Poker dictionary

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Checking out early

Nearly every time I play poker, I run into at least one person who checks out (i.e., folds unnecessarily, when not facing a bet) on the flop if he misses it. I don't get this.

First, let me tell you what I'm not talking about. I'm not talking about breaking a rule or point of etiquette. Some people consider folding when not facing a bet to be against the rules, the equivalent of acting out of turn. I first ran across this idea last year in a Card Player magazine column by Michael Wiesenberg, available here. This surprised me, because I've never heard a player in a casino scolded for checking out, as long as it is done in turn. Here's Wiesenberg's argument:

Online cardrooms offer an unfortunate option. You can fold at any time when
the action is on you, even when there has been no bet in the current round.
Presumably, this is to speed up the action, but the downside of this is that it
is not protecting the other players.

For example, in a no-limit hold'em game, the player on the button flops a
straight-flush draw and bets on the flop (which contains an ace) and turn.
Unfortunately, the river misses him completely. He is reasonably certain that
the player under the gun has middle pair. To his right you sit, a new player not
up on cardroom etiquette. The first player checks. You, drawing to a straight or
flush, missed your hand and disgustedly throw your cards into the muck. The
button had planned on making a final bet to try to steal this pot. Had you held
on to your cards, the first player might well not have called, fearing that an
overcall from you would beat him, but with you now gone, he's much more likely
to call, so the button dares not make a bluff that otherwise might have had a
reasonable chance of succeeding. But your not holding on to your cards stopped
him. You did not protect him. When you are in this situation and the first
player checks, you also should check and hold on to your cards, even if you're
that sure you can't possibly win. Then, if the button bets, hold on to your
cards until the first player acts. Only when he has completed his action should
you throw your cards away.

I usually agree with Wiesenberg, but here I think he's wrong. Of course folding rather than checking changes things. But that's the nature of the game--every action or lack of action by every player changes the situation. In the specific example cited, one could just as easily argue that the player checking out makes it easier for the guy on the button to bet with nothing, because now he knows that he only has one person to try to bluff, which is always easier than trying to bluff two people. Yes, the unnecessary fold changes things, but it doesn't change things in a way that is either obviously or consistently favorable or unfavorable to any other player. It is therefore not unfair or unethical in the slightest, in my opinion. The player checking out has no way of knowing whether his action helps or hurts the plans of any remaining player; he cannot intentionally be helping or hurting anybody else by his decision. As far as I know, it is not against the rules in any Vegas card room.

But that's not my point here. There are rare situations in which I have checked out on the river, because it is inconceivable that I could win or even split the pot. I stress rare, though, because usually I'll just check along with everybody else, there always being a very small chance that I'll have the shock of collecting the pot, or part of it. (For one such story, see the second part of this post.)

Checking out on the flop, though, is just nuts, as far as I'm concerned. There are two more cards to come, and you just might get to see them both for free. That doesn't happen often, but it costs you nothing to check and hope. If somebody bets, you can fold at that point, without anything lost. It's not like you're in a hurry to be doing something else, since you have to wait for the hand to play out anyway. Once in a great while, even if your hand is a complete dog on the flop, the turn and river will come as the miracles to make you two pair or trips or a straight or a flush. What is the point of throwing your hand away when instead you could just check and watch to see what develops? I cannot discern any up-side, any benefit to folding in this situation--yet every session I play I see at least one player who has adopted this as a habit when the flop misses him.

Like I said at the beginning, I just don't get this. Poker players do all sorts of goofy things, but this strikes me as one of the most inexplicable.

Stories from the Palms

The three souvenir chips above are the ones I nabbed tonight playing at the Palms. The first two, Gwen Stefani and No Doubt, are shown here as a shoutout to my good friend who is a fan of Ms. Stefani and her former band. The third one is a special chip the Palms issued for the Fourth of July, 2008. It was a nice surprise to pick up a chip that has only been in circulation for a few days. (Click on the photo for a ridiculously enlarged view.)


There were a couple of incidents worth grumbling about here during this poker session.

1.

I was not involved in this hand, but was following the action trying to deduce what cards the two players involved had. One of the players was definitely not a PokerStars prodigy. He was mid-60s, with a heavy German accent, and I've seen him around town a few times before. He played the hand (the details of which don't matter) in a very peculiar way, alternating on every street between passivity and aggression, and I couldn't easily put him on a hand. It turned into one of the biggest pots of the night.

This man finally was facing a very large bet on the river. He looked very unhappy about it. He picked up his hole cards and showed them to the two players on his left (not visible to me or his opponent, who was next to me on the other end of the table from him). One of them reacted strongly, making a face and saying, "Oh, wow." (This is a good reason, kids, not to show your cards to another player during a hand. No matter how good your poker face is, you can't control how others will react, or what they will give away.) This heightened my curiosity. He finally decided to fold.

As the dealer was pulling in his cards, I said to her, "Show those, please." The man nearly had a fit. He went on a tirade about how disrespectful I was being. "Have some respect! HAVE SOME RESPECT!" The dealer had somehow not paid attention at the crucial moment, so she had missed the fact that this guy had deliberately flashed his cards to two other players, but when I told her that, those other players confirmed it. That should have been the end of it, because of the universal "show one, show all" rule. But this guy just escalated his protest at having his cards revealed. Finally, the floor was called over. It took her a while to get the salient facts, but once she did, the decision was simple: Of course any other player can ask to see them.

The guy was so angry at me for making this request that he picked up what was left of his chips, cashed out, and stormed off.

He was apparently confusing two different rules. The only one applicable here was "show one, show all." Information is the most valuable commodity at a poker table. Once he revealed his cards to two other players, it became perfectly legitimate for anybody else to ask to see them. This is not a breach of etiquette, either. Anybody flashing his cards to another player, especially in a hand as unusal and a pot as large as this, has to expect that somebody else will ask to see them. That is what usually happens. In fact, I maintain that it is rude to try to show them selectively, as he did. I think that the spirit of the rule imposes an affirmative obligation on a player. If I show one, I should lay my cards on the table for all to see--players shouldn't have to ask the dealer to exercise their right. (I suspect mine is a minority view on that narrow point, however.)

A completely different rule pertains to "called hands." That is, if on the last round of betting there is a bet and a call, then other players may have the right to ask to see the losing hand, even if the player holding it would rather toss his cards unseen into the muck. This is one of the most controversial rules in the book, and its implementation varies wildly between casinos. In some, only a player who was in the hand all the way to the end can exercise the privilege, while in others anybody at the table can, and in still others one has to be able to convince a floorperson that there is a basis for suspecting collusion, the prevention of which was the original reason for the rule. In some places, the hand about to be revealed gets killed by the dealer first, so that it's ineligible to win, should the player have accidentally misread his hand, while in others this does not occur, and in still others it occurs unless the player asking to see the hand is the guy who apparently won the pot. The rule is also different in tournaments than in cash games. It's all potentially very confusing.

Michael Wiesenberg recently summed all of this up in a column for Card Player magazine--see here. He wisely notes, in addition to the myriad of variations on the rule, that there is also an associated etiquette:

Even though the rules permit requesting any called hand to be shown, you'll find
that in public cardrooms, players rarely ask. Doing so is often considered a
breach of poker etiquette. It's easy online. At the end of any hand in which you
had cards, you can just click on the button that presents the hand history. No
one knows that you looked. In live play, though, you'll soon make a nuisance of
yourself and annoy the others at your table if you keep asking. Reserve doing so
for a hand in which you had demonstrable interest, such as one in which you were
driven out by a large bet on the river and the winning hand is worse than yours
and you want to see if you had the bettor beat. And even then, exercise your
right sparingly.

Well said, and good advice.

But even after typing in all of the above, I have to say that it's all completely irrelevant to the situation I was in tonight. This was not a called hand, so no variant of this rule had any bearing on the matter. I belabor it in order to make clear that the associated point of etiquette, nicely explained by Mr. Wiesenberg, is equally inapplicable. And that seems to be what the gentleman in question was missing. He somehow thought that that etiquette point also carried over to the "show one, show all" rule. It does not. No way, no how.

As I wrote here on the same subject back in November, 2006, in one of my earliest blog posts,

I have heard only one person ever express the opinion that it's bad form to ask
to see a player's cards after he shows them to another player, under the classic
and universal "show one, show all" principle. That was Phil Hellmuth, in one of
last year's WSOP events. I recall that another pro at his table stated strong
disagreement that there was anything wrong with the request.

In fact, looking back on that post (which I had kind of forgotten until just now), I think what I wrote there is what I would tell the older man who got so angry at me tonight:

Dude, you were out of line. If you don't want anyone to ask to see your
hole cards, it's pretty simple: just don't show them to anybody. But if you
choose to flash your aces to your buddy, you've got to expect that somebody else
is going to ask to see them, too, and if you can't deal with that, just go back
to your home game.

Pardon the extended discourse on this point. It's awfully rare that I'm publicly accused of having violated poker etiquette, so when that happens, I feel a need to explain and defend my actions.

I did try to calmly explain exactly this to the man tonight, but he twice interrupted me with yelling, over and over again, "HAVE SOME RESPECT!", so I gave up, rather than risk infuriating him further.


2

A bunch of young men had just started up a new game at the next table over. Within the first couple of hands, a big nastiness erupted. Apparently one of the players wanted to put in a double straddle (for explanations of the regular straddle, see here and here) and have it be live--i.e., that, like with the regular straddle, the double-straddler would gain the last option of raising before the flop. He was told that this would not be allowed.

He was incensed about this decision, far more than could be considered rational or even sane. He insisted that he had played in poker rooms all over Nevada, and every other establishment allowed this, except for the Palms.

Well, that's just pure BS. I can document having played in all of the poker rooms in the Vegas and Mesquite area (with the exception of a couple that I'm not entirely sure are even still open)--see here for the list. In most of them, at some point somebody has asked about the double straddle, which is popular in many home games. I have never found any poker room that will treat it as live. They all allow it, but only as a dead raise in the dark (meaning that the player does not have the option of raising again before the flop after putting in his initial raise).

Maybe it's different if you request a private game for a group of friends, and you're paying by the hour for the table and the service of the dealer, but that's not what this guy was claiming. Some places might also allow it if everybody at the table agrees (though again I've never witnessed this happening), but that's likely to happen only if all of the players know each other, so that it's nearly like a private game anyway. At any public poker table with a random assortment of players, there will almost always be at least one who objects to a live double straddle, because it can effectively push a game to be much bigger in stakes than everybody is comfortable with. If you basically try to turn, say, a $4/$8 game into a game with a $16 big blind, players won't want that. If they felt like playing with a big blind of that size, they would have sat down in a $15/$30 game to begin with!

Anyway, this guy was so bothered by this limitation on his fun that he picked up his chips and left, taking a couple of his friends with him. He had threatened that his leaving with his buddies would result in the newly-started game breaking up, but they just filled the seats from the waiting list, and it continued without them.

If being allowed a live double straddle is so crucial to one's enjoyment of a poker game, wouldn't it be wise to call around and find where it might be permitted before settling on a place to play? I don't know where those three guys went, but I'm highly confident that they didn't get any more satisfaction on their request at any other poker room in town.

It's so stupid to make a big fuss over such things. Sure, go ahead and ask, but if the dealer tells you it's not permitted, and the floor person can't or won't make an exception to the general house rule, you say, "Well, OK, thanks anyway," and move on with your life. At that point, no amount of talking, arguing, cajoling, demanding, stomping your feet, explaining what you have seen happen at other places, or raising your voice is going to get you what you want. So either live with the game as it is being spread, or calmly, politely stand up, say good-bye, and find a place more to your liking.

People can be such idiotic boors.

3

I'm pretty sure that I made a mental note of a third story to write about while I was at the poker table, but now it's 2:45 in the morning, and I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open. My powers of recall are not exactly at their sharpest. So I guess I'll have to either come back and add an addendum to this post later, or do a separate post, or maybe the story will be lost forever. Couldn't have been too earthshaking, I guess.

No-limit straddles

Every poker room in the city, save one, has what seems to me to be a flaw in its rules: specifically, a fixed amount for a straddle bet in no-limit games. This is my call for the other 50+ rooms to get with the program.

First, the basics. A straddle is the currently more popular term for what Michael Wiesenberg's poker dictionary (the best there is; see http://www.poker1.com/mcu/mculib_dictionary.asp) calls an overblind:

********
overblind
1. (v) Put in a blind when one is already present. In a traveling blind game, this could mean someone putting in an optional blind in addition to the mandatory blinds. In a game without mandatory blinds, this would be blinding a pot (putting in a blind) after someone else has killed it. (To put in an overblind is sometimes called to kill.) Sometimes called go the overs. 2. (n) The blind put in by the person who overblinds. In a 3-3-6 traveling blind game ($12 limit or $12 minimum bet no-limit), John might put in $12 before getting his cards. He has doubled the limit (or the minimum bet) to $24, and he gets last action before the draw. Someone might say, "John acts last; he has the overblind." Also straddle, for both meanings.
**********

Because a straddle is simply a blind raise (though whether it is technically a "raise" is a point I'll deal with shortly), with the option to reraise oneself, in limit games it makes sense for it to be the same amount that a regular raise from first position (i.e., under the gun) would be. But since no-limit games don’t restrict the size of a raise, it's illogical for the amount of a straddle to be limited.

To be sure, nearly every poker room with no-limit games allows only a fixed straddle of double the big blind. Treasure Island is the exception. (The astute reader may have guessed that from the choice of accompanying photo.) There, a straddle bet in a no-limit game can be of any size the player wants to make it, up to his whole stack. After thinking about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re doing it right, and everybody else is doing it wrong.

Personally, I think straddles are generally pretty stupid strategy. (See my full rant on this at http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2006/11/live-straddle.html.) I rarely do them, but it doesn’t bother me that others like using them. It just seems to me that if the goal of allowing them in the first place is to increase action (particularly at a tight-fisted table), then that would be better achieved by allowing a straddle of any amount. As it stands, the difference between calling the $2 big blind (in a $1-2 game) and a $4 straddle is virtually nil. But a straddle to, say, $15 would definitely alter (and make more complicated) the decisions for the other players. And from the perspective of poker room managers, it will tend to increase the chance of getting a pot large enough to collect the maximum rake.

I’ve checked several sources, and there is very little advice in print about this question. Specifically, the allowable amount of a straddle in a no-limit game is not discussed in Cooke’s Rules of Real Poker or Lou Krieger’s Rules of Poker. Bob Ciaffone’s "Robert’s Rules of Poker" (never in print, as far as I know, but widely available online) specifies that the straddle amount is twice the big blind, but it’s not clear to me whether he is intending to include no-limit games in that prescription. In Paymar et al’s Professional Poker Dealer’s Handbook, p. 141 (2nd edition), they don’t discuss no-limit games, but do say that in spread-limit games the straddle amount can be anything up to the maximum raise that would be allowed. This makes sense. Extending the same logic to no-limit games, the straddle amount should be unlimited.

Two technical questions that I can think of will come up if other poker rooms were to decide to give this a trial:

1. What is the minimum amount of a reraise? If the straddle is just a raise of the $2 big blind, then a straddle of, say, $15 is a $13 raise, and one would think that the minimum reraise would therefore be another $13, to a total of a $28 bet. But it may be better to think of the straddle not as a standard raise, but more like another (optional) blind. If so, then the minimum next raise would need to be double the straddle amount (e.g., to $30 on a $15 straddle). (Robert’s Rules, version 10, #15: “A straddle bet sets a new minimum bring-in; it is not treated as a raise.”) Personally, I think this makes more sense, and would be easier to implement, though it’s only a small difference.

2. What is the minimum bet on subsequent betting rounds? Usually the minimum bet on the flop, turn, and river is the amount of the big blind. Usually the occurrence of a straddle before the flop isn’t considered to change this. However, if one sees the straddle as, effectively, a third blind, then it might make more sense to use the straddle amount as the minimum bet size on subsequent streets, too. Furthermore, if there’s a straddle to, say, $15, with a call or two, a minimum bet on subsequent betting rounds of $15 is more sensible than reverting to a $2 minimum, given how big the pot is going to be. The question may never come up, because the kind of action junkie that will throw in a sizable straddle, given the chance, isn’t going to even consider a $2 bet when there’s a decent-sized pot built by his pre-flop action. But the room staff should make the decision in advance one way or the other, to be prepared, just in case.

So how about it, Venetian? Caesars? Mirage? MGM? Mandalay? Binion's? Red Rock? Who among you will step forward, admit that you've had an illogical rule in place, and change it?

Both sides of quad slow-rolling in one night

From the best poker dictionary in existence, by Michael Wiesenberg (http://www.poker1.com/mcu/mculib_dictionary.asp):

slow roll
(n phrase) The practice by some players, at the showdown, when they have the best hand, of waiting till the last possible moment before showing that hand. This is usually done for one of three reasons: to see everyone else's cards first, to needle one or more of the active players, or just out of pure orneriness.

slow-roll
(v) To knowingly have the best hand at the showdown but expose it only after the losers' hands are shown, leading another player to think he has the winning hand. See slow roll.


By odd coincidence yesterday, I was both the intentional victim and unintentional perpetrator of a slow roll of unbeatable four-of-a-kind hands in one session at the Venetian.

Perpetrator:
I'm in late position with suited Q-9 and call a largish raise from one of the blinds. It's heads-up between us. The flop is 9-8-8 rainbow. My opponent hesitates, looks at his chips, looks at me, seems quite nervous, then puts all his chips into one big stack and pushes it forward. It's $103. This is well over twice the size of the pot--a huge overbet. Before that, I thought it most likely that he had a big pair, something between jacks and aces, and I was frankly just hoping to catch a lucky flop, but expecting to have to dump my hand if I didn't hit something strong.

His hesitation, nervousness, and the peculiar size of the bet made me re-think this, however, and suggested to me that he actually had A-K, missed the flop, and really, really, really didn't want a call. At this point, I had only $110 in front of me, so the call is for essentially my whole stack. I finally convinced myself that hitting my 9 actually did put me ahead, so I call.

Then several things happen basically all at once. My opponent turns over his cards, and I see that I was dead wrong in my post-flop read of him: he had pocket aces. Oops. Oh well. So without even watching the dealer put out the turn and river cards, I start counting out what I'm going to have to pay him.

While I'm doing that, I glance up at the now-completed set of community cards. The last two cards have come 9-9, giving me quad 9s, but it doesn't register that way with me. For some reason I can't explain, my brain reads the board as 9-8-8-8-9, instead of the actual 9-8-8-9-9. Just at this moment, I get more confused because the dealer announces my opponent's hand as "nines full of aces." I'm frozen like a deer in the headlights, simultaneously trying to figure out (1) how he can have nines full when there are only two 9s on the board (or so I think), and (2) whether my full house is bigger or smaller than his. I haven't turned over my cards because I'm a little embarrassed to have twice called big bets from a guy with aces when I was so far behind.

It takes me probably five seconds to clear my head and realize why I'm so confused. Then I see that I got just obscenely lucky to turn my measly pair into quads. So I sheepishly flip over my hole cards. Several people at the table gasp. My opponent--to his credit--didn't whine or complain, just let his head roll back for a second, then stood up and walked away.

The dealer seems to understand my situation, and quietly says, "You didn't see it, did you?" No, I didn't.

So to the guy I beat, I apologize for the slow roll. I'm well aware of how rude it is. I swear it was completely unintentional. I thought for sure I was dead. All those 8s and 9s blurred in my visual cortex, and I just didn't grasp what had happened for a few seconds. I would never do that on purpose. You left the table too quickly for me to explain, though I did attempt to tell the other players at the table what had happened, once it became clear to me in retrospect.

Victim:
Earlier in the evening I had A-J. The flop was A-K-x. A guy in the big blind checks, I bet, he calls. The turn card is another K. This makes me think he probably doesn't have a king and my ace is probably good. I only have in front of me about the same amount that's in the pot, so I move all in after he checks again. He calls. The river is a blank. I turn over my A-J.

He looks at my cards, looks at me, nods, but doesn't move. Then oh-so-slowly he turns over first one king, then another one. He has all four of 'em.


I suppose that if I were a generous soul, I would give this guy the benefit of the doubt and assume that somehow he got confused about his hand the same way I did. But, frankly, this seems pretty damn unlikely. Pocket kings are the second-best starting hand, and I think everybody who looks down at them gets a little jolt of excitement at the prospect of winning the hand. Then upon hitting a third one on the flop, the excitement builds, because you're a virtual lock to win the hand. When the fourth one hits the turn, and an opponent pushes all-in, it's like having an orgasm.

It's just not plausible that this guy didn't know what he had, given the sequence of events. It played out in a completely different way from the hand in which I made quads on the turn and river after all the money went in on the flop. With about 99% certainty, this guy was just being a jerk. I have no idea why, other than a personality disorder. It happened within the first five or so hands of my session; I had just sat down, and so hadn't had any kind of history with him that would make him want to retaliate.

On one of the first seasons of the World Poker Tour (season 2's "WPT Invitational," to be exact) Harry Demetriou accidentally gave an opponent a slow roll. He had put in a pre-flop raise with pocket aces. The short-stacked opponent (I don't remember who it was) moved all-in. Harry didn't realize that a player between the all-in guy and him had folded; that is, he didn't know the action was back to him. He just sat quietly for maybe 30 seconds. Finally he realized that everybody was waiting for him to act. He obviously was going to call.

What was impressive is that he apologized over and over and over again. He would never intentionally slow-roll anybody; he just didn't realize it was his turn.* He was mortified that anybody would think he had done that deliberately. He's a classy guy.

I think most players are delighted to show their winning hands as quickly as possible. It's rare to run into a player who takes some sort of sick pleasure in slow-rolling with the absolute nuts. I don't recall ever before being the one to have done it (however unintentionally), nor being on the receiving end (though perhaps I have been, and don't remember it). It was very strange to be on both sides of it in one night.

To the guy who slow-rolled his quad kings: a pox on you, sir.


*In this case, it would be a slightly different kind of slow-roll than described in the definition above. If at any point in the hand one has the nuts--the best possible hand--so that a call of an opponent's all-in bet is eagerly and automatically given, delaying that call any longer than necessary is another version of a slow-roll. Now, sometimes there is a strategic reason to take one's time about it--most commonly to seduce another player into also calling, by acting as if it's a difficult decision. There's nothing unethical about that. But in Demetriou's case, he was the last one to have a decision to make. He would surely have acted instantly if he had known it was his turn.