You might be a donkey if....

Monday evening at the Venetian I had the table donkey on my right. His oddness began with the fact that he was wearing sleeves too long for his arms, with holes cut in them for his thumbs to stick out, leaving the elastic cuff to go across his palms--because, y'know, one's palms get so cold playing poker.

I first noticed his donkitude in how little attention he was paying to the game. He was just completely zoned out. Every time it was his turn, the dealer would have to try to get his attention, then recap the action for him to that point. That gets old REAL fast.

But there were four specific points in the evening at which he might as well have bared his teeth, kicked his rear hooves, and brayed.


1.

He limped in from early position, then called a ridiculously large pre-flop raise to $25 from one of the more solid players at the table, with K-2. But, of course, it was sooted! The flop gave him a gutshot to a wheel, so of course he check-called a pot-sized bet, and hit his draw on the turn.


2.

In another hand, he limped in, and was one of four callers for a raise to $12 from the table's tightest player on the button. Pot was about $60. On the flop it was checked around to the raiser, who bet $50. It folded around to Donkey. He said, over and over again, "Wow. Great bet. Really great bet." He finally folded, but continued the admiring speech. "That was just a fantastic bet." No, there was no irony or sarcasm in it.

I took a dinner break, and as I was sitting down upon my return, caught the end of Donkey yet again bringing up that hand, and telling the opponent from nearly an hour before, "You put in a really great bet there, dude."

Yeah. The pre-flop raiser putting in a continuation bet of a little less than the size of the pot, from the button, when his opponents check it to him--that's positively ingenious. Never seen anything like that before! It's well worth continuing to marvel at FOR AN HOUR!

3.

About a minute before I stepped away for my break, he said, to nobody in particular, "Do you think the table has noticed that I'm playing, like, every hand?"

No, sir! None of us were paying any attention to such obscure, hard-to-obtain information! You should have kept it to yourself, and nobody would ever have known.

(Later, after about the seventh Jagermeister, he changed his tactic to raising every hand. I was salivating in the hopes of picking up something good. But I went card-dead about then, and by the time I hit some good stuff the booze had pushed him to nearly falling asleep at the table, and complete passivity in play. I still took nearly $100 from him on my last hand of the night when my K-K was apparently good enough.)

4.

I had A-A under the gun. I raised. Button reraised. Donkey folded. (Dang!) I put in the third raise, and the button called. Flop A-K-10 rainbow. Bet and call. Turn a 6. Big bet, reluctant fold.

I show the aces as a bit of false advertising. Donkey says, "Nice hand, but you must have hated that flop." I'm kind of stunned--I flopped the second nuts, and just wasn't too worried that my opponent had called the third raise (from a tight player in first position) with J-Q. Actually, I was about to pee my pants with the hope that he had either A-K or K-K, and I would stack him. And Donkey is saying I must have hated the flop??? All I can croak out is a stammering, "It was OK." Donkey says, "That's sure not the kind of flop you want when you've got aces."

He is not kidding.

I'm flabbergasted into silence. The thought running through my mind is, "Just shut up. Keep it to yourself. No teaching at the table. Let him think whatever he wants to think."


To the young man in Seat 9 Monday night: In case anybody tries to pin a tail on you in the near future, there's a damn good reason.

Poker gems, #218

Tommy Angelo, Elements of Poker, p. 75. (Thanks to Cardgrrl for the submission.)


You are not entitled to play bad just because they are playing bad. You are not entitled to tilt on the grounds that anyone would tilt after the terrible luck you've had. You are not entitled to play a marginal hand as a reward for folding correctly before the flop many times in a row. You are not entitled to call all the way when you know you are beat, just because you have a big pair in the hole. And no matter how good you play, or how bad they play, you are not entitled to win. If you have time and money, you are entitled to a seat at the table. That is all.

Guess the casino, #60

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Boulder Station

Poker gems, #217

Matt Perry, in Bluff magazine, February, 2009, p. 43.


I love No Limit Hold'em. I'm one of those narrow-minded idiots who runs screaming from any game where you have more than two cards. Don't even get me started on Omaha 8--four cards, two hands, quartered pots? Are you trying to make my brain explode?

Poker players who don't like money

This happened just a few hands before packing it in last night at the Venetian. Big stack at the table puts in the third raise preflop--all in. Conservative young woman who had put in the second raise tanks. Big stack tells her to fold, he has the best hand, he doesn't want action, just wants the pot as it is. She's not convinced. He tells her, "You should fold. I have aces." He shows her one. She's still thinking. So finally he turns over his other card--another ace. She screws up her face, but still takes maybe 10 or 15 seconds before she mucks her pocket kings face up.

As Robert at The Vegas Year is fond of saying, "These are the people I play with."

I've seen this once before, as reported here. I still don't get it. As far as I'm concerned, when I have aces, please, please, please let's get as much money in as we can, whether my opponent has kings or anything else.

I guess some people just don't like money.

Guess the casino, #59

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Hooters

More fun with Cardgrrl. Less fun with Cardgrrl.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

(Hey, y'know, that would be a great opening for a novel. Somebody should try that.)

As for this post's title, I have spent the last few days debating which it would end up being. Finally couldn't decide, so used both.

As I write this, Cardgrrl is presumably in the air on her way home to D.C., undoubtedly happy to leave Vegas behind. We have spent much of the last six days together, taking on the donkeys of the world at the Venetian, Harrah's, Caesars Palace, and Mandalay Bay. But the donkeys collectively beat us with the variance stick.

I chalked up losses the first three days, though saw some recovery yesterday and today, to a unpleasant but relatively modest net loss of $345 during Cardgrrl's visit. I'll let her share her own numbers if she chooses to, but I trust she won't mind me speculating that she would be thrilled to have lost only $345.

Interestingly, her best day was Saturday (finishing 11th in a large-field tournament), the only day of the trip I wasn't playing. And, conversely, my best day was today, when she and I played at different tables at the Venetian, rather than side by side. Do you sense a pattern there? We did. We seemed to be each other's bad luck charms.

She is, however, a delightful poker companion. I used to have a shooting buddy in Minnesota. We'd go to competitions together, work on equipment together, trade magazines and tips, coach and critique and compete against each other. It made the whole experience many-fold more enjoyable. Since taking up poker, I had not found a comparable person in the game. Sure, there are lots of locals that I have come to know superficially who I find pleasant to share a table with--but nobody that I could say actually enhances the enjoyment of the session to the point that I would find myself hoping to find him or her at the table when I arrived somewhere. Until now.

Cardgrrl and I seem to think about the game in many similar ways. It is tremendously enjoyable to have somebody with whom to exchange knowing looks when somebody does or says something stupid, to talk over hands with, to trade insights and scouting reports with, to jointly celebrate hands well won and sympathize with hands unjustly lost. The time flies, and I find myself able to put up with considerably longer sessions than my attention span would otherwise tolerate.

So that should make it "More fun with Cardgrrl," right? Except there's that whole making-each-other-lose thing.

There are three possible mechanisms behind this. First is that we somehow distract each other and thus play less effectively. I can't be entirely sure of this, but I tend to think not. At least I didn't feel any more pulled away from the game than I am by the combination of table talk, music in the ear buds, big-screen TVs, my own daydreaming, etc. Second is that with a formidable opponent in the next seat, there is one less space for a money-donating, less-experienced player. This is undoubtedly true in the long run, although it wouldn't explain this week's results on my ledger: Cardgrrl actually ended up being one of my biggest sources of chips. I hasten to add that this was not through poor play on her part nor brilliant play on mine; rather, it was just the confluence of cards, position, and other circumstances that happened to work in my favor this go-around. (E.g., my queens held up against her A-K, but when I had the A-K against her queens, I caught an ace on the board. Hard to attribute much of that to skill.) I am confident that a long-term accounting between us would come out even.

That leaves the third possibility: random variance. We shared juicy, fishy tables. Tables that made her say, "Let's never leave." Tables that made me say, "If we can't make money here, we should get out of the business."

And then we'd both lose.

But you have to understand the magnitude of bad luck that was being manifest over these last several days. I know that Cardgrrl is too classy to tell her own bad-beat stories [Edit: Or maybe not! See here. LOL!], so I'll do a bit of it for her. Playing poker for six days, it wouldn't be too surprising to get hit with a one-outer bad beat one time. She had at least three that I know about--for example, hitting a king-high flush when an opponent made his straight flush and losing 3/4 of her tournament chips in the process. Or here's one that I witnessed in a cash game at the Venetian: Set over set, with her J-J against an opponent's 8-8, board J-K-?-8. All the money gets in. River: 8. Something like $500 shipped to Mr. Quads.

And if you go beyond the one-outers, the hit list grows too long to keep track of. For example, her A-10 against know-it-all donkey's K-10. Board: 10-10-8-X... KING! All the mobneys going to the wrong end of the table. It was brutal. It was genuinely painful to watch her take such thrashings over and over and over again. She got knocked out of two tournaments with A-A. First time (Thursday) up against K-K, all the chips in pre-flop, K on the flop. Next one (Sunday) up against J-Q, flop was jack-high, chips all in, river brought a third jack. The city and/or the poker gods had it in for her, to be sure.

She even experimented with the mighty 2-4 a few times. She has declined my urging to write her own post about the unfortunate results, but I'll just say that it resulted in a text message to me that included a Very Naughty Word. (I replied that the Deuce-Four only works if you believe in it. I'm glad that my testicles were not within reach of her foot at that moment.)

I had my own little hells, but got off relatively easy compared to her, in terms of magnitude, frequency, and sheer horrendousness of the beats.

So unless we do actually act, in some weird supernatural way, as each other's bad luck magnets, pure ugly variance seems the most likely explanation for the week's results.

Perhaps we'll test that theory on another visit one day. If so, I hope that I'll be able to title the resulting post, "More fun AND more money with Cardgrrl."

Playing at the "Venetian"

You see, it's not actually the Venetian Poker Room. It's the "Venetian" Poker Room. This is evidenced by the sign taped to the front desk, which I snapped a photo of earlier today:




The quotation marks around and capitalization of "Phone-ins" also raise my editorial eyebrow. The "continue patronage" and lack of blocking of paragraphs are just sloppiness.

It's a never-ending source of bemusement to me how poker rooms--even otherwise classy ones--are willing to be viewed as places where nobody cares about getting things right, which, of course, they do every time they post a sign as carelessly composed as this one.

Incidentally, there is an entire blog dedicated to poking fun at the use of unnecessary and contextually baffling quotation marks. See here.

Poker words, #6

When a new player joins the table, in many poker rooms there is a delay before he gets chips. During that few minutes, the new player can play like everybody else, but on the basis of a verbal commitment, rather than actual chips put into the pot. Things get settled up once the chips arrive.

Last night at Caesars Palace this happened. The new player was to be the big blind. The dealer announced, "Seat 5 will be our virtual big blind."

I liked that way of expressing the situation.

Guess the casino, #58

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Sam's Town

Poker plates

Thursday night I saw in Harrah's parking garage a car with California vanity plates: AK SUTED.

The next day while driving around town, I spotted another out of state car with plates reading QUADS.

I love this game as much as anyone, I think, but don't feel any inclination to putting that fact on my license plates.

Guess the casino, #57

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Flamingo--could I possibly make it any more obvious?! :-)

Poker lessons from non-poker movies: "Slumdog Millionaire"

A friend had free tickets for any Regal Cinema feature, so we hit the one at Fiesta Henderson to see "Slumdog Millionaire" today, curious as to why such an apparently unlikely movie racked up 10 Oscar nominations. Well, the reason becomes obvious after seeing it--it's simply magnificent. It's completely original, moving, well written, well acted, well edited.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you much about the most salient poker-y scene without spoiling a key plot point. Here's what I can tell you without ruining things: At one crucial juncture, our hero (shown above on the left) has to decide whether somebody is telling him the truth or lying--and everything rides on getting it right. There is some suggestion that he picks up physical tells, but we are led to suspect that his main tool is consideration of the other person's motivations. When he does that, it leads him to the right answer.

Back in December, 2007, I told this story:

I was on the bad end of another skillful bit of deceptive revealing by an
opponent a couple of months ago. I started with a strong hand (can't remember
exactly what it was), but hated seeing three hearts on the flop, when I had
none. The turn brought a fourth heart to the board. I bet, my tricky opponent
took a long time to decide what to do. While thinking, he turned over the 7 of
hearts. He finally called. The river was a blank. I decided that with just a
7-high flush, he must be worried that I had a higher flush, so I moved all-in.
He insta-called with the look on his face of the cat that caught the canary (as,
indeed, he had). His other card was the king of hearts. He had flopped the
king-high flush, and his showing the lower card tricked me into thinking exactly
what he wanted me to think: that he just had a low flush and was in a difficult
spot, when really he had the second nuts. Well played, sir--you lured me in
perfectly.

I made a mistake by not considering his motivation. I assumed he was trying to get a read on my reaction to his shown card, and I frankly didn't even entertain the possibility that he might have some other purpose in his evil little heart. But I learned from that encounter, and now when an opponent does something out of the ordinary, I try to remember to explicitly consider the possibility that what appears straightforward may be deliberate deception.

It's a useful thing to keep in mind in poker.

New (well, sort of) poker room at Fiesta Henderson

I was at Fiesta Henderson today to see a movie, and was surprised to see that the poker room had moved. Last time I was there (December, 2007) it was upstairs; now it's just off the main casino floor, next to the cafe. That's my old friend from the Hilton, Ken Franco, at the front desk. He tells me that the room has been where it is for six months or so. So this isn't exactly breaking news. I didn't stay to play, so can't tell you anything more about it. But with a high degree of confidence, I can predict that it's about 90% locals, rarely more than one table going, and that will usually be $2/4 or $3/6 limit hold'em, with maybe a no-limit game on weekend evenings. Being open to the casino floor on only one side, I do hold out some hope that it will be less smoky and noisy than the old room.

Sorry for the blurry photo. My encounters with casino security--particular the Stations chain, of which Fiesta Henderson is part--have made me try to be quicker and less obvious. I didn't notice until I got home that the only picture I took wasn't very good.

Fun poker fact

On this week's "Poker After Dark," Chris Ferguson revealed that in an early version of the software that became Full Tilt Poker, the system would sometimes say "Winner winner, chicken dinner," and push an icon of a chicken dinner to the winner of the hand. He added that that particular feature got nixed soon after it was introduced. Probably a wise decision, that.

I'm just sayin'...

Sure, he won by getting a walk in the big blind. But why did his opponents fold? Because they sensed that he had an unbeatable hand, that's why.

My usual expression

Because I am the Grump, Cardgrrl (the photographer) insisted on the visage matching the name. The site is the Forum Shops of Caesars Palace, near the famous spiral escalators (not visible here)--which, by the way, are cool enough to be worth the walk from the casino.

Guess the casino, #56

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Mirage

Guess the casino, #55

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Treasure Island

Poker gems, #216

Jimmy Warren, on "Poker After Dark," pointing to prolific poker author David Sklansky.


He's devoted his life to making limit hold'em games so tough he can't beat them anymore.

Guess the casino, #54

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Green Valley Ranch

Fun with Cardgrrl

I mentioned a few days ago that Cardgrrl was coming to town. She arrived today. I just got home from a delightful five hours of poker sitting next to her at Caesars Palace. As you might have deduced from reading her blog, she's smart, funny, and interesting, my top three favorite attributes in people.

I had aces twice, kings twice, queens twice, and A-K four times. Cardgrrl was mostly card-dead all night. Yet I ended up losing about the same amount as she won--and she had the added disadvantage of jet lag. You be the judge of who played better. Of course, I never even once got dealt the mighty 2-4, so I had no chance. (I'll let her tell her own 2-4 story, if she chooses.) And, in my defense, I was on the upswing when we left, and she was on the downswing, so it might have ended differently if we had stayed.

There was only one hand that I think is worth relating. I was on the button with Ah-Qh. (That's right, it was sooooted.) Several players limped in ahead of me. An elderly gentleman, who was under the gun, reraised all-in for $97. It was folded back around to me.

I had basically four thoughts, all of which converged on the same conclusion. First, the reraise was so big that it seemed clear that he didn't want a call, which suggested that I should frustrate his desires with a call. It would have been scarier if he had put in a raise to, say, $50. He still would have been pot-committed, but it would have conveyed a sense of "call me, sucker," rather than "go away." The way he put his chips in also seemed to me, well, defiant, for lack of a better word--overly forceful and dramatic. Second, he had played few hands, and I couldn't remember him winning a pot. I thought he was frustrated and pushing with less than a premium hand--the old "double me up or send me home" syndrome. Third, there was going to be enough dead money in the pot that it was mathematically OK to take the slight underdog position if he had an underpair, which is what I thought his most likely holding was (roughly 7s through 10s). Fourth, he could easily think my raise from the button was based more on position than my cards, as if I were just trying to pick up the limpers' money, and thus reraise me fairly light to catch me in a bluff. So I called. The big blind reluctantly folded.

I was wrong. He had Q-Q. The flop and turn gave me no help, so I was resigned to my fate--until the dealer put out an ace on the river. Whew! At that point, the woman who had been hesitant to fold said, perfectly plausibly, that she had folded A-K. Whew again! I had hit a two-outer. Hey, I'm not proud of it, but I'll take it.

The older guy who lost the hand got up in a big huff. He limped a short distance away to his mobility scooter, fired it up, and took off. But as he zoomed past the table, he called out to me, "You were only a 15:1 dog!"

And *poof*, he was gone out the door.

It's the first time I've ever been the victim of a drive-by taunting in a poker room.

The poor man would not have liked the reaction he provoked, which was laughter all around. It was so pathetic it was funny. It also became a running joke for the table. For the rest of the evening, when somebody made a bet, he or she would warn opponents, "You're a 15:1 dog here." Conversely, somebody folding would say, "I can't call--I'm a 15:1 dog."

I also managed to get a good laugh out of the dealer (who had been trying hard to maintain his professional neutrality) when I said, "He should have known a bet that big would only get called if he was beat."

I can't say that a good time was had by all, but I think a good time was had by all but one.

Guess the casino, #53

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Circus Circus

Smelly and me

I ran into Smelly again a couple of weeks ago. He got up and left the table. It was one of the most tangible markers I've yet been given that I have gotten better at this game.


Back to the beginning of the story: As most readers know by now, the Hilton was the first poker room that really caught my attention as a quiet, friendly, comfortable, convenient, and profitable place to use as my default poker destination when there was not some reason to go elsewhere. I naturally ran into a lot of the same people frequently. One of them was a guy that I'll call Allen (not his real name).

Allen is a sourpuss. He could call himself the Poker Grump more accurately than I can. He also had questionable personal hygiene. One day when I was waiting for a table, I chatted with the person at the front desk. One of the high-hand jackpots had been capped at its maximum for an unusually long time, but that day I noticed that it had been reset to the minimum, meaning that somebody had hit it the previous day. I asked if it had been won by somebody I would know. She said, "Yeah, it was Allen." There were two frequent customers named Allen, though. One of them was dating one of the Hilton poker dealers. So I asked, "The one who's dating [so and so]?" She replied, "No, Smelly Allen."

I almost died laughing. Up until that point, I had no idea that the dealers had adopted that nickname for him for use behind his back. When they needed to make the distinction, there was "Nice Allen," and there was "Smelly Allen."

My first few months in town, I found Smelly to be a challenging opponent. Here's how I described him in an email to a friend back in Minnesota on September 20, 2006: "He’s erratic and tricky, very unpredictable, and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost more to him than I’ve won from him. When we’re in a hand against each other, he seems to be able to get away from me when I’m strong more easily than I get away from him when he’s strong."

Over time, though, I started noticing patterns to his play. For example, one of his favorite moves was a huge raise from the big blind when several people had limped in. After a while, I could even predict when he was going to do this, which meant that he was doing it largely independent of what his cards were. I also noticed that he would fold to a reraise, and wouldn't take any heat after the flop if somebody called him in that situation. So although in any one hand, that move might look like he has a big pair, seeing it occur many times made it clear that he was often doing it with air.

Another pattern that I started to notice was that he would usually put in a continuation bet after the flop, if he had raised before the flop, but he wouldn't fire second and third bullets if he missed the board.

The reason for that 9/20/06 email was to describe my turning point with Smelly. I limped in with 9-9. He raised, I called. At that moment, I had something of an epiphany. I could see the different paths that this hand might take at each decision point, all simultaneously. It wasn't a vision, exactly, but a weird sense that I knew the things he might do at each decision point, what each of them implied about his cards, and, therefore, how I would need to respond to them, for all of the remaining three betting rounds. Basically, most flops were going to go check-bet-call, because I knew that I needed to see what he did on fourth street to know whether he had (1) either started with a big pair or started with two big but unpaired cards and had hit one of them, or (2) he had started with two big cards and whiffed on the flop.

The flop was 10-10-2. Check-bet-call, as expected. Turn was a rag. Check-check. Aha! I was confident then that he didn't have an overpair. His pattern would have been to fire again if he did, and let my response dictate what he would do next. (I.e., if I check-raised, he would probably fold.) Now my only concern was that the river not be an overcard that might pair him up. It was another small card. I bet, and Smelly insta-mucked.

The hand had followed one of the paths that I had foreseen. Now that I have about a billion more hands of experience, nothing about that seems particularly remarkable. But it was the first time that I ever had an advance sense of the ways in which a whole hand could play out, instead of just taking each decision separately as it came. It was also one of the first times that I had been able to apply betting patterns of a particular opponent from previous sessions to a specific current hand. (Of course, I had at least some facility with observing and adjusting to players over the course of a session, but cumulatively gathering information on people over weeks and months was a skill I was just developing.)

The pot wasn't very big, but it was a huge turning point for me. From then on, I didn't fear Smelly. I realized that he wasn't nearly as tricky and unpredictable as I had mentally labeled him. The tide turned between us. I started winning more of our encounters.

By the time that the Hilton poker room closed about a year after that, Smelly largely stayed away from me. It was crystal clear that he had been burned enough times that he decided it was better to pick on other people and stay out of my way.*

Since the closing of the Hilton poker room, I have bumped into Smelly only three or four times, all but one of them, I think, at Harrah's. Our old pattern on those occasions seemed to continue--he would rarely contest pots in which I was taking the lead. He seemed to want to avoid me.

Then, as I alluded to at the top of the post, a most interesting thing happened a couple of weeks ago. I joined a game at the Monte Carlo where Smelly was playing. Within five minutes, he stood up and cashed out without saying a word.

It's impossible to know for sure that I'm the reason he decided to leave, but I have a strong hunch. He hadn't just lost or won a large pot, and didn't have a particularly short or large stack that would suggest itself as the reason for him calling it a day. I believe that he simply decided that he could find an easier table somewhere else. (That wasn't entirely due to me. I discovered that there were other good players at that table. But I think that I was the final straw in his decision to look for better hunting elsewhere.)

I can't think of any other opponent with whom I have that kind of history--starting off with me intimidated by him, and ending up the other way 'round. It's highly satisfying, because it's a pretty unmistakable sign that I have made progress (and had even made measurable improvement between early July, 2006, when I started here, and late September of the same year, when we played what proved to be that pivotal hand). Smelly, I'm afraid, has basically stayed at the same level of play.

And he still has questionable personal hygiene.



*Every time I write something like this, I feel the need to throw in my usual disclaimer: I do not view myself as any sort of poker prodigy. I'm not especially good at the game. No real pros would find me scary or difficult. I have a basic level of competence that is probably about as low on the scale of poker talent as one can possess and still manage to squeeze a living out of the tourists. Readers should not mistake what are intended as fairly objective statements about me being a better player than some particular other one as suggesting swagger on my part.

Guess the casino, #52

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Palace Station

I'll see if I can squeeze it into my schedule

I rarely pick my poker venue more than about five minutes before I'm leaving the apartment, but this week I think I might make an exception.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7014011487

I have a hunch that Thursday night the Luxor will be my poker room of choice. Y'know, in case any of the girls get tired of the drinking and dancing, and feel like playing a little NLHE.

They might even want private lessons. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

Guess the casino, #51

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Rio

Allow me to introduce you to Cardgrrl

The other day I received an email from a reader asking if we could arrange to meet while she is in town later this month. The signature file on the message pointed to her poker blog, so naturally I started reading.

Now, I have to tell you (actually, I have said this a few times before, but it bears repeating) that most poker blogs are crap, as far as I'm concerned. (Of course, their keepers might say the same about mine, but that's how tastes and opinions go.) Most of them just talk about specific hands and sessions, whining about bad beats, blah, blah, blah. I find them unreadable after about 30 seconds. Moreover, they tend to butcher the language and rules of writing the way I'd expect from a typical middle-school student. At a bad school. Who had flunked English. Twice.

So it definitely caught my attention when I quickly discovered that Cardgrrl (1) respects the basic mechanics of writing, and (2) actually has interesting things to say. Here's what little one can glean about her from perusing the still relatively short archives: After having had a variety of previous careers (including, I gather, web design, photography, and jewelry design--already an interesting set of background skills), she is now spending one year seriously attempting to see if it would be feasible to make it as a poker pro. The blog is the chronicle of her experiment, as is a book that apparently is being written as she goes. Maybe the strangest part is that she is doing this from Washington, D.C., which strikes me as one of the unlikeliest places from which to attempt launching a poker career, especially one that emphasizes live play over online play. OK, maybe Provo, Utah, would be stranger, but not by a lot.

The writing is smart, funny, and literate, qualities that one naturally assumes are shared by the author. The last time I was this impressed with a poker blog, for both having something original and interesting to say and saying it well, was when I started digging through the archives of The Vegas Year, which chronicles a somewhat similar poker-life experiment. (Still working on it, Robert, but I'll post a note akin to this one when I'm done.) Before that, it was when I first stumbled upon Hard-Boiled Poker.

So with that introduction, here are some of my favorite samples from CardGrrl, each followed by the accompanying URL, all posted with not even a semblance of permission from the author:

About an hour later, after a rebuy and a top-up (things are just not going my way at all), I find AhKh on the button. Five limpers enter the hand in front
of me, and ~ trying to learn a lesson from my previous experience ~ I raise to 10xBB this time. Surely this will induce some folding.

The big blind calls, as does a guy in middle position.

Flop comes 3s 5c 10h.

The big blind leads out 10xBB into a pot of 33xBB. Middle position guy folds.

I know this bettor. He could be leading with anything or nothing. I think there's a strong probability that my hand is good right now, and even if it isn't, I very likely have 6 outs to the winner. I also have to believe that, given my initial raise pre-flop, I have some fold equity here.

I reraise all in, an additional 31xBB to the original bet. I am called.

Turn is the ace of clubs. River is the ace of spades.

My trip aces go down in flames to... what else, the 2 and 4 of clubs.

Yes, the man called a huge raise out of position with the mighty 2-4 and took my whole stack. As he was explaining his reasoning, he said, "Well, I knew you had just wondered what raise would get people to fold, so I thought it would be fun to call with a donkey hand." He flopped an open-ended straight draw, and called a subsequent all-in bet despite not getting drawing odds.

And that was my night, right there.

I try to tell myself that I want people making these idiotic decisions, that in the long run I'll profit mightily off them.

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com/2008/09/day-24-gone-in-two.html

(Obviously, this early in her poker career she had not yet learned that she had no chance from the beginning here, taking a measly A-K up against the nearly invulnerable 2-4. I wonder, in fact, if her opponent was one of my own disciples from the Holy Order of the Deuce-Four.)

I've always been a bit of an outlier on whatever normal curve you'd care to distribute the population along. I'm something of an oddball; I admit it, I'm
used to it, and mostly I'm okay with it. But with this change of profession,
such as it is, I'm really living into my differences these days. I am out-there.

Sometimes, driving the blissfully empty streets of my city in the wee hours
of the night, I feel so detached from the everyday lives slumbering in the
darkness around me that it's a little scary. I have stepped out of mainstream of
the economy, for example, in a fairly definitive way. My day-to-day activities
don't bear much resemblance to most other people's. And I spend a lot of my time
thinking about stuff that many people find either ridiculously arcane, of
dubious morality, fundamentally frivolous, or otherwise objectionable.

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com/2008/09/day-27-untethered.html

The more I play poker, the more convinced I become that the single biggest component of a winning edge is the player's attitude.

As with any craft or art, one must have mastered the basics. You've got to
know the math (to a reasonable approximation, anyway). You have to be in
good-enough health to think clearly, observe, remember, concentrate, and put in
a sustained effort. You have to be sufficiently experienced to recognize the
shape of certain situations and their likely significance. And, of course, when
you get to showdown you have to actually have the winning cards often enough.

But the fact is, all of the above is useless ~ as a practical matter ~
without the right attitude. Although elements of the right attitude change with
the circumstances, there are some things about it that can be asserted
independently. The right attitude is: even-tempered, open, unafraid, patient,
focused, flexible, imaginative, rational, creative, self-aware, and resilient.

Aren't these qualities highly desirable in life as well? (Of course, one
might also add to the list: ruthless and relentless. Compassion and mercy do not
enter the equation at the poker table; whereas, a life devoid of these essential
qualities of humanity is hardly worth living.)

I watch with astonishment as decent players fall apart because their
attitude is incompatible with success. They are so highly reactive, so
emotionally labile (to get technical about it), that a bad card or an insult or
the wrong music or indigestion or too much to drink or whatever disagreeable
internal or external factor can move them off their best game. They wobble into
disequilibrium, they tilt, and then with the slightest nudge they
fall.

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com/2008/10/attitude.html

Pocket aces are the best hand in Texas Hold’em. And, over the long run, they lose 15% of the time. That’s a little more than one in seven occasions, on
average. And believe me, when you’re playing for a monster pot or your tournament life, it seems like it happens a lot more often than that. Which is why, ridiculous as it may seem, there are players who actually say things like, “I hate the bullets, I always seem to lose with them.”

They don’t always lose with them, of course. But they remember the times
they do lose, because it hurts so much, and they gloss over the times when they
win with them, because they expect to win with them. This is called “selective
memory,” and it’s something poker-players should learn how to correct in
themselves, because it has all sorts of pernicious effects. We’ll talk about
that in other contexts too.

It is true, though, that your can get all your money in the middle pre-flop
with pocket aces and lose four times in a row. Or three times out of five. Or
eight times out of ten. You can lose with pocket aces over and over and over
again, to the point were someone will quote “1:6.6” at you and you will laugh
long and bitterly. When you look down at pocket aces you will see, instead, twin
headstones with your name engraved on them, and you will long for the sweet,
sweet release of death. You will develop a thirst for hemlock.

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com/2008/10/do-you-feel-lucky-punk-well-do-you.html

The next post is the only long one that I will quote in full, because I couldn't find anything I wanted to snip out of it.

On Being Bad

Most mainstream religions frown on gambling.

There’s definitely something unholy about putting one’s (or, ideally, someone else’s) hard-earned money at risk — subject to the vagaries of chance — rather than to work. Should you be squandering the precious resources entrusted to you for mere entertainment? Furthermore, gambling just doesn’t seem like a godly activity; Einstein, for example, was offended by certain aspects of quantum theory, “God does not play dice with the universe.”

Gamblers come in two flavors, the superstitious and the scientific. The first subscribe to the magical property of luck and the second ascribe to the propositions of probability. Those who wish to mix luck and religion find themselves in the dubious position of asking their Deity to help them be lucky (we may pause to recall the unseemly spectacle of competing prayer-wars at the final table of the 2007 WSOP Main Event). This is particularly awkward for those who believe that God has a master plan, and all is fore-ordained. What is it you’re praying for in that case? “Let me turn out to be the one predestined to win!”

Those who are die-hard probability fans may start to wonder where God is in the grand scheme of things. If it’s all chance, given enough time and the laws of physics, pretty much everything that can happen, will happen. Why bring God into it all? There may be no atheists in foxholes, but there are plenty at the poker table. (Believe me, run bad long enough and you will start to question the existence of a loving God.)

Poker, with it’s skill component, [Grump scolds: Cardgrrl! You know better than to put that apostrophe there!] brings some further concerns into play. Now, in addition to the gambling, there’s the matter of using your presumably God-given talents to take other people’s money. Specifically, to take other people’s money by means of deception, aggression, and by taking advantage of their weaknesses. You are to feed on your opponents as the wolf feeds upon sheep. The apparent lack of sharp teeth and overt bloodshed should not mislead anyone: poker is a predatory pastime. This is not the stuff of saintly behavior.

The wish to exercise the cardinal virtues of compassion and generosity, the commendable impulse to heal the sick and nurture the helpless, the desire to educate and enlighten the ignorant, and the natural human tendency to bond and form groups for mutual aid — these are all deprecated to the point of being out-and-out liabilities when playing poker. Poker is a caricature of Darwinian competition, “nature red in tooth and claw,” survival of the fittest. It’s a bit like capitalism, except without the productivity part. It’s hard to see how this is a good thing.

Various people have tried, in my view completely without success of any kind, to make a case for poker having some socially redeeming value. The closest that I, personally, have ever been able to get is the notion that poker facilitates the redistribution of wealth from stupid people to smarter people. This seems like a pretty feeble proposition (on a factual basis) to begin with, and I’m not sure that it would represent much of a social good even if it were proven to be true. I see no evidence that people who are good at poker are, in fact, any more likely to do worthwhile things with money than their less-skilled counterparts.

Does boxing have any socially redeeming value? Two people get into a ring. There are certain rules that govern their behavior, which are intended to ensure that the fight is fair. The combatants bring differing levels of preparation, skill, stamina, experience, intelligence, aggression, discipline, and desire to the competition. And then they hit each other. A lot. Let’s face it: somebody is gonna get hurt.

It has always baffled me that some people find watching boxing to be entertaining, and I am stymied even more by the fact that there are people who actually like to box. I don’t like to see people fighting, and I really don’t like to see people hurt. (I especially abhor the idea of hitting or being hit, myself.) Then I wrote the previous paragraph, and now — although it still doesn’t appeal to me — I think I may have an idea why they enjoy it.

Poker is like boxing, without the physical part. The key to both activities is that the participants come to the table voluntarily. 1

When you climb into a boxing ring, you accept that you are going to get punched. Repeatedly. Hard. When you belly up to a poker table, you accept that everybody there is going to do his or her best to TAKE ALL YOUR MONEY. There are rules and referees, it’s not a free-for-all scrum. It is not the case that “anything goes.” If you don’t abide by the rules, you won’t be allowed to stay, and you may even be sanctioned. But within the magic circle of rope or felt, you are permitted to — nay, encouraged and rewarded for it! — exercise all your faculties to prevail. Hit as hard as you can, float and dodge, outwit and baffle. It may not be nice, but it cannot be described as unethical.

In a word: compete. Bring out your bad self and go medieval on their asses. As the teenage son of some dear friends asked drily the other night, over dinner, “You’re not going to trot out the catharsis argument, are you?”

(Smart kid. Let him write the damn book.)

Where was I?

I was raised to be a good girl. I was brought up to be nice. I was taught not to be selfish and to tell the truth. I wanted people to think well of me.

Enter the poker table and Enter the Dragon.

At the poker table I am not nice. I am utterly selfish. I am devious. I am aggressive. I am ruthless. I lie my ass off. I don’t care if people think well of me or not. In fact, if they think I’m stupid, it’s good. If they fear me, it’s good. If they like me, it’s good. I can work with whatever they think. At the poker table, I am not a good girl.

And that’s really, really good. It’s the thrill of defying a taboo. It’s satisfying, on the level of an inchoate itch that you didn’t even know required scratching until you dug in your fingernails for the first time. I can reinvent myself however I please. It’s fun.

But part of the reason it’s fun is because, on a very basic level, it’s safe. I’m playing poker. There are rules. It’s a game, not my whole life. And although, while playing poker, I may not be a good girl, I am always an honorable girl. My integrity remains intact, and it is important to me that others know and can rely on that.

I despite cheaters. They blur the boundary between the game and the rest of life in a destructive way; the “bad” that should be confined to the context of the game leaks out into the world, where it absolutely does not belong. That decompartmentalization is a breach of the poker-player’s social contract, and it undermines the very nature of the undertaking. It renders the game unconstrained, unsafe, and therefore not fun. In the context of a poker game, cheating is sociopathic behavior.

1 I set aside, here, the case of those addicted to gambling. This a topic that deserves separate consideration.

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com/2008/10/on-being-bad.html


When things are going well, it's difficult to remember how awful it feels when things go badly. And, conversely, when everything is going to shit, it's difficult to remember what life was like when things were easy and pleasant. In fact, I maintain, except for the very most highly evolved persons, virtually impossible.

This trip to Atlantic City was a classic arc. Things started out pretty well. I went deep in a tournament or two. I was up a couple of hundred bucks at the cash table. I was flirting with my tablemates, with the dealers, the floor staff ~ let's be honest and say just about everyone ~ and they were flirting right back. Fun was being had by all concerned. The cards, while not spectacular, were well within normal and acceptable parameters. Poker was being played. And life was good.

(I add, on an entirely and purely personal note, that one cannot truly claim to have lived, as a poker player, until one has closed down a cash table in a casino and proceeded, whilst stone cold sober, to make out with the player immediately to one's left, as the dealer sits by and does his or her best not to hear or see anything. The entertainment value alone of this experience is enormous, quite apart from any other enjoyment that may be derived from it.)

And so one quite naturally thinks to oneself, "things are going swimmingly, yea verily I shall extend my stay in this paradise of gaming, where the rooms are cheap or free, the people pleasant and accommodating, and the cash runs like milk and money, err, honey."

But no paradise is without its snake, no rose without its thorn. Or, if you are me, your paradise becomes a snake pit, and your rosebush becomes a thicket of thorns without a bloom of any sort.

That horrible, perhaps unfamiliar, but indisputably ominous creaking noise you hear in the background, is the sound of the doomswitch being pulled from the OFF position to the ON position. You don't know it, yet, but you are FUCKED. Everything that was fun and good is now going to become very, very unfun and very, very bad. It's as if the Apocalypse had five horsemen, not four, and the guy after Death (Death’s really, really mean older brother) is coming specifically for you. Did I mention: really, really not good?

You will go through the stages of grieving. You will deny. You will rage and you will make stupid decisions. You will bargain. You will be very, very depressed. And eventually you will accept. Or you will kill yourself.

You know, one or the other.

In short: you will tilt. Welcome to my world.

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com/2008/11/day-74-scorched-earth-and-other-signs.html


Women’s liberation and the feminist movement in general notwithstanding, women in our culture are still brought up to want — first and above all — to be loved. We are encouraged to do everything possible to be desirable, acceptable, and emotionally unthreatening. We are taught to avoid or swiftly resolve conflict, not to engage it, take it on, or god forbid escalate it. Few men, for example, would put "intimidating" high on the list of desirable attributes in a mate. (It was, in fact, a source of some consternation to me throughout my youth that people did sometimes characterize me as intimidating, especially since I had no intention of being so, nor could I really understand why others perceived me that way.)

But it turns out that, at the poker table, Machiavelli is right. It is better to feared than loved, if you have to choose between the two. This is especially true in tournaments. Tournaments are all about survival and domination, about putting your opponents to the test. If you cannot occasionally move an adversary off a hand when you need to, for example, you are utterly at the mercy of your cards and you are essentially playing bingo, not poker. Predictable behavior is not frightening: the bogeyman does not publish a schedule of his daily activities. He jumps out of the shadows, or emerges unexpectedly in the mundane environment of the laundromat (say), and wreaks bloody havoc. That’s scary. The tyrant does not forgive and forget, or pursue civil justice under the rule of law: he punishes his enemies (and the occasional innocent, just because) all out of proportion to their sins against him, and shows up with the secret police pounding on the door in the middle of the night. That’s intimidating.

While there are some benefits to having people like you (you may gain information, you may be given the benefit of the doubt, you may even get a break when you’re behind), they pale in comparison to the advantages gained by striking fear into your opponents’ hearts. I suppose if you could really somehow persuade your table mates that you were a harmless dumb bunny who was just getting lucky over and over that might be ideal. But realistically, that’s only going to work for awhile. Sooner or later any observant opponent is going to put two-and-two together and then, no matter how charming and careless you may appear, the fear and doubt are going to begin to set in. And then you have them.

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com/2008/12/move-over-machiavelli.html


Romans 7:19
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.


I know I shouldn't play when I'm exhausted. So what do I do? I play when I'm exhausted.

I know I should work out every day, and especially on days when I'm playing. So what do I do? I don't go to the gym and sit around while my legs atrophy.

Once the minimum intellectual requirements are met, the fundamental key to success in this game is pretty simple: self-discipline. That comprises physical maintenance, emotional equanimity, and mental toughness.

I have a ways to go.

http://raiseorfold.cardgrrl.com/2009/01/romans-719.html

So there you have it--a little bit of what Cardgrrl has to offer. So go subscribe or add her to your favorites/bookmarks list, why dontcha?

Our brains are not wired for poker

This is a whole post devoted to telling you of a roughly three-second mental malfunction that I had the other night.

It was the unplanned mini-bloggerpalooza at Imperial Palace. I was in the big blind with some sort of king/baby offsuit hand, but nobody raised, so the flop came for free. It was king-high with two spades. I decided to take a stab at it and see what happened. Player A called. Player B called. OK--probably at least one of them has a flush draw, so if another spade were to hit, I was going to shut down. (Note that this isn't always so by any means. But the combination of being out of position and having an unraised pot pre-flop, so that opponents could have anything at all, meant that it was not a situation in which I was going to press hard with top pair/crappy kicker.) Turn was, indeed, another spade. I checked, Player A bet, Player B called, I folded. I don't recall the river action, but B won it with a small flush.

Next hand, I had some jack/baby garbage in the small blind. Again an unraised pot. Again the flop came to give me top pair, and again with two spades. I took the same tack. (I don't always do this, but the players left in were pretty passive, and a bet could often take down a pot uncontested, so I thought it worthwhile.) Same two players called me as in the previous hand. Again the turn was a third spade. I felt like I was Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day."

I checked, Player A checked, and B led out. My first reaction--which is, finally, getting to the point of this post--was approximately this: "There's no way that two hands in a row this guy can have been dealt two spades, flop a flush draw, and then hit it on the turn." I even went so far as to recall explicitly that if you start with two suited cards the probability of making a flush by the river is only about 6%, so must obviously be somewhat lower than that to hit it by the turn. Surely, I thought, he can't have had a less-than-6% event happen twice in a row--especially not in the same suit.*

The thing is, I know better than to think like this. I have had it drummed into me very thoroughly that things like hands of poker are independent events. The cards have no memory. What happened on the previous hand has zero bearing on the current hand. Hell, I even did well in a post-graduate statistics course back in the day. I know this stuff backward and forward.

What's more, I have an archive of posts making fun of players who don't grasp this simple fact. Here's one typical example. I'll even throw in a story I haven't told here before. In Minnesota, no-limit cash games are illegal, so the card clubs spread only limit. One time I watched a guy with pocket fours hit a set on the river, having called bets and raises from two opponents all the way, with every card on the board larger than his fours. His explanation? "I only called because fours have been hitting so often tonight." Brilliant, eh? In his mind, apparently, the cards had had a meeting at the beginning of the shift, and decided to have the fours be the stars of the show. He believed that enough to bet a substantial amount of money on the theory. (And, wonderfully, he was rewarded for it, thus perversely reinforcing his views.)

All of that history of me both feeling and actually being superior to many typical opponents in the degree to which I have internalized this simple concept is precisely the reason that I think it's so interesting that it would all abandon me, even if only briefly. I actually considered calling Player B in this spot. I might even have done it, if not for fear that Player A was setting a trap for a check-raise with the nut flush. And the only reason I contemplated the call was that kooky notion that he couldn't have made a spade flush on the turn twice in a row.

Fortunately, that thought lasted only about three seconds before rationality grabbed the steering wheel back from the stupid driver who was about to send it careening off the road.

Thinking about this mental lapse afterwards made me realize, for about the millionth time, how fragile our rational understanding of the world can be, and how easily it is penetrated, suppressed, and overwhelmed by erroneous, distorted, biased guesses about what is happening around us.

No matter how much I make fun of players who ask for a new deck of cards or a seat change** in order to change their luck, who play a junk hand on the basis of how lucky it has been for them (obviously the Deuce-Four is not included in the phrase "junk hand"), perform some weird ritual before each hand is dealt, won't touch $50 bills, believe in various good luck/bad luck totems, and so forth, I guess I have to admit that at some scary brain level I am only one odd coincidence away from potentially reverting to a caveman's grasp of the universe. We are deeply hard-wired to see patterns and infer cause-and-effect relationships even where they do not, in reality, exist. It requires constant vigilence to keep that tendency on a very tight leash.

Oh, and yes--Player B did have his second consecutive spade flush. Go figure.



*If it had been crubs, then sure. Because, as I have recently learned, crubs always get there. But we're talking spades here.

**Oooo, here's another story I haven't written about before. I'm pretty sure I told it in one of my early contributions to the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, but I can't find it in any blog post. This was at the Canterbury Card Club in Minnesota. When one player left, the guy in seat 10 claimed dibs on a seat change because, he said, he was card-dead where he was (i.e., his request was not for tactical or comfort reasons, both of which can be perfectly legitimate). But he wanted to wait until he had played his button so that he wouldn't have to post the big blind again. On the next hand, when he was on the button, he ended up hitting quads and won a large pot. The dealer then started to help the guy move his chip stacks to the empty seat. The player practically shouted at the dealer, "What are you doing?" The dealer said, "You said you wanted a seat change." Seat 10, sounding as if the dealer were the world's biggest idiot, said, "You think I still want to change seats after I hit quads???"


Addendum, February 10, 2009

Just found the following story here:

Once football season ended, we put in a Splash the Pot promotion. That is
working out great and actually bringing in some people. It has also caused a few
comical events to occur.

A couple weeks ago, we had three tables going when it was time to splash
the pot. We drew the first table - table 7. Two hours later, we drew the second
table - table 7. At the time of the last drawing, one of the players sitting at
table 7 asked if he could move to table 2. His reasoning for wanting to move was
that table 7 had been drawn two times already and there was no way that it would
get drawn a third time; he felt he improved his chances of contesting for the
extra money on a different table.

I allowed him to move...and then I had him reach into the bag and draw for
the lucky table - table 7. After the pot with the extra money was completed, he
moved back to his original seat.

It's an "I'm bored" post

Yesterday on my day off from poker one of the tasks I accomplished was buying a new pair of shoes. Not a big deal? Well, you see, for me this happens about once every three or four years. I buy a pair and wear them for essentially everything, every day, until they're ratty enough that I'm slightly embarrassed to be seen in public. Yes, I am that cheap.

This time, largely because of having had such a good poker week (which continued today, incidentally; now at $88/hour for the month of February), I decided to go for new shoes even though the old ones have only one hole in them. I splurged $29.95 plus tax. Just as significant (or, let's face it, insignificant) is that this marks a departure from years of relying on New Balance, with a trial of Skechers.

While sitting at the Palms today waiting for a game, I was so bored that I took a picture of my feet. Then, having taken it, I had to post it here, right?

Today I am New Shoes Boy. (No need to send gifts or cards--but thanks anyway.)

Guess the casino, #50

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.

Comment: I am sort of cheating with this one, making it extremely difficult (I think) by zooming in so as to exclude the associated information that would make it almost trivially easy. To see what I have cut out of the photo before you check the answer, click here.



Answer: Hard Rock

Fun at the I.P.

As usual, I rather arbitrarily chose my work station for the evening: Imperial Palace. I'm very glad I did. It turned out both profitable and fun, a combination that's hard to beat.

Dug myself a hole early on, but just before I hit the big hand that surged me ahead into profit territory, I was, to my great surprise, joined at the table by two other poker bloggers, B.W.O.P. and F-Train. Soon thereafter, they were followed by Grubette, half of the blogger duo that is Poker Grub. I had not met her before, nor, I must confess, have I ever explored her blog, though I will promptly remedy that deficiency now. Also at the table was a guy named Ken, an uber-rock of a player whom I have met briefly a couple of times through social events and tournaments of allvegaspoker.com.

Now I have to tell you, this combination of folks promised to make the table lively, fun, and interesting--and it lived up to expectations, as far as I'm concerned. However, there was a countervailing consideration. I had chosen I.P. because (1) in my experience, it tends to be one of the softest $1-2 NLHE games in town, and (2) I was feeling tired and lazy, not completely up to taking on a more challenging game, such as is usually found at, say, Venetian or Binion's or Caesars Palace or Treasure Island. These four people at one table meant four seats that were anything but soft, when I had envisioned them filled with people who would just hand me their money. So--forgive me for this--I admit that I viewed their presence as something of a mixed blessing.

But I caught a few lucky hands and managed to walk away with a nice W to cap one of my best weeks ever: eight wins in eight sessions (spread among Palms, Rio, Binion's, I.P., Hooters, Boulder Station, and Riviera--an interesting sampling of this city's poker rooms), netting north of $80/hour. (I'm taking tomorrow off to do some other stuff, so my poker week is now closed and in the books.)

I think I also made some Deuce-Four converts. The night was simply chock-full of boards for which 2-4 would have been the winner, including, e.g., an A-3-5 flop and a 4-4-2 flop. B.W.O.P. told me that observing this through the session had convinced her never to throw 2-4 away again in her life. F-Train, I think, remains on the skeptical side, despite the plain evidence. He played it once and won the pot with two pairs, but said that he had done it just for me, and he wouldn't do it again. Sooner or later he'll come around.

Unfortunately, both of them appeared to be having relatively frustrating nights in terms of the poker. Grubette seemed to be holding her own. I was glad that none of my big pots came at their expense. I hope that the luck I was getting shifted their way when I left.

Thanks, guys, for making my time there a blast. And thanks, too, to the less-experienced players who made it profitable (though I doubt they're reading).


Bonus story, having nothing to do with poker

Snippet of conversation overheard in the parking garage elevator on the way back to my car, between two women who appeared to be in their mid-30s.

First woman: She let everybody know that she's still sleeping with the boss from her old job. She texted him a picture of her tatas.

Second woman: I'm not texting anybody a picture of my tatas. But that's just me--I'm old and stodgy.

Guess the casino, #49

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Bellagio. If you couldn't get this one, you just don't get out enough!

I'm not the biggest loser

I was unhappy to record a net loss for the month of January--down $255, to be exact. Not devastating, by any means, but unpleasant and disheartening. Some of it was due to bad luck, of course, but I'll admit that I was also afflicted by a streak of the Fancy Play Syndrome virus. Reverting back to my more habitual by-the-book, ABC, solid, value-bet approach seems to have turned the boat around. This week, though yet incomplete, is already my fifth-best since moving to Vegas, and the very best week that doesn't include a tournament score (i.e., it's my best-ever cash-game-only week).

But in the last couple of days, the news has presented me with more reasons not to feel quite so bad about a -$255 January:

1) There's this guy, who apparently owes Caesars and Rio some $14.7 million.

2) There's Tom "Durrrr" Dwan, who reportedly lost $3.5 million playing online in January. (Reached via this Wicked Chops Poker post.)

3) Then there's the Fertitta family. For a long time, it seemed that everything they touched turned to gold, but since taking their Stations Casinos company private, they are estimated to have lost no less than $3.5 billion. Now that's gotta hurt!

I guess I can take my little bad month in stride....

A spoonful of magic

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

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

Before.

Every.

Hand.

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

People are so strange.

Guess the casino, #48

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: South Point (Did I fool you?)

Dumbest floor decision I've seen in quite a while

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Favorite books

When I posted photos of my poker bookshelves, somebody requested in the comments that I list my top five. I started to put it together, but found that I couldn't. So I decided on a top ten list instead. That was too hard, too. I did finally manage to narrow it down to a top 15.

Note that these aren't necessarily the best books I have. Instead, my criterion was this: If I had read all of the poker books I already own (I haven't--not by a long shot), which ones woud I most look forward to reading again? Take, for example, David Sklansky's Theory of Poker. It's one of the most educational books you can read on the subject of poker. But it's hard work and deadly dull. It's like eating your vegetables--good for you, but not enjoyable. If anybody has ever actually enjoyed reading it, I'd wonder what was wrong with him. Not all of those listed here are fun, but those that couldn't be called fun at least were so informative, so full of new insights, that I lapped them up eagerly.

These are in no particular order. What's more, if you asked me in, say, a month to make this list again, it might turn out different. This is a fairly arbitrary choice based on today's mood.


Read 'Em and Weep, John Stravinsky

Aces and Kings: Inside Stories and Million-Dollar Strategies from Poker's Greatest Players, Michael Kaplan and Bran Reagan

The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook, Dan Paymar, Donna Harris, and Mason Malmuth

The Best Hand I Ever Played: 52 Winning Poker Lessons from the World's Greatest Players, Steve Rosenbloom

Professional Poker: The Essential Guide to Playing for a Living, Mark Blade

Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, Mike Caro (This was AWOL from my photos, which I noticed only when searching for this list. I thought I had gathered them all in, but this one was hiding under a pile of papers. Oops.)

Phil Gordon's Little Green Book, Phil Gordon

Fighting Fuzzy Thinking in Poker, Gaming & Life, David Sklansky

Positively Fifth Street, James McManus

The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time, Michael Craig

Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, Roy Cooke and John Bond (I'm afraid this really exposes what a sicko I am, to put a rule book on my favorites list.)

The Tao of Poker: 285 Rules to Transform Your Game and Your Life, Larry W. Phillips

The Making of a Poker Player: How an Ivy League Math Geek Learned to Play Championship Poker, Matt Matros

The Book of Bluffs: How to Bluff and Win at Poker, Matt Lessinger

Ace on the River: An Advanced Poker Guide, Barry Greenstein (This, too, was AWOL from the photos. It's oversized and doesn't fit on those shelves.)

Guess the casino, #47

To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.




Answer: Planet Hollywood