It's all about the cards

Perhaps my least favorite moment in the whole process of hitting a casino to play poker is signing in and out, when I have to hand over my players' club card to be swiped so I can get comp credit for my hours.

You see, I kind of have a lot of those cards, and I have to keep them all together. There are way too many to fit in a wallet. I often don't know when I leave the house where I'll end up playing, because I change my mind on the way, or because I have a really lousy session and pick up to go somewhere else, or I have a spectacularly lucky big start and feel that I'm just going to give it all away if I stay put. So the cards have to come with me, or I might not have the one I need when I need it. I hear that some people leave them in their car's glove compartment, and just pull out the one they need when they arrive. I'm sufficiently absent-minded that I'd always be forgetting to take it inside with me. Besides, wouldn't the Vegas summer heat melt the plastic?

I always wear a dorky fanny pack when I'm out and about, and there's plenty of space for the cards. But they have to be held together. So I have them all strung on a key ring:

The result is that when I come to that dreaded moment of handing over the card, I have to give them the whole mess. And that nearly always provokes some sort of remark. "Got enough of those?" "Do you have all of them yet?" Etc.

Even worse is sitting down at the table at the places where they swipe the card right at the table (Station properties, Treasure Island, MGM Grand, Imperial Palace, and a few others). First, the poor dealer usually has to make the swipe one-handed, because the deck of cards is in the other hand. Doing this with a single card isn't too hard, but juggling my whole collection is a challenge.

But then there are the inevitable sniggerings from the other players. Apparently having this many cards is quite amusing to them, though I've never really figured out why. Surely there are thousands upon thousands of Vegas locals who have such collections, and I can't possibly be the only one that has them all strung together for efficiency. But there's always at least one person who feels the need to ask, "Gamble much?" or say something sarcastic like, "You really don't have enough of those cards." My, my--aren't you clever to think of such witty banter on the spot.

Besides, it's really not all that many. It's 25, to be exact. I've dumped the ones for places I'm unlikely to ever play in again.

My stock reply is to say, "Some people would call that evidence of a gambling problem."

But it isn't. I spend more time in casinos than anybody I know except employees of the places, but the total amount I spend on non-poker gambling a year is under $25--and even that is nearly all on 2-for-1 coupon deals or when a friend is in town and I do a little nickel-and-dime betting alongside him or her for amusement. The casinos do not consider me a highly valued customer; I never qualify for any of the giveaways they have for their regular customers, because poker hours aren't nearly as profitable to the casinos as the same time spent plugging slot machines or trying to beat the blackjack dealer, so we poker players are at the bottom of the comp priority list.

Still, when I can pick up an extra buck or two an hour in free food credits just for handing them the stupid card as I start and end play, well, dammit, I'm going to do it. That means dragging the cards around with me, but with them thrown into a fanny pack that's no burden at all.

The only burden is the taunts from poker room employees and other players. I'm kind of a freak of nature in a lot of ways that, were people to know about them, might make targets worthy of some ribbing. Carrying 25 casino cards may be the least peculiar thing about me. But that's the first one so many people see, so that's what grabs their attention, I guess.

*sigh*

Poker gems, #125

Ambrose Bierce, as quoted in John Carlisle,'s Poker Player newspaper column, June 9, 2008, p. 13:


The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.

Something fishy is going on in the WSOP ladies event

Yesterday I was watching some of the live updates from the World Series of Poker on the PokerNews feeds. One of the first ones about the ladies event was an announcement from WSOP Chariman Jeffrey Pollack to the effect that as long as he was in charge of things, there would be a ladies event (some people want to eliminate it), and that no men would be allowed to enter it (never mind antidiscrimination laws to the contrary).

Today, that report can no longer be found in the pages of Poker News updates of that event from yesterday. However, similarly defiant declarations from Pollack are reported by Michele Lewis as having occurred the night before:

Last night at the Queens of Heart dinner, Jeffrey
Pollack made two announcements:

1. As long as he is WSOP Commissioner there will be a Ladies
Event awarding a bracelet

2. No man would be allowed to register for the Ladies Event today

But at least one man did register for the tournament, and show up, only to be turned away at the last minute. Here's the incident as reported by Poker Listings.

Alan Jaffray showed up in a lovely dress hoping to have a go at the
bracelet. Jaffray's intent was to protest the sexist nature of the tournament
but was approached by WSOP Chairman, Jeffrey Pollack, shortly before the start. Mr. Pollack requested that Jaffray unregister himself from the tournament to preserve the integrity of the game and Jaffray obliged.

But on Jaffray's blog, he makes it pretty clear that, from his point of view, he was not "requested" to unregister, but was positively disallowed from play by Mr. Pollack:

I showed up at 11:30, met Patti, Sabyl, and a couple of friends at the
coffee shop, borrowed Patti's hat, had them adjust my necklace and apply makeup,
posed for photos with supportive and enthusiastic ladies at a couple of nearby
tables who were also playing that afternoon, walked to the Amazon room, and
promptly got pulled aside and kicked out by Jeffrey Pollack, Commissioner of the
World Series of Poker.

I'm honestly surprised by this - as I told Jeff, I've never heard of anyone
being denied entry to a poker tournament, including ladies events, on the basis
of sex. He claims that "in the 31-year history of the World Series of Poker
ladies event, no man has ever played." I asked if he was not concerned about the
sex discrimination aspects of this decision. "Not at all. Men are not a
protected class."

He talked about how they treat this event very seriously - "as do I, sir" -
and about the importance of protecting "the integrity of the game." I'm not sure
what my penis has to do with the integrity of the game. He asked if I could
understand his point of view. "I don't accept it, and I don't believe it's
right. But you're the boss, and if you say I can't play, then I can't
play.

"I'm disappointed and annoyed that I can't play, since I expected to have
more fun in this event than perhaps any other in the WSOP, and I'd really love
to win the bracelet. C'est la vie. I don't know whether or not they have the
legal right to discriminate in this way, but I'm not going to make a big fuss. I
don't care enough to fight it, and I have too much to lose to risk Harrah's
blacklisting me and preventing me from playing future WSOP events.

Maybe I'll have better luck in the WSOP Negro World Championship. Oh, wait,
they don't have that. They wouldn't even dream of running that. Hmmmmm.

At least I got a nice outfit out of the experience. Photos later.

Jaffray confirmed the same point in a story and interview by Jennifer Newell for PokerWorks:

I never got to my seat. As I was approaching the blue section,Jeffrey
Pollack pulled me aside and informed me that I would not be allowed to play.

But perhaps the strangest part is that it appears there is a man not only playing in the event, but among the chip leaders at the end of Day 1. Here's what is being reported on the N.Y. Times "Freakonomics" blog:

Last year my wife Jeannette played in the ladies event at the World Series
of Poker. As I wandered around the poker room, I noticed a few of the
contestants sported very un-ladylike goatees. On closer inspection, they were
definitely men.

I asked around, and it turns out that the casino technically cannot exclude
men from participating in the ladies event if they want to. Every year a few men
enter.

Unless there is a case of mistaken identity, it looks like a man is
threatening to win the ladies event at this year’s World Series of Poker. After
one day of play, the starting field of over 1,000 has been whittled down to just
61 remaining players.

Here the blogger, Steven D. Levitt, refers to Hoa Nguyen, 7th in chips going into Day 2. He also posts this link to Nguyen's player profile on the official WSOP web site. Dude looks like a dude to me, all right.

(Caveat: Since there are many events going on simultaneously, I consider it possible that he unknowingly crossed the border from one event to another, and thus was seeing men in an open event. However, if that were the case, you wouldn't really expect him to stumble upon a table of eight women and one man, which is kind of what is implied in his report. Remember, too, that his observation was from last year, not this year, so it's relevant to the question of whether men have entered the ladies event in the past, but not relevant to whether any men are playing this year.)

So here are my questions (and I'm deliberately omitting the larger question of whether there should be women's-only events; that's a matter of opinion, and I'm just focusing on questions of fact):

1. Is Levitt right that at least a few men have entered the ladies WSOP event in past years, or is Pollack right that that has never happened?

2. Did Pollack, in fact, say something about no men being allowed to enter the event in his introductory remarks to the crowd, as I remember PokerNews reporting just after it happened? (I grant the possibility that I was web surfing somewhere else and thus it came from some other source--perhaps I'm even confusing what I read from Michele Lewis with something that came from the PN live feeds. But I feel about 90% confident that I'm remembering it accurately.)

3. If PN did make such a report, why has it been deleted?

4. Is the Hoa Nguyen reported as one of the current chip leaders actually the same person as in the WSOP player profile, and is the accompanying photo (which is clearly of a male-type person of the masculine gender) correctly matched to the player?

5. If Nguyen and/or other men were allowed to play, why was Jaffray denied entry (assuming that his report of being disallowed--rather than just asked to withdraw--is correct)?

6. If Nguyen and/or other men are playing, why was that fact ignored in PokerNews's 12 pages of coverage yesterday? Similarly, was not Jaffray's incident considered "poker news" by that reporting organization?

7. Was Jaffray asked not to participate, as PokerListings claims, or was he actually prevented from playing, as he says? If the latter, why does PokerListings say otherwise? Did they, perhaps, get their information from Pollack, without asking Jaffray for his version of events? If Pollack is the source for their report, did he lie about the interaction with Jaffray? If so, why?

8. Does PokerNews's exclusive contract for live reporting from the WSOP include an explicit or implicit agreement that they will suppress stories that the WSOP would, for whatever reason, prefer them not to report on (perhaps because of being too unpleasant or controversial or showing the WSOP management in an unfavorable light)?

If I am able to get definitive answers to any of these questions, I'll post what I learn in an addendum to this post. For now, I'll just say that something smells really rotten here.


Addendum:

I wrote the above before making my usual daily rounds of poker blogs. If I find that others are discussing the situation, I'll add a note about it here.

I see that Wicked Chops Poker has a brief post and a photo of a person whose sexual identity is not immediately obvious. They say they confirmed that it's a "dude," but given WCP's penchant for tongue-in-cheek reporting, I don't know how much stock to put in that claim.

Here's what Pokerati reported, in relevant part:

The ladies event brings out all sorts … supposedly one man entered, and one
man left. Because the WSOP wasn’t gonna get themselves into anything resembling
a civil rights and discriminatory mess, anyone who stood in line for Event #15
would be allowed to buy in. However, when only one man did this, Nolan Dalla
went up to him and politely asked him not to play — refunded his buy-in as he
obliged.

No names given, so I don't have any idea how to mesh that information with the other reports discussed above.

Addendum, June 10, 2008

The Freakonomics post cited above has now been amended to say that "reliable sources" have confirmed that the Hoa Nguyen this was indeed a case of mistaken identity, and the person by that name in the ladies event is (A) female and (B) not the same one as linked to in the WSOP site bio and photo. The other questions remain, however.

You goof, I profit

Yesterday afternoon I was playing at South Point. It was a $4-$8 limit game with a half-kill, while I was waiting for a no-limit seat to open up. My opponent in the hand had won the two previous pots, the second with an outlandish bluff, so the half-kill was on, and the hand was being played $6-$12.

Normally when somebody has just shown a bluff, then comes out firing the next hand, he really has something. But I got a sense that this guy might try the ol' double-reverse-reverse and bluff again, on the assumption that we wouldn't think he'd do that. He raised before the flop. I was on the button with just a 6-8 offsuit, but I decided to hunt him down and see what was going on.

The flop was A-6-3, giving me middle pair. He bet, I called. Although he could easily have an ace, I thought his range of raising hands was wide enough that it was more likely he did not have one. Of course, he could also have a pocket pair bigger than 6s, but I just didn't believe him.

The turn was another 3. He fired again, and I called again, figuring that this was a safe or at least neutral card for me.

The river brought a third spade, the 4. Now he checked. I couldn't tell if this meant he never had the ace to begin with, or he had it but was now afraid that I had filled a flush draw. So I bet. He called. Oops--that must mean he has an ace after all. Oh well. That's the way it goes sometimes.

I flipped up my cards silently. He was at the other end of the table. I was extremely surprised to hear him say, "Oh, you flopped a set. Nice hand." The guy next to him said, "No, a full house," and my opponent then apparently noticed the paired board and said, "Oh yeah, even better. OK"--and he pushed his hole cards toward the dealer face down!

Both he and the player next to him had obviously misread my hand and thought that I had 6-6 instead of 6-8. Well, it's not my job to correct them. I hadn't said a word. I wasn't trying to trick or deceive anybody. I was sure that somebody else at the table would pipe up and correct the guy's misimpression, because that virtually always happens in such situations (even though it shouldn't), but miraculously nobody did this time.

The dealer had pushed up the 6, the ace, and both 3s on the board to indicate which cards constituted my best five-card hand, but he did not verbally announce my hand. This was good for me. Unfortunately, by the time my opponent pushed his cards forward, the dealer was busy stacking the chips up (I can't imagine why he was doing this--it was not a situation in which he would reasonably expect a split pot to result), and those cards just sat there for several precious seconds! I was mentally flogging the dealer: "C'mon, forget the chips! Get those cards in the muck before he comes to his senses!" But I remained quiet and motionless. I think that urging the dealer to muck the cards would both alert the other player that something was wrong and border on being unethical.

Finally, the guy says, "Hey, hold on a minute." This suddenly alerted the dealer that something was afoot, and just as the guy started to reach out to reclaim his cards, the dealer snatched them up and shoved them deep into the muck, completely unrecoverable. Whew!

That's when the talk started. People started pointing out that I just had two pair, not three of a kind or a full house. The guy said, quite plausibly, that he had had A-Q. He wanted the dealer to do something, but the dealer obviously had to explain that he couldn't do anything but award me the pot, since nobody else had seen his cards.

I didn't say a word through the whole thing, just stacked up about $70 in chips.

I have maintained here repeatedly, whenever the subject has come up, that a player's decision to either show his cards or muck them unseen is a strategic/tactical one, just like the decision to check, bet, call, raise, or fold, and the player must be allowed to make that decision unaided, even if it's a foolish one. Once he decides to reveal his cards, then it doesn't matter if he has misread either his own holding or that of an opponent--at that point both the dealer and the other players can sort out who the winner is, because, as they say, the cards speak. (Or, alternatively, "cod spick.") But the cards can't "speak" if nobody except their owner ever sees them.

I would never intentionally tell an opponent that I had trips or a full house, when I really didn't, in an attempt to get him to muck the winner--that's about as dirty as angle-shooting gets. And if he opened his hand and the dealer misread the cards and started pushing me the pot, when it rightfully belonged to somebody else, I'd speak up and correct the situation immediately.

But I feel not one iota of duty to correct another player's erroneous reading of my cards before he finishes making his decision on whether to show or muck, nor one speck of guilt for having accepted that pot. Why on earth should I stop him from throwing away the winner, if that's what he feels like doing? All that he has to do in order to prevent adverse consequences of making a mistake at this crucial juncture is the minimal effort of turning over his cards. If he's not willing to do that much, why should I or anybody else help him? If he has decided that keeping his cards Top Secret is more important to him than reducing the risk of losing the pot by mistake, who am I to try to convince him otherwise?

I'm glad to report that the guy didn't go ballistic or anything. He admitted that he screwed up--although he did have a few unflattering comments to his neighbor about my decision to make such thin calls.* That's OK, pal--we can disagree on whether it was reasonable. I'm pretty generous about such things when I have your money.


*In this particular situation, this gripe was even more stupid than usual. One of the objectives of showing a bluff--as he had just done--is to make opponents think that you're bluffing again later when you're actually not, and thus collect extra calls that otherwise would not have been reliquished. Assuming that he was rational enough to have that as one of the reasons he showed the bluff, he got exactly what he was hoping for--and then complained about it!

Shut yer piehole!

To the best of my knowledge, we have just had the first enforcement of the WSOP's new "excessive celebration" rule. As reported about 20 minutes ago by Don Peters at www.pokernews.com, from the ladies event:

"They call me the firecracker."

We've just had our first penalty issued for the tournament. Heidi "The
Firecracker" Muhamed eliminated a player and taunted her as she exited the room.
She then received a warning from the tournament staff.

After another win, Muhamed burst out again in celebration. This time, the
tournament staff was quick to issue her a one-round penalty. "The Firecracker"
just got back into play and has 5,200 in chips. She asked one of our reporters
for a piece of tape to put over her mouth. Another outburst will issue her
another penalty. A third penalty will get her kicked out of the
tournament.

Three cheers for the tournament staff. Other than outright cheating, ain't much lower in poker (or any other game or sport for that matter) than taunting an opponent you have just beaten. What is so hard about just sitting there quietly and raking in the chips? What is wrong with people that that does not provide sufficient satisfaction? If you get pleasure from kicking somebody when he or she is down, there is something seriously disturbed about you. A poker tournament penalty won't come anywhere close to fixing your deep-seated personality disorder, but it's all we can do.

Bloggerpalooza!

I heard about Vegaspalooza from Gadzooks's blog a few weeks ago, and have had tonight marked on my calendar ever since. A bunch of poker bloggers were descending on Vegas, and a major part of the plan was a mixed game at the MGM Grand tonight. I made sure to not only be there, but to be the first on the list. In addition to making sure I got a seat, this also allowed me to establish that it would be a $2-4 game--my preference, since I accurately foresaw that the betting was going to get wild. When it's primarily for fun and bragging rights, why make it expensive?

I had never met any of these people before (except for Shamus, who showed up after his PokerNews gig ended for the day, too late to get in on the game, and really just a short time before everything broke up). I tend to be pretty awkward about meeting people, since the whole concept of "small talk" is foreign to me. But they welcomed me warmly and openly, which made me feel like the nerd on the playground who has somehow gotten the cool kids to let him join their gang.

They say you should never play poker with a man called "Doc." Well, that aphorism might extend to playing poker with a table full of poker bloggers. It makes for a crazy game. You get things like the first round of betting capped without players having looked at their cards (which is considered cheating). You get players raising in razz with K-K-J showing. You get a lot of drinking. (As usual there, though, my non-imbibing ways put me at the enormous disadvantage of having to play sober.) You get dealers who have no idea how to control the game. You get an attractive, young, female member of the contingent promising a kiss right on the mouth to anybody who hits quads. (Sadly, only her husband got this particular jackpot--which seems kind of a waste, if you know what I mean.) You get dudes kissing each other (srsly). You get arguments about who is the gayest poker blogger (this, ironically, from a couple of the people who were alluded to in the preceding sentence). You get alleged adults sounding like kids with ADD, whining that we've been playing some particular game too long, when it has only been six hands.

You can also get scintillating conversation, such as these exchanges (which, as Dave Barry would say, I swear I am not making up):

"I'm folding just on principle."

"But you have no principles."

"That's my point."

"Fair enough."

"Have you looked at your cards yet?"

"Yes."

"Oh, that's right, you showed them to me."

I had two memorable hands. One was in razz, calling a bet on the end with a J-7 low, and edging out a J-8 low. The other was when I caught the perfect card on the river in stud/8 that both filled my gutshot seven-high straight draw and made me a 6-low, for the scooper-dooper on a large three-way pot. Poker is all skill, you know.

The unfortunate part is that we really had enough people to fill two tables, but for reasons unexplained, MGM management wouldn't get a second one going. This meant that nearly half of the attendees never got to play a hand. The MGM mixed game is also a lot blander than what I've played at Treasure Island and Imperial Palace. The games were all, well, completely normal ones--no strange discards, no extra cards on the board, no passing trash, no putting a card on your forehead. Just Omaha/8, razz, straight stud, and stud/8. We even had to get special permission to replace boring ol' hold'em with Crazy Pineapple.

Most of the night's players have now moved on to the Spearmint Rhino. They politely invited me along, but I declined. Among other reasons, I wanted to be the first one to post about the game.

Now comes the hard part--trying to match names with the faces in the photos. Although I got introduced around, I didn't take very good notes, so I'm afraid that my associations of real-world names, blogosphere nicknames, and blog names got all jumbled up. There's also this problem: Some poker bloggers hide behind a pseudonym for some very good reason, such as an employment situation that would not be thrilled to learn that they are dedicated gamblers, and spend several hours a week writing about it. So even with the ones where I have a solid association of face, name, and blog, I'm a tad reluctant to make the identification here, because I don't know how fully "out" everybody is.

The one exception to this that I'm confident about is Gadzooks, since she has her photo at the top of her blog. (It was clear that everybody knew her. When she arrived, one heard a chorus of "Zooks!" reminding one of nothing so much as the "Cheers" crowd yelling "Norm!") She's standing, in a white t-shirt, in the photos above. F-Train came along after I had put the camera away, so no worries there. (Oddly enough, he and I had been spending a lot of hours this week working together on the WSOP, though several miles apart, each on our laptops, and thus never meeting in person previously).

For the rest of you degenerates, if it's OK with you for me to name names, either send me an email or put something in the comments. I'll add an addendum here later with a cross-referencing guide and pointers to those who are all right with it.

I don't have anything to say about tonight's event that will be particularly profound or meaningful to my readers. But I do have one thing to say that is important to me: Anytime you get a group such as this assembled, with some having never met others, introductions will often trigger a moment of recognition that you're shaking hands with somebody whose posts you have read and enjoyed. Just about the highest compliment you can pay to a blogger upon meeting him or her is "You're _______? Wow! I read you. Good stuff you're putting out."

To have heard words like that tonight, not from just readers, but from several others who share this strange habit of writing up our thoughts on the game we all love, was a sincere honor and thrill. It was not only a blast of fun, but greatly flattering and heartwarming to have been recognized and accepted as one of you. For that I thank you.

The Imperial Palace mixed game

I just posted about some hands from a session of mixed poker games. It occurs to me that it would probably be useful to post some more general information about it.

As I hear it, about three weeks ago Imperial Palace started hosting a weekly $3-$6 mixed game, as you can see from the photo above of the sign they now have posted in their poker room. This had apparently been discussed thoroughly over on http://www.allvegaspoker.com/, but I haven't been keeping up on the posts there carefully enough to have read about it. Word is that the mixed-game fans were lured from Treasure Island over the IP because the latter's management promised them a weekly game, a reduced $3 maximum rake, and credit for double comp hours on the players' Harrah's (I'm still not used to saying "Caesars") cards. So now it's a regular fixture.

The sign lists several games, but that's not necessarily what gets played. Below is a scan of a sheet that was being handed out, outlining no fewer than ten different games that get thrown into the blender! Some of these I had never even heard of before sitting down Sunday night--and one of them (the nutty-sounding 3-2-1 Omaha) I still haven't played, because even after a couple of hours at the table we hadn't completed the circuit, and my brain was too fried to continue.


So take this as encouragement to support IP in its effort to get a regularly scheduled low-limit mixed poker game going in Vegas. It's fun and a challenge the likes of which you'll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in town (except on the occasions that other card rooms spread a mixed game by special request--but good luck being at the right place at the right time for that happening).

I might be a donkey

Jeff Foxworthy has made a fortune with "You might be a redneck..." observations. I don't expect to make millions, but I'd like to borrow the general idea for some tests of donkeyhood.

1. You might be a donkey if you continue betting into another player who has already shown you a hand you cannot beat.

I did this.

I had just joined the crazy mixed game at Imperial Palace Sunday night. The game of the moment was A-5 high-low triple draw. It was down to just me and one other player. After the second draw I had two pair--aces and eights (enough to make me wish I had a seat with my back to the wall*). After the betting round, my opponent mistakenly thought the hand was over, and turned over his cards for all to see. I saw that he had two pair--kings and nines. Well alrighty then! This is looking good for me! He quickly gathered his cards up again when informed that we had one more drawing round.

He stood pat--which, if I had the sense of the average boulder, should have tipped me off that that it wasn't two pair I had seen. If it had been, surely he would toss the odd card and try to hit a full house, right? I drew one. This brought stunned looks from the other players--which should have been my second clue. I didn't improve. But, of course, I felt as if I didn't need to improve, so I didn't care much. My opponent checked. I, still not having assembled the available information into a coherent picture of where things stood, bet. He called.

I had failed to see his cards clearly enough, apparently, for there had been another nine mixed somewhere among them. His position at the far end of the table, combined with me having been caught somewhat off-guard by his premature showdown, being brand-new to the table, never having played this particular poker variation, and who knows what other factors, had caused me to miss the rather significant fact that he had a full house.

Hee-haw.


2. You might be a donkey if, on the final drawing round of a triple-draw game, you have four parts of a made hand and yet stand pat.

I did this.

It was later into the mixed-game session. The game was 2-7 triple draw. I had four good low cards and a jack. We were on the last round of the hand. My opponent patted the table, and I did the same, having gotten momentarily confused about the sequence. I thought we were on a betting round, and that I was checking behind. (Checking looks a whole lot like the motion for standing pat, I now see.) I then went to remove the jack from my hand to exchange it, when the dealer pointed to my opponent, indicating that he was first to bet. Which he did.

Realizing too late that I had accidentally passed up my last chance to draw to a better hand, I mucked. There were two reasons for this. First, my jack-low wasn't likely going to be able to beat an opponent who had stood pat on both of the last drawing rounds. Second, it would have been just entirely too mortifying to show my cards at that point. So nobody else knew what I had done, until now--though anybody paying attention must have wondered why I would stand pat, then fold to a bet.

HEE-HAH!


3. You might be a donkey if you stand pat on the first betting round of a triple-draw game, and then check behind.

I did this.

We were on to baduci, which combines badugi and 2-7 triple draw. I was dealt 8-7-5-4-2, with three clubs and two hearts (as I recall--the trauma of it all may be causing some minor memory deficits--but it's pretty close). I had no idea what to do with this. Trying to make a badugi seemed out of the question, since I would have to dump either two or three cards of a decent made hand to try to get four different suits. So I abandoned that idea, and focused just on the 2-7 half of the hand. What I had was OK, but not great. It was a situation I had never faced before, having played this particular game very, very little.

It was immediately apparent to me that it would be crazy to dump my 8 and try to improve it if I had just one drawing round, because there were many more cards that would make my hand worse than ones that would make it better. But what if I'm given three consecutive draws? Suppose I decided on a strategy of mucking the 8 and whatever replaced it each time, standing pat if I ever got a card that was better? What is the probability that I'd improve by the end, versus ending up with a worse situation than I started with? That's a bit too complex for me to calculate on the fly. So I did what every other poker-playing idiot does: Nothing. That is, I decided to play completely passively. Therefore, after the first round of betting, I patted the table.

I was aware that standing pat from the outset of a triple-draw hand was an extremely unusual thing to do, and, sure enough, heads turned my way. But if that got their attention, it was nothing compared to what followed: On the betting round, it was checked to me (in obvious deference to my made monster)--and I checked behind.

I think it's safe to say that I successfully confused my opponents--perhaps almost as much as I was confusing myself.

Anyway, by the end of the hand only two of us were left in it. I finally decided to bet, just on the notion that perhaps my lone opponent had missed with his last draw. He folded.

Realizing that the other players were intensely curious what had provoked this spate of odd behavior on my part, I showed my cards, and tried to explain the dilemma I felt I had been in. The last guy to fold said (perfectly believably) that he had had a four-card badugi, but had mucked it because he had to assume that I had him beat on both sides of the hand. So, in essence, I bluffed him out of half of the pot, without really having intended to do so.

I still don't know the optimal play there. Maybe I should have tried to improve. Alternatively, maybe I should have kept my original five cards, but added to the image of having been dealt the nuts by betting and capping every street. At the time, that seemed an awfully risky way to go, though the idea did cross my mind. Instead, I chose the meek, timid, passive middle ground, neither drawing nor betting.

HEE-HAW!!!


I take some small comfort in the fact that I rarely make such boneheaded plays in my bread-and-butter game of hold'em. When I enter mixed games like this, I do so knowing that I am more likely to lose than to make money. If I break even, I'm happy. This is all a long-term learning process, and poker education necessarily costs money in the form of mistakes. I consider it an investment. I lost about $100 in the mixed game. But I had had to wait a couple of hours for a seat to open up in it, and had made considerably more than than playing hold'em while waiting, so I still ended up for the night.

A donkey can't ask for much more than that.


* That sentence may require a bit of explanation for those not steeped in poker culture. Wild Bill Hickok, it is said, habitually sat in public places with his back to a wall so that nobody could sneak up on him from behind. The one night he didn't do this, somebody--you guessed it--snuck up on him from behind and shot him dead. According to legend, he was holding two pair at the time: aces and eights.

Poker gems, #124

From Des Wilson, Ghosts at the Table, as reprinted in Poker Pro magazine, June, 2008, pp. 57-58.


But the smaller games had their producers [i.e., the bad players who attracted the professionals] too. Poker player and writer Nolan Dalla tells an amusing story about a relatively modest producer:

"I was playing in a $10-$20 stud eight-or-better game. It was played almost every day and we all knew each other. Every now and then a player everybody called Cowboy used to come in. He wore a big Stetson and always had a pocketful of money. When Cowboy was in the game it was like fish-fry. I mean, the guy just loved to play--and he played every hand. For anyone who knew what he was doing it was a bonanza. One day Cowboy finally got sick of losing. He announced he was fed up with eight-or-better and was going to another game across town where they were playing $10-$20 hold'em. The other game was due to start in half an hour and Cowboy reckoned he just had time to get there. Well, wouldn't you know it--as soon as Cowboy left, the game immediately broke up. I mean, it was more like an evacuation. You could have shouted 'fire' and the room would not have cleared any faster. Players jumped in their cars and made a mad dash across town to get seats locked up before Cowboy arrived. Three of us made it in 20 minutes. A couple of other players walked in a few minutes later. Finally, Cowboy arrived and looked at a table comprising exactly the same players he had just left. Without blinking, he said: 'I guess ya'll got tired of playing stud eight-or-better too.'"

He shoulda listened to the Grump

I have railed previously about the importance of using a card protector to prevent various misfortunes befalling one's cards. But some people won't listen (or--if you can believe this--might not even be readers of this blog!), and have to learn the hard way.

Here's another example of the problem, from today's WSOP $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em with Rebuys event, as reported in the PokerNews live updates:

Mucked and Out of Luck

Quite a commotion took place at table Blue 1 when Bill Pryor made it
950 to go from under the gun. A player in the hijack moved all in and Mark Puma,
from the button, moved all in as well for his remaining 3,000. Pryor called but
as the dealer scooped in the blinds she inadvertently mucked Puma's
cards.

"Where'd my hand go?" Puma questioned the dealer. The table seemed to
acknowledge that there was no reason for Puma's hand to be mucked and a
tournament director was immediately called over to determine the outcome of the
hand. The tournament director decided that 950 was owed to the pot from Puma's
stack but that his hand would be dead.

Pryor, who had shown his pocket aces at this point, became quite upset at
the ruling and asked for a person to appeal the decision to. The player in the
hijack showed pocket nines while the wait began for a second ruling. Pryor was
upset as he thought he should be allowed the opportunity to triple up rather
than have the other player's hand forfeited.

The new floor staff upheld the decision and the hand continued, albeit
against Pryor's wishes. The board ran 7s Qd 5h Qh Td and the player with the
pocket nines was eliminated.

As the chips were being shipped Pryor's way, Puma chuckled and said, "You
woulda lost, dude."

If Puma is on the level here (perhaps he had a queen, and would have made trips), he lost out on an enormous pot because of not taking the simple expedient of protecting his cards from accidentally being scooped up by the dealer.

The news story doesn't actually specify that his cards were unprotected, but anything else is almost unimaginable. I have never seen cards covered by a chip or other kind of protector picked up by a dealer, and if it ever happens at all, it must be exceedingly rare.

It's such a simple thing to do, and you can see that the magnitude of the problem caused by its neglect can be quite large. My guess is that Mr. Puma will decide that maybe he should change his ways. But how many more players have to learn the same thing by sad experience, instead of heeding warnings given by others who have been there?

Call of the day

As reported a few minutes ago by Gene Bromberg, live reporting for PokerNews on the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em Rebuy event at the World Series of Poker:

Jack-High?

With the board reading 3s 2s 4h 8h 2c, Jamie Gold bet 500 and Erik
Seidel called. "Beat that!" Gold said, slapping 9d 5d for the busted straight
draw. Seidel tabled Jh Ts and took down the pot.

Wow.

Sure, it was not a huge bet. And they were still in the rebuy period. And it was Jamie Gold, who brags that he wants to be known as the best bluffer in poker, and who, as followers of GSN's "High Stakes Poker" show well know, is much more likely to bluff on the river than to value-bet it.

But still--jack high?

Wow.

Nice call, Mr. Seidel.


Addendum

Uh, never mind. Update, from the same source:

Oops

Before the break we posted a hand where Erik Seidel won a hand where he
called a bet by Jamie Gold holding Jack-high. That was wrong--Seidel had two
tens, not Jack -Ten. It's a testament to Seidel's paranormal skills that when
someone tells you that he called down a hand with Jack-high and took down the
pot, you say, "That sounds odd...but it's Erik Seidel...so anything is
possible". Still, my bad.

Poker gems, #123

Today's gem is brought to you by Dr. Pauly, whose ear and eye for offbeat stories and observations at the World Series of Poker is unrivaled by any of the big-time media covering the event:


In the hallway some guy in a LA Commerce jacket was screaming into his cellphone, "Every time beat! Every time beat! Every time beat! The river fucking hates me. I want to die."

On my non-iPod

OK, yeah, it's shmaltzy and corny, but I'm one of millions who love this music. There is little else that so intensely brings waves of childhood nostalgia for me.

I have wisps of memory of my parents taking me to see "The Sound of Music" in its original theatrical release, which was in 1965. Back in those days, movies had rolling releases over many months, rather than opening nationwide all at once, so it might have even been 1966 by the time it got to our medium-sized midwestern city. I was either 4 or 5, then. Of course, the plot completely baffled me. Nazis? Austria? Governess nuns? Why are they running away? Where's the kids' mom? Why are their clothes made out of curtains? None of it made any sense to me. Not much about the world really makes a whole lot of sense when you're that age.

I even remember that there was an intermission. When was the last time you went to a movie theater and got an intermission?

Anyway, my family had the soundtrack album, and I played it endlessly. It was hands-down my favorite record as a kid. And even now, with a slightly more refined taste in music, I don't think there's any denying that Richard Rodgers had an extraordinary gift for melody, comparable to that of Mozart, Schubert, Dvorak, or Puccini, though working in a different genre. Is it even humanly possible not to be moved by "Edelweiss," "Something Good," "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," or the title song? Furthermore, if anybody cares to challenge the assertion that Julie Andrews has the loveliest voice ever to grace Broadway or the cinema, well, let's step outside and settle it like men, OK?

The other day something I was listening to on the radio reminded me of this collection of music, and I was overtaken with an urge to hear it all again. I found an el cheapo used CD on Amazon. It arrived today, and I'm already on my fourth time through, playing it as background while I play online poker.

I have copied it to my MP3 player, and I expect that the next time I'm feeling cowed by a skilled opponent or a series of bad beats, I'll tune to "I Have Confidence" and flood my brain with this thought:

...Show them I'm worthy
And while I show them
I'll show me

So, let them bring on all their problems
I'll do better than my best
I have confidence they'll put me to the test
But I'll make them see I have confidence in me!

The Grump plays with an ancient Roman naval commander, gets sunk

You really never know who you'll run into playing online poker. Earlier this evening I was at a razz table with Pliny the Elder, who, I'll admit, I thought had died some time ago.

The most astonishing thing is that it turns out this great writer is a reader of this very blog:


Pliny, Elder: Rakewell1 - you don't happen to write a blog, do you?
Rakewell1: i do
Pliny, Elder: I enjoy it quite a bit


He certainly seemed a decent fellow. Why, when I dropped a random, unprovoked Star Trek reference, he not only didn't make a nasty comment about my geekiness, but actually knew the episode in question. Who knew the ancients were so well-informed about pop culture?! (Well, of course I would expect them to have watched and rewatched "Who Mourns for Adonais?" and "Bread and Circuses" and "Plato's Stepchildren," which are the episodes about them. But I would have guessed "The Tholian Web" to be a little beyond their range of interest.)

So you'd think that with things starting off so amicably, the Grump might get a little mercy as far as the poker goes. But no.

I won't prolong the story, but simply jump to the sad, painful end:


Dealer: Rakewell1 has Lo: 6,5,4,2,A
Dealer: Pliny, Elder has Lo: 5,4,3,2,A
Dealer: Game #17877838505: Pliny, Elder wins pot ($21.15) with Lo: 5,4,3,2,A*


Cringe. Where's the love?

However, he nearly redeemed himself in my eyes with this sympathetic response to my pain:


Rakewell1: ouch
Rakewell1: thought the A nailed it for me
Pliny, Elder: A little part of me dies inside every time a 6 gets beat


I hear you, ancient brother.


Incidentally, running into the master prompted me to run to Wikipedia to refresh my rather foggy memory of his accomplishments. I learned that among his famous aphorisms is this: "True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read."

I perpetually hope that by the latter standard this humble blogger achieves a small measure of "true glory."


(Just in case it's not sufficiently obvious, the foregoing stuff about mercy is tongue-in-cheek. I do not and would not either give or expect soft-playing, whether the opponent is friend, family, or reader. It happens fairly often these days that I encounter a reader in the casinos or across the virtual felt--though usually not ones quite so elderly as Pliny. Should you find yourself in that situation, give me your best shot, because I will be doing the same, with a promise of no hard feelings however it comes out.)



*Here's the full hand history, for those few who are pathologically interested in such details:

PokerStars Game #17877838505: Razz Limit ($0.50/$1.00) - 2008/06/02 - 22:46:48 (ET)
Table 'Oppavia V' 8-max
Seat 1: aacda ($17.20 in chips)
Seat 2: nutOmatic ($50.70 in chips)
Seat 3: Pliny, Elder ($21.60 in chips)
Seat 4: fgrthodds ($19.70 in chips)
Seat 5: zendova ($5.50 in chips)
Seat 6: Rakewell1 ($20.20 in chips)
Seat 7: 00Hellmuth00 ($8.50 in chips)
Seat 8: Cshosz ($24.90 in chips)
aacda: posts the ante $0.05
nutOmatic: posts the ante $0.05
Pliny, Elder: posts the ante $0.05
fgrthodds: posts the ante $0.05
zendova: posts the ante $0.05
Rakewell1: posts the ante $0.05
00Hellmuth00: posts the ante $0.05
Cshosz: posts the ante $0.05
*** 3rd STREET ***
Dealt to aacda [8d]
Dealt to nutOmatic [5d]
Dealt to Pliny, Elder [Ad]
Dealt to fgrthodds [2h]
Dealt to zendova [Qs]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [2d 4s 5s]
Dealt to 00Hellmuth00 [6d]
Dealt to Cshosz [2s]
zendova: brings in for $0.25
Rakewell1: raises $0.25 to $0.50
00Hellmuth00: calls $0.50
Cshosz: raises $0.50 to $1
aacda: folds
nutOmatic: folds
Pliny, Elder: calls $1
fgrthodds: folds
zendova: folds
Rakewell1: raises $0.50 to $1.50
00Hellmuth00: calls $1
Cshosz: calls $0.50
Pliny, Elder: calls $0.50
*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to Pliny, Elder [Ad] [3d]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [2d 4s 5s] [6h]
Dealt to 00Hellmuth00 [6d] [Tc]
Dealt to Cshosz [2s] [4h]
Pliny, Elder: checks
Rakewell1: bets $0.50
00Hellmuth00: calls $0.50
Cshosz: raises $0.50 to $1
Pliny, Elder: calls $1
Rakewell1: calls $0.50
00Hellmuth00: calls $0.50
*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to Pliny, Elder [Ad 3d] [Kc]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [2d 4s 5s 6h] [Kh]
Dealt to 00Hellmuth00 [6d Tc] [7s]
Dealt to Cshosz [2s 4h] [Qc]
00Hellmuth00: checks
Cshosz: checks
Pliny, Elder: checks
Rakewell1: checks
*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to Pliny, Elder [Ad 3d Kc] [6s]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [2d 4s 5s 6h Kh] [9s]
Dealt to 00Hellmuth00 [6d Tc 7s] [Td]
Dealt to Cshosz [2s 4h Qc] [Th]
Cshosz: checks
Pliny, Elder: bets $1
Rakewell1: calls $1
00Hellmuth00: folds
Cshosz: calls $1
*** RIVER ***
Dealt to Rakewell1 [2d 4s 5s 6h Kh 9s] [Ah]
Cshosz: checks
Pliny, Elder: bets $1
Rakewell1: raises $1 to $2
Cshosz: folds
Pliny, Elder: raises $1 to $3
Rakewell1: raises $1 to $4
Betting is capped
Pliny, Elder: calls $1
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Rakewell1: shows [2d 4s 5s 6h Kh 9s Ah] (Lo: 6,5,4,2,A)
Pliny, Elder: shows [2c 4d Ad 3d Kc 6s 5c] (Lo: 5,4,3,2,A)
Pliny, Elder collected $21.15 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $21.65 Rake $0.50
Seat 1: aacda folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 2: nutOmatic folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Pliny, Elder showed [2c 4d Ad 3d Kc 6s 5c] and won ($21.15) with Lo: 5,4,3,2,A
Seat 4: fgrthodds folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 5: zendova folded on the 3rd Street
Seat 6: Rakewell1 showed [2d 4s 5s 6h Kh 9s Ah] and lost with Lo: 6,5,4,2,A
Seat 7: 00Hellmuth00 folded on the 6th Street
Seat 8: Cshosz folded on the River

HBPRS, #4

The fourth episode of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, with, as usual, a few minutes of ranting from yours truly, is now available here.

Micro-stakes razz

I just logged on to PokerStars, looking for one of my regular $0.50/$1 razz tables, when, to my surprise, I discovered that the site has now added some levels below what used to be their cheapest entry into the game. If $0.50/$1 is too much for you, you can instead choose $0.25/$.50, $0.10/$0.20, or even $0.04/$0.08 limits to learn the game.

Enjoy!

Some people just don't recognize a good deal when they see it

The first time I played poker at Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon they accepted my generic Harrah's card for tracking hours. But last night, they said that I had to get a Bill's card. OK, whatever, I don't mind adding to my collection.

When I got it, they also presented me with what you see above--a Bill's Fun Book. It's loaded with coupons for free and discounted goods and services at Bill's and other Harrah's properties. (They haven't yet changed it to reflect the new corporate name of "Caesars.")

I looked through it, and there wasn't much I would personally use. So it occurred to my ever-enterprising self to sell the thing. As you can clearly see, it says right on the front cover, "$850 value." But when I tried offering it around at the bargain-basement price of just $500, nobody would buy! Can you believe it???

So just for my readers, I'm making an even steeper discount. A mere $100 and it's yours! That's what a generous guy I am.

Of course, you could sort of get one for free just by signing up for a Bill's card. But don't let that stay your hand! This offer won't last long!

Me and my brain: A story in four parts

Part 1.

Tonight I went to Bill's Gamblin' Hall, where I had played only once before, on its opening day. Remembering how that game had been chock-full of weak, passive calling stations, and anticipating more of the same, my brain had a little chat with me as I was walking from the parking ramp to the poker room.

BRAIN: There will be no bluffing tonight, you understand.

ME: Huh? What?

BRAIN: Not here. You're going to be surrounded with people who will call you down with second pair and a bad kicker. The watchword for tonight is "value bet."

ME: OK, I'll cut back on the bluffing.

BRAIN: Did I say anything about "cutting back?" No. There is to be no bluffing. Zero.

ME: But you know that bluffing is a pretty big part of my game. I can't just, y'know, go cold turkey! That could lead to, I dunno, convulsions or something!

BRAIN: Do you want to leave here with more money than you have right now, or not?

ME: Well, yeah. But I want to play poker, too.

BRAIN: Shut up with the commentary, and just answer the questions. Do you want to leave with more money?

ME (whimpering): I suppose.

BRAIN: Is trying to bluff a table full of calling stations the route to making money?

ME (shuffling feet, kicking pebbles, face down, dejected): Not really.

BRAIN: Then it's settled. No bluffing. Value bet.

ME: Oh, all right. I guess I'll have to get by with just my semi-bluffs.

BRAIN: You really are a retard, aren't you? You will wait for a good hand, bet it strongly, and get paid. It's that simple. What part of this formula is too hard for you to understand?

ME: You used to be fun.

BRAIN: Yeah, well, get over it. We are not here to gamble. We are here to take other people's money as painlessly and with as little risk as possible. One of us has to be responsible.

ME: Just my luck, stuck with Mr. Responsible.

BRAIN: So are we understanding each other here?

ME: (mumble mumble mumble)

BRAIN: Excuse me, I didn't quite catch that.

ME: Yes, all right, dammit!


Part 2.

That I made this commitment less than wholeheartedly became perfectly apparent only 15 minutes or so into the session. I had J-10 of spades in first position.


BRAIN: Throw it away.

ME: What? You're crazy! It's a good hand!

BRAIN: It has its place, yes. But this isn't it. You need good position to even think about playing it. What will you do if somebody raises? Huh? What then?

ME: But they won't. There's a lot of limping in this game.

BRAIN: Oh, so now you can see the future, eh? If you call now, then you're going to feel committed to calling a raise, too, and you'll just dig a deeper hole. Throw it away.

ME: No! It's only a dollar with this silly game structure Bill's has. What's a buck? I can muck it if somebody raises.

BRAIN: No you can't--you never do.

ME: I will this time, I promise.

BRAIN: *sigh* Well, I can't stop you. You control the right hand, not me.

ME: That's right--and don't you forget it. There. One dollar in.

BRAIN: You should have kissed that chip good-bye first.


Several other players limped, then a player in late position raised to $5.


BRAIN: OK, you said you'd fold to a raise, now's the time.

ME: Well, to a real raise, sure--but this is only $5. And everybody else is going to call. Pot odds! I've got pot odds! All the books say you need a lot of people in the pot for suited connectors to be profitable, and we have that!

BRAIN: Don't those same books say something about needing late position, too?

ME: Um, well, I don't really remember for sure. Oops! That red chip just slipped out of my hand!

BRAIN: Sure it did.


The flop was 9-6-6 with two spades.


ME: Whee! A flush draw! I loves me my flush draws! I'm gonna bet!

BRAIN: You're the first one to act here. Don't you think it might be better to check, with six people left to act behind you?

ME: Nope. Gotta thin the field. I know I read that somewhere.

BRAIN: Do you remember what we said about waiting until you have a strong, made hand to bet?

ME: I bet $10.

BRAIN: You're not even listening any more, are you?


A couple of people called, then a guy across the table raised it to $30.


BRAIN: OK, now you see what you did? You got caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Get out while you still can.

ME: But, but, but I have a flush draw! You want me to fold?

BRAIN: If you'll recall, I didn't want you to get into this hand in the first place, and this is exactly why. Now dump it!

ME: But it's a good hand. It might win.

BRAIN: What do you think he has?

ME (softly, not very convincingly): I dunno.

BRAIN: Yes you do. He has a 6 in his hand. He flopped trip 6s. He wouldn't raise with anything else here. It couldn't be more obvious if he showed it to you.

ME: He, uh, he might be bluffing!

BRAIN: Yeah, right.

ME: Maybe he has a really bad kicker with his 6, and if I go all in, he'll decide I have a better kicker and fold.

BRAIN: What, exactly, have you been smoking?

ME: What's wrong with that plan?

BRAIN: First, he could easily have A-6. What "better kicker" will he think you have then, eh? Second, suppose he just has 6-2. If you were in his seat, would you fold 6-2?

ME: Fold equity! I read about that in a book, too!

BRAIN: How much do you have left to bet? About $70? There's already about $90 in the pot. You can only charge the guy $40 on top of what he just bet. So what pot odds are you offering him, hoping to make him fold?

ME: Hey, you know I'm no good at math story problems!

BRAIN: OK, then just trust me. Your fold equity is basically zero. He is going to call.

ME: But I could still hit my flush! Then his having called would be great!

BRAIN: Really? Even if he has, say, 6-9 or 9-9 for a made full house?

ME: Well, maybe not. But if he doesn't, then I'm in good shape with a flush.

BRAIN: Yeah, you might hit. And one of those other players still in the hand might be on a higher spade draw along with you, so that you're drawing dead.

ME: Nosirree. I am not drawing dead, no matter what. Look again--that's the 9 of spades out there, and I've got the jack and ten here in my hand. That gives me three parts of a straight flush draw that I might hit.

BRAIN: Listen to yourself: you're justifying an all-in raise into a made hand because you might hit two perfect cards to hit a straight flush. When was the last time you made a straight flush--a year ago, maybe? Isn't that a little far afield from the "wait for a strong hand, then bet it hard" plan we agreed on?

ME: But a flush is a strong hand!

BRAIN: You don't have a flush, dude. You're hoping for one. And if your idea of winning poker is to shove it all in with 2:1 odds against making what you hope for, then you might as well go play at the craps table instead.

ME (fingers in ears): I can't hear you, I can't hear you, nyeah, nyeah, nyeah! I'm all in!


Of course the raiser called. And of course he had a 6.


But sometimes the fools win, and the queen of spades came floating down the river to save my sorry butt. The other guy just looked at me and shook his head.

Dude--I feel you. I've been on that end of it many times.


Part 3.

All right, enough of letting you listen in on the colloquy. Let me just explain how it all played out in the end.

I really did feel sheepish about having made what I knew as I was making it was a stupid move. It felt even worse, because I quickly realized that I had done precisely what John Vorhaus had warned about in the "Poker Gems" post I had written up just a couple of hours earlier: I had veered way over the line between deceiving my opponents and deluding myself. I had told myself every flimsy excuse to justify each bad step of a bad hand, even though I was perfectly aware that the rational truth was just the opposite. I was just like "bad Jim" in James McManus's wonderfully honest tale of playing at the WSOP 2000 in Positively Fifth Street, with a right hand that kept pushing in chips in spite of knowing he should fold.

When I buy in fairly short, as is my custom, I need to build up my chips rather carefully before I have a stack with enough force that I can wield it as a weapon. And the ugly truth was that tonight I just wasn't feeling patient enough to do that the way I usually do. I wanted to build it up quickly, go home, and go to bed.

Patience, I am well aware, is one of the few poker commodities that I tend to have in greater abundance than most of my opponents. When I try to play without it, I nearly always regret it and end up losing. I know that. I know it deeply and thoroughly. I've proven it over and over and over again. I tell it to myself before every poker session, and frequently while playing. Usually the self-coaching works. But once in a while, impatience still gets the better of me.

At least I have enough sense to recognize when I'm playing badly, and do something about it. Usually when I'm feeling impatient, that's not something that's going to fix itself in that session, and I'm better off just leaving and waiting for another time. But I had memories of how the cash flowed so freely into my coffers the previous time at Bill's, so I was really reluctant to leave.

I'll spare you the internal dialogue (trust me, it wasn't pretty), but Brain really took Self out to the woodshed and made himself very, very clear about what was going to happen. I got enough of a sense of control that I decided I could indeed play the way I had at the last Bill's session. And I really did get a grip, and started playing smart.

I also started thinking about the possibility that I might be able to exploit the fact that the table now had me pegged as somebody who would try to push as a semi-bluff, just on a draw. If only I could luck into a situation where it looked like I was doing that again, but this time with a made hand, I might really be able to hit a home run. Proverbs to the contrary notwithstanding, in poker it might actually be possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.


Part 4.

About an hour later, it happened. I had A-4 offsuit in the blind (Bill's plays with a single $1 blind). Nobody raised, so I got to see the flop for free. It was A-5-4 with two clubs. Top and bottom pair for me was feeling promising. But the pot was really small. I needed to build it up. I bet the size of the pot, got one caller, then the best friend of the guy on whom I had rivered the flush raised. The action was back to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other player with cards in his hand, ready to muck. So it was going to be one on one.

I was reasonably confident that I was ahead here. I didn't think he would play 2-3 (for the straight) before the flop, even for just a dollar. The most dangerous possibility was 5-5 for a set, which he probably would indeed raise with here, given the draw-heavy board. A-5 was less likely, since two of the four aces were accounted for.

I concluded, after thinking for a while, that it was most likely that he had an ace with a medium kicker (e.g., A-7, A-8, A-9), and he was raising because he put me on a flush draw, just as in the previous situation when I was up against his buddy. My dilemma was the stack sizes. Moving all-in would be a substantial overbet, and if I was right, I didn't want the fish to spit out the worm because he tasted something suspicious. On the other hand, if I was right, then an all-in push might be the very thing to seal his conclusion that I was on a flush draw, because that's just what I had done before. It was a tough decision--milking him versus going for the whole enchilada.

Finally, I went with my read of him, and announced all-in. He thought and thought and thought. And finally he called. He was even weaker than I had guessed: He had just A-2, with only the one-way straight draw to save him.

He didn't get as lucky as I had, and I took his whole stack. I didn't ask him what he thought I had, but the answer is pretty obvious. He must have concluded that I was on either a flush draw or a straight draw, because he could not beat anything else. So not only had my assessment of the situation been dead-on, it was exactly the kind of spot that I had been looking for since my initial bad play, when I began wondering if there was a way to exploit the image I had created for myself.


Coda

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

I was feeling pretty smug about the whole thing. But then Brain came along and made it perfectly clear that I would be getting none of the credit, thank you very much. I had created the mess; he got us out of it.

I guess I'd have to give him that much.

Poker gems, #122

John Vorhaus, in his Card Player magazine column, May 7, 2008 (vol. 21, #9), p. 98.

Don't justify a bad move by calling it elegant misdirection. Dig a little deeper and you may find that your primary motivation is not to win money but just to be in action. In that case, you have crossed the line from deception to delusion.

When good people make bad decisions

For both of the last two years, WSOP events have had way too many reports of inconsistent, questionable, and downright wrong decisions by tournament staff. These have come from multiple sources, with usually reliable professional players describing what appear to be all of the relevant details.

It is not encouraging that in the early stages of the very first event of WSOP 2008 we appear to have another case of the same. Here's the story, as reported for Poker News by well-known poker blogger/reporter Change100:

A Min-Raise or a Max-Raise?

After several players had limped in, including Jamie Gold, a
middle-position player announced "raise" and tossed a single 5,000-denomination
orange chip into the pot without making a verbal declaration of the amount of
the raise. As the players at the table, as well as the dealer, disagreed whether
his action should be ruled a min-raise or a max-raise (in this case the max
would be 4,800, as it's pot-limit) the floor was called over.

The player's action was declared to be a minimum raise, though the majority
of the table disagreed with the ruling, as typically when a player bets with an
oversized chip without declaring the amount of the raise, the bet stands at the
amount of that chip.

Jamie Gold called the minimum raise and the two players went to the flop,
where Gold check-folded to a bet.

"You just cost me 1,200. You'd better not do that again," seethed Gold, who
was left with only 3,100 after the hand.

The Tournament Directors Association rules, 2007 edition, is explicit on this point, at rule 11:

A single oversized chip will be considered a call if the player does not
announce a raise. If a player puts an oversized chip into the pot and states
raise but does not state the amount, the raise will be the maximum allowable up
to the size of that chip.

(Emphasis added.)

The WSOP's own rules are virtually identical:

Putting a single oversized chip into the pot will be considered a call if
the player doesn’t announce a raise. If a player puts an oversized chip into the
pot and says, “Raise,” but doesn’t state the amount, the raise will be the
maximum allowable up to the denomination of that chip.

(Emphasis added. That is taken from the 2007 rules, #49, found here. I have not yet been able to find a copy of the 2008 rules online, but it's highly unlikely that this point changed since last year. If it has, making today's decision right, I'll gladly post a correction/retraction.)

It's hard to know how the rule could be stated more clearly, or in a way that would be more directly applicable to the exact situation described in today's event. I have no idea what the floor person was thinking, or on what rationale he based making a decision that directly contradicts the tournament's own explicit rules.

Here's a kind, gentle suggestion to those running the Series this year: Have your tournament staff read your own $#%^&*@ rule book!

Here's another suggestion: When there's a controversy, maybe the floor staff should have a copy of the rules in hand to refer to, rather than making stuff up as they go.

As for Gold's nasty little dig/threat, well, I hope the stupidness of it is sufficiently self-evident that I don't need to say more about it.

Less blogging, maybe

Today I started in on a new temp job for/with/about (not sure which preposition fits best) the World Series of Poker. It's behind-the-scenes, hush-hush, top-secret, on-the-down-low, if-I-told-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you kind of stuff. It is likely to mean less time for writing, as well as less time for playing poker and thus generating stories and observations and questions related to same. All of which means that posts will probably be somewhat rarer than you may have become accustomed to. Not to worry, all is well, just a temporary shift in time priorities. And it may turn out to be less of a time suck than I'm envisioning right now, in which case this forewarning will be moot and pointless. We'll have to see.

Old Vegas

If you're fascinated by how this city has grown and changed over the years, click here to be treated to a nice slideshow of mostly 1950s photos. A few things shown still exist--but not a lot.

"I had to see the flop"

The first full hand I watched play out after taking my seat at the Rio tonight had Player A limp in, Player B raise to $15, Player A call. After the flop, it was check/bet/fold. Player A showed his cards to the table before folding. "I had the jack-ten of hearts. I had to call. I had to at least see the flop, for a possible $4000."

I hadn't been aware of it, but apparently the Rio high-hand jackpot is up to a little over $4000 for hitting a royal flush.

Let's run a few numbers. If you start with any two of the five cards needed for a royal flush, how likely is it that you will have the royal if you see the hand out to the bitter end? Obviously, you're going to need the final board to have the other three exact cards that you need, leaving two other slots that can be filled with any ol' cards. So after we specify what five of the seven cards have to be, there are 47 possibilities for one of the open slots, and then 46 for the final slot, for a total of 2162 different final boards that will complete our hand (assuming that we don't care about what order they come in).

The total number of boards that we might get, after eliminating our two parts of the royal from the deck (because they are in our hand), is denoted by (50, 5). Running this on Excel, that turns out to be exactly 2,118,760. In other words, of a little over two million possible five-card boards that might show up, a little over 2000 of them will give us the royal flush. The odds are 980:1. Let's round it to 1000:1 to make things neat and simple.

With a $4000 jackpot, the expected value is therefore about $4 every time you have two suited Broadway cards and see the flop. Mathematically, then, you should imagine that the house has plopped an extra $4 into the pot as soon as you see those two hole cards, and then make your decisions with that slightly altered assessment of what the pot is offering you.

From the discussion that ensued after this guy folded, it was clear that he dislikes playing J-10, and called the $15 raise only because of the jackpot possibility. In other words, he threw in an extra $12 (beyond the $3 call he had already made) in order to win $4.

Actually, the situation is worse than that, because that extra $12 only gets us to the flop, and even when the royal is destined to come, it will most often not all hit at once like that. So we're going to have to be willing to invest even more money if we get one or two more pieces of the royal flush on the flop and an opponent bets. The real amount that one would have to invest in order to collect that hypothetical $4, playing the way this guy was apparently willing to pay, would certainly be, on average, something like two or three or four (or more) times what we've already calculated. On the other hand, sometimes he will win the pot even when he doesn't win the jackpot, so that reduces his average price (or you can say that it increases his average profit) some. For a hand that he recognizes isn't intrinsically strong, this surely won't be enough to offset his entire entry price, but let's be extremely generous and assume that he'll win often enough to compensate for what he'll have to pay, on average, on the later streets, thus leaving him with just the pay-12-to-win-4 deal.

Of course, he would protest that he didn't spend $12 in order to win $4; he spent $12 in order to win $4000. OK, let's look at it from that point of view. How much will he have to spend, on average, in order to collect that $4000, if this situation were to repeat itself endlessly? That's easy: about $12,000 ($12 each time, for 1000 iterations). And, again, this is the best-case scenario--if the royal comes on the flop or our opponent is generous enough to let us peel off two more free cards, which doesn't seem like the most common way it will play out.

By his own words and actions, we can infer that this guy is willing to spend $12 (or more) to win $4, or $12,000 (or more) to win $4000. He can pick either of those ways of expressing it that he likes, and I won't argue with him. But, of course, they're both equally stupid.


One of the things I would most like to see in one of the poker publications is a series of columns or articles with rigorous mathematical assessments of various poker room promotions, how they distort the pot odds, and to what degree should one alter one's play to adjust for them?

For example, a casino I used to play at in Minnesota had an "aces cracked" promotion one day a week--you'd get a rack of white chips ($100) if your pocket aces got beaten. Some players insisted that the only smart way to play aces was to limp, hope for lots of opponents, play completely passively and see the hand to the end as cheaply as possible, hoping to get beaten and pick up the $100. The problem with this strategy is that often the aces would still hold up, and you're left without the bonus, and with a tiny pot. Other players insisted that because of the problems with that strategy, it was best to play the hand as usual, hope and expect to usually win the pot, and let the $100 bonus just be sort of a net to break your fall if you got unlucky. Arguments about this took place every single week. I'd love to see somebody take reasonable ranges of assumptions about the variables involved (number of callers, size of the pot, probability of holding up against X opponents, etc.) and crank out a mathematically sound answer. I sure can't do any more than guess at what it is.

I think that bad-beat jackpots probably introduced relatively little distortion, because the threshold requirements are usually two big hands that would inevitably get played out anyway. It's hard to imagine folding four of a kind just because an opponent with the perfect two cards in his hand might have a straight flush, for example.

But there undoubtedly is a mathematically optimal way to account for various promotions--such as should I hold on to a J-5 of diamonds that I would otherwise fold, for the possibility of hitting a diamond flush at the Palms? In order to answer that, you'd have to know approximately how many people hit one every day, so that you could calculate the expected bonus value of hitting the flush, then make some estimate of how much EV you're losing in the pot by calling. Those aren't easy or obvious numbers to come by.

I have written to a few of the more mathematically minded columnists at Card Player and suggested this topic, but none of them have taken up the challenge yet. Oh well. I have a pretty good idea that the guy at saw at the Rio tonight would flip right past them, or would get a glassy look in his eyes at all the numbers, then say, "But I might win $4000!" (Think of the look and tone of the guy in "Spinal Tap" saying "But these go to 11!")

Time to stay away from the Rio

I went to the Rio tonight, thinking that I might be able to get one more normal poker session in before the place becomes a WSOP madhouse. Nope. Too late.

All but one of tonight's dealers were substitutes, brought in for the event. None of them knew the house rules. One of them was literally on his first day as a dealer anywhere.

Thousands of things irritate me, but I'm actually very slow to anger. This dealer, though, brought me to the brink. He was painfully slow, getting out only seven or eight hands per down. He didn't know how to make change. He left the amount of money in the tray wrong after every down (according to the excellent Rio regular dealer who had the misfortune of following him around--"He drives me crazy!"). He didn't know that he was supposed to prevent string bets/raises. He had no idea what to do with missed-blind and "absent" buttons. He thought that maybe a player who had missed three sets of blinds had to make up all of them at once. He flashed cards with every deal. He forgot to burn cards. If somebody asked him something, everything had to stop while he talked, because he couldn't even hope to accomplish two things at once. He forgot to move the dealer button--EVERY time. He usually forgot to take the rake until after pushing the pot, then would ask the player for some chips back to pay the house. He knew less about poker rules than an average player--for example, he insisted that when two players were both all-in, they had to turn their cards up before he could put out the turn and river cards (which is true only in a tournament, not a cash game).

It was the most excruciating experience with a dealer I've ever had. Out of literally thousands of hours of live poker, he was far and away the worst I've seen--so bad that nobody else even comes in a close second place. I've had a fair number of dealers on their first day out of school, and they were all slow, but they knew what to do, and would get things mostly right. That doesn't bother me--in fact, it's kind of cute and fun to watch. But this guy tonight, well, if he passed any sort of audition to get the job, it must have consisted of nothing more than checking to be sure than he had a pulse. I cannot imagine that he had to demonstrate actual competence or proficiency in dealing.

As I was leaving, I spoke to the poker room manager and told him that if that dealer ever again sat down to work a table I was at, I would simply get up and leave, rather than suffer through that experience again, that he was absolutely not ready to be put in charge of a table on his own. Unfortunately, my complaint/observation seemed to fall on deaf ears. The response I got was "Yeah, probably half of the dealers we got for the series aren't really ready." Oh, well, that's a fine explanation. There was no apology, just a "I can't do anything about it" kind of reaction.

So that's the end of my playing at the Rio until the WSOP is done and they get their normal staff of fine dealers back in the box. It's clear that the Rio doesn't care about making poker an enjoyable experience for its regular players while the series is in town. It's obvious that they don't care about my business, so I'll take it elsewhere.

I pity people who pony up $10,000 to enter one of the championship events, and get stuck with the dealer I saw tonight, making every possible error and putting out half or a third of the number of hands that the rest of the tables are getting.

It may be that all of the Harrah's--oh, excuse me, it's now all of the Caesars--properties will be like this until July. I'll check in with a couple of others and let you know.

Accidental tipping

I just got back from a delightful afternoon with Short-Stacked Shamus. He is every bit as smart, funny, educated, interesting, and self-effacing as you would anticipate from reading his blog. We've been chatting via email for many months now, but never met. So we had lunch at Gardunos, a nice Mexican (their web site calls it "New Mexican"--whatever) restaurant inside the Palms. Chatted for a while, then went (of course) to the poker room, and played $2-4 limit hold'em for a while.

Shamus had a good session. Me, not so much--but I only lost $12, so it didn't really sting.* I had been ahead for the day, until Shamus cracked my pocket kings with a heart flush on the river, swiping a nice multi-way pot. Of course, this doesn't bother me one bit; it's just part of how limit poker goes. I'm much too broad-minded to harbor even the tiniest bit of resentment over such things. But I should mention--completely unrelated to that incident, of course--that his blog totally sucks rocks and you should never, ever look at any of the completely worthless crap posted there.

(Just kidding!)

Also, if he tries to tell you that he was merely getting even for when I beat his solid A-K on the button with a crap hand that I should have folded the instant I saw it--like maybe a J-7 offsuit from out of position, or something equally awful--well, he's lying, and that's all there is to it. I'm simply incapable of playing that badly.


Anyway, on to the story of the day:

Shamus got seated first, and I was standing by watching, when I saw something unexpected happen. A player was getting low on chips, and pulled out another $20 bill to buy more. The dealer counted out four stacks of five chips each, then made them into one stack, lifted it up with one hand (his left hand was holding on to the deck of cards for the hand that was in progress), and handed it to the player. What I saw, but the dealer didn't, is that when he lifted up the stack, the bottom chip stayed on the table, right in front of the dealer. He looked away at the crucial instant because there was pre-flop action going on at the time, and he was trying to follow it at the same time as he sold the chips. The player didn't re-count the chips he had just bought.

A few seconds later, when he went to gather in the pre-flop bets and put out the flop, the dealer noticed the lone blue chip sitting in front of him. He picked it up, clearly unsure of where it had come from. He quickly reached to put it into his tip box, because, after all, that's the most common and logical explanation for why it was there. But then I saw him hesitate. I watched his eyes go around the table--he was counting the number of players who had put limped in, then counting the pot, to be sure that the extra dollar wasn't spillover from one of their bets. When he saw that the pot was correct, he concluded that the dollar had indeed been a tip and dropped it in the box.

I know this dealer well enough to be absolutely certain that this was not deliberately stealing. I've chatted with him many times while he's in the box. He knows my secret identity. (OK, it's not really all that secret, since you can pretty easily find references herein to my real-world name, photos of me, etc. Still, most people I play with have no idea that I go home and blog about them.) He would never be that corrupt, nor so stupid as to endanger his career for a lousy buck. It was just an innocent mistake. He made a genuine effort to be sure that the chip wasn't supposed to be part of the pot before keeping it for himself, and just didn't think about the possibility that he had accidentally dropped one off of the stack he had sold to the player.

Maybe I should have spoken up. But I was just a bystander, not even seated at the table yet. And it was just a dollar. (Today's helpful hint: Count the chips that the dealer sells you, even if you just watched him or her count them!)

I certainly got a dollar's worth of amusement out of watching the dealer's confusion resolve into an incorrect, though perfectly understandable, conclusion.



*It's strange how poker money is both conceptually and emotionally different from regular money. A session in which I end up $12 down means nothing to me--not even a pixel on my Excel graph of cumulative results. It literally gets lost among all of the bigger numbers (bigger on both the positive and negative sides). But if I somehow became aware that I had, say, been shorted $12 in change at Target, or paid $20 for an item that I could have bought for $8, or discovered that $12 had fallen through a hole in my pocket onto the street, I'd be seriously irritated at the loss. Maybe someday an expert in poker psychology can explain this anomaly to me. It seems utterly irrational, and I don't like having to admit that there are irrational facets to my being.


Addendum

You can read Shamus's version of events here.