebody try to play when they come to town on vacation, and several others. Feel free to add to the list with whatever you're curious about. I make no guarantee about when or even if I'll ever post an answer, but your chances are a lot better if you ask than if you don't!
Today's question is:
Why do you continue to play in places that have rakes as high as $5 + $1?
The heart of the answer is pretty simple: I keep playing where I make money consistently. The rake is only one factor in determining my profit.
Look at it this way: All else being equal, would you rather play in a house with a $6 rake and nine opponents who have no clue what they are doing, or in a place with a $1 rake and nine sharks at the table? Of course, it's never really that simple, but looking at the question framed that way should, I hope, make clear my general point.
I keep careful records, so after doing this for a couple of years, I have a pretty reliable read on which places are consistently profitable and which are not. I don't know all the reasons why. I lose money more often that I make money at Treasure Island and MGM Grand, for instance, even though other players that I know of comparable skill report raking in the dough at those places. Conversely, the Venetian tends to be one of my most profitable places, while others who I think are comparable to me tell me they avoid it because they find the competition a lot stiffer than they run into elsewhere. It's incredibly difficult to pin down why our experiences might be so different.
I suspect that much of it is simply random variance as to table composition on a given day. There is also likely a psychological self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing going on. That is, if just by chance I have losing sessions the first three times I play in a particular card room, the fourth time I try it I likely have some subtle negative expectation going in that erodes my confidence, and it's deadly to play without confidence. So I lose a fourth time, which makes me even more pessimistic on the fifth try, etc.
Other factors that may make one place more or less profitable than another over the long haul, despite playing what is ostensibly the same game, might include one's subjective sense of physical comfort (e.g., I generally prefer smaller, enclosed, quiet rooms, while others feel limited and confined in them and like being open to all the stimulation of the surrounding casino action), one's like or dislike of the dealers, floor staff, and house rules/policies (again, feeling good and comfortable rather than feeling irritated or on edge makes a huge difference), and the style of play that tends to prevail in a given poker room. There really are noticeable differences in this, and one's preferred style of play might work better in some environments than in others.
Finally, of course, there is the opposition. The clientele playing at Bill's is completely different from what you'll find at the Wynn, and that, in turn, is completely different from what you'll find in a nitty, locals-predominant place such as Boulder Station. The skills it takes to win in one place do not necessarily transfer directly to winning in others.
Anyway, when I put all of those things together and find, e.g., that a Harrah's property with the highest rake in town is earning me, say, $60/hour over enough visits and time that I have probably evened out much of the statistical variance and can really count on the numbers being a genuine reflection of expected income there, and another with the lowest rake in town, after similar experience, shows, say, $12/hour, where would you choose to spend more time?
Me too.
Sure, all else being equal, I would prefer to have fewer dollars taken out of each pot that I win. But all else is far from equal, and the fact is that I can't just conclude that I will make more money playing in the rooms with the lowest rake. The rake is simply one factor in the profitability equation, and one that is probably overwhelmed by some of the other issues mentioned in the foregoing. So for the most part, I disregard it. When deciding on any given day where to head, honestly, the rake doesn't even dawn on me. I'm far more focused on where I have a history of consistent profit, where I'm comfortable, where there might be a convention with some easy pickings, where traffic isn't likely to be heavy, where will be close to or on the way to other places I need to go for errands, where I can be confident a game of my liking will be going, where I haven't visited in a long time, and other such sundry factors.
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