Riviera stories

There's a pool tournament going on at the Riviera, as happens a few times a year. Such occasions are basically the only times that I play there, because the games become extra juicy. Tonight was no exception. In addition to being profitable, it generated four stories that I thought were worth telling.

1.

I had Qc-Kc and raised to $10. Two callers, and I had position. Flop was 5-9-7 with two hearts. Both opponents checked, so I bet $20. One folded. The guy on my right called. I thought a flush draw was his most likely hand. Turn was an offsuit 8. He checked again. I bet $40, hoping to dissuade him from chasing his draw further. He called again. I didn't think he would do that with a naked draw, so concluded that I had probably been wrong and that I was up against some sort of made hand. On that basis, I decided that unless I caught a pair with my overcards, a bet on the river would probably just be throwing more money away. I planned to bet at a jack or queen, but otherwise give up. River was an offsuit 6. I just glanced at it long enough to see that it wasn't one of the cards I wanted, then focused my attention on my opponent. He thought an unusually long time while I stared at him, then checked. I checked behind.

At that point, my only hope was that he had, in fact, been on a flush draw and had missed. I waited for him to show his cards. J-9. Top pair. Well, that's it, then. I lose. I flicked my hole cards back to the dealer, who buried them in the muck.

I turned back toward the center of the table, took another look at the board just before the dealer swiped it away, and realized to my horror that I had completely missed the fact that the 6 on the river had completed a straight on the board. My cards were good for half of the pot if I had just turned them face up.

D'oh!

That mental lapse cost me a bit over $70. My only consolation is that I make this sort of mistake at an average rate of about once a year (as far as I know; I suppose there could be other instances of it that I never notice). Given the number of hands I play, that's an error rate that is small enough to be forgivable, and just large enough to prove that I'm human.

2.

In one hand, I got all in on fourth street against another player in a dominating situation: My K-Q versus his K-9 on a king-high board, with him having no straight or flush possibilities. (I don't remember the other cards. I write down the details of hands that I think will make good blog stories, but I didn't think this one would at the time that it happened.)

River: 9, giving him two pair to my one--a pure three-out hit for all the marbles.

Sigh. Oh well. Rebuy!

About 15 minutes later, there was an eerily similar recurrence. He and I again managed to get all of our chips into the pot on the turn. This time, however, he had the dominating situation: Q-7 versus my A-K on a board of A-Q-7-3.*

River: K, giving me a higher two pair than his.

To make the sweet revenge even sweeter, this pot was much bigger than the previous one, having been swelled by a bunch of pre-flop action.

After paying me off, he began grumbling about his rotten luck, getting screwed by a three-outer. (I had actually had eight outs, but I didn't bother correcting his math.) After about 30 seconds of his little tantrum, I decided that I could have a bit of fun with it and simultaneously maybe give him just enough extra needling that he'd go well out of his way to target me for payback later, which tends to make for very profitable situations.

So I smiled sweetly and said, "I don't remember you complaining this way a little while ago when you rivered the three-outer against me."

His face clouded, and he insisted, "I never caught a river card against you like that!"

Some people have amazingly short memories.

3.

I noticed this part of the sign announcing high-hand bonuses:



I'm not much of a believer, but I would sure pray to a Saint Flush if one really existed.

4.

In a hand that did not involve me, the flop was A-6-6. The pre-flop raiser bet at it, folding his opponents, and showed his A-K before mucking. A player next to me told his neighbor, "Dammit! I folded A-6! He had top pair/top kicker. I think he would have put all his chips in against me, and I would have won!" He then paused a second and added, "Unless he caught his king, of course."

Well allrighty then! Nice to know that I'm not the only one capable of putting his inner moron out on public display!

* I'm acutely aware that this makes twice in a short period of time that I was all-in with just top pair, a practice I normally try to avoid. In terms of both how the action unfolded and who was involved, there were extenuating circumstances in both cases that made it more justifiable than it would otherwise be. But an exposition of those additional considerations would just bog down the story, so I'm omitting them.

Riviera success, Tropicana fail

A few months ago, a friend of mine who lives in Australia wanted to organize a couple of get-togethers for people who, like him, participate in an online poker forum. He comes to Vegas for about six weeks every year. After consulting with potential participants about when they might be in town, he picked two dates, June 24 and July 8, both Sunday evenings. Between those two dates, nearly everybody who was interested in coming could make at least one of them.

I volunteered to make arrangements for small private poker tournaments. Because I live in town and know the poker rooms pretty intimately, I thought I was in a good position to pick spots. The poker room manager of the Riviera piped up on the forum, actively offering his facilities at a discounted rate, so that was half of the decision easily made. I could have done both nights there, but wanted to spread the business around a little, because I thought that people attending from out of town might not have seen other poker rooms and would appreciate the variety.

The first event at the Riviera was just perfect. They were great hosts and took really good care of us, taking pains to be sure that we all had a wonderful time. I could not have been more pleased. If you're ever have occasion to have a private poker tournament, I recommend that you put the Riviera near or at the top of your list of venues to consider.

The Tropicana, however, is another story. I spoke to the poker room manager by telephone in late April, explaining what we were looking for. He promised that he would come up with a proposal for a tournament cost and structure and get back to me. He did, several days later.

My first warning sign of trouble was that he clearly had me mixed up with somebody else for whom he was also negotiating a private poker event. He had the date wrong, he had the number of expected participants wrong, and he remembered that we had wanted to have pizza available, which is something I had not requested. But after getting those items corrected, he gave me his proposal, and I accepted it: July 8, 8 p.m., total of $75 buy-in. The tournament was to be followed by low-stakes cash games, and he promised (just as the Riviera had) to lower the usual rake for any cash games we started. I told him that exactly what games we played would depend on the preferences of those who showed up, but that something like the dealer's-choice mixed game that they regularly offer on Monday nights might be interesting to our guests. He said that would be fine, and if we did that, we could make it either $2/4 or $3/6 limits.

So it appeared that all was in place. Early Sunday I sent him an email as a final confirmation that all was in place. I did not get a reply (still haven't, in fact), but I didn't worry about this. I just assumed that the room manager had the day off and thus didn't see the message. In retrospect, I should have seen that lack of reply as more of a red flag than I did.

Just before 7:15, as I was getting ready to leave home, the first people to arrive were sending messages via Twitter that the staff of the poker room had no idea what private tournament they were talking about. Some small misunderstanding, I thought. So I quickly printed out a copy of the email the poker room manager had sent me containing the details and stuck it in my pocket as I headed out the door.

When I got there, it was as the others had said. The guy behind the desk knew nothing about it. Furthermore, he had in the interim called the room manager, who had claimed to know nothing about any private tournament. They had just one dealer on duty, running their one and only cash game.

I called the room manager. He said that there had been a flood in his office that destroyed his computer, and he had lost all of his emails for the last few months. I was highly skeptical of this story. (I related it to those who had arrived, and one of them quipped, "So he's telling you that the dog ate his homework." Yep--that's about it.) But he said that they always had dealers on call in case they got busy, and they could have someone there in about 20 minutes, and he would take $5 off of the house's portion of the tournament entry fee to help compensate for the misunderstanding. Fine--that was easier than trying to organize going somewhere else at the last minute.

The dealer arrived, sat into the cash game, and the one that had been in the cash game ran our single-table tournament. But when it was over, we were told that we couldn't open another cash game as we had planned; the dealer who ran our tournament was already on overtime and they couldn't keep him there any longer.

A few of us decided to go over to Bally's and play there instead. Others went their separate ways.

The whole thing was a disorganized mess from that second phone call on. I was embarrassed, because I had promised everybody that all was in place, and the failure made me look bad. (Admittedly I could have been more aggressive about rechecking before the appointed date to make sure that all was set. But I assumed that I didn't need to, that this guy was a professional at running his room, and that when he promised to be ready for a private poker tournament at a certain date and time, he would be.)

So what I said about giving consideration to the Riviera if you need to find a venue for a private poker event? Do the opposite for the Tropicana. Put them at the very bottom of your list, unless you relish the idea of your event being ignored and forgotten.

Taking on the luckbox

I was at the Riviera tonight. There's a big pool tournament going on there, and it's the busiest I've ever seen the place. For the first time ever, I could not find a spot in the parking garage and had to resort to the surface lot east of the garage.

The poker room had three $1-3 NLHE games going when I arrived at about 8:00 p.m. On a typical Friday night they would have one that's having trouble being sustained. I have seen two no-limit games going at the Riviera before, but I don't think I've ever seen three. And a fourth one started up while I was there.

The first seat that opened up was to the immediate left of the table drunk. He was incredibly annoying, paying no attention to the action, playing out of turn, slowing everything down whenever it was his turn, talking about the hand, flashing his cards both deliberately and inadvertently, etc. But he was so awful that nobody complained much, for fear that he'd be kicked out, and that would be tragic.

He was the prototypical drunk luckbox. Shortly before my tussle with him, he had twice in ten minutes come out on the good side of set-over-set situations, stacking two good players who had patiently waited for their chance to trap him. The second of these profited him about $600, and he was sitting on about $1400 when the key hand occurred. (I had a mere $320 or so, just barely above my buy-in.)

He would frequently raise without looking at his cards. He would just grab a handful of chips and toss them forward helter-skelter, with no idea how much it was. This appeared to happen randomly, without respect to position. I kept an eye on him so that I would always know whether or not he had looked at his cards before doing this, because if he looked, he actually had a respectably tight raising range.

To the matter. He and I were the blinds. The player to my left straddled, and picked up a bunch of callers. Drunk Luckbox--who had not picked his cards up off the felt--yielded to one of his urges to raise in the dark, and tossed a bunch of chips forward. The dealer counted it as $31.

I had J-J. This is, of course, comfortably ahead of two random cards, so I slid two stacks of $50 across the line, which was followed by rapid-fire folding around the table. DL finally figured out that it was his turn again, and the dealer informed him of my reraise. He looked annoyed and said, "Now I'm gonna have to LOOK!" He did, quickly followed by, "I'm all in."

There is just no way to know what range of hands he will do this with, as such a situation had not occurred before. There's also no way to get inside his head and deduce what he must be thinking about me and my range, etc., because he's just too wild and erratic for logic or third-level thinking to be of any use. I felt that all I could do was go with the math: If I have J-J, the probability that anybody at a full table was dealt a higher pocket pair is only about 13%, and if he has anything less than that, I'm OK getting all the chips in with my edge. In my first few minutes at the table I had seen this guy call all-in for about $300 pre-flop with A-Q offsuit, hit top two pair and win. The way I see it, he might well shove with a baby pair or an ace-rag hand. In fact, I had seen him reraise all in with 10-10 once, probably because he didn't want to play it post-flop. Given his past history, I thought it would be crazy to put in a third of my stack, then fold.

I insta-called, as I had actually made up my mind in advance that that's what I would do if he pushed, knowing that he might do so relatively light.

We turned up our cards. My J-J was up against his...

A-A.

Mother-effin' snakes on a mother-effin' plane!

There are three hands he could have that were a favorite to my jacks: aces, kings, and queens. There are six ways to make each of those hands. That means that out of the 1225 possible two-card combinations he could have been dealt, only 18 of them would have me in trouble. And he had to have one of them right now?

Sigh.

Flop: 4-5-7.

Turn: 5.

Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;

It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled with a crack,

For from the cards left in his hands, the dealer found a jack.*

That's the second time in a week that I have misread an opponent for being weaker than he actually was, got all my money in at a severe disadvantage, and got my butt rescued by the fall of a lucky card. It's not really the way I prefer to make my money, but I'll take it and be grateful.

Sometimes, in order to win, you just gotta outluckbox the luckbox.

***********

Incidentally, this is going on a few steps outside of the new location of the poker room at the Riviera. It seems that some of the players at the tables find this distracting. I can't imagine why.

* From "Casey at the Bat," by Ernest Thayer, very slightly modified.

Room updates

1. I played at the Riviera Saturday night for the first time in (brief pause while our hero checks his records) about 11 months. It's not exactly my favorite place. I had trouble finding it, because the room has moved since I was last there, and they apparently can't be bothered to put up any directional signs. If you want to find the poker room, you have to just wander around until you stumble upon it. To save you that trouble, I'll tell you that it's right inside the Strip entrance, that wall of glass doors. Since I was there last, they have also changed their main no-limit game from $1/$2 to $1/$3, a curious move for a small, downscale poker room. Finally, they have installed player's card readers at the table instead of having you log in and out at the desk.

2. I was in a tournament at MGM Grand Sunday, and incidentally learned that they now run a weekly HORSE tournament on Tuesday evenings. This is the one that used to be at the M Resort. This is good news, I think, because (1) M is just too far away to bother with, and (2) MGM will have a lot more touristy types who just happen to be there and decide to give HORSE a try, without knowing the games very well.

3. I read that the Palms is closing its poker room, only to reopen it a few days later. The idea, apparently, is that they're contracting out management of the room to Cantor, which already runs a bunch of casinos' sports books. Will this be the leading edge of a trend? I don't know. I also don't know if this change will coincide with the long-promised move of the poker room to a new location. Nobody tells me anything.

Wild tournament

When I first saw this, I thought it was a joke. But a check of the Riviera poker room's Facebook page and Twitter feed confirm it:

Starting tomorrow night...and continuing throughout the summer on EVERY Monday night...is MONKEY'S MIDNIGHT MADNESS at the Riviera Poker Room. Ready for the details?

Time of tourney: 12:00 midnight.
Entry Fee: $125. $10 add on gets you $2000...all $10 of those dollars WILL go to the dealers.
Bounty: Whack the Monkey...win $100.
Structure: $12,000 chips (with add on) 15 minute levels. Very few levels left out.
Expected time needed to Win: 4 to 5 hours, max.
Rules: NO RULES! I have arranged to have ZERO rules enforced. Showing cards, talking in the hand, offensive language (within reason)...anything goes.
Prize Payout: A very unique 'Winner Take All' format. However...the players will have the right to chop the money any way they can all agree to.
High Hand Drinking Torture: Every orbit...the person with the highest hand...will be required to pound a red snapper (or shot of their choice). A few excuses will be accepted to avoid this. A membership card in AA. The presence of a glucometer (diabetes) or a table side liver dialysis machine (liver failure) would be good examples.
STRIPPERS: The ladies of Vegas who earn their living slip sliding their way up and down poles and not on the felt, will be afforded a complimentary entry. We already have two confirmed entries, as well as one from a porn star. Yup...Kai Landry and I have gone the full distance to make sure all of you late night, poker drunks have everything to make your experience at Monkey's Drunkfest a night to remember.

Source: http://pokermonkeytalk.blogspot.com/2011/06/sundays-monkey-recapxanax-please.html

I can't make up my mind what to think about this. It certainly sounds...interesting.

New poker room at the Riviera

I played at the Riviera tonight. It's way down low on my list of preferred rooms, but I heard that they had moved the room recently, and wanted to see the new digs.

There's not a lot interesting to report. Same old tables, same old chairs, same staff, same chips. It's now at the base of the escalator that goes up to the theaters, and adjacent to the entrance to the main-floor theater where they have the Rat Pack show.

There is markedly less foot traffic in the new place. I spoke to the shift manager about it for a minute as I was cashing out. He pointed out that the old location was very near the elevators to the guest rooms, so they would get a lot of people returning from the Strip (often drunk). They'd pass the poker room as they were heading to their rooms to crash, and decide to engage in a little late-night poker as a nightcap. That doesn't happen now, because the room is well off the beaten path.

They are phasing out the high-hand jackpots as each one is hit for the last time, and substituting a splash-pot promotion. At hourly intervals (or so it seemed tonight), a player is chosen at random to spin this wheel for the table:

The amount indicated is put into the pot at the beginning of the next hand, and goes to whoever wins the pot.

I was there for two of these spins tonight; both happened to be for $100. The first one played out in a straightforward manner. The second, though, was kind of interesting. Almost everybody limped in. (I can't say "everybody," because we had some players who had no concept of poker math, and failed to realize that any two cards were worth at least the $2 big blind for a chance to win $100.) I joined them from the cutoff position with K-3 offsuit, hoping for a cheap flop.

The guy in the small blind was the only other smart, thinking player at the table. When it was his turn, he moved all-in for $101. Everybody folded around to me. This was an intriguing situation. If I were that guy, I might be inclined to do that move with any two cards, after the table had all limped, showing weakness. It would seem to have very high fold equity, and hence a high expectation to win $100 without even having to sweat a five-card board.

He was the only player at the table capable of figuring out that that was likely a profitable move, no matter what he held. He knew that essentially every other player was a complete or near novice to the game. They were having trouble just with knowing what the bet was, whose turn it was, how to protect their cards, etc. They were utterly ABC, playing the strength of their own hands with no grasp of how to gauge what others held, and with not a lick of deception among them. (Well, except for when they failed to grasp how strong a particular hand was--e.g., I saw one of them just call on the river with the stone cold nuts, for no apparent reason.) He would know that their limps were not setting a trap for somebody who would try to raise big with air to steal the pot; a $2 call meant that they didn't want to put in more than $2.

All of which meant that he was the one player whose shove could not command much respect from me.

So I called. He flipped over 10-10--a better hand than I had given him credit for. But at least I had an overcard. Sure enough, the flop came K-Q-9, and he bricked out on the turn and river. I suspect that's the first time I've won a $300+ pot with K-3 offsuit.

My opponent did not take it well. "K-3? You've got to be effin' kidding me! WTF were you doing calling there?" Etc. In short, hilarity ensued--at least briefly, before he stomped off.

Had I been able to see his cards, would a call be correct there? I actually don't know the answer as I type this, but let's work it out. PokerStove tells me that I win against T-T 27.9% of the time, while he wins 72.1%, or 2.58:1. I had to call an additional $99 to win a pot that was about $220 after the rake, so pot odds of 2.22:1. That means that my call was slightly -EV, had I known what he held.

However, if we look at his whole range, things look better for me. I have no way of knowing exactly what range of cards he would make this push with, but let's assume that it's any pocket pair and any two Broadway cards. Then he's 65.4% to my 34.6%, or 1.80:1, making the call mathematically correct. My guess is that that is his minimum range for that situation, and it might well be much broader. Or maybe this is all just self-serving justification. I don't claim to know for sure.

Anyway, the structure of this promotion is kind of interesting. One strategy might be to keep one's stack at the bare minimum, buying a few chips at a time, but never going entirely broke (which then triggers the minimum buy-in requirement of $50). Ideally, you'd have just $2 left when it was time for the splash-pot, because you're eligible to win the entire amount that the poker room puts in the pot before the hand begins with that minimal investment. Of course, you can't win more than an additional $2 from any other player, but spending $2 to have a 10% or more shot at $100 is a nice bargain. Obviously, some of the slots on the wheel are much less than than, but others are more. Also obviously, it costs you something to stick around, which complicates the risk/reward calculation.

One of the big drawbacks, it seems to me, is that they announce in advance when the splash-pot will occur, which will give all the local jackpot-hunting jackal nits plenty of incentive to occupy a seat for about two hands per hour, and do something else the rest of the time while leaving the game short-handed and putting no chips at risk--and they'll do it with the minimum buy-in. They could quickly kill the game if they start acting as I predict they will. (A side note: If I can figure out how the scummy angle-shooters will try to game the system, why can't the poker room managers who devise them?)

It won't matter much to me. I only visit the Riviera a few times a year, mostly when there is a billiard or archery tournament going on there. My guess is that this promotion will have run its course by the time I'm back.

String theory

There was an incident near the very end of my session at Caesars Palace Monday evening. A woman in early position raised to $10. I called, holding the two red jacks. The player to my left was on the button, and reraised to $30. The blinds folded. The dealer gathered in all of the bets except for the $20 raise, which was left sitting in front of the button, as that was now the amount that the remaining players would have to call if they wished to continue in the hand.

The original raiser announced,"I'm gonna reraise." She picked up stacks of four red chips with each hand and pushed those forward. She then went back to her stacks and repeated this move, bringing out a total of $80 in this way.

A couple of other players howled their protest. "String raise!" "She can't do that!" The dealer said it was OK, because she had announced "raise" first. I thought this was damn peculiar, since that announcement doesn't change her obligation to stop putting out chips as soon as she has committed enough to constitute a legal raise, and since she did not announce any specific raise amount.

The floor was called, and he made the obvious ruling that her initial move of putting out $40 in chips was the extent of what she could do, because that was a full raise (even if a minimal one--$20 for the call, plus another $20). After he had walked away, the dealer said, "That's a new one. Must be a Caesars house rule."

Caesars Palace is in the midst of a big tournament series, so they have brought in a bunch of temporary dealers to supplement their usual staff. This guy was obviously one of them. However, as one player vociferously (and correctly) pointed out to the dealer, this is not a Caesars house rule. Rather, it is the standard rule, and would be enforced exactly the same way in every poker room in Vegas.

The dealer shrugged his shoulders and said, "That's not how they do it at the Commerce."

In the midst of the initial confusion, before the floor had been called, I had heard another player inject, "This isn't California, dealer." The combination of that comment plus the dealer's observation make me think that perhaps it is done differently in at least some California casinos. If readers have personal experience to either confirm or refute that, I'd like to hear about it in the comments section.

Anyway, it was very strange to have a dealer not know what constitutes a string raise, as it is one of the most common violations that a dealer is called upon to enforce. I don't think I've ever before encountered one who didn't know that rule.

For the record, you essentially have three choices for putting in a raise. (1) Announce the amount of the raise (or the total amount you are going to bet; i.e., the sum of the call and the raise), in which case it doesn't matter how many moves to your stack you make to get the right number of chips into the pot. (2) Say nothing, and push all of the chips you wish to bet (the call plus the raise) forward in one motion. (3) Announce "raise" without an amount, put out chips to constitute the call, then with one additional movement forward put out the additional amount of the raise.


While I'm on the subject of dealers not knowing basic rules, a few days ago I was playing at the Riviera. There were three players left in the hand on the river. (I was not one of them.) The player who was to be second to act went out of turn, moving his entire stack forward. When it was pointed out that it was not his turn yet, he apologized and took his chips back. The first player then checked. This second player then checked behind.

I immediately asked the dealer, "He can move all-in out of turn, and then check when it's his turn?" She said, "Yeah, sure, it's no problem."

The last player checked, too. It seemed that nobody who would be directly affected by the action cared to contest it, so I didn't argue further. But a little while later I headed over to the counter, described the situation to the floor guy, and asked him if the Riviera used some non-standard house rule to cover that situation. He said no, and emphatically agreed that the player should have been held to his all-in bet when it was checked to him. He was surprised that the dealer had handled it incorrectly. He said he would have a chat with her at her next break.


There are some obscure rules in poker that cover rare situations. Even after having been to dealer school, even after having read a couple of poker rule books cover to cover, even after playing most days of the week for four years now, there are still occasionally situations that come up for which I don't know a rule, and have to look it up later. For example, a dealer friend recently emailed me a question about the so-called "fourth-street rule" in seven-card stud. While both he and I knew the rule and its usual application, neither of us was sure how it should be applied in the situation he described to me. My initial guess was wrong, as I discovered later when I checked my published sources. As another example, during a mixed-game tournament at Treasure Island in March, I made an error with respect to posting the bring-in with an oversized chip during a stud round. An off-duty dealer (and reader--hi, Pete!) playing at the table pointed out to me that somebody being nitty could hold me to having made a complete bet rather than just the bring-in amount. I hadn't ever thought about it before.

But string raises and out-of-turn action are things that happen not just every day, but many times a day. It is hard to understand how a dealer--other, perhaps, than one on his or her first day on the job--could not know how to apply them. It's not quite as bad as not knowing whether a flush beats a straight, but it's close.

Status update

I played at the Riviera tonight. It's my sixth day of live play since returning to the felt last Friday, and my fifth win in a row, after losing the first day back.

I got only about three hours of sleep last night, what with the all-night online tournaments, so I was extremely sleepy. For that reason, I made it an ultra-short session, about 75 minutes.

During that time I had the following happen:

• My first hand at the table I had pocket queens, raised to $10, got reraised to $20, and five of us saw the flop with a $100 pot. Flop was king-high, but I led out at it anyway, and nobody called.
• Playing suited A-5, flopped wheel draw, got free card, hit my gutshot on the turn, $30 profit.
• Called a raise with suited connectors on the button, flopped a flush draw, bet when it was checked to me, took it down. $50 profit.
• A-10 on button. Flop 10-high with two hearts. Bet, one caller. Turn offsuit ace, for top two pair. I bet pot, another call. River ace of hearts. Boat for me. Bet pot again, called by the flush draw that got there.
• Q-2 of crubs in small blind, unraised pot, so I called. Flop Q-2-2. Bet and got paid all the way by a doofus with Q-J, who thought it was good.

To be sure, it wasn't all perfect. As the saying goes, ya can't win 'em all. I had top pair/top kicker outdrawn by two players with flushes when four diamonds were on the final board, and I had none. I also had a bluff snapped off, though I thought it had been pretty well timed and convincing.

But even with those minor setbacks, it was quite an extraordinary run of good cards and good situations for just over an hour's play.

This session, plus those of the previous several days, make me reasonably confident in saying this: Yea, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of deathly variance, I have emerged into the light.

In short, things seem back to normal in the poker world for me. I seem to have stopped running into invisible brick walls, at least for now. I have also won enough this week that with one more good session tomorrow, I should be able to close out April as a break-even month.

I do realize how pathetic it sounds to be hoping for a break-even month.* But given how April started, making it back to the zero mark would be either a commendable accomplishment or a small miracle, depending on whether you want to attribute it to me or to supernatural forces. Either way, I'll take it, and start afresh in May.

Because of that, I'm going to return to my usual policy of not using this blog to keep running tabs on my results, for all the reasons I've mentioned many times before. But since the ride on the extreme negative end of the bell curve of variance was a pretty big deal to me, and since I talked about it here, I thought I should provide you with the apparent end of the story.

Oh, and one more thing: If you're counting, that's eleven posts in the last slightly over 24 hours. The few of you who whined and complained about me having taken a hiatus from writing? You can bite me.



*It is, of course, utterly irrational to think of one's poker results in terms of specific calendar months, or weeks, or days, or even sessions. If you're a winning playing long-term, then you put in the hours, and you have some sort of average hourly rate of return, and it matters not one bit whether the ups and downs cluster in some particular way over some arbitrary period of time. But c'mon--is there anybody who can really, truly, completely ignore the rhythms by which we measure everything else in our lives when looking at their poker results? You can make a fairly convincing accusation of roboticism against me in many respects, but even I am not a sufficiently pure automaton as to be able to disregard the calendar when tallying my wins and losses.

Showing a called hand

A few days ago while playing at the Riviera a situation came up that I've read about many times but never witnessed before.

The under-the-gun player (UTG) raised to $17. It was folded around to the small blind (SB), who shoved for his last roughly $60. UTG called and showed J-J. SB didn't show his hand. The board ran out 6-Q-2-8-7. SB nodded grimly, as if acknowledging defeat, and slid his cards face-down to the dealer. Nothing unusual so far.

But then UTG asked to see the hand. OK, this is uncommon, but I've seen it a few times before. It's a pretty slimey thing to do. You gain a small amount of information about one opponent, but it comes at the cost of possibly embarrassing him unnecessarily, possibly angering him, and getting yourself branded as a USDA-certified Grade A douche. It's much better to just take the pot quietly and unceremoniously, and be happy with the outcome. Really--why do you care what hand you beat?

Anyway, the dealer tapped the two cards on the muck, then turned them face up. It was 9-10 offsuit. The dealer then plowed them into the muck.

That's what I've never seen before: the apparent winner of the pot asking to see his opponent's folded cards and learning that the opponent misread his hand and had thrown away the winner. (In this case, SB obviously overlooked having made runner-runner straight.)

It wasn't clear that the dealer or either player recognized the significance of what had been revealed. I saw it, as did another player--a thin, middle-aged woman. I don't know her name, but I've seen her around town many times before. She's a decent and obviously experienced player.

She saw what I saw and caught my eye. I just shrugged, because there was nothing to be done. I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that the dealer's action of touching the cards to the muck meant that the house rule was that the hand was deemed dead before it was exposed, so it didn't matter if it was the best hand or not; the pot would still go to the guy with J-J.

The woman, though, started making a fuss about the pot going to the wrong player. Then it became clear that the dealer did, in fact, recognize what had been revealed; he simply hadn't reacted for the same reason that I just shrugged it off--there was no recourse, so no point in making a big deal about it.

When the woman questioned him about it (I think she was initially a bit uncertain whether she had seen what she thought she had seen), he explained that that's exactly the reason for touching the cards to the muck--to kill the hand before exposing it. Once that has been done, there is only one live hand, and therefore only one place the pot can be awarded.

The woman refused to accept this. She thought it was an abomination. She not only insisted that the dealer was wrong, but that there was no poker room in town in which that would be the proper procedure.

********

Allow me to digress for a moment about the idiocy of how people tend to argue with each other. Actually, there are a whole bunch of interrelated stupid things that they do. First, they seem to care intensely not just about actually being right (I fully sympathize with that part of it; I, too, value being right about things), but about convincing some other random stranger that they'll never see again of the rightness of the position being staked out.

If it were me, and if I hadn't seen the dealer tap the cards to the muck, I might speak up initially to be sure that the dealer knew that SB's hand was the straight. If the dealer made clear that he had recognized that, then explained that the house rule was that the hand was dead anyway, I'd accept that and be done with it. I might even later, away from the table, check with the floor person if I had some substantial reason to think that this was wrong. (Regular readers will know that I've enountered many situations in which dealers didn't know either the general rules or the house-specific rules.) In this case, though, it's one fairly standard variant of a rule, so I would see nothing surprising about it.

The second stupid thing that people arguing do is step back and start making their arguments broader and more all-encompassing than their initial position. Here, for example, it wasn't enough for this woman to question whether the dealer had the rule right for the Riviera. She quickly enlarged her claim to being that no other poker room in the city worked that way. This is where I started rolling my eyes. It's just not plausible that she has gone around and taken a survey of all 50+ poker rooms on this very specific question, or that she has played in every room enough times to have seen it come up and get handled in every one of the rooms. In short, she is just making this up (or, at best, making an overly broad generalization from whatever her experience is).

The dealer, in turn, also backed up so that he could take a bigger, broader swing. Had I been the dealer, I would have told her, "I can't speak for what any other casino does, ma'am. I only know for sure what our rules are." That's it. Let it drop. Who cares what she thinks any other card room does?

But no. He was getting palpably irritated at being questioned. He upped the ante, so to speak, and said just the opposite of her claim: that their rule was the same at every other place in town--in fact, it was the same at every poker room in the whole state, because--get this--it's a Nevada gaming regulation to do it that way.

This is just as much of a lie--or, at best, a gross instance of being badly misinformed--as the woman's claim about what the rule is everywhere in town. His, though, is more easily checked from a readily verified source. The gaming regulations are available here, in a text-searchable PDF file. The word "poker" occurs only four times. The most detailed rules pertaining to the game are at Regulation 23, and there's nothing said about what happens to a killed hand. For that matter, there are no details about a flush beating a straight, the action going clockwise, or a zillion other large and small points of the game. The regs just aren't that detailed. Nearly all of Regulation 23 is about what happens to the money, not any details of how the game is played.

The next stupid thing that people arguing tend to do is make appeals to authority. In this situation, the woman first proclaimed her own experience as a dealer and floor person for however many years. When that wasn't sufficiently persuasive (by this time, the dealer was finally starting to bite his tongue and tell her that he wouldn't argue further with her about it), she said, "Ask Linda Johnson. She's been in the poker industry for 30 years and she helped write the rules for the World Series of Poker."

You see how stupid this is, don't you? First--again--why on earth does she care so passionately about convincing this dealer that she's right? If I know I'm right about some particular point, and, after explaining my position, some random person that I happen to be talking to about it doesn't choose to believe me, well, OK, suit yourself. I just can't bring myself to care whether that person leaves the encounter thinking that I'm right or wrong. People's egos are so fragile; they can be damaged simply by a stranger not accepting their version of some obscure factual point. I just don't get that.

But beyond that, is this woman really so daft as to think that after this dealer invokes (1) the house rule, (2) his own personal experience, and (3) a claim about what the state regulations require, he is going to suddenly abandon his belief when she mentions how many years she spent as a poker room employee? He is obviously just as stubborn as she is. Next, how does invoking Linda Johnson's name change the situation? Again, does she think that that will suddenly cause his position to change? That's insane. Moreover, does she expect him to say, "Hey, asking Linda Johnson is a great idea. Excuse me a second while I go make the call"? It makes no sense whatsoever to invoke authority that is, for all practical purposes, unavailable at the time. You might as well be having an argument about the Big Bang, and when your interlocutor disagrees with you, riposte by saying, "Oh yeah? Well, call Stephen Hawking and ask him!"

I love the scene in "Annie Hall" in which Woody Allen nicely skewers such moronic ways of arguing (taken from the imdb.com page here):

Alvy Singer: [the man behind him in line is talking loudly] What I wouldn't
give for a large sock with horse manure in it!

Alvy Singer: [to audience] Whaddya do when you get stuck in a movie line
with a guy like this behind you?

Man in Theatre Line: Wait a minute, why can't I give my opinion? It's a
free country!

Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean,
aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is,
Marshall McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!

Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class
at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr.
McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!

Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr.
McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me... [pulls McLuhan out from behind
a nearby poster]

Alvy Singer: come over here for a second... tell him!

Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my
work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in
anything is totally amazing!

Alvy Singer: Boy, if life were only like this!

It's all so, so stupid.

*********

So what is the actual rule? Well, it varies a lot from place to place. There are differences in who can ask to see a called but unshown hand, and differences in the details of the procedure invoked for it, which are related to whether the hand can be deemed the winner once exposed. In some places, only players still in the hand at final showdown can claim the right to see the hand; in others, any player can make the request. In some, as at the Riviera, the hand is killed before being shown so that it cannot win no matter what. In others, it is deemed still live. In yet others, it is live if the request is made by the ostensible winner of the hand (so that asking to see it carries the risk that you'll lose the pot if the player folding misread the situation, as happened here), but the hand is dead if the request is made by a player not involved.

Here, for example, is the relevant text from Robert's Rules of Poker:

Any player who has been dealt in may request to see any hand that was
eligible to participate in the showdown, even if the opponent's hand or the
winning hand has been mucked. However, this is a privilege that may be revoked
if abused. If a player other than the pot winner asks to see a hand that has
been folded, that hand is dead. If the winning player asks to see a losing
player’s hand, both hands are live, and the best hand wins.

Here's The Rules of Poker by Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky, p. 142, #5.25:

Any participant in a hand may ask to see a hand that was called. The proper
dealer procedure is to kill the called hand by touching it to the muck, then
place the hand face up on the table. If the player who won the pot asked to see
the mucked hand, and the mucked hand is actually the superior hand, then the
caller's hand is assumed to be live and the pot will be awarded to that player.
If a third party asks to see a called hand, the called hand is considered dead.
Even if it turns out to be the better hand, it is dead and cannot claim the pot.

Here's Roy Cooke and John Bond, Rules of Real Poker, p. 74 #11.08:

Players shall not be entitled to see a called hand except in cases where
there is a reasonable suspicion of collusion, in which case the floorperson
shall be called over for examination of the called hand. This is contrary to the
traditional rule. However the traditional rule, which was designed to prevent
collusion, has not served its original purpose. Asking to see called hand slows
down the game, causes resentment and impedes action. The first alternate rule
continues to be the most prevalent, but in the interests of the game it should
be completely done away with.

Alternate Rule: At the showdown, any player who was dealt into the hand has
the right to ask to see any called hand. Before turning over the hand the dealer
shall kill the hand by touching it to the muck. If the hand is not killed it is
still live and eligible to win the pot.... The purpose of this rule is to
protect against collusion, not to satisfy a player's curiosity or get a read on
a player's style of play, or worst of all to intentionally irritate a player.
Abuse of this rule is very bad for poker as it kills action and causes
resentment....

Second Alternate Rule: Only players who have been in on the turn in hold'em
games, fifth street in stud games, and for the draw in draw games shall have the
right to see a called hand; also, a winner cannot ask to see a loser's hand.

Here's Dan Paymar, Donna Harris, and Mason Malmuth, The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook, 2nd ed., p. 143:

Showing a Folded Hand

The policy of seeing a "called hand" or a "calling hand" that was discarded
can be seen by any player at the table. [sic] The dealer must tap the cards face down
on the muck to "kill" the hand, then turn it face up on the table.

If a player abuses this privilege--that is, if he constantly asks to see
other players' hands--he may be refused the right to see any hands. The
floorperson will make this decision.

So you can see that even among published rule books there is considerable disagreement about this rule. But at the very least, the detail of having the dealer kill the unseen hand before revealing it (in some circumstances, anyway) is present in all three of the books that I have on hand. Thus, for the woman at the Riviera to assert it as some sort of unique perversion of the general rule is woefully misguided.

I don't claim to know which specific variants of the rule are used at what casinos. I doubt that anybody has taken a survey and could tell us definitively what is most prevalent on each of the sub-questions involved. And it really doesn't matter. All of the possible variations carry advantages and disadvantages. There's plenty of time to find out what a particular room's rule is if and when the situation arises.

Incidentally, neither player involved in the hand ever spoke or reacted in any way. I was never sure if either of them realized what had happened. Maybe one or both did, and simply realized that nothing was going to change by talking about it and shrugged it off. I'll never know.

Weird rule at the Riviera

Above is the Riviera I wish I were at. The one I have actually been at this week is considerably less glamorous. But it has at least been profitable, as some compensation for being a dump. I may continue going there every night as long as the pool tournament is going and most of the locals are staying away. The Riviera games are pretty soft on a regular basis, but right now they are marshmallows.

Last night after I had been playing for quite a while, a Riviera regular (one of maybe only four I've encountered this week) showed up. When he was under the gun, he put out a $5 chip. The dealer announced, "Five dollar straddle." I assumed he had just had a slip of the tongue, so I asked, "Five?" He said yes. Both the player and dealer said that the straddle can be either $4 or $5. I had never seen this before, here or anywhere else.

Half an hour later we have a new dealer. Same player puts out a $5 chip. Dealer makes change and announces, "Four dollar straddle." The player tells her that it's $5. She has never heard of this rule, but rather than calling the floor over (which seems the obvious thing to do), she just says, "Oh, OK," and lets it go.

When I was cashing out at the end of the night, I asked the floor guy at the desk. He told me that, yes, the straddle can be $5 if the whole table has agreed to it. Hmmm. At the time of the first incident, I had been at the table longer than anybody else, and nobody had ever asked for consensus. If the whole table had, in fact, agreed to this arrangement before I arrived, and the first dealer knew this to be so, is that agreement still valid when not a single player who had made it remained at the table--that is, after a complete turnover of players? That seems odd.

I asked the floorman why some of his dealers seemed not to have heard of this option. His response: "Because we kind of make things up as we go."

Ah. Well, that would explain it, all right. Fine way to run a poker room.

I really don't care whether somebody straddles for $4 or $5. The advantage is that it saves the dealer making a lot of change. It also makes it that much easier for me to fold marginal hands. The disadvantage is that it's non-standard (I have a general dislike for non-standard rules, unless there is a very good justification for them), it's unknown to most of the players and apparently even some of the dealers, and it relies on 100% table agreement, which is no longer present as soon as somebody new comes along.

It's not important, but it's peculiar, which obligates me to report it here. Now I have done so.

Rack 'em up!

Last night as I was negiotiating the driveway to the Riviera parking garage, I noticed several people entering the casino with strange-looking tubular packages slung across their backs. It took me a few seconds to recognize what they were: pool cue cases!

Why is that exciting? Because pool players typically make enthusiastic but lousy poker players. I am indebted to my friend The Vegas Flea for first pointing this out to me. He's right.

My intention had been to try to put in 20 hours at the Riviera this week and thus qualify for their weekly Saturday freeroll tournament, which, by all accounts, is some of the easiest money in town. The obvious downside is that you have to sit your butt in the fairly icky Riviera poker room for 20 hours (though they have some double-hour times, which cuts down on the total amount of ickiness), which is exactly why I've never done it before.

But as soon as I saw that there was a pool tournament going on (which you can read about here), the prospect of grinding it out at the Riviera no longer seemed so daunting.

As it turns out, they have cancelled the freeroll promotion for this week because they can't afford to tie up their cash game tables with a tournament on Saturday when they are anticipating having so many more people wanting to play poker than usual. Although this is not what I anticipated when arriving last night, it's even better. It means that the place is virtually free of the local nits who clog up the tables on most weeknights, putting in their freeroll hours. The only way to make money from them is to pilfer their chips when they step away from the table, or assault them in the parking lot and steal their Social Security checks. With them gone and the stickmen in their place, it should be happy hunting for a while.

My general observation has been that people in town to participate in any sort of sporting competition (bowling, archery, darts, pool, etc.) make even more excellent--and by "excellent" I mean "terrible"--poker opponents than Joe Tourist or Joe Conventioneer, because they tend to have a keener competitive edge and a bigger spirit of adventure, without necessarily having the poker acumen to go with it.

I think that this is especially true of pool players, most of whom presumably have had to learn how to hustle their marks. They have to disguise their true skill until the big money is in. That's obviously a skill that is highly pertinent to poker, which, I suspect, tends to make them think that poker is a perfect pasttime when they're not shooting pool.

But while they may well have an exquisitely honed sense of how their pool skills rate relative to those of any opponent, in general they seem not to be nearly as sharp at figuring out when a poker opponent is a better player.

All of which means that they are excited to be in Vegas, they have spent the day showing off their world-class pool skills, they are brimming with self-confidence, they want to play poker for a break, and they will bring to the table their desire to hustle unsuspecting opponents. But in reality, they are the unsuspecting ones.

It's all perfectly delicious.

Of course, these are broad generalizations, and there are plenty of exceptions. Daniel Negreanu was a pool hustler before he took up poker seriously, for example. I know I've read of other poker pros who are also significant threats with a cue stick, though offhand I can't recall which ones.

So I won't be going to the Riviera this week complacent. But I will be going there.

As I was racking 'em up last night (the chips, that is), preparing to leave after an easy, profitable session, the dealer said to me, "See you tomorrow night." This struck me as odd, because if he recognized me as having been there before, which is likely, he would know that I tend to stop in only occasionally; I'm not what one would call a regular there. I don't think he says this to everybody, because I hadn't heard him say anything similar to other players as they left. I think he simply recognized from my general demeanor and style of play that (1) I'm there to take the money, (2) it was easy pickings, and (3) the good conditions are likely to be there again all week, and thus, (4) I wouldn't be able to resist coming back. Damn. I hate it when people read me so well.

A spoonful of magic

I had a good time and a profitable session at the Riviera last night, so tonight I headed there again. Two seats to my left was a guy using a small souvenir collector-type spoon as a card protector. (I snuck a picture of it.) OK, that's a little peculiar, but hardly worthy of mention all by itself.

The really weird thing was what he did with it. Before every hand, he would rub the back of the spoon several times in a small circle approximately where he expected the cards to be pitched to him, then turned it on its side and made three or four consecutive scraping or scooping motions toward him, as if trying to spoon the good luck his way.

Before.

Every.

Hand.

It seemed to work. That is, once in a while he won a pot. But a lot of the time it didn't work, and he had to fold without putting any money in, or he put some (or a lot of) money in and lost it. Overall, I'd say it worked about as well as if he had, say, smeared chicken blood on the table and his chair (though many casinos, oddly enough, frown on this practice).

People are so strange.

Dumbest floor decision I've seen in quite a while

Last night I was at the Riviera. I was in seat 10. The guy in seat 1 was not careful about protecting his hand. As many players are prone to do, he looks at them by just resting them on one long edge perpendicular to the table. Because I am in the same plane as he is, I can often see his bottom card. I have warned him about this. He is apparently a slow learner.

So a bunch of us are in a hand. Flop is A-K-Q. Misses me completely. I check and plan to fold. (I have the mighty 2-4, in fact, playing it on its holiest day, hoping to get a good story to tell here, but I think this is one of the rare instances where I have to let it go.) Slow Learner (SL) checks his cards again, and I get a glimpse that his bottom card is an ace. He bets $10 as I'm telling him, "Sir, I just saw your bottom card again."

There's a guy named John in seat 7. He's a dealer at the Venetian. I've played with him before. I actually like him a lot. He's a good player but pretty straightforward, friendly, funny, always well-behaved. He tells the dealer that if I saw SL's card, then everybody else has a right to see it, too. (He's in the hand.) The dealer is stymied by this request. John asks for the floor to make a decision.

Floor person comes over and the situation is explained to her. She tells me that I have to tell the table what I saw. My first thought is, "And if I refuse, do you have a penalty in mind that you think would apply to me?" I can't imagine what it would be. But I just don't really care here, since I'm going to fold and be out no matter what. So I say, "I saw an ace."

Simultaneously, the floor person is making SL show her his cards, apparently so that she can ascertain whether I'm being accurate. So now she asks, "Which ace?" I say, "It flashed too fast for me to see the suit." I suppose I could have added that I know it's not the ace of spades, because what I saw in my glance was a single, small, central pip, and the ace of spades mark would have been larger. I didn't bother with that additional piece of information.

The floor person said, "Well, if you can't tell me the exact card, then I can't make him show it." She said this directly to me, as if challenging me. Hey, lady, this isn't my fight! You asked what I saw, I'm telling you. If that isn't good enough for you, tough! Do what you want with the information.

So it was left at that. At the end of the hand, SL showed down the ace and deuce of diamonds.

This is a really strange floor decision. I can't think of any reasonable basis for requiring a player to announce to the table what he has seen of another player's accidentally flashed cards. I could be lying, or maybe my eyesight ain't so good and I'm simply mistaken. I'm sure that possibility is the thinking behind her checking SL's cards to see if I'm right.

But that opens up an obvious path for an angle shooter. Suppose the flop is all diamonds. I have the king of diamonds. My opponent bets into me. I want to know if he has the ace of diamonds. I'm in a position to possibly see his cards. So I announce that I have seen his cards, even though I haven't. The floor comes over and requires me to declare what I saw. I lie and say that he has the ace of diamonds. Now only one of two things can happen. Either the floor confirms my lucky guess that that's what he has, and shows the card to everybody, or says, "No, sir, you must have been mistaken," and the hand plays out, with me having gained an extremely valuable piece of information. Of course I wouldn't do that, but this city is filled with unscrupulous players who would, if they knew in advance that the floor is going to rule the way this did woman last night.

The only rational floor response, I think, is to tell the table, "Seat 10 claims that he saw a card of Seat 1. There is no rule that requires him to share this information. In fact, doing so would violate the rule against discussing the hand in progress. I remind you that he may be lying about having seen the card(s), or he may have thought he saw something he didn't. There is no remedy available for this unfortunate incident. Everybody please remember to protect your cards from being seen by other players in the future."

In most cases, I dislike situations that are handled differently depending on whether a player's action is deemed to have been deliberate or accidental, because that's not always easy to determine, and angle-shooters can become adept at faking things. But I don't see any good way around it here. If a player voluntarily shows his cards to another who is still in the hand, then clearly everybody else has a right to that same information before play continues. If, however, one person gets an advantage by seeing an accidentally unprotected card, in a way that isn't open to everybody, I don't think there is any immediate remedy, and you just have to play the hand out with that player having the advantage. You obviously can't automatically expose one or both cards in question, because that makes it too easy for an angle shooter to claim to have seen something that he really didn't. Adding the precaution of the floor trying to verify the assertion of what was seen introduces the hypothetical angle-shooting problem I mentioned above. Also, I must question again what this floor person intended to do if I refused to disclose what I saw. Is she going to penalize me, when I did nothing wrong? Is she going to try to torture the information out of me--maybe bring in the boys from Gitmo with a waterboard to make me talk?

There's also the problem that last night's decision in a way punishes me for having been honest. It made me the bad guy, as if this were all my fault, and put me in the situation of having to talk about the hand in progress. Put another way, SL slipped and revealed a card to one player (me), but I was asked to reveal it to eight others, arguably a far worse sin. That just doesn't make any sense to me. If this were to happen again at the Riviera, I wouldn't say anything about it until the hand was over, because I don't want to be put in that awkward situation again. Nice job, Riviera--you have caused a player to decide to be less open about breaches in game integrity.

This is actually the second time that I have been seen an opponent's card(s) in the middle of a hand, announced that fact, and been asked to tell everybody what I saw. The first time was at the Rio a month or two ago. This was just the dealer telling me that's what I had to do. I meant to write up that story when I got home, but then forgot all about it. It was so weird I thought it was just an anomaly. (Funny part of that story: The card I had seen was a 6, which was bottom pair on the flop. The player holding it folded after the dealer had me say what I had seen, because he was facing a large bet. Another 6 came on the turn. The table erupted with laughter, except for the player who had folded, who slammed his fist on the table.)

In thinking this over, I suppose there is really no reason for me to tell somebody that I'm seeing his cards in the middle of the hand. I can just wait until it's over. There is not much to be gained by passing on that warning as the hand is playing out--the damage has already been done. With two recent cases of my announcement causing complications for the hand, I guess it's easier on everybody if I just shut up until the end of the hand. My motivation in both cases was to try to say something in the very moment that the player is flashing, so that he can see what he's doing wrong with his cards. But in the future, I'm going to wait, lest the table be visited by another stupid floor decision that makes the situation worse.


*sigh* On rereading, I see that I have once again freely intermixed present and past tense in my story-telling. But once again, I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. Apologies again for my sloppy writing.

Flopping trips and tripping flops

Last night after I left the Orleans I drove to the Riviera and played there for a while. In the first hour, there were three flops that contained all the same rank of card: specifically, 9-9-9, 8-8-8, and 5-5-5. That seemed like a remarkable coincidence to me, and it got me wondering how often this should be expected to occur. Let's work it out.

The first card can obviously be anything. Let's say it's the ace of spades, just for funsies. Now there are two cards left to come for this flop and 51 cards unaccounted for in the deck. There are 1275 combinations of two cards that can be picked from a deck of 51 when we don't care about the order they come in, because C(51,2)=1275.

There are three aces left. There are only three different pairs we could possible select from them: Ad-Ac, Ad-Ah, and Ah-Ac. So only 3 out of the 1275 possible pairs of cards that we might draw to complete the flop will meet our stated criterion of all three flop cards being the same rank.

In other words, this should happen 3/1275 hands, or 1 in 425 hands, or about 0.24% of the time--a pretty rare occurrence, all right.

So I was correct: seeing it three times in an hour was highly unusual, given that a typical hour of live casino poker usually won't produce more than 40 hands or so.

Isn't math fun?!

Another very minor celebrity sighting

I forgot to mention that the other night at the Riviera I was seated next to Allan Pyles, a poker dealer at Binion's, who hosts a weekly podcast called "Man in the Box" over at Hold'em Radio. I have to admit that I've never heard the show, but I'm downloading a couple of episodes now to listen to later. He is a fine player and a smart, funny guy--one of the rare ones that it's an actual pleasure to spend a few hours sitting next to.

New chips at the Riviera

Played at the Riviera last night. I hadn't been there in a few months, and was very surprised to see that they have made a complete relacement of their $5 chips. There appear to be five different new ones, shown above, fronts and backs. They're really quite nice (though the middle one may hold the world record for the most human butts ever displayed on a poker chip). It's a rare esthetic pleasure to play with a set of uniformly new, sharp-edged, and still mostly clean chips.

I can't recall ever seeing a casino entirely replace its stock of chips. The old ones were nowhere to be seen. Usually the old ones continue to exist alongside the new ones. Despite the pleasures of the new set, this is kind of disappointing, because the Riviera used to be one of just a handful of places (Palms, Rio, the old Aladdin, Harrah's, Hard Rock) that issue new chips at the drop of a hat. They had literally dozens of different ones in circulation, and there were many not yet in my collection. What I most liked about the Riviera's practice was issuing commemorative chips for the various oddball conventions that were held there.

I like having and looking at a variety of chips in my three-ring binder. But it's not a serious hobby, and not worth it to me to invest much of either time or money to expand the collection. Basically, if I don't come across a chip while playing, I don't pick it up. So I'm not going to go out of my way to hunt for all of the chips now taken out of circulation. Furthermore, I've never paid more than face value for a chip, and still won't. They're just not that important to me. All of which means that what had been one of the reasons I occasionally hit up the Riviera--the hope of picking up a couple of new interesting chips as souvenirs--is now gone, and the ones I didn't get earlier will just have to remain out of my life.

Certainly a bit of sadness, but I suppose it's possible that there are greater tragedies than this in the world.

For Sopranos fans

I'm not sure what prompted the Riviera to issue this set of chips, but I love 'em. Unfortunately, now I'll have to go back and keep playing there until I have the whole series.

Of course, I could just ask one of the cashiers to pick them out for me, but I consider that cheating. For my collection, I have to come by the chips honestly, which means in the course of playing poker. Chips won are far, far sweeter than chips purchased.

Weird card protector

This one was an ugly little Yoda, spotted at the Riviera poker room.

Still not quite as strange as this one, however: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2006/11/weirdest-card-protector-ever.html

An ethical dilemma (non-grumpy content)

Last night I played a hand at the Riviera while knowing what my opponent held. It was an extremely strange sensation. How it happened requires some fairly boring background explanation.

Many of the sleazier poker rooms (and the Riviera fits that description) scrimp way too much on putting replacement decks of cards into use. The uniform pattern on the backs of cards gradually starts wearing off in places, leaving tell-tale pale spots in the design. Often, there are so many cards affected in this way, and the marks are so hard to distinguish from each other, that it would take great concentration and effort to learn which spot went with which card. But sometimes one of the marks is fairly distinct in shape or location, and an observant player can quickly learn to identify that card.

Naturally, I consider it unethical to continue playing with such a card in the deck, once I'm confident I can spot it in an opponent's hand. I alert the dealer to the problem and get that card (or the whole deck) replaced.

One of the first times I did this, I was embarrassed to be wrong. As the card I had noted was mucked by another player, I said to the dealer what has become my standard line: "You should peek at that card. If it's the four of hearts (or whatever), you should probably replace it." I had been right all three times or so that I had noted such a problem before. But on that occasion, I was wrong for the first time. It turned out that that deck had two or three cards all with similar marks.

As a result, I tightened up my standards. My method now is that when I see what appears to be a distinctive worn patch, and learn what card it is associated with, I have to correctly spot that card twice before I alert the dealer to it. For example, if I get dealt the card and correctly identify it to myself before peeking at it, that's one. If I see it coming off of the deck as one of the flop cards, and the card I've named to myself is indeed on the flop, that's two. Then I feel ready to alert the dealer the next time there's an opportunity.

Even then, I still want the dealer to do the final test. It's far more convincing that there's a problem if I point to a card in the muck and name it for the dealer, than if I point to a spot on a card that the dealer knows that I've seen (e.g., one from the flop or one of my own hole cards). So even after I've passed my double test, often quite a bit of time passes before I get the chance to see the card in a situation where the dealer will know that the only way I could name it is from recognizing the back (usually when another player folds his hand, and I see the mark as the card is being pulled into the muck).

The reason for this final demonstration is that on a previous occasion when I didn't prove my secret knoweldge, but just pointed to the tell-tale spot on a card from my hand, the dealer waved it off, saying, "Oh, lots of the cards have little marks like that."

Before last night, I had never contemplated the dilemma that I would face if I found myself in a hand with an opponent who was holding the card I had confidently identified, but had not yet had the chance to reveal to the dealer. So of course, since I hadn't thought about how to handle the situation, the poker gods foisted it upon me.

On one of my very first hands of the session, I noticed an unusual mark on a card in the muck. The Kem card pattern was one of tiny overlapping circles. There isn't a straight line anywhere in the design. But this wear mark was perfectly linear, which is why it caught my eye. It was a long, long time before that card was dealt to me, and I learned that it was the nine of spades. But having been burned once, I was aware that there might be two or more cards with similar features, and I couldn't be sure. So I waited until it was dealt to me again. Yep--nine of spades again. That's almost surely a unique mark, and I'm ready to point it out to the dealer next time I see it in a situation where he or she will know that I didn't see the face of the card.

Then the problem hand developed. I was in the five seat, and looked down at the ace and jack of spades. I raised. I got only one caller, an older man in the one seat, who was in the big blind. He didn't use a card protector, and as he tossed in the chips to call, I saw, to my consternation, that his top card was the marked one. I now knew that he had the nine of spades.

This was an eerie feeling, one that I've never had before. Instead of mentally constructing a list of the possible range of hands with which he would have called me in that situation, I knew one of his cards for sure, and could place extremely tight boundaries on what the other card must be. He might have an unsuited ace-nine (had to be unsuited because I had the ace of spades), he might have pocket nines, and he might have suited connectors, with the eight or ten of spades as his second card. Those were really the only possibilities for his call, given that he was a tight player, that he knew me to be a tight player, and that he was willing to play the hand against me from out of position.

It's hard to describe how incredibly useful this kind of information is.

The flop was J-4-5, with one spade. I had top pair, top kicker. He checked to me. Naturally I'm going to bet here, even if I have no idea what he's holding, but I would usually be doing so with a cautious eye to the possibility that he had flopped a set and was slow-playing it, or had a big pocket pair with which he was preparing to sandbag me. Here, though, that wasn't possible. Of the narrow range of hands listed above, the best he could have at this point was pocket nines, which were way behind my jacks. He could not have a flush draw or a straight draw. He could not have a higher pair.

I bet with a higher degree of confidence than I can recall ever previously having on the flop (short of holding the absolute nuts). It was spooky. I suddenly had an inkling of how the infamous Potripper must have felt playing on Absolute Poker last year. (He's the guy who had insider access so that he could see all of his opponents' cards while he played. Poker is a remarkably easy game when you can do that.)

I was fidgeting, though, and unsure of what to do. I wasn't cheating, of course. I hadn't marked the card. I hadn't peeked at it when it wasn't mine to see. I had only used information that was freely available to anybody at the table who cared to pay attention to it. Furthermore, I hadn't intentionally withheld my knowledge of this one card--I just hadn't yet had the opportunity to disclose my knowledge of it in the way that I have developed, in good faith, as my custom.

If this guy had called my bet on the flop, I was thinking that I should probably stop the action and tell him what an advantage I had, and let the dealer and floor figure out what to do about it.

Fortunately, I was saved the decision of whether to actually do that, because he folded. And yes, I did seize the moment, as he slid his cards toward the dealer, to tell the dealer, "Check his top card. If it's the nine of spades, you need to replace it." My opponent looked as if I had just performed an astonishing magic trick. "How did you know that?" I pointed out the spot. He turned over both cards. The other one was the nine of diamonds. Bingo.

Now my problem is what procedure to use to balance being highly confident that I have, in fact, identified a unique mark, against being again put in the awkward position of playing against an opponent when I have such a huge unfair advantage. It's a problem I haven't solved yet.



Note above, please, that the Riviera is another casino with a huge assortment of lovely chips for collectors. (Click on the photo for a magnified view.) I especially like that they issue chips for conventions that they host, which produces some really unexpected ones. My favorites from this batch, though, are the Easter one in the center and the Halloween one in the lower right corner.


Addendum, February 4, 2008

Yesterday I was playing at Boulder Station. Twice in a fairly short interval I was dealt the five of clubs, which I noted had a small mark on the back. Given my story above, I decided to lower my threshold for pointing out the problem to the dealer, so instead of waiting for a second confirmatory instance of identifying the card from the mark, I used just one (i.e., the second time it was dealt to me, I correctly suspected it was the 5c before I turned it over). The next time I saw what appeared to be the same mark on a card in the muck, I had the dealer check it. It was the deuce of clubs, not the five. *D'oh!* So I'm still unsure how to get to a position of confidence that a mark is unique and therefore especially problematic without risking putting myself in an ethical quandary again.

Bluetooth addicts

I secretly snapped this photo at the poker desk at the Riviera last night. See that Bluetooth headset the guy is wearing? He was just concluding at least two hours of poker with that thing stuck in/on his ear the whole time. He was at the next table over, so I can't be sure, but I never noticed him acting as if he were taking a phone call at any point.

I suspect that the image such people wish to project is one of great self-importance. "I'm in such demand that I can't even be bothered to take my cell phone off of my belt when a call comes in."

I'm sure that these devices are extremely useful for people in some specific situations, such as needing to use both hands to enter data on a computer while on the phone with a customer. But to wear it through a long poker session at a casino is ludicrous. It reeks of a fragile ego that needs to be boosted by silly status symbols.

Here's an idea: When you go to play poker, play poker. Let other stuff go. It's fine to leave your cell phone on (I do), but remember that you do have voice mail. You can let most of your calls go there and deal with them later. Really--not everything is urgent in life. And since you're going to step away from the table to take the rare call that is worthy of immediate attention (you are going to step away, aren't you? Or do you think that we're all vitally interested in what groceries your wife is asking you to pick up on the way home?), you really don't need the telephone hanging from your ear for hours at a stretch, do you? Or perhaps you enjoy looking that dorky?

(Incidentally, for one of the best stories ever of public cell phone use, see http://hardboiledpoker.blogspot.com/2007/05/shamus-in-vegas-episode-9-what-happens.html.)



Below is a bonus photo of yours truly, looking suave and sophisticated and important with my own Bluetooth thingy. It came free with my cell phone. I put it on just for this picture, then put it back in its box and in the closet--never inserted a battery in it or synced it to the phone. I just don't need it.

(Close observers may notice that this is the first time a photograph has appeared in a post at some point other than the top. I just now figured out how to move it to a different spot! Woohoo! Another breakthrough for your techno-challenged author!)