Celebrity sighting (non-grumpy content)

Once again, apologies for the poor resolution on wide angle on my cheapo cell phone camera. It may be a bit hard to tell, but that's actor Michael J. Anderson, in the background, checking in at the poker desk at the Hilton last night. He's been in lots of movies and TV shows, but is most famous for playing the red-suited, backwards-talking, dancing dwarf in "Twin Peaks," 1990-1991. He was seated at another table, so I didn't get to talk to or play with him. However, I'm told that this is the second session he has put in here this week, so I may get to see him again soon. Amazingly, he looks just like he did during "Twin Peaks"--that is, he absolutely does not look 17 years older than then. It's like he's frozen in time.

Addendum, 8/10/07: Mr. Anderson was playing poker at the Hilton again last night. While he was waiting for a table, he kindly allowed me to snap a much better picture of him, and chatted with me for a few minutes about David Lynch movies. He got seated at a different table from me, so I still don't know how well he plays. But he's very kind to strangers.

This post for men only!

OK, well, women can read it, too, but only if you have a lot of nose and ear hair.

So now that it's down to just us people with nose/ear hair problems, let's talk frankly, shall we? I have no idea why, with age, we start losing hair where we've traditionally had and wanted it, and start growing hair in all sorts of places that we're not used to having it. None of us asked for this, but it's the way things are, so we have to deal with reality.

And the reality is this: Nose hair and ear hair are just gross. Nobody wants to be seeing it on you--or, more precisely, coming out of you.

What does this have to do with poker? Well, at the poker table we are crowded together unnaturally and uncomfortably. We have to look at each other to chat, to see who is doing what, to watch facial expressions and gain information, etc. If you're across the room from me, the thick, black, gnarly stuff sprouting from your facial orifices probably won't be within the gradually fading resolution of my vision (although, let's face it, there are some guys who could get theirs to floor length without much effort). But when you're shoulder-to-shoulder with me, my view of your face is about as good as Cary Grant had of George Washington's in "North by Northwest."

And I don't want to be seeing what you've got going on there.

You get a haircut once in a while, right? You shave at least a few days a week, right? So what has motivated you to decide to just let nature take its ugly course when it comes to the nose and ears? (And if you're one of the Eyebrow People, let's throw that area in for good measure here, too, though it falls more into the category of "weird" than "disgusting.")

Hey, I'm right there with you. About the time I turned 40, some bizarre biological switch was thrown, and out the stuff came. I actually have to eat twice as much as I used to, because my body is now expending so much energy on growing unwanted hair everywhere. But I deal with it, y'know?

If you don't already know what to do or where to turn, I highly recommend ordering yourself one of these bad boys: http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/productdetails/sku__SI679COB . I've had mine for six or seven years now, and it's going as strong as ever. It's fast, powerful, painless, and effective. About two minutes once a week and you're good to go. You'll wonder why you ever fussed with dainty little scissors or the dreadful prospect of plucking. (Of course, if you're one of the ones I'm addressing, maybe you never bothered trying those first steps.) There's really just no excuse not to.

Guys, I'm just telling it like it is: Nobody, NOBODY wants to see you looking like you just snorted up the clippings from a barbershop floor. And (WARNING: potentially nausea-inducing observation coming up in this sentence; avert your eyes if you are sensitive) we really, really don't want to see the stuff that gets tangled and matted in your little bushes after you blow your nose. If you see what I mean.

So please take care of business, men. I'd sincerely rather never have to address this subject again.

Wait until the action is complete, please

In limit games, the amount of every bet and raise is fixed by the structure of the game. Because verbal declarations of intent are binding, when a player says "raise," he must put in a raise, and it must be exactly the amount that the rules specify. The word "raise," therefore, determines what his action is on the hand, and the next player can safely and properly proceed with his own decision.

But in no-limit games, which is what I usually play, there's a crucial difference: a raise can be any amount between a defined minimum and all the chips that a player has in front of him. If he says "Raise to $20," or something like that, then that has the same effect as if he said nothing and pushed out $20 in chips. Either way, his decision for that turn is over, and the next player in line can act.

Lately, though, I've seen a lot of no-limit players muck their cards as soon as they hear the player on their right say the word "raise," even though no amount has been declared. This is in violation of the rules, because it isn't their turn yet. And, yes, it matters.

Suppose I'm one to the right of the button, and the first player to act after the flop puts in a bet. Everybody folds to me. I want to raise. My problem is that I don't know whether I'm going to have one opponent to deal with or two, because the guy on my left (with the button) hasn't acted yet. If I say raise, and he immediately throws his cards away, my decision just got easier. I might now put in a larger raise than I otherwise would have, because I know it's easier to get one opponent to fold than to get both of two opponents to fold. Or, alternately, I might put in a smaller raise than I otherwise would have, because I have a hand I want to play against just one opponent, and I was originally planning to raise enough to persuade the button to fold. Now, however, since I know he's folding, I want to coax the first-position bettor to call my very strong hand, so I can put in an irresistably small raise.

Either way, I have gained important information that I can use to make my decision, and it's information that I shouldn't have.

(There's an exception to the rule here. If, because everybody else has already folded, you are going to be the last person to act on the raise that has been announced, and you won't be calling even a minimal raise, then there is no problem with the insta-muck. This situation, however, will essentially only arise before the flop when it's down to the two blinds.)

Unfortunately, dealers tend to be pretty lax about enforcing this. My limited experience is that most players who commit this violation simply haven't thought about the implications, and once they understand how it distorts the rightful play of the game, they stop doing it.

So, dealers, could you please be more aggressive at putting an end to this? Every time it goes uncorrected, other players may notice, decide that it's perfectly OK, and start doing it themselves.

Addendum, August 30, 2007:

I’m watching an old episode of the World Poker Tour, specifically the first Mandalay Bay tournament from season 5, which I hadn't seen before. I was surprised to see this exact situation occur, and become the topic of discussion among both the players and the commentators.

Players are Brad Booth, Joe Tehan, and Burt Boutin.

Tehan has A-K and raises under the gun.

Boutin calls with A-Q.

Booth attempts a squeeze play with 10-2, and re-raises.

The action is back to Tehan, who announces “I raise,” and puts out chips to call Booth’s re-raise. He hasn’t yet decided on the amount of his raise.

Boutin apparently makes an honest mistake, thinking that the chips Tehan has put out are the raise. He presumably doesn’t care how much the raise is--he’s getting out. He folds and stands up from the table.

Tehan makes a face and says something I can’t hear, because over his words Vince Van Patten is saying, “Look at this, Burt has folded. He’s up out of his seat like a Pop Tart.”

Booth says, “You’re always supposed to wait for the amount to be raised there, Burt.”

Mike Sexton: “Brad makes a good point there.”

Boutin: “Oh, I thought he said raise and he raised it.” Apparently at this instant he realizes that the chips Tehan put out were just the call of Booth’s re-raise. “Oh, I didn’t see, I’m sorry.”

Sexton: “Joe said raise, and as soon as he said that Burt mucked his hand. But it makes a big difference. Does a guy raise the minimum raise? Does he move all in? He can bet any amount he wants there. You’re supposed to let him complete his bet before you fold your hand.”

The hand finishes playing out as Booth folds.

Sexton: “But the point is well made, though. You know, when you’re in a game, even if you know you’re going to fold your hand, courtesy dictates that you wait till your opponent make [sic] his raise before you muck your hand.”

Van Patten: “No doubt about it, and Burt knows that, but Burt just made a mistake there, and he apologized for it. So it does happen at the table. Burt, a veteran of the poker world, apologizes—no harm, no foul.”

A whistle???

Just when you think you've seen it all....

At the Hilton today, a stupid argument broke out between two players. I wasn't involved in the hand, but here's what happened. After the river card was dealt, Player A went all-in, and pushed all his stacks of chips forward. Player B said, "I call," without pushing his chips forward.

Now, this is perfectly acceptable. It's how I usually do it, too. It's time-saving to just find out who won, and then settle up who owes whom, and how much. The guy who called even turned over his cards first as he announced his call, though he had every right to wait and see his opponent's hole cards first.

Player A hears the announcement of the call and sees B's cards. He knows he's beat. Player A is an older Asian guy who is usually silent, but every once in a while he flies off the handle about something--and it's always something incredibly trivial. When he does, he yells as loud as anybody in a poker room ever gets, and it's essentially impossible to understand what he's saying, because of a thick accent, and because his voice jumps way up into the little-girl-soprano register when he's upset.

That's what happened in this instance. He was mad because B didn't push his chips forward. By the rules, this makes no difference whatsoever, as B calmly tried to point out to him, once the shouting started. B said, with complete sincerity and plausibility, "If I had lost, I'd pay up." Of course he would--the casino would see to that, even if he refused (something I've never seen happen, by the way). But that didn't stop the ruckus. Player A's gripe was completely meritless and stupid, and was obviously just the result of being mad at losing a really big pot.

After 15 or 20 seconds of this nonsense, a guy sitting between A and B pulled out a referee's whistle and blew it--hard. You know how loud those things can be in a confined space like a small poker room. It was ear-splitting.

Ken, the shift supervisor, came over to the whistler, and told him calmly but firmly, "If you ever do that in this room again, you will be asked to leave." Mr. Whistle protested that he couldn't stand the stupid argument. Well, buddy, none of the rest of us could, either, but we didn't resort to a whistle!

It was truly one of the strangest moments in my poker experiences. I can't say I liked or approved of the technique, but it was instantly effective at terminating a pointless, annoying, and time-consuming argument.

By the skin of my teeth (non-grumpy content)

Poker blogs that mostly revolve around the writer's personal poker results and hands are, in my experience, deathly dull, so I've tried to avoid telling stories that are of no importance to any larger point. But once in a while something so unusual happens in a poker hand that I just have to tell the tale.

Played at the Hilton again today. One opponent is Paul. He's one I like having at the table, because he's friends with lots of people, and he's always having fun, win or lose. I pride myself on never gloating when I win and never whining when I lose, and the same can be said of Paul. And, truth be told, I also like having him there because he's still relatively new to the game, and I've gotten the best of him most of the times we've tangled in big pots. It's critical to today's story that I have seen him overbet and overvalue good-but-not-great hands on many occasions. That said, he plays quite a bit looser than I tend to, which means that there's always potential danger lurking, because he can have hole cards that I wouldn't expect him to be playing.

I'm in middle position, limp in with 9-10 offsuit. Paul is in the small blind, and raises to $12. 9-10 certainly isn't a great hand, but I'll have position on him after the flop, so I decide to go for the ride. I know that I can just throw it away with minimal damage if things don't develop favorably.

The flop is J-Q-K with two spades. I flopped a straight! I have the second nuts; the only hand that can be ahead of me at this point is A-10. Now, I immediately recognize that Paul could easily have an A-10. On the other hand, there's a wide range of hands with which he might have raised before the flop, so I'm not very worried about being behind.

Paul has checked in the dark, as is his custom when he's first to act. I put in a bet that's nearly the size of the pot, to make it unprofitable for him to try to make a flush, in case he is sitting on two spades. To my surprise, Paul raises me. I'm instantly worried that he does, in fact, have the A-10, and is trying to push me off of a spade draw. Still, I know Paul's manner of play well enough to know that he could put in a raise here with two pair or three of a kind, and certainly any two-pair or trips hands he could have with this flop would explain the pre-flop raise. He might even raise me here with A-K, though that seems less likely. So I conclude that I'm still reasonably safe with my straight.

It would make no sense to just call and see what develops, because my hand is already as good as it's likely to get, but if he has one of those six other hands, he could easily improve to a full house, and I don't want to be putting big money in with a straight after he hits a full house, if he's going to. So...

I re-reraise him. He waits only about 3 seconds before pushing all-in. Uh-oh. But my previous reasoning is, I think, still valid: Paul would certainly do this with several hands that he could plausibly be holding other than the A-10. Maybe I'm beat, but it's not often as a hold'em player that you flop the second nuts and have a less-experienced opponent betting into you. I decide that I'm ahead of six out of the seven hands he could have here (3 ways of making two pair, and 3 ways of making three of a kind), and behind only one of them, so I have to go for it. I call his all-in.

As I flip up my cards I say, "I've got the second nuts. I'm just hoping you don't have A-10." He smiles and turns over--I know you're all way ahead of me here--the A-10. I have no spades, so I can't make a flush. This means that I cannot win this hand outright, no matter what cards come on the turn and river. The best I can do is split it with him if an ace comes, which would then mean that we both have the same ace-high straight. I'm drawing to 3 cards in the deck just to get my half of the money back! That's about as bad a spot as one can get onesself into in poker.

The turn card is another spade, giving Paul a flush draw, though that doesn't really matter, because he's already holding the ace of spades, so if no ace comes on the river, I can't much care whether I lose to just a higher straight or to a flush. The $300 I had sitting in front of me is just as gone either way.

The dealer puts out the river card. It's an ace. Paul and I both have the Broadway straight, and we split the pot. We actually each lost about $2 on the hand, because of the casino's rake of the pot. But you can be sure that I was delighted to have that outcome. Paul, to his credit, didn't whine or complain or yell or swear or stomp his feet. He just shook his head.

By coincidence, a couple of hours later we were both leaving at the same time. I told him that somewhere there is kept an invisible log of poker results not as they actually played out, but as they by all rights should have happened, and in that alternate-reality log book, I owe him $300. He was gracious as always. He told me that he was saying to himself, "Finally, FINALLY, I got him where I wanted him"--and then I slipped out of it! A perfectly understandable sentiment, given our history. And it's basically inevitable that sooner or later he will nail me for a big pot, if we play together long enough, because that's the nature of the game. But today wasn't the day for it.

Addendum, August 16, 2007:

Paul took almost $100 off of me two days ago. By strange coincidence, I had 9-10 again, this time in hearts. The flop paired my 9 and gave me a flush draw, too. It got checked around. The turn was an offsuit 10, giving me two pair and the flush draw. Paul bet, and I liked my hand enough to move all-in. He had pocket tens, and had made a set with the card that made my two pair. Oops! I didn't hit the flush, and he won, quite deservedly--he was ahead every step of the way. Nice hand, Paul. You got me good there, and this time I couldn't slip out of the net.

The drunk cop

Here's a story from last October that I wrote up and emailed to a friend.

At the Hilton today there was a guy that, by coincidence, had been at my table at the Orleans last night. He’s terrible as a poker player. He didn’t seem too drunk last night, but this afternoon he was reeking and reeling, and barely coherent. Because he recognized me, he acted as if we were best friends, particularly since the only open seat was on his immediate right. While I was trying to focus on the game, he kept trying to engage me in conversation about work, about sports, about blackjack, whatever. At one point he nudges me and shows me a badge—he’s a cop from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I have no idea why he thought that I would be impressed.

Anyway, I’m in the small blind with Q-8, a pretty worthless hand, but nobody raises, so I toss in the extra $1 to see the flop—and it has two more 8s in it! There are no straight or flush draws possible, so I can safely slow-play it. I check, somebody bets $5, which several people call, building the pot nicely. I’m salivating.

Turn card is another blank, but it’s the second of one of the suits, so I think I’d better take the pot on this round of betting rather than risk somebody catching a flush on the river. Still, I’m first to act, and confident that somebody will bet at it and I can raise, so I start off just checking. Drunk Cop surprises me by betting $15. It gets folded around to an Asian guy two seats to my right, who is sitting behind several hundred dollars in chips. He looks at Drunk Cop and says, “I’ll put you all in,” which means that he’s raising—betting whatever amount Drunk Cop has in front of him. The dealer counts D.C.’s chips, and it’s $59, so Asian Guy pushes out $59. I can barely keep from slobbering. “I’m all-in,” I say. D.C. looks at me as if I’ve just insulted him or something, but he pushes all his chips in. Asian Guy clearly doesn’t like this development—he had obviously assumed that his big raise would push everybody else out and it would be just him vs. D.C. But he calls my all-in reraise. We show our hands, and Asian guy has 2 pairs. D.C. has the last 8, but only a deuce kicker versus my queen kicker. The river card doesn’t change anything, and I take down the whole stinkin’ pot. It’s the kind of hand that I wait hours for, and makes all the difference in whether it’s a winning or losing day.

But the weird thing is that after it’s all over, D.C. starts whining to me about what I did. “Come on, you know I’m a cop, you know I don’t make much money. You didn’t have to play it that hard. You could have gone just a little easy on me.” He is dead serious. And he keeps it up. “Why did you have to do that? You make enough as it is. [I have no idea how he thinks he knows what my income is.] I can’t afford to be losing this much.”

Well tough cookies, dude. Excuse me, but weren’t *you* trying to take *my* money with your bet? What in the hell is unfair about me turning the tables on you? You took a chance, I took a chance. You might have had 8-K and beaten my 8-Q, or you might have had a full house instead of just trips. I knew that, and gambled that I was ahead, and I was right. You thought you were ahead, and you were wrong. How in the hell does that make me the bad guy here? And what am I supposed to do—check every player’s 1040 forms before deciding how hard to try to play against him? Ask whether he can really afford to be playing poker? Bite me, you weirdo! What an idiot.

Of course, I don’t say any of that. I just say, “Hey, it’s a game. I try to play it the best I can. I’m not trying to hurt you, you just got stuck with a hand that was second-best. I’m sure you wouldn’t have folded if you had been in my position. And if you had turned out to have the best hand, I’d have said, ‘Nice hand,’ and moved on.” I am intensely conscious *not* to apologize in any manner. Fortunately, right about then another seat opened up, and I moved away from him. Later, I caught the dealer on a break and asked if she had overheard that. She said, “Oh yeah, the guy playing the sympathy card? That was seriously weird. I wonder if he expected you to give his money back or something.” Who knows?

The poker threat

I'm glad that it's rare that I hear actual threats of bodily harm at the poker table. But I'm puzzled that once or twice a week I hear a poker threat. These take many forms, but the most common are warnings like this: "You just keep playing that way, pal--it'll catch up to you." "Next time you raise my blind I'm going all-in on you." "I'm going to let you have this one, but I will bust you before we're done."

Last week I cracked a guy's pocket kings with sneaky little suited connectors that hit the flop just right. As I stacked up his chips, he said, "I'll be coming at you to get those back." There was not a trace of levity in his voice or demeanor.

I don't get this. Well, actually, I do, in a sense: It's purely about ego. A player who lost a hand or was forced to fold takes it as a personal affront to his dignity, and makes that kind of stupid comment to repair the psychic damage. But what I may never understand is why people let their egos get caught up in whether they win or lose a hand.

It's just not possible to win every hand in poker. It's not even possible to win every hand that you contest all the way. All that matters is that, over the long run, you win more money than you lose. That might mean giving up a lot of small pots in exchange for winning a few big ones, or, if you're a "small ball" kind of player, winning a bunch of little pots but reducing your chances of winning a huge one. Nobody keeps track of the number of pots won, because it simply doesn't matter.

So why do people take it as some sort of dent to the ego when they lose or have to lay one down? That fact is not a comment on one's worth as a human being, or skill as a poker player. It's just part of the game.

The poker threat doesn't intimidate any sensible opponent. It only accomplishes a few things, all of them bad for you: (1) It tells everybody at the table that you can't play dispassionately, that your fragile self-image is, in essence, put into the pot along with your chips on every hand. Any smart player will recognize this as a huge leak in your game, because you will do things like make bad calls to avoid the agony of being bluffed, or just to show that you can't be pushed around; you'll loosen your play in frustration, trying to give yourself more chances to get lucky, which will spew more chips to your opponents. (2) It changes your future play for the worse, because now you'll feel some weird obligation to carry through on your threat, targeting somebody who may be a better player or who is just on an unusally lucky streak--to your detriment. (3) It sours the previously light, friendly mood at the table. (4) If the opponent you threaten really was playing stupidly, it just might smarten him up enough that he'll play better, making those chips that much harder to win back.

You pay these steep prices all for the sake of a little phony self-soothing when your poor, delicate ego has been bruised. What a rotten trade-off.

So don't be an egotistical idiot (unless, of course, you're on national TV, in which case it might make for good viewing). Keep the threats to yourself.

You can't help another player--is this concept too difficult?

Hilton today. I'm in a pot against an inexperienced player I've never seen before. I have pocket 8s, both red. There is a pre-flop raise, which I and several others call. The flop is 8-9-10 with two clubs. There's a bet. I make a large raise to push out anybody hoping to draw to a straight or flush. This new player is the only one who calls me. The turn card is an offsuit jack. Ick. I don't like that because of the obvious possible straight sitting out there. But the pot is now large enough that I decide to push all-in, crossing my fingers and hoping that he was on the club draw and didn't just make his straight. The guy thinks for quite a while, then calls. He has a few chips left over after the dealer makes the pot right. The river card is an off-suit 7, putting a jack-high straight on the board. There is no possible flush, so unless my opponent has a queen (which I think is pretty unlikely), we're going to split the pot.

I turn up my 8s. He looks at the cards and the board, gets a befuddled look on his face. It's obvious that he doesn't know what to do, but he's aware that everybody is looking at him to do something. Bizarrely, he grabs his remaining chips and pushes them forward. The dealer politely returns them to him and reminds him that I'm all-in and there is no more betting. He still looks confused.

At this point, I'm dearly hoping that he decides that my set of 8s has him beat, and he will just muck his hand face-down, relinquishing his half of the pot, so I can take the whole thing. I'm hyperalert to anybody talking to him, because I just know that some blabbermouth will feel obligated to help him in some way: tell him to turn his cards up, or point out that there is a straight on the board, or some such thing.

Sure enough, a woman at the far end starts to say, "There's a..."--and quick as a wink I cut her off, saying, "Please don't help him." The guy has still got the deer-in-the-headlights look, and he's looking at the dealer. Bless her, the dealer just tells him, "We're waiting for you, sir." Of course, if he asks what his options are, she can inform him that he can either turn his card face up or muck them face down, but she correctly does not offer even this much assistance, since he didn't ask.

Finally, he turns his cards up. Amazingly, he has 10-10. We had a set-over-set situation, in which I had the worst of it, and didn't know it. I thought the straight killed my winning hand, when, in fact, it saved me. The pot gets split.

I have no idea what this guy was thinking during that 30 or 45 seconds when he froze and didn't know what to do. But it doesn't matter.

The point here is the predictability that somebody would attempt to step in and help him. Folks, you just can't do that! Of course, it's possible that whatever that woman was going to say would have been innocuous and within the rules, but it's much more likely that she was going to say something that would have helped him make his decision (between tabling his cards face up and mucking them face down), and I wasn't going to let her. I really couldn't even wait to find out what she was going to say, because if I was right, the damage would have been done, and protesting after the fact wouldn't do much good.

After the hand was over, the guy next to me said, "She can tell him there's a straight on the board." No, she can't. Really the only things you can say about the hand while it's in progress are the pieces of information that are freely available to everybody: what the community cards are (in case somebody with poor vision can't make them out, for example), where the action is, what the amount of the last bet was, etc. Telling somebody that there is a straight on the board goes beyond that, into the realm of interpreteting the raw data of what the five cards are. That's helping (or at least potentially helping) a player who isn't paying attention. One player to a hand means no helping of that sort. This guy had the right to muck his hand if he wanted to, even if it would have been stupid to do so.

(Confession: I have twice mistakenly mucked the winning hand, and just last week accidentally forfeited my share of what would have been a 4-way split pot, by mucking--in each case because I misread the board. All my own fault. This guy must be allowed to make the same kind of mistake all by himself. It's part of the learning curve of poker to lose money because you screw up.)

Both the dealer and the other players are also forbidden to instruct another player to turn his cards face up. That's crossing the line from telling him what his options are--i.e., what he may do--to telling him what he should do. That territory is strictly off-limits. The dealer can tell him, if asked, that she can't award the pot to anybody while his cards remain live but face down. But she can't instruct him to turn them up any more than she can turn them up for him, because that is taking an important decision away from the player.

We all have a social impulse to be helpful. And that's a good thing in nearly every aspect of life. But the poker table is different. A player in a poker game has to fend for himself.

A few weeks ago in a Saturday Hilton tournament, we were down to just 6 or 7 players. A woman was trying to decide when to make a dash for a restroom break because she couldn't wait until the next scheduled break. A friend was pointing out to her when it might be most advantageous to go. Marc Nelson, the tournament director, correctly stopped her. The friend protested, "We're just talking about when to go to the bathroom!" But that was a decision with considerable strategic implications, given how big the blinds were and how fast they were coming around. He was absolutely right to stop that discussion.

Now, there are plenty of exceptions. Last week I was seated next to a woman who freely announced that it was her first time playing in a casino, and she'd appreciate help. I made sure the dealers knew this, because they're much more likely to give only the kind of help that is proper. Other players, unfortunately, in their zeal to be nice, tend to cross the line all too easily. For example, when this woman was faced with a large bet on the river, and there was 4 parts of a straight on the board, a player told her, "Don't call unless you can beat a straight." Well, that's just way more help than any player or dealer is allowed to give. After the hand, if it seems that she made a blunder and appears to welcome strategic advice, that's OK--but not during the hand. I was also happy to explain to her how the high-hand jackpots worked, why it's wise to cap one's cards, how to tell when it's her turn or whether she's in one of the blinds, etc. Those are all just pieces of general information, things that everybody is entitled to know, and things that the dealer would be happy to explain to her; I'm just in a position to do it more quickly and quietly, sitting next to her.

Unfortuantely, there are way too many players who don't understand the boundary between what can be said and what can't. If you're not absolutely certain, discretion is the better part of valor. Just keep it to yourself. The dealer will give a player needing help all that is allowed.

Mr. Destiny

Yesterday was an interesting day. It's the first time I have shelled out for the pay-per-view live feed from the World Series of Poker main event final table. I watched all 15+ hours of it.

It's hard to know for sure until we see the broadcast with the hole cards, but it looks like in Jerry Yang we've just crowned our most unskilled player ever as world champion. It appears that he's a far, far worse player than the other two relatively unprepared amateurs, Robert Varkonyi and Chris Moneymaker. I think that when those two won, they were both better players than I currently am, though they have taken licks from all around because they simply weren't in the same league as the poker world had become used to seeing in the title role. I'm no poker genius; I think I have a pretty good handle on where I am in the poker food chain, and it's just barely high enough to be a long-term winner at low-stakes games rather than a loser or a break-even player. I wouldn't consider myself a better player than anybody I saw at yesterday's final table, except for Jerry Yang.

So how did he win? Well, to hear him tell it, God ordained it to be so.

From early in the final table, when he was all-in with another player, he could be heard saying things like, "Lord, you have a destiny for me today," and "Father, I will use the money to glorify your name." He gave the Big Dealer in the Sky further credit in his closing interview with Norman Chad.

I have to wonder about this. Does God really care who wins poker tournaments? If so, does he actually make his picks not only during the course of the tournament, but right at the very moment that a hand is being played out? If not, then it would seem to me that entreaties made while waiting for the last cards to be dealt out are pretty useless; the deck has already acquired a particular arrangement, and that has already determined what cards will be coming. There would, then, seem to be little point in pleading to God to favor one person over another that late in the course of things.

And, by the way, does it really help your case to tell God what you plan to do with the money? That is, can an omnipotent being really be bought off with a bribe? Isn't he able to bring into existence all the money he might need to carry out whatever his plans are, without needing 10% of Jerry Yang's winnings? What if Yang's opponent at the same time promised God to donate, say, 20% of the prize money to noble charities, or to "glorifying God's name" (whatever that might mean)? Does he then decide on whose behalf to intervene based on who will be giving him the biggest cut? If so, then why didn't Barry Greenstein win, a guy who would have donated 100% of the money to children's charities? (Oh, I know: God hates Jews because they killed Jesus, right?)

Does Mr. Yang actually believe that if he says just the right prayer, God will miraculously change the order of the cards in the deck that the dealer is holding? This is just as nutty, frankly, as Shannon Elizabeth invoking the "law of attraction" in an attempt to make it more likely that cards favorable to her will be dealt out (which absurdity was shown clearly on NBC's "Heads-Up Poker Championship"). And if God really does step in in this manner, it seems to me that it's a pretty clear violation of the one-person-to-a-hand rule. After all, if it's illegal to ask a friend in the stands whether to make a tough call or to fold, how much more wrong is it to get an omnipotent supernatural being to alter the order of the cards in the deck after the shuffle?

On the other hand, maybe God really does help Mr. Yang. Maybe that's how he knew to call Lee Watkinson's all-in reraise with just a stinky little A-9: God was whispering in his ear (in a voice like that of Charleton Heston, no doubt), "He's only got A-7, so you're about 75% to win. And besides, I've peeked at the deck with my x-ray vision, and there's no 7 coming. Go for it." That would be a pretty darn handy way to win poker tournaments, all right. Maybe it's the only way Mr. Yang can win. In fact, come to think of it, maybe that's what is meant by the "glorifying your name" business: Having him as the game's ambassador for the next year tells the world, "Look, God is so powerful that he can even make a really, really bad player the world champion! Walking on water is child's play next to that kind of miracle!"

But if so, I still have to wonder how God goes about picking his winners. After watching Mr. Yang, it certainly isn't on the basis of skill and preparation. Nor is it based on conduct at the table. He wasn't over the top or downright rude, but the loud cheering every time a card fell that was favorable to him just isn't cricket, as the Brits say. When you see Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Doyle Brunson, Dan Harrington, Greg Raymer, Allen Cunningham, John Juanda, T.J. Cloutier, or other classy guys start doing this, then you'll know that the rules of conduct have changed (for the worse), and it's OK. Until then, keep a lid on it, dude. It's obnoxious and annoying.

Look, I have nothing against people in general, or poker players in particular, being religious. Daniel Negreanu has said several times in his blog that when he feels his relationship with God is out of sorts or taking a lower priority than it should, his poker results suffer. OK--so be it. I certainly can't prove that that's not so. And believing that God will help you win a tournament is, objectively, no crazier than, say, Gavin Smith thinking that not cutting his hair gives him better luck than when he cuts it. On the other hand, it is, objectively, no saner and no more rational than thinking that a certain fat denizen of the North Pole brought the presents under your Christmas tree in a magical sleigh pulled by eight flying reindeer.

But putting your slightly nutty beliefs on international display in a manner that opens all sorts of unanswerable questions of logic and theology just isn't smart. It just makes you look foolish, as if you haven't given more than passing thought to what you're doing and its implications for how you think divinity operates. Keep it to yourself.

Addendum, added 7/20/07:

I just saw this article in the Las Vegas Sun:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sports/2007/jul/19/566665723.html

More evidence for Yang's peculiar thoughts about how God works is found therein. Note that apparently divine omniscience doesn't mean that God necessary understands poker, because he needs Mr. Yang to tell him what specific cards to have the dealer pull out of the deck in order to make him a winner.

Once, for instance, he risked a big chunk of his stack of chips with just a
pair of 4s and ran smack into an opponent's higher pocket pair.

It was then Yang - like a lot of poker players, including some who are probably more
reluctant to admit it - turned to prayer.

"I kept saying, 'Lord, give me a set,' " Yang said, using the common poker term for three-of-a-kind. "And there was a 4 on the flop."

Another time, Yang needed an ace or a 4 on the final
card to fill a straight and extend his tournament life.
"I said, "Lord, if you want me to win this, put the ace or the 4 on the river,' " Yang said. A 4 came, and Yang lived to fight on.

"I've seen miracles," he said.

Celebrity (lookalike) sighting (non-grumpy content)

Hey, look who I played poker with tonight at Planet Hollywood.

That's right, it's Michael Moore! Or at least someone who looks a lot like him, which is close enough, right?

Worst call ever (non-grumpy content)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why I like the Hilton poker room (non-grumpy content)

I've mentioned the Hilton poker room a bunch of times in my posts, and even said that it's my favorite poker hangout. It's not exactly the most common/popular place for a reasonably serious poker player to frequent, compared to the Bellagio, Venetian, Wynn, Caesars Palace, Mirage, etc. And, frankly, it tends to get more negative reviews than positive ones from visitors, at least as judged by postings at http://www.allvegaspoker.com/ (which is, incidentally, a really useful site for deciding where in the city to play). So I've been thinking that I should, at some point, explain why I like it there. And now seems as good a time as any. Yeah, I realize that it will seem like sucking up because they just had me on their little radio show, but I would have said the same things a long time ago.

First, and by far most importantly, once a year there is a huge Star Trek convention at the Hilton, so you have the opportunity to play poker with Vulcans, Klingons, and Romulans, in full regalia, at the table. Can ANY other poker room in Vegas make that claim? I think not.

OK, so maybe that's not really the most important factor. (It's the one I was prepared to give if the radio show hosts had asked why I like the Hilton. But they didn't, so I didn't get to use it, and I hate to waste my few scraps of comic material.)

These really aren't in any particular order, except as they occur to me:

It's an unusually friendly place. On only my second trip there, roughly a year ago, employees remembered me and were calling me by name. Very impressive.

I make money playing there. This is a must--there are rooms in which, after four or five visits, I haven't had a single winning session, for whatever reason, and I don't keep going back. When somebody posted an opinion at the above-mentioned web site that it was virtually impossible to make money at the Hilton because it is frequented by so many tight players, I poked through my records to come up with this data in response: "In April and May (just to pick the most recent time frame), I've played 23 cash-game sessions at the Hilton, totalling 104.75 hours. Of those, 14 have been winning sessions and 9 losing. My net profit has been $2587, or $24.70/hour. So when people who have played there for a few hours once or twice post here and make generalizations about not being able to make money playing there, I have to scratch my head and say, "Huh?" Now, maybe $25/hour is a pittance to some, not worth the investment of time. But that's about my average everywhere I play, so I consider it perfectly acceptable."

It's true that occasionally I run into a table of people playing so tight that the only way to make money is to literally pick up the table and shake the chips off of it into my pocket. But fortunately, the Hilton is one of the few rooms that will allow you to do this. (If I have to append "Just kidding" here to prevent readers from even remotely thinking that I'm serious about this, then I have truly failed in my attempts at humor herein.)

Actually, one of the things I value most is that most of the time I encounter a great mix of locals and tourists/conventioneers. I consider it ideal to have 2-3 players at the table whose style of play and habits I already know pretty well. It reduces the work of figuring out where the soft spots at the table are, what weaknesses I can see and exploit in opponents, etc.

The monthly freeroll is a great bonus. Do the math: they give away $20,000 every month, divided among roughly 60 players who show up for the freeroll tournament. Assuming you're of average skill, your expected value is about $333. It takes only 40 hours of play to qualify, which means that you're getting about $8/hour returned to you. Yeah, I realize that it's money that was taken out of pots, so it could well be that I'd do just as well if they didn't take it out in the first place. But as long as it's coming out, you might as well do what you can to get some of it back.

The place is one of the more effectively smoke-free rooms in town. It's not quite as good as facilities in which the poker room is truly isolated from the smoking areas of the casino (like Harrah's or Caesars Palace), but it's close. I never leave there reeking of cigarette smoke (and if I did, I wouldn't keep coming back frequently).

It has one of the best parking/walking factors in the city. I can almost always park within 200 feet of the door, and the poker room is probably only 100 feet inside the door. Compare that with, say, the MGM, or Planet Hollywood, where the hike is such a marathon that you could solicit donations for charity by the miles you have to walk.

I like small rooms. Maybe it's some sort of Freudian remnant of being in the womb, but big poker rooms make me feel kind of lost. I like easily being able to know, at least partially, what's going on at all the tables, who's coming and going, etc. Probably in correlation with this size factor, the room is sufficiently quiet that one can engage in conversation in normal, even quite soft, voices. I'm a quiet guy. I like quiet places. It's not like a library or funeral home or anything, but it's incredibly easy on the ears, by comparison with places like Bally's, or the old Aladdin, or MGM.

The staff is competent. Sure, there are a couple of dealers who I think don't pay enough attention and, consequently, make too many mistakes, but they're a distinct minority. Very few of my rants about problems with dealers have been Hilton stories. Moreover, I have never--not even once--seen a Hilton floor person make an incorrect or unreasonable decision when called over to address a problem.

It's one of the closest places to drive to from where I live--no freeways needed to get there. Your mileage may vary (literally). And because it's off the Strip, I don't have to wrangle with Strip traffic, either.

Their tolerance for rude/abusive conduct by players is pretty low. It's not as low as I would personally like, because my threshold for such antics is, like, absolute zero. But the dealers and supervisors will intervene more quickly and reliably when there's a problem than at most other poker rooms that I have experienced. (Maybe some day I'll write a post about the first time I tried the Tropicana, and took unbelievable verbal abuse from a jerk, without a single dealer doing anything about it.)

Comps are readily given and easy to use (though, admittedly, it would be nice if they were redeemable at a wider range of the facilities the Hilton offers).

The weekly Saturday tournament may be the best structure of any in town in its price range. And it's small enough that you have a decent chance of cashing. I'm happier with smaller, more frequent payoffs than larger but rarer ones.

There's a bunch of little things, too: autoshufflers to keep the games moving fast, good service from chip runners and cocktail waitresses, cup holders in the rail, decently comfortable chairs, Kem cards, table sizes that Goldilocks would say are "just right" (not too big and not too small), zillions of televisions, no obnoxious talking on cell phones allowed, free doughnuts (if you're there before they're gone, anyway).

Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. Hey, Hilton guys--can I get my payment for this advertisement now?

Article in Card Player magazine (non-grumpy content)

For those who just can't get enough of my writing about poker (ha!), I sort of had a thing in Card Player magazine a couple of issues back. It's now available online, at http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/127/9249. It's just the story of a bluff that I was unduly proud of, and wrote up and sent to Matt Lessinger, one of the CP columnists. He liked it enough to use it in his monthly column. Spoiler warning: reading it will reveal my ultra-secret real-world identity. (Shockingly, neither "Poker Grump" nor "Rakewell" appears on my birth certificate.)


Addendum, February 5, 2010

I see that the link no longer works. But this one should:

http://www.cardplayer.com/cardplayer-magazines/65671-erick-lindgren-20-12/articles/16822-nice-play-dude

On the radio

Hey, readers! I'm going to be on a local poker-oriented radio show later today (Friday, July 13, 2007) from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. It's KLAV, 1230 AM, and the program is "Poker, Straight from the Hilton." You can also listen to the show live on the web through http://warpradio.com/single.asp?id=6224, click on the "listen" button.

Today's hint: Check the spelling before you get the tattoo (non-grumpy content)

A few days ago I was playing in a Texas Hold 'Em tournament at Planet Hollywood (formerly the Aladdin). The guy on my left was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, so the tattoos on his upper arms were hard to miss. The person on his left asked him about them, and he said that he had just had them done a week ago. I couldn't see the ones on his left arm very well, but it was a series of playing cards. On his right arm I could see an ace, under which was written "Hold Em'."
The guy on the left asked how much the tattoos had cost, and the response was $450. I was feeling a bit cheeky, so I asked, "How much are you going to sue the tattoo artist for, for putting the apostrophe in the wrong place?"

The puzzled look said it all: This guy had no idea. He said, "What do you mean?"

I pointed out that the apostrophe represents the missing "th" in what would otherwise be "Hold Them," and belongs before the "em," not after. I was a bit worried at this point, because the tattoos were atop some pretty massive muscles. I didn't want him to feel any urge to kill the messenger.

But he looked at the errant tattoo, shrugged, said, "Whatever," and turned back to the game. I guess this shouldn't be surprising--after all, if he were inclined to care about punctuation, he presumably wouldn't have let the mistake be made in the first place.

I got knocked out in about the middle of the pack, but Mr. Tattoo was one of the top finishers, so I guess you don't have to know how to spell or write "Hold 'Em" to be able to play it.

Don't be a flasher

A few days ago I was at Mandalay Bay, in the 1 seat (on the dealer's immediate left). The guy in the 5 seat was a habitual flasher. That is, when he was thinking about what to do, he would shuffle his cards in a particular way that I've seen several other people use: The cards are face down, horizontal (i.e., the ends are to his right and left), and he lifts up the bottom one by its right side, using his right hand, and puts it on top of the other, repeating mindlessly.

Well, there are some problems with this. First, anything that you do without much thought (chip shuffling, tapping your fingers, bopping your head to your iPod music, chewing gum, eating an Oreo cookie, etc.) provides opponents with a tell, because you will tend, without knowing it, to change the manner or pace of the thing when you have a strong hand versus a weak hand.

But for this particular tic, the more important consideration is that, unless you're extremely careful, you'll expose your cards to the people on one end of the table. That's just what this guy was doing, obviously without knowing it.

So when I caught a glimpse of one of his cards, I told him (after the hand was over) that he was putting himself at a disadvantage by letting others see his hole cards. Other times that I have warned players of this, they have been grateful. Not this jerk.

First, the guy said, "So what? Have you actually seen them?" Yes, I replied. The player two seats to this guy's right spoke up and confirmed that he had been able to see them, too. Then the dealer confirmed that it was a problem, and said he had intended to warn the guy himself, but then had gotten busy in the hand and had forgotten it.

But rather than be thankful, or just accept the advice quietly, or even ignore it if he wanted to, this idiot felt the need to defend himself. He told the dealer, "They're my cards, and I can show them to anybody I want to."

I won't bore you with the tedium of the ensuing incredibly stupid argument between the dealer and the jerk. I will, however, point out that it's a gray area of the rules (unless the casino has a specific house rule), when a player may deliberately expose his cards to another player or players before action on a hand is concluded, and what, if anything, is to be done in the case of accidental exposure. Furthermore, these rules may vary depending on whether it's a cash game or a tournament, and whether the action is heads-up or multi-way. And some sets of rules require showing both cards if one is exposed (at least deliberately). It's kind of a messy technical problem.

But put all that aside. Even if there are occasionally legitimate tactical reasons that you might want to expose a card or two to an opponent during the play of a hand, if the rules governing the situation allow it, why in God's name would you want to defend ACCIDENTALLY doing so? That makes no sense at all. And that's precisely what this idiot was doing--all because he couldn't accept a little friendly helpful hint. And, really truly, I was being friendly and helpful about it, not criticizing him. I was blown away by his incredibly defensive, aggressive reaction. But at least he stopped doing it.

Please don't be a flasher. I'm tired of having to tell people that I can see their cards.

"Things are good all over"

Tom is a regular at the Hilton who, as far as I can tell, is a decent enough fellow, but I dread getting stuck at a table with him, because virtually all he does is complain about what bad cards he's getting. And I mean constantly. He doesn't talk about sports or other players or the weather or poker strategy or his family or politics--he only opens his mouth to gripe about getting dealt bad cards.

Oh wait--there is one exception. This monologue is occasionally punctuated by complaining about how the rare good starting hand he receives gets outdrawn. That's how awful his constant moaning is: a bad-beat story is actually a welcome reprieve from the stream of ordinary gripes. It's not just like fingernails on a chalkboard; it's as if somebody had invented a machine that relentlessly scrapes synthetic, never-wearing-out fingernails across a chalkboard 24 hours a day, with a constancy that no human could hope to match. He is the Energizer Bunny of whining. If Mike Matusow is the John Henry of poker complaining, Tom is the steam hammer that runs poor John Henry to his death.

Last week, though, he actually made me laugh out loud for the first time, with a line that almost--almost, mind you--made me want to forgive him his incessant, drive-me-up-the-wall diatribes.

He was at the next table over. One of his friends, sitting at my table, hit four of a kind and won a high-hand jackpot. He leaned back in his chair, got Tom's attention, and told him the good news.

Tom replied, "Oh yeah? Well, things are good all over. Half an hour ago, I almost hit a pair."


Ah, if only his sense of humor showed through the river of griping a bit more often....

I think I'm going to throw up

Earlier this week I was playing at Sunset Station. Two middle-aged women, obviously friends, got some food delivered to the table and started sharing it. They were on the other end of the table, and the little cart with their meal on it was behind them, so I couldn't see exactly what they were eating, but it was some sort of finger food. They didn't wash their hands--just dug right in. They, when it was their turn to play, they'd LICK THEIR FINGERS OFF and resume play, as if nothing had happened.

It makes me nauseous just thinking about it.

How can people be so clueless? Poker chips and cards are filthy, disgusting things. Pick up any chip, and you can see globs of crud adhering to it. ("Table boogers," I once heard a dealer fittingly call them.) I know all too well that the majority of men leaving the public restrooms in casinos haven't washed their hands. Whatever is now on their hands, from their butts and genitals, gets spread all over the chips and cards.

And then you ladies want to handle those chips and cards for a few hours, then pick up and ingest food without first washing your hands, and then, to top it all off, LICK YOUR FINGERS??????????? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you just mentally ill?

Here's an interesting article from Bluff magazine about an experiment to determine the bacterial inhabitants of Vegas poker chips: http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazine/2007/02/2007_02_54.asp. I only wish they had tested for viruses as well as bacteria.

And have you two ladies never, ever seen guys who openly pick their noses at the table? I have, many times, in a series of images that are seared into my retinas. Coincidentally, here's Daniel Negreanu's video blog from just yesterday, in which he discusses Mike Matusow doing the same thing--and the camera pans over to Mike, who freely admits he goes digging for gold openly, and doesn't care who sees it or knows about it: http://www.rawvegas.tv/watch.php?vID=6259beb58303c9d0ed2626fbab1eb6. Trust me: Mike is not alone in his lack of discretion about this activity.

So these ladies handle the chips and cards that have players' snot dribbled about on them, and then LICK THEIR FINGERS! Perhaps they think, somehow, that the rest of us sharing those cards and chips really, really want these women's saliva added to the already disgusting blend of crud we have to touch.

I remember an episode of Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown" featuring the famously germophobic Howie Mandel. It was seriously bothering him to be handling the cards and chips, so he passed out latex gloves for everybody to wear. It was funny, but it was also pretty clear that this wasn't just a joke for him--he really couldn't handle thinking about all the microbes that were getting passed around. I'm not a germophobe--really--I just have a decent understanding of and healthy suspicion of the microbial flora that will invariably contaminate objects that get handled by so many members of the general public, many (most?) of whom have highly questionable habits of personal hygiene.

I'm not advocating that poker rooms hand out or require the use of rubber gloves while playing. But common sense suggests that one take care not to touch anything the cleanliness of which you care about (like, say, your face, or your food) after handling such manifestly foul things as poker cards and chips, without first washing one's hands pretty thoroughly.

Lordy, lordy, lordy--there's just no understanding some people's lack of good sense.

Addendum, May 6, 2011

I see that the link to the Bluff magazine piece no longer works. Here's the new link to get to the article: http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazine/Dirty-Vegas--Bluff-Staff-750.htm

Reacting to community cards

It happened again today. I was in a tournament at the Hilton. I wasn't in the hand, but the flop came down 2-5-2, and immediately another player who had folded before the flop smacked his hand down on the table, groaned, and shook his head. It was obvious to everybody that he had folded a deuce. (He later claimed to have folded 5-2, in fact, which is perfectly plausible.)

I hate this sort of thing. There's absolutely no reason for it. It's highly unethical, for exactly the same reason that you can't say out loud, in that situation, "I folded a deuce." That provides potentially crucial information to the players still making decisions--information to which they are not entitled. Suppose you're trying to represent having hit trips on that flop, and a player announces that he folded a deuce. Your bluff just became a whole lot harder to sell. Or suppose that you do, in fact, have a deuce with a weak kicker, and your dilemma is figuring out whether your opponent has the last deuce in the deck with a better kicker. Hearing that the last deuce was folded would be a big help to you, and, conversely, would hurt your opponent (because he will be less likely to believe that you have a deuce now, and because you'll be able to play the hand much more strongly than you would if you were worried about being up against a better set of trips). Such situations are exactly why it's explicitly against the rules to say such a thing. Well, an overt negative reaction to the flop essentially announces the same thing.

Unfortunately, it's highly problematic to try to write or enforce a rule against non-verbal actions such as this, because they can be as dramatic as this guy today was, or as subtle as rolling one's eyes silently, which one would have to be very observant to notice. But whether or not it's technically forbidden and subject to penalty in the same way that a verbal announcement would be, it's just wrong.

When I've pointed this out to offending players in the past, I sometimes get the protest along the lines of "I can't help it--it's involuntary." Bullshit. It's completely under your control. If you were still in the hand, would you yield to your impulse to stand up and cheer for having flopped a full house? No, of course not. You'd suppress it to the very best of your ability. You can do exactly the same kind of suppression of your natural reaction when that reaction is negative, if you choose to do so. If you react overtly, it's because you are making a deliberate decision to conduct yourself in that manner. No excuses.

Moreover, the not-s0-subtle psychological reason for people wanting to act out like this is that they want sympathy from other players about what a great opportunity they missed. But the fact is, nobody cares what a great hand you might have made. (On this subject, see my very first blog post: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2006/10/what-you-threw-away.html.) You're not going to get any sympathy (or, at best, you'll get some phony imitation of sympathy, though it's beyond me why anybody would reward your actions with even this). The same thing happens to everybody from time to time, and it's just part of the game. It's unavoidable, unless you literally play every hand you're dealt.

Deal with it. Grow up. Get over yourself. Stop acting like a baby, and stop throwing your little tantrums. They're immature, annoying, pointless, repulsively self-centered, unethical, and they disrupt the game.

Addendum, October 12, 2007

Last night I was re-watching one of the first-season installments of GSN's "High Stakes Poker." In one hand, Doyle Brunson folds pocket 8s to a bet on the flop when he doesn't hit a set. Two others are still in the hand. What would have been his third 8 comes on the turn--and it would have been the winning hand. Doyle immediately grimaces, shakes his head, and turns to look at somebody standing near him. It wasn't as flagrant as the instance I wrote about above, but it would have been perfectly obvious to anybody at the table that was looking his way at the moment. Of all the people that should know better than to act that way--Doyle Brunson?! So if you do this yourself, you're in good company, in a sense--but it's still wrong.

Favoritism? No, it's just the rule, moron

So today I'm at my favorite hangout, the Hilton, playing $3-6 limit while waiting for a no-limit seat to open up. One of the other players is Myron, a sweet octogenarian (I think I heard him tell somebody he's 83) who is a regular there. Rachel, perhaps my favorite dealer anywhere (smart, funny, interesting, unflappable, accurate, consistent about rule enforcement, attentive to detail--what more can you ask a dealer to be?), is in the box. Myron is on the button, but after the flop he mistakenly thinks he's first to act, and puts out a $3 bet. It is pointed out to him that it's not his turn, so he takes it back. The player who is rightly first to act bets $3, and is called by a young guy who just sat down on my right. (I'm not in the hand.) When the action gets back to Myron, he raises to $6. Guy on my right protests, saying that he can't do that; since he bet $3 out of turn, all he can do in turn is the same $3, which would now be a call.

Rachel politely corrects this young man's impression, and says that Myron can, indeed, raise in these circumstances. The young man gets unusually upset at this point, and insists that the rules only allow the $3 call here. Rachel correctly calls the floor over (Irving) and explains the situation. Irving confirms that Myron can raise. (It would be clear to any observer that Myron is a regular and known by name by all the staff--a detail that is about to become important.) Rather than accept this ruling, the guy on my right says, "Oh, you all know each other, that's great."

At the end of her down, Rachel went above and beyond the call of duty by stopping at this guy's seat and quietly offering to explain the rule in more detail, explicitly saying that she didn't want him to be left with the impression that it was favoritism operating. He declined and brushed her off. So he didn't learn anything.

I realize that there's not a snowball's chance in hell that that guy will ever read these words. But I'll feel better for putting it out into the ether anyway. (And, besides, maybe somebody else reading doesn't understand the rule, and can learn a little something.) So here it is: Action out of turn is binding if, and only if, there has been no intervening change in the action between when the out of turn player erroneously acted and when it actually becomes his turn. In this instance, if everybody had checked around to Myron, then he indeed would have been committed to his previous and untimely $3 bet. But the early-position player's bet changed the action. Myron was now free to fold, call, or raise.

Consider the lunacy of the young man's logic under other conditions. Suppose that before the action got to Myron, there was a bet, a raise, and a reraise. By this guy's logic, Myron could still only put in $3, which wouldn't be enough to call. It's absurd.

The purpose of the rule is to prevent angle-shooters from deliberately pretending to put in a bet or raise in order to inhibit action. That is, particularly in a no-limit game, somebody might want to try to scare opponents who are to act before him into not betting by "accidentally" firing a big bet out of turn, then, when everybody checks to him, he checks, too, thus getting himself a free card that he might otherwise have had to call a bet to see. The rule obligates him to the action that he took out of turn. But once somebody acting in turn shows by betting that they're not afraid of the possibility of a call or raise behind, there would be no purpose in forcing the out-of-turn actor to repeat his action in turn.

For the genuinely accidental action, the rule also makes sense. If I erroneously think I'm first to act, I might want to bet. But if instead I see a bet and a bunch of calls and/or reraises, well, that changes everything, and the situation no longer looks like a good one for a bet, so the rule doesn't punish me for my inadvertant error, and I can fold (or raise, or call).

This rule is, as far as I know, universally recognized. Here, for example, is "Robert's Rules of Poker" (available many places, including http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/poker/rrpprinter.php), under "Betting and Raising," #11: "An action or verbal declaration out of turn is binding unless the action to that player is subsequently changed by a bet or raise." Cooke's "Rules of Real Poker," 10.08, on p. 67, says, "A player who makes action out of turn shall be held to that action when it is his turn, unless intervening action changes the action the out-of-turn player is facing." Lou Krieger's new "The Rules of Poker," p. 84, says, "A player acting out of turn will also be held to his or her verbal declaration unless intervening bets or raises change the action faced by the out-of-turn player."

In short, this young guy was, well, insane. Instead of considering the possibility that he might just be wrong about the rules, he leaped to the conclusion that the poker room staff was conspiring against him and in favor of a regular player. Then, rather than accept a kind offer (after he had cooled down a bit) for a more thorough explanation of the situation and the applicable rule, he blew it off, preferring to maintain his paranoid fantasy.

People are funny creatures, in how they are so confident about things they really know nothing about, and in how they will actively choose to remain ignorant, and in how they love to see conspiracy all around when, objectively it isn't there. (No doubt this guy was followed by a squadron of black helicopters on his way home.)

Clonie Gowen is a cheater

I was just watching "Poker After Dark" on NBC, a re-run of the "Ladies Night" special, featuring six female professional players, including Clonie Gowen, one of the best-known female players on the tournament circuit.

I was astonished to hear her relate a story of winning a pot even though she held the ace of spades, and, before the hand was complete, another player mucked his hand face-up, and in the process showed another ace of spades. Her clear obligation in this situation is to alert the dealer. The floor person will be called over, the hand is dead, everybody gets their money back, and the next hand goes on as if the one in question never occurred (with a new deck of cards, obviously). But instead of doing that, Gowen quietly took the pot, then told the dealer to replace the deck (apparently without specifying why that should be done).

This is cheating, pure and simple.

I just posted the following question in the "Ask the pros" section at Full Tilt Poker (where Gowen is one of the resident professionals) and on Gowen's own site, in the "Ask a question" feature. My guess is that it will be pointedly ignored in both places, and possible deleted. But it needs to be asked anyway.

******

On “Poker After Dark,” you told the story of winning a pot (in a tournament, I presume) even though you had become aware during the play of the hand that the deck was fouled (because there were two aces of spades present). The standard rules of poker clearly prohibit this. For example, Bob Ciaffone’s “Robert’s Rules of Poker” says, under “Irregularities”:
“4. If two cards of the same rank and suit are found, all action is void, and all chips in the pot are returned to the players who wagered them (subject to next rule).
“5. A player who knows the deck is defective has an obligation to point this out. If such a player instead tries to win a pot by taking aggressive action (trying for a freeroll), the player may lose the right to a refund, and the chips may be required to stay in the pot for the next deal.”
Roy Cooke’s “Rules of Real Poker,” p. 105, says:

“14.12. Fouled Deck…. When a fouled deck is discovered, all betting will cease and all money in the pot shall be returned to the players in the hand. If this information is available to only one player and that player attempts to win the pot by initiating action, that player shall forfeit all rights to the pot and all chips in the pot shall be divided among all active players at the time the fouled deck is discovered.”

Similarly, Paymar, Harris, and Malmuth, in “The Professional Poker Dealer’s Handbook” (2nd edition, p. 23) say that “a duplicate card…immediately fouls the deck, and all monies are returned to all players who received cards at the beginning of that hand…. If a player knowingly tries to win the pot with a fouled deck then he has a dead hand and forfeits all rights to the pot and all monies involved.”

In short, by every standard that I can find, you cheated. Worse, you openly advised people listening to your story to do the same--be sure they get the pot pushed to them before telling the dealer to replace the deck.

Were you to claim that you did not know such rules existed, I would find such an assertion implausible. At the very least, a player of your experience absolutely should have known to call over a floor person to make a decision on what to do, rather than keeping the information—and the pot—to yourself.

How can you justify cheating? Why do you advise others to cheat?

Shame on Caesars Palace

Yesterday I played in the Caesars Palace freeroll, for which one qualified by logging 60 hours of cash-game play during the month of May. But the tournament was not what was promised.

Freeroll tournaments as a reward for patronage are often structured with blinds increasing so quickly that the luck:skill ratio is way too large. The Station and Coast ones are notorious in that regard.

Caesars was supposed to be different. One of the attrations, in addition to the handsome $100,000 prize pool, was a slow, reasonable structure that would give enough time for skill to predominate over luck. That's what Caesars promised. But it ain't what they delivered. When I checked in, I picked up a paper with the structure on it, and was shocked to find that they reneged on their promise. We were given 20-minute levels, with blinds doubling every level for the first five levels. Antes started with level 3--a mere forty minutes into the tournament.

Predictably, and inevitably, soon after the first break it turned into a pure luckfest, with the only reasonable move being all-in before the flop. This is just nuts. You might as well just hold a random drawing for the prize money.

Arnold Snyder has a useful metric for assessing the speed of a tournament structure in his book The Poker Tournament Formula. I won't bore you with the details, but the Caesars freeroll structure works out to what Snyder would call a "patience factor" of 3.06, which is just barely into his "skill level 2" (on a scale of 0 to 6). Snyder keeps a database of Vegas daily/weekly tournaments rated on this "skill level" scale: see http://www.pokertournamentformula.com/las_vegas_poker_tournaments.htm. There's a lot of variation, but typically skill-level-2 tournaments are cheapo daily things with buy-ins of $35-$60. They're for tourists who just want a little tournament fun, without the casino having to invest much in terms of tying up tables and dealers. They're donkfests, or, as the 2+2 forum people like to call them, "donkaments."

I suppose some readers will think this is just sour grapes because I got knocked out in level 5. But I promise I would be saying the same thing if I had won the whole thing. It's the principle: Caesars didn't deliver what it promised. They lied to us, or at least went back on their word.

If a casino can't be trusted to stick to what it promises its customers, it's a slippery slope with no end. Next time maybe they'll decide to make the tournament rolling dice instead of poker, or make the total prize pool $100 instead of $100,000, or just cancel the thing altogether after getting their month of increased business. Why not? It's all of a kind with radically altering the structure of the tournament that you promised. What they did was as much a bait-and-switch con job as if they had done any of the other possibilities I just mentioned. It's dishonest, and it's disgraceful.

The next time you see a promotion from Caesars, promising you something in return for playing there, just remember--they now have a demonstrated tendency to renege on their promises. They can't be trusted. And why should I or anybody else patronize a business that can't be trusted to give you what they say they will?

It's really that simple.

"I had to call you"

I haven't yet compiled a list of the Ten Stupidest Things That Poker Players Say All the Time, but a leading candidate for such a list would be "I had to call you."

It seems that this is said with about equal frequency by players who win pots with a call and those who lose pots with a call. It doesn't matter--it's just as stupid either way.

First of all, no, you never have to call any bet. There is no gun being held to your temple. There is no rule requiring it. You get to choose. Now, it may be that in a given situation it is mathematically correct (i.e., a positive expected value over the long haul of making that decision many times in a lifetime of playing) to call, but that is not the same thing as saying that you had to call.

Secondly, it isn't even true that the call in question was reasonable on an EV basis many of the times that somebody utters the dreaded words. If there are 4 parts of a royal flush on the board, and you call a river bet to somebody who, by all indications, does indeed have either the straight or the flush, and you say, "I had to call you--I had top pair," well, then, you're an idiot.

In fact, this is one of the basic problems with the phrase: it is often followed by a statement about what the player was holding, e.g., "I had to call you, I had 2 pair/trips/a straight" (or whatever). But this just reveals that the person is making his decisions based solely on the strength of his own hand, rather than the relative strength of his hand versus that of the opponent--a preposterous way to make poker decisions. You don't get the pot just because you flopped a set or caught a straight on the turn. This ain't video poker, where the reward depends only on the hand you make. Whether your call wins you the pot because you beat a bluff or an unexpectedly weaker hand, or loses you money because your opponent had a stronger hand, making the call based only on what you're holding misses the entire point of good poker decision-making.

Finally, nobody at the table--least of all the guy who you either just beat or just gave more money to--gives a shit why you made the decision you did. Let me repeat, a little bit louder: NOBODY CARES WHY YOU MADE THE CALL! (And it's usually obvious without your explanation anyway, if anyone bothers to analyze the situation.) If you won, you're certainly not going to take the sting of the loss away from the other guy by saying, "I had to call, I had two pairs." In fact, it's rude and unsportsmanlike to rub it in with a speech. If you lost, the guy raking in your money absolutely doesn't give a damn why you made your mistake; he's just wondering if he maybe should have bet more and sucked more chips his way. So you're pissing in the wind with your post-hand analysis. Nobody is listening to you. Nobody cares.

Furthermore, your explanation just reveals a pathological insecurity: you are so afraid of what people will think of your call that you feel a need to explain it. But why on earth would you care what the other players think? If it was a reasonable call, given the range of hands with which your opponent made his bet, and it turned out that he was actually at the high end of that range with one of the few hands that would beat you, then be content with your own analysis that it was the right move. If you correctly sniffed out a bluff or a hand that was otherwise weaker than the bet represented, great, be proud of yourself.

Either way, what is the point of trying to change what somebody else might think of your call by providing an explanation of it? If somebody is impressed with a good call, they won't be made more so by your little self-centered explanation. And if somebody is inclined to think you made a bad call (regardless of the results), so what? Let them think you're a calling station or a moron, and then figure out a way to exploit that erroneous impression (if, in fact, it is erroneous). What's more, consider this: If it was actually a bad call, your justification of it after the fact just makes you look that much dumber in the eyes of experienced players, and they will go out of their way to set you up to make the same mistake again, to their benefit.

In my experience, I often have to think for quite a long time after a hand is over before making a really good assessment of whether a call was smart or not. Your instant analysis is at least as likely to be wrong as it is to be right.

So the next time you feel an urge to say "I had to call you," please just stifle it. It's never true, it's often not even an approximation of the truth, it tends to reveal only bad things about you, and, most of all, nobody cares.

Bizarre new "rule"

This post might better be titled, "Dealers who make up their own rules, part IV."

Monte Carlo, last night. There's a guy across the table from me who plays about 90% of hands, and bets or raises post-flop the majority of the time. He's very difficult to put on a hand, because he plays the nuts the same way he plays zippo.

He wins one pot with a bet on the river that an opponent doesn't call. Before he mucks his hand, he shows it to the guy next to him. Before the player has tossed in his cards, I say to the dealer, "Show those, please." The dealer hesitates. I've seen this happen many times, and it's usually because the dealer is busy doing other things and didn't notice one player showing his hand to another--perfectly understandable, with all the other things the dealer is doing when a hand is concluding. So I say, "He showed them to the guy next to him." That explanation is usually sufficient for the dealer to act, or at least to seek confirmation from one of the players involved that the cards were voluntarily shown, before showing the hand.

But this dealer mucks the cards anyway, and explains that the player that was shown the hand was not involved in the pot, so I don't have a right to see them. I think, "Are you f'ing kidding me? Are you just making this up as you go?" Instead, though, I explain that it is never the case that a player can give that information selectively to some people at the table but not to others. The dealer reaffirms that that is the rule--only people who were in the hand can ask to see it. (I was dealt in, but folded pre-flop. This dealer didn't explain how long one has to stay in the hand to retain the right to see the hand, under his bizarro version of the rules.)

Well, I don't believe this for a second. The cards are in the muck, and I'm not so concerned about this one hand that I'm going to try to pluck them out, but this is a principle that's too important to let stand in this idiotic fashion. So I tell the dealer, "Could you call the floor, please?" He does, though obviously he isn't very happy about it.

Predictably, the floor person confirms that "Show one, show all" does indeed apply, providing that the request is made before the cards go in the muck, while they can still be identified. I point out that I did make the request in plenty of time, but the dealer refused it. Neither of them attempts even a token apology, or acknowledges that a mistake was made.

I am usually completely forgiving of dealers' errors, and don't needle them about their mistakes--they're just part of the game, same as referees and umpires making erroneous calls in other sports. But this is one of the most universally recognized and commonly cited rules in the book, one which virtually every player can recite, and I was astounded that a dealer actually didn't know it. After the floor person left, I asked the dealer, "You really had never heard the 'Show one, show all' rule?" He opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, then apparently thought better of it, turned away, and ignored the question.

For the fourth time in these rants, I have to say that I just don't understand the mindset of dealers who just make up crap completely on their own, and somehow delude themselves into thinking that those are actually the rules. There can't possibly be any person of authority or any book or any dealer school that taught him this. He apparently just made up this exception to the general rule. Who knows how long he has been citing it to players?

What the hell is up with that?

Tap, tap, tap

I'm getting increasingly annoyed with players who absentmindedly tap their hand and/or chips on the table when they're thinking about what to do. It looks like a check, and other players behind them should be entitled to interpret it as a check. Unfortunately, most dealers are much more lenient about this that I think they should be.

A couple of weeks ago at the Sahara this happened. A very drunk guy, when it was his turn, tapped on the table with his right hand. It was a situation where I really needed a free card, so I was happy to check behind him. But after I did so, the drunk guy pushed a stack of chips in. I protested to the dealer that he had checked. The dealer said he didn't see it, so I re-enacted for him what the player had done. The dealer asked, "So he tapped with his right hand?" Yes. Well, it turns out that this particular player is a frequent flyer at the Sahara, and he always checks by tapping his left hand, palm flat, on the table (which I confirmed thereafter by watching him). So the dealer says that it wasn't a check--as if it is my responsibility to know the exact personal style of checking of every other player at the table, and thereby separate idle hand movements from actual, intentional checks. Ridiculous.

To quote from Roy Cooke's wonderful "Real Rules of Poker" (p. 68, rule 10.12): "The dealer and other players shall have the right to rely on a player's hand motions. Any tapping of the table or other hand signal that the dealer might reasonably construe to be a check shall be deemed a check." That's how it should be, of course.

Want an example of what a huge difference it can make?

Recently at the Hilton I had an offsuit AJ, with the A of spades. There was a pre-flop raise to $15 or so, which I called--along with 6 other people, so it was already a big pot even before the flop. The flop was all spades, giving me the top flush draw. A player a few seats to my right was supposed to act first. He tapped his hand on the table, and I couldn't tell if it was a "just thinking" tap or a check. Just as he reached for his whole stack and put it in the pot, the dealer said, "Was that a check?"

Now, I certainly didn't want him going all-in, because I couldn't possibly call such a large bet, in the hopes of catching another spade. I wanted a free card very badly. The player said, "No, I'm all in!" I spoke up and said, "It looked like a check to me." The dealer agreed, and made him take his bet back. Everybody else checked, too.

The turn card was another spade, and I had the best possible flush. This dummy then *still* decides to go all-in! As it turned out, he had pocket 9s, and the 9 of spades had been there on the flop, giving him a set--no wonder he had wanted to bet big, to take down the pot right then, without giving anybody a chance to draw to a flush to beat him. His tapping was just his internal debate about whether that was the thing to do. But even with four spades on the board, he couldn't let go of it. To make things better, the guy to my right made a jack-high flush with that turn card, and he went all-in! And, as you might guess, so did I. With what was already there before the flop and our 3 all-ins, the pot ended up being about $500.

That little idle motion with his hand while he was thinking cost that guy nearly $200. And I don't feel one bit guilty about calling him on it. Rules are rules, and the fact that I'm usually willing to be lenient when there's some doubt about his intentions doesn't mean I have to be every time. I'm extremely careful not to take any actions or make any motions that might confuse or mislead another player, or cause somebody behind me to act out of turn, and if others have to learn the hard way about paying attention to what they're doing, so be it. I've got bills to pay.

Now if we could just get dealers to be vigilant on this point, and enforce the rule consistently.

Fortunately, some do. A couple of weeks ago at Caesars Palace, there was a guy who was habitually doing the "I'm thinking" tap when it was his turn. Twice it caused people behind him to take their turns prematurely, and twice the dealers (different ones each time) called back those actions and let the tapper still decide whether to check or bet.

Finally there was a third such incident, unfortunately with yet another a new dealer, but fortunately with a dealer that was watching closely. He saw the tap, announced "Check," and gestured toward the next player. Mr. Tapper protested that he hadn't acted yet. The dealer explained that it looked like a check, but he would allow him this one warning. I spoke up and said that the same player had already been warned twice by previous dealers, which another player confirmed. Usually, this doesn't get anywhere (except maybe the floor called over for a decision), because obviously the dealer can't know what did or didn't happen prior to his arrival at the table. But this guy, bless him, took it seriously, and said, "In that case, we're going to have to let that stand as a check." The tapper didn't protest further. And, significantly, he didn't do it again. People are capable of learning quickly, if it costs them money. If they're allowed to slide repeatedly, they tend not to learn.

"Good luck, honey!"

Two bits of weirdness that are, in my experience, unique to Las Vegas, have been intruding into my consciousness lately. I'm hoping that talking about them here will help dispel the distress they have been causing me, similar to the way in which one rids oneself of earworms (songs you can't get out of your head) by giving in to the temptation to sing them aloud.

1. It seems that everybody here takes liberties with terms of affection for complete strangers who are of the opposite sex. At least between customers and casino/restaurant employees, men and women casually and freely call each other "honey," "dear," "love," "darling," "sweetheart," "sweetie," etc. I find this jarring, whether it's addressed to me or I just overhear it. The implied familiarity is simultaneously so intrusive and so phony that I have been unable to get used to it, despite some 11 months of exposure to it. I try not to be bothered by it when it's directed at me, because I know that it's not intended to offend, and, furthermore, that attempts to stop it are completely futile. But I refuse to join in.

2. I'd happily put up with being every female service employee's "honey" and "dear" if I could somehow stop being told "good luck" at every turn. Here's how it goes: I arrive at the casino for a session of poker. I buy chips at the desk, get directed to a table, and am told "Good luck." I arrive at the table, and the dealer greets me with some variation of "Welcome to the table. Good luck." Every 20 or 30 minutes the dealers rotate between tables. The process always includes the outgoing dealer telling everybody at the table "Good luck," a wish that is soon echoed by the incoming dealer. If I run out of chips and have to buy more, I get them either from the dealer or from a chip runner, either of whom will conclude the transaction with another "Good luck." If I order a beverage, I'll tip the waitress (in nearly 1000 hours of poker playing since I've been here, I have not seen a single male cocktail waiter, so I think it's safe to use the feminine form of the word), and hear, in reply, "Thank you and good luck." It has become so pervasive that one of the biggest casino conglomerates now has their telephone operators using a variation on it: I ask for to be connected to the poker room, and hear, "My pleasure. Have a lucky day."

Again, I try not to be annoyed by this, even though it's all purely mechanical and devoid of any feeling, because I know that all of these people are simply doing what their employers tell them to do and/or what seems to them to be situationally polite. But it's grating--like hearing "Have a nice day" 700 times in a row.

It all kind of makes me long for the old, familiar annoyances of Minnesota.