My most expensive dollar ever

Fortunately for me, most days that I play poker I still actually enjoy it. After three years, I'm still not feeling burned out. I like playing, and on any given day I will basically keep playing until the game goes bad, I'm feeling too tired to continue, or I just feel like I want to go home and do something else.

There are days, though, when, for whatever reason, it feels like a grind and I'm just putting in the hours to collect the money. I don't hate the work, but I'm not really having fun, either. Which is, I suppose, how most of the world's population feels about their work most of the time. When I'm having a day like that, my tendency is to set some arbitrary goal for income for the day (usually $100 or $200 or $300--the amount depends on how ambitious and energetic I feel, how the bankroll has been doing lately, how pleasant the poker environment is, and other intangible factors) and call it quits when I get there. I very much like Tommy Angelo's advice: "[I]t's okay to quit while citing this to yourself as the reason: I want to have fun. I am not having fun. So I will stop this unfun activity, now." (See here.)

Yesterday was one of those days. I was at Mandalay Bay again. I made the first $100 fairly quickly--$70 in the first hand, in fact--so I decided that when I got to a $200 profit I'd call it a day, go home, and finish watching a Netflix movie that I was in the middle of.

About two hours into the session I counted my stack after winning a pot and found that I was up by $199. So close. Just one more pot and I'm done, I told myself.

But I lost the next one, and was then at +$183. I thought about leaving, but it felt like it would be lazy to quit short of my goal--like I hadn't really put in my honest day's work. So I kept going.

I lost the next pot, too, and was down to about +$160. Now I was annoyed because of the extra time it was going to take me to grind back to where I wanted to be. But the table was soft, I wasn't especially tired, and there wasn't anything I really needed to be doing anywhere else, so I decided to put my nose to the grindstone for a while longer.

Grindstone? That's the wrong word. Millstone is what I should have said, because there was one tied around my neck and I was sinking. Next time I counted, I was at +$120 or so, then +$101 (I remember that one exactly), then about +$85.

Just. Could. Not. Win. An. Effin'. Pot.

As far as I could tell, nothing had changed. The table had not suddenly gotten tougher. I had not gone on tilt and started seeing promise in trash hands or making desperate calls. My most objective assessment (though I recognize that one's ability to analyze these things deteriorates and may not always be reliable) was that it was just a bad streak: my draws not getting there, opponents' second-best starting hands catching up, being dealt my best hands in worst position, etc.

So I shrugged it off the best that I could and kept playing.

And I kept losing.

+$85, +$60, +$35 came and went. I finally crashed down through the break-even point.

I reassessed, still felt reasonably good about the EV of the situation, so kept going.

Long story short, I bottomed out at about -$80. I seriously thought about quitting then, because this trend showed no signs of reversing. I still couldn't see that there was anything in particular that was wrong. However, I have enough experience with poker to know that sometimes there is something that is adversely affecting me in some insidious manner and I just can't diagnose it in myself until later, in retrospect, when I'm removed from the immediate situation. I was therefore wondering if this was another of those cases, and, if so, whether I should just take my loss and run away before losing the rest of my stack.

Fortunately, right about then, I finally won the first meaningful pot of the last couple of hours, and was back to about -$20. That gave me some sense of confirmation (rightly or wrongly) that I was OK to continue at least for a while more. And, sure enough, I soon thereafter hit another winner that took me back over the most critical psychological threshold. I left with a big $4 profit to show for my 4 1/2 hours of work.

I could have stayed longer, but I had enough uncertainty about whether there was something I wasn't perceiving about my own play or about the situation that I thought discretion was the better part of valor. There's always another game another day. So I left technically a winner for the day, but, of course, feeling like I had actually lost $195. Which sucks.

My buddy Cardgrrl recently had a similar night. As her readers know by now, a few months back she set up for herself an incentive plan to help her get up from the table when she has won enough to be content with. This was to avoid the awful feeling that results from giving it all back. Last week in a cash game she had bought in for $200. Her incentive plan involves doubling the buy-in, so when she was at about +$180, she texted me to say that she should be done and heading home soon. But it was not to be. Just like me, things started heading south. If I remember correctly, over the next few hours she lost not only the accumulated profit but the original buy-in, too. (If I have that wrong, Cardgrrl, my apologies--the days all start to run together in memory after a while.) Had she been content with a $180 profit, instead of chasing that last $20, it would be in her pocket now.

These stories aren't told as criticism of either my own decision or Cardgrrl's decision to stay and win a little bit more. These things just happen sometimes. In both cases, staying was presumably +EV, and just didn't work out as expected. In both cases, the next pot could just as easily have gone my way (or hers) as the other, the goal would have been met, and there would have been joy in Mudville.

That's the thing about poker sessions--kind of like with the stock market, you can't ever tell where the peak is until after it has passed. Especially when playing no-limit, the next pot could double or triple your money, or, conversely, leave you staring at the felt, facing the awful decision whether to rebuy or go home loser for the day, and wishing you had quit one hand earlier. And on the other side of the equation, it's entirely possible that packing up for the day after hitting some arbitrary amount of win is a mistake because the next hand would have doubled your profit for just three more minutes of work. You just never know. There have been plenty of times that I've kicked myself for not leaving when it first occurred to me that I should, but there have also been plenty of times when I've gone on to win a lot more money after that point, and ended up thinking, "Good thing I didn't listen to myself!"

Most of the time I don't have any particular need to employ a stop-loss or stop-win mechanism. (I'm well aware of the arguments for and against such devices, but don't feel like engaging in that discussion at the moment.) But at least for the foreseeable future, I think that when I'm having a "poker is just a grind at the office" kind of day and I have set some arbitrary income amount, I'm going to remember the sting of last night's cost of chasing that last damned dollar, and be willing to cut things short when I get within shouting distance of whatever that amount is.

I've gone viral!

I attended some of the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Championship at Caesars Palace, and wrote up a post about it here. Included were a few video clips I shot of hands being played out. I posted them on YouTube, then embedded them in the blog post.

Well, yesterday YouTube notified me that one of the clips--with Mike Matusow eliminating Tom Dwan--had become very popular. They were inviting me to share in the revenue from ads placed next to it.

This puzzled me, because there's nothing special about that hand or the little video I shot of it. So I went to YouTube to check out the viewing stats:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zhqBPkjRQg

Good Lord! The things has been watched 122,000 times!

This completely boggles my mind. I have no idea why it has been hit so often. None of the others that I did at the same time is over 30,000--and even that number startles me.

I didn't know it, but I guess I'm just about the next best thing to the Numa Numa kid!

Guess the casino, #287

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Answer: City Center (Ha! I cheated, using a shot of a casino that isn't even open yet! My game--I get to make and break the rules whenever I feel like it! :-) Thanks to my friend Cardgrrl for snapping this picture as we drove by the place on I-15 in August.)

Who you callin' dumb?

I think I resent this!

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/oct/05/report-vegas-near-bottom-list-smartest-cities/

At this time of year I always wonder

Why isn't there a Nobel Prize for poker? And/or for blogging? Cuz I'd be a shoo-in, right?

Lying and poker

My friend Shamus just put up an interesting post weaving together thoughts about the new Ricky Gervais movie, "The History of Lying," the soon-to-be-released James McManus book on the history of poker, and the role of lying in the game of poker.

These are the two paragraphs that primarily triggered the desire to comment here:

That said, notice how McManus characterizes “good poker” in the
above-quoted passage, which includes hiding one’s tells and knowing how to
bluff. You can’t play poker without lying, even when you aren’t cheating. The
game doesn’t work without it.

In fact, if you think about it, the ability to lie (and to suss out others’
lies) is pretty much what we’re talking about when we argue for the “skill” of
poker. Sure, as McManus notes, “calculating pot odds and value bets” is part of
“good poker,” too. But knowing those things is hardly sufficient. One has to be
able to lie, and lie well, to succeed.

If I'm reading Shamus correctly, he is categorizing bluffing as lying. He would hardly be the first. I've heard this said many times.

I've never felt right about it, though. I would certainly agree that one cannot succeed at poker without being deceptive about one's down cards. That sometimes involves convincing an opponent that one is stronger than is really true (bluffing), sometimes that one is weaker than is really true (slow-playing). But I do not think that this constitutes lying.

Standard dictionary definitions of lie, in the verb form, consistently involve speaking. See, e.g., here. This seems to me a little narrow, since one can obviously also lie in writing. In the noun form, the definitions mostly involve the word statement. A lie is a statement, whether written or spoken.

I think that's the source of my discomfort with the categorization of deceptive poker play as lying: There is no statement being made--at least not necessarily. I virtually never speak during a poker hand. Some people do, and of course I've heard players utter direct lies about their cards and their thoughts, both during and after a hand.

I don't do that. If somebody asks me what I had, I duck the question. I have several stock responses: "If I answered you, I'd just lie about it anyway" (which is basically true). "Sorry, I can't tell you that." "I think I'd better keep that to myself." Etc.

Two of my most common stock responses are, "Gee, now I can't remember," and "Aces, of course. I only play aces." Both are said with such an exaggerated tone of voice and facial expression such that it is unmistakable that the words are false. That is, the listener will know without a doubt that I'm not telling the truth. This isn't lying, exactly, since there is no intent to deceive, which is the sine qua non of a lie.

My point, though, is that not everything that is deceptive is a lie. I would go further and say that not everything that is deceptive is dishonest. Those who argue to the contrary (and I have had this exact conversation any number of times) usually say something like, "If you make a pot-sized bet when you have nothing, it's a lie, because you're telling your opponent that you have something that you don't actually have." I disagree. I don't think that is either the only or the most natural way to characterize such a bet. I think it can just as accurately be understood to be saying, "I don't think your hand is strong enough that you'll be willing to call a bet of this amount." That is an absolutely true statement, so if a bluff can be considered to constitute a statement at all (as necessary for it to potentially be a lie), it is not necessarily a false or deceptive one.

Similarly, checking the nuts could, I suppose, be considered a form of lie if that action is understood to say, "I have nothing." But surely that's far from the only possible message being conveyed. I think it is more accurate to understand a check to be saying simply, "I decline to bet right now." Again, that is an absolutely true statement.

Put another way, every check or bet is, by nature, ambiguous. Ambiguity is not lying. It is not dishonest.

Based on those considerations, I reject the claim that lying is a necessary part of good poker.

But let me take this opportunity to go beyond the question of whether betting actions constitute lying, which is just a debate about definitions and semantics, and talk more generally about the role of lying in the play of a poker game.

I have kind of a strange and, admittedly, not terribly consistent attitude about lying at the poker table. First, I virtually never lie about my hand or what I was thinking or doing--i.e., about what's going on in the game. As mentioned previously, I prefer to shut up about it, and dodge any questions directed my way. If I decide I want somebody to know what cards I had, I will show the cards. If I don't want people to know, I won't tell them anything. I suppose there probably have been a few occasions when I did tell an outright lie about what I had, but they are so few and far between that I really can't remember the last time it may have happened.

This decision on my part is, I think, an extension of how I see lying in life in general. I've told enough lies and gotten into enough trouble from it over the years that I've decided just not to go down that road any more. I lie very rarely these days, and I can't think of any life situation in which I tell a lie that has any significant consequences. On the rare occasions that I lie at all, it's most often to avoid unnecessary complications. For example, yesterday I stopped at a Walgreen's pharmacy to get a flu shot. Among the questions they asked was, "Are you taking any medications?" Well, the fact is that I am, but I know that none of them pose any problem or contraindication to getting the shot, and if I listed them, it would take more time, possibly lead to other irrelevant questions and diversions, while in the end not benefitting either me or Walgreen's. So I lied and said, "No." I would not give the same lie if the situation were, e.g., that I was about to undergo general anesthesia for surgery, in which case the need for the caregivers to know what's in my system has more potentially serious consequences, and is therefore worth disclosing.

I am not comfortable lying. It makes me squirm internally, though I probably have a good enough "poker face" by now that I'm better at disguising any associated body language than most people are. (There's a show on the Fox network called "Lie to Me," which stars Tim Roth as an expert human lie detector. I watched the first few episodes last season. It had some interesting stuff about how people behave when they're lying, but I thought there was too much sameness from one installment to the next. It's kind of a thin premise for sustaining interest over the long haul, it seems to me.) For the most part that feeling extends to the poker table. I don't like to lie. I'd rather not do it if it can be avoided without too much bother. When playing poker, it's usually easy to be able to avoid it, so I do--at least insofar as it comes to the poker itself.

But, like I said, I'm not completely consistent on this subject. Earlier this year I confessed here about the standard BS line I give people when they ask about my job. This is part strategic, but also partly because I just feel like my personal life is nobody's business, so if they go probing about things that they have no call to know about, they get what's coming, which is useless information and a distracting shower of verbal chaff. If I were perfectly consistent, I suppose I would handle this the same way as when asked about what my cards were, with a clear deflection. But social norms being what they are, one's career is generally considered fair game to ask about. It would therefore strike a discordant and antisocial note to tell the truth frankly, which would be, "None of your business." So I lie. It avoids complications and avoids social awkwardness at the same time.

There is yet another type of lie--at least arguably--in which I will engage while playing poker, and that is saying something like, "Nice hand" to a donkey who played horribly and got lucky. Obviously this is strategic, because I want him to continue playing that badly. I think this is less clearly lying than things like baldly naming cards other than what one really had when asked. That's because it's ambiguous: it could be taken to mean, "Nice outcome you got there," or, "Lucky catch on the river." In other words, it doesn't necessarily mean, "You played that well," which would be a clear lie if said in so many words. Again, ambiguity is not lying. If the listener understands from such a vague comment that he is being complimented on his play, well, that's an interpretation to be found only in his mind, not in my words.

So that's my somewhat complicated, odd, and admittedly inconsistent attitude about lying at poker. Others bring to the table a very different ethic. My friend Cardgrrl, for instance, openly admits that when playing poker, "I lie my ass off." (See here.) She has also mentioned a few times how during the latter portion of her most recent Vegas visit she adopted a new, experimental table persona, which involved a fair amount of lying about herself, her career, and her poker experience. (See here and here.) I don't suppose she would mind me revealing that she has also privately warned me that when we're playing together, I'm just as fair game for being lied to at the poker table as any other opponent. Outside of the poker room, though, I know that she is a scrupulously honest person.

A few weeks ago I told her about a situation in which a player I respected was leaving the game, and I took the opportunity to tell him privately about the only big hand in which we had confronted each other. I had raised, not sure whether he had a bigger pocket pair than mine or two unmatched overcards. He folded a higher pair face up. (I think it was queens to my 10s on an all-baby flop, but I no longer remember for sure.) He had been deeply curious about whether he had done the right thing, so as he was leaving I took him aside and told him the truth. I did so because I both liked and respected him. Cardgrrl, I think it fair to say, was at least puzzled and possibly even shocked by this. She told me she would have lied and told him he made a good laydown.

That's just not my style. It's rare that I will take an action such as I did with this guy (it has happened maybe three or four times in my three years here). Most often I will just leave people hanging, forever wondering whether their decision was correct or not. But if I'm going to tell him one way or the other, it will be the truth, not a lie.

I want to be clear that I don't condemn Cardgrrl's attitude here. In fact, I think it's undoubtedly the most common one among poker players. I've heard Daniel Negreanu, for example, say that he considers openly lying at the table, even to his best friends, to be just part of the game. I fully acknowledge that the prevailing view is that the poker table is a zone in which the usual social opprobrium about lying is suspended, and anything goes, on the truth/fiction scale.

I just haven't been able to bring myself to adopt that point of view and the conduct that would go with it. This isn't because I'm morally or ethically superior in any way. I just find it both personally uncomfortable and almost completely unnecessary (with the two general categories of exceptions I detailed above). What's more, I have a nagging fear that if I became more comfortable and free with lying during poker, it could easily start to spill over into other areas of my life--especially considering how much time I spend at poker. That's an outcome I'd like to avoid.

So, to wrap up a post that is already about five times longer than I planned when I started writing it, I respectfully submit my disagreement with my friend Shamus about lying being an intrinsic part of poker, both from the standpoint of whether betting actions constitute lies and whether it is necessary to tell lies verbally (though, in fairness, he didn't directly say anything about the latter).

Comments, as always, are welcome. And I ain't lying.

Guess the casino, #286

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Answer: Bellagio

Unusual rule at Mandalay Bay

The Mandalay Bay poker room is rather notorious for its quirky set of house rules. (See posts here and here and here for examples.) Today I noticed another.

Most must-move games operate first in/first out. That is, the person who has been at the table the longest is forced to move to the regular game when a seat opens up there. Mandalay does it backwards: The person who has been there the longest is given the option of moving, but is not forced to move; if they go down the whole list and nobody wants to go, the last person to have joined the table is the one that will be required to move.

I like this! It is, so far, the only one of the idiosyncratic house rules at Mandalay that I think is superior to the standard procedure. Those who arrived first should be given the option to move or stay; they have the most invested in having observed opponents and having created a table image.

I had noticed the floor staff operating like this at Mandalay previously, but I thought they were just kind of casually bending the rules. Today a comment from the supervisor clued me in that this is, in fact, what their protocols dictate.

Is there any reason this idea should not be implemented universally? I can't see any down side to it. It seems like the way things should be everywhere.

Poker gems, #316

Mike Caro, in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, p. 272.


7. When You're Not in a Pot and Don't Feel Like Observing--Don't

I believe that one of the main reasons players don't learn observational skills, and thereby sacrifice profits, is that observing constantly is agony. It's better to let your mind rest when it wants to rest. Always observe when you're in a hand. Otherwise, when it's comfortable to observe do; when it's not, don't.

Yes, you can force yourself to concentrate more and play a little better for short periods. But most people will find that they burn out quickly and are unable to play longer sessions in profitable games if they force concentration when their minds rebel. I believe that in those long, profitable games, you should let your brain relax between hands whenever it wants to.

She's got 'em

A woman sitting next to me at Mandalay Bay today had this unusual card protector: two 9mm cartridges welded or soldered together.*

By this means, whenever an opponent asks what she has, she can say, "I've got bullets," and not be lying.**



* You can see by the pierced primers that they have been fired, then reloaded, presumably without gunpowder. If you're knowledgeable about guns, you can even tell that they were fired in a gun with a traditional hammer (e.g., a Browning Hi-Power), rather than in one with an internal striker (e.g., a Glock). This is because the indentation in the primer is round rather than rectangular. If you're truly a gun nut, the kind who loads his own ammunition in the basement, you might even notice that these rounds were badly made and overpressured, probably with an excessive load of powder; the primers are flattened and backed out. If I had made these, I would throw the batch away. Continuing to use them risks blowing up an expensive gun. They're probably pretty safe to use as card protectors, however.


** The shooting enthusiast in me, though, wants to be sure that all understand that it is erroneous, though terribly common, to refer to loaded cartridges as bullets. A bullet is the projectile component of the cartridge, not the cartridge itself.

Guess the casino, #285

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Answer: Rio

Deuce-four is always good, of course...

...but I admit that I've never seen it win quite like this before. See this Twitpic from David Stucke, whose 2-3 made three pair but lost to the mighty 2-4: http://twitpic.com/k4na2

I'm going to Washington, D.C., and Atlantic City

My friend Cardgrrl has kindly invited me to come play some poker on her home turf: an assortment of tournament leagues, private home games, and underground raked cash games in the environs of Washington, D.C. I have accepted the challenge. The games begin Thursday, October 15, and run through Monday, October 26. I understand that I have at least a few readers among the denizens of those games, and it will be fun to meet and play with them. (I briefly met about seven of her "A league" crew when they were out here for the World Series in June, but I'll have to admit I was in a pretty down mood that day and probably didn't make a good first impression. I hope they'll forgive that and give me another chance.)

Plans include a side trip to Atlantic City the first weekend (Saturday, October 17, through Monday, October 19), on one of Cardgrrl's monthly Harrah's-sponsored bus junkets. Harrah's AC will be the main hang-out joint, but I'll see if I can persuade her to take a cab to the other part of town and try playing a bit at Caesars and/or Bally's and/or Showboat, since all should provide equal Harrah's credits. Besides, it will be a chance to add to my poker chip collection.

Any reader tips about the poker rooms, hotel/casino amenities, restaurants, sightseeing (if anything in Atlantic City can be so labeled), etc., will be warmly welcomed in the comments section.

Ever since I moved here, I have thought that I should take a week or at least weekend trip to other poker venues: Reno, L.A., or even little ol' Laughlin. But I just never get around to it. The plethora of poker rooms here just seems too cushy to provide much of an incentive to go anywhere else. I'm glad to finally get--and take--the chance to do so, especially with a travelling companion/poker pal as delightful as Cardgrrl.



(Map shot above nipped from the Atlantic City page of www.thepokeratlas.com.)

Guess the casino, #284

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Answer: M Resort

Guess the casino, #283

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Answer: Fiesta Henderson

Poker gems, #315

Mike Caro, in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, p. 301.


[M]astering the science of poker, both tactical and psychological, is only half the job. The other half is finding the world's weakest wimps and pouncing.

You can relax now

I'm sure all of you "Guess the casino" fans were sweating, because we were getting close to the end of the batch that I had prepared a couple of months ago. Would there be more? Well, you can breathe easy. I just spent the last couple of hours uploading the next batch. "Guess the casino" is now officially safe. They will continue to deploy one a day, usually at 1:00-2:00 a.m., at least until December 4 now, even if I were to die. (That's not in the plans, but ya never know.)

Poker gems, #314

Mike Caro, in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, pp. 298-299.


At the first event at the 2006 World Series of Poker, I held 8-8 when the flop was 8-8-6. You're right. I lost to a straight flush. Couple this with a myriad of two- and three-card "miracles" with which opponents recently eliminated me from the rare tournaments I enter and I could get to feeling sorry for myself.

Now, are those sad stories, or what? At least one kibitzer thought so. On my way out the door at a tournament, he commiserated, "I saw that beat you took with the two jacks last time, too. You really get a lot of good hands beat, don't you?"

I said, "I think I get beat, on average, with better hands than almost anyone else."

He seemed surprised that I would say that. "So, you're usually unlucky?"

"No," I corrected, "I'm not unlucky at all."

"But you just said you got beat with big hands."

"That's right," I told him. "But I don't mind."

Moral of the story

Getting beat with bigger hands on average than your opponents is not a sign of misfortune. Aspiring professional players need to understand that. If you play skillfully, if you have a winning game plan, if you succeed, then you will absolutely lose, on average, with bigger hands than your opponents. That's because the hands you play are, on average, stronger.

Players complain about being drawn out on. Even world-class players complain about it. But, if you're a great player, you should be drawn out on much more often than other players. Why? Because you usually have the stronger hand to begin with. In fact, if you always started with the best hand against an opponent, then every single time you lost, you would take a bad beat. How else could you lose?

So, now you have new goals in poker.

Your New Goals

1. To have as many of your losing hands as possible be bad beats, and
2. To never complain about it.

Poker gems, #313

Mike Caro, in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, p. 296.


I was almost convinced years ago to establish a 900 number that players could use to phone in their most miserable experiences at poker. A fully trained and sympathetic staff would, for $4.95 a minute, listen attentively.

Our skilled Bad Beat hotline employees would know precisely when to sigh empathetically, and when to use one of the three permitted responses: "Oh, my gosh, no!" "That's just awful!" and "I can't believe you didn't kill yourself after that hand!"

I caution players never to talk about their bad luck at the poker table. The reason is simple: Opponents are inspired by your bad luck. They then think of you as someone they can beat, and they play better against you. It's not a good idea to discuss your personal poker misfortunes, because that tends to reinforce the bad experiences, even in your own mind. At my seminars I explain how complaining about missing twenty-seven flushes in a row might actually make you want to miss the twenty-eighth one so that you can show your cards and say, "See, this is what I mean."

Guess the casino, #282

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Answer: Venetian

People are rude and disgusting

No, that's not a new revelation to me. But I was reminded of the fact again tonight during the Mookie.

Look at this. My dear friend Cardgrrl, who got knocked out earlier, was watching me. When it was down to three-handed, it was clear that the other two players had it in for each other. They were raising each other light and shoving light, taunting each other in chat. At the same time, I was going through a card-dead phase: 10-3, 6-2, etc. So I decided to fold a lot more than I usually would, and let those two slug it out for a while. I was perfectly content to sit back and then take on one of them heads-up. Of course, I would have gotten involved if I got dealt something strong enough to go up against both of them with (because neither was in a folding mood), but that wasn't happening.

Anyway, that decision resulted in this chat exchange, spread out over maybe a dozen or so hands:

Full Tilt Poker Game #15046286357: The Mookie (109308627), Table 1

JOELPOKERGOD: Rake well folding up the money ladder like a girl lol
VBPro7 (Observer): yeah he sucks
cardgrrl (Observer): "like a girl"... what are you, an idiot?
cardgrrl (Observer): oh wait...
Rakewell: that would be yes
VBPro7 (Observer): nicejob Rake
VBPro7 (Observer): take these ROOKIES
JOELPOKERGOD: hes a nit
cardgrrl (Observer): better a nit than a not-nice person
cardgrrl (Observer): :)
VBPro7 (Observer): id do cardgrrrl69
JOELPOKERGOD: lol il bluff her azz later
VBPro7 (Observer): i'd rather lick it
cardgrrl (Observer): you all lead very active fantasy lives
cardgrrl (Observer): gl with that
VBPro7 (Observer): she fiesty
VBPro7 (Observer): i wanna oil her up and chase her around
cardgrrl (Observer): better save the oil for your long lonely nights dude

(At this point, Mike Maloney knocks out JOELPOKERGOD.)

Mike_Maloney: I'd say gg, but, you kind of suck
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): Go to hell ealier
VBPro7 (Observer): lol you KINDA suck
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): lol
VBPro7 (Observer): how rude
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): i do suck
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): this is a tough game tho vb
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): lol
VBPro7 (Observer): yeah right
VBPro7 (Observer): im just here for the women
JOELPOKERGOD (Observer): Rakewell is really bad


As long as I'll live, I will never understand (1) men being sexually crude to women just because they are women, and (2) people being nasty to each other for no discernible reason at all. It makes me want to shake them and say, "What the hell is wrong with you that you get pleasure from saying things like that?"

For all the good it would do.

And yes, I do realize that this snippet is fairly tame as such things are known to go. But I don't play online much, so I can usually be blissfully unaware of it.

I haven't tried to look up who JOELPOKERGOD or VBPro7 are, or whether they have poker blogs of their own, but really, guys--it's not funny, it's not cute, it doesn't make you look smart, it doesn't make you look superior. You show off what vile, stupid, pathetic, desperate people you are. It's not at all clear to me why you would want to do that. It's a form of psychopathology that I really don't get.

The overwhelming sense conveyed, to me at least, is that these are people who are seriously screwed up, and have somehow developed such a demented, warped view of the world and its inhabitants that they think this type of interaction is normal. Perhaps it's the only way they know of to behave. If so, that's just as sad as it is annoying.

Close, but not quite

I stayed home and played the Mookie tonight. First time I've ever cashed in it, and I came in second. Of course, with only 17 players, it's not exactly a world-class accomplishment.

It's hard to go deep in a tournament without getting insanely lucky at least once, and this one was mine. As far as I know, it was the only time I got a lot of chips in bad:



That guy had been a thorn in my side for a long time. He was always raising my blinds light, so this time I just called with my AK. I shoved the flop, he called, then I caught my 3-outer. Hee hee hee!

Other than that, I thought I played pretty well throughout. I didn't blow up, which is something of a novelty.

Guess the casino, #281

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




Answer: Tuscany

This would be me

So many diamonds!

I was playing a heads-up sit-and-go HORSE tournament with Cardgrrl a little while ago when this hand came up.

The diamonds just kept pouring in! If I've ever seen a seven-card flush in stud before, it didn't make enough of an impression that I remember it. This one even included four parts of a royal flush to boot.

How rare is it? Well, let's work it out. The first card can be anything, because I'm interested in the question of getting all seven cards from the same suit, not just in diamonds specifically. The second card obviously has to match the suit of the first, or the process is foiled from the get-go. There are 51 unseen cards left in the deck, of which 12 are of the same suit, so the probability of getting dealt a second one is 12/51. Similarly, to get the third card to match, it must be one of the now 11 remaining of that suit out of the 50 unknown cards.

Continuing that logic, the cumulative probability of getting the last six cards all to match the first card in suit is 12/51 x 11/50 x 10/49 x 9/48 x 8/47 x 7/46. That works out to 0.000051 (0.0051%), or about one time in 19,491 hands.

As a double-check that I didn't screw that up, I went at it a different way. There are 1716 different seven-card combinations that you can pull from a quarter-deck of 13 cards (e.g., all the diamonds), because C(13, 7) = 1716. There are four suits, so a total of 1716 x 4 = 6864 different seven-card combinations you can draw from a standard deck that will be seven-card flushes. The total number of seven-card combinations you can draw from a 52-card deck is given by C(52, 7), which Excel tells me is 133,784,560. Therefore, the probability of drawing seven cards at random and having it be one of the all-one-suit combinations should be 6864/133,784,560, which is--TA DA!--0.000051, exactly the same as with the first approach. That give me great confidence that I have the number right.

It's meaningless, of course, since there is no bonus for having a seven-card flush instead of a five-card flush. But it sure is pretty--and quite rare.

Guess the casino, #280

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




Answer: Red Rock

Dumb idea

Last night I watched the season's first installment of "The Amazing Race." I have watched this show most seasons, so I'm not tuning in just because they have a couple of poker players this time around. What can I say? I like it, and "Survivor," and "Big Brother." Sometimes my taste is hopelessly middle class.

Anyway, as most readers already know, Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle are on it. They came up with a boneheaded idea: They were going to go the whole race without telling anybody about the poker thing. Instead, they cooked up a story that they worked in a Southern California nonprofit that served the homeless, or some such crock. Their idea was that if the other teams thought they were rich and didn't need the money, they would become targets and not get any help or sympathy.

Yeah, right.

As soon as they announced this plan, I knew it was doomed to failure. What's more, the reason it couldn't possibly work was so damned obvious that I am at a loss to understand why they thought the scheme would work. The flaw is this: They have both been on television way, way too much not to get recognized by somebody.

Surely they both have had people recognize them in, say, airports. And surely they have both watched the show in previous seasons enough to know that the contestants spend a lot of time in airports. Are they unable to put two and two together?

Sure enough, in the very first episode, it happens just like that. They ask a random stranger for a bit of help--in an airport, no less--and in addition to helping them, he says, "I know who you are," and outs them, where other teams can overhear.

Well, DUH! Of course that was going to happen. So now in addition to the negative effects that might come from other teams being jealous or resentful of their modest degree of success and fame in poker, they have the added burden of having started off the competition lying to everybody else's face, in a way that was trying to win good-guy points (helping the homeless). In other words, they got caught acting in what others will likely perceive not just as a game strategem akin to bluffing, but in a morally and socially reprehensible manner.

Brilliant, girls. Just brilliant.

I do not foresee this duo going far in the game.

Guess the casino, #279

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




Answer: Luxor

Guess the casino, #278

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




Answer: Treasure Island

Miscellaneous stories and observations from the last couple of nights of poker

1.

I played at the Sahara last night, for the first time in (checking records--hold on a sec) seven months. I was very surprised to find in my buy-in a couple of the chips shown above. In the three years I've lived here, the Sahara has never had even a single commemorative chip anywhere to be seen. I like such little treasures, of course. But I'm left wondering: With all of the events, holidays, conventions, etc., that have occurred in the past however-many years, was "Bikefest 2009" really the most significant one, the big thing that finally caused some executive in the casino to say, "By Jove, we have got to get us poker chips celebrating this"?


2.

While I was playing at the MGM Grand tonight, my friend Cardgrrl was playing in a home game somewhere in the D.C. area. She posted a Twitpic along with this message: "Just win a big hand on this board. Can you guess what I had? Hint: Thanks @pokergrump :-) http://twitpic.com/jbm8o"

The photo was this:



In a text message to me, she confirmed that, yes, she really did have 2-4 offsuit there. What's more, she called a pre-flop raise with it! The pot she won was $80 or so. (They apparently use tournament chips in this game, devalued by a factor of 100.) I have no idea what the action was, or what her opponent held.

I was so proud of her. Naturally, I texted her right back to ask if she is now a believer, and if we would be seeing a conversion-story blog post. Her response: "Ummmm. Let's see... NAH!"

Sigh. She has plenty of evidence. See here, and here, e.g. But some people are just stubborn, I guess. With this refusal to accept the obvious fact that 2-4 is the most powerful hand in poker, I'm afraid that, as I have told her privately, she is good, but she will never become great. It's so sad.


3.

Last December I blogged here about how the MGM Grand had been like Kryptonite to me, but that I had finally broken the curse with a win. A month ago I reported that it was continuing to be good to me.

I'm pleased to say that that trend continues. I have chalked up four winners in a row, averaging $252. I'm still at a net negative because the first few losses I had there (this was mostly back in 2006, after which I stayed away from the place for a long time) were unusually large ones. But the trend is clearly set.

This tends to confirm my suspicion that there wasn't anything really mysterious going on--it was just a result of variance acting all in one direction over a small sample set, perhaps combined, after the first two or three visits, with some subtle fatalism creeping into my mindset and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once those two things are broken, poker can get back to normal. (And, fortunately, for me, "normal" = "usually winning.") In fact, I'm kind of getting to like the joint. All signs point to it becoming a more frequent hangout for me.


4.

One of the small things that will contribute to that happening is that this evening I discovered a different restroom. The most obvious one to use, right by the Stage Deli (incidentally, this is the same Stage Deli that sells wonderful GIANT COOKIES, to which I treat myself every time I play at MGM now), is small, cramped, usually overcrowded for its capacity, and not cleaned regularly enough. Using it has always been a distinctly unpleasant experience.

Tonight it was just too crowded to tolerate, so I decided to go in search of an alternative. Not knowing which way to turn, I just continued in the same direction--away from the poker room past the deli and restrooms. I was rewarded for my adventurousness. (Yes, looking for a different restroom in a casino is what counts as "adventure" in my life. Pathetic, eh?)

About 50 steps past the restrooms you come to the "West Wing Bar." Just walk right through it, enjoying the piano player/singer on the way, and on the other side you will find the bar's own set of restrooms. These are clearly not MGM Grand standard-issue, but designed to go with the bar. The lighting is low. There is actual decor inside--slate gray in the men's--with, of all things, real potpourri in wicker baskets between the sinks. The room is spacious, infrequently used (judging my my two trips tonight), and quiet. It makes for a surprisingly effective respite from the cacophony of the casino floor.

But don't tell anybody else, OK? Let's keep this our private little secret.


5.

On the negative side, the MGM Grand's parking garage is right up there among the worst-designed of such structures in the city. I think it is topped in badness by the ones attached to Imperial Palace and Hard Rock, but it scores a solid third-worst. It's too late at night for me to feel like elaborating, but I'll just say that when I'm driving in it I feel lost, and when I'm a pedestrian in it I feel perpetually endangered by the vehicular traffic. That's not a good combination.


6.

I had a major cooler of a hand last night at the Sahara. I had the top full house, and lost to a straight flush. There were only two exact two-card starting hands that had me beat: pocket 5s to make quads on this double-paired board, and the two cards that would complete the only possible straight flush. So, not surprisingly, my opponent and I raised and reraised each other on the river until we were both all in. I thought he might have the same hand I did, or a lower full house, or maybe even the nut flush. I saw the other two possibilties, but didn't want to fall prey to "monsters under the bed" syndrome. So I lost nearly all my chips.

I'm telling you this in order to comment about my opponent's reaction. First, when I called his all-in bet, I immediately showed my cards, without waiting for him. I don't usually do that, but just felt like it here. He gave me a mild slow-roll by issuing this speech before the reveal: "I have to apologize to you for this, sir." Then he showed the stone-cold nuts.

OK, so that was bad enough. But then he kept trying to assuage me. As he was stacking up the chips, and I was counting to see how little I had left, he called out to me to get my attention, then gave me a "nice hand" kind of table thump. He told me I played it fine and just got unlucky. He smiled and tried to get me to smile back.

Bollocks. I hate crap like that. Just leave me alone. You won, you have the money--can't you let it go at that? What are you, my mother or my therapist, feeling some need to make me feel less bad about handing over my stack? I mean, if he is actually feeling guilty about it (and I see no reason that he should--I certainly don't when I come out on the good side of such clashes), then give me the money back to get rid of the shame. But if you're not feeling guilty, then what's all the BS that seems designed to make you feel less bad about it?

Look, dude, you're not a sufficiently skilled emotional manipulator to be able to make such a loss sting any less than it does, so don't bother trying. Maybe I'm the only person in the world who feels this way, but you're adding to my annoyance rather than relieving it. (I doubt that that was his intention--he seemed like a genuinely nice person.) Besides, it's just not your job to make me feel better.

To add to my misery, it made me think of all the stuff I've read from Mike Caro about being the person at the table that the fishies don't much mind losing to--becoming their friend and confidante and supporter and cheerleader, so that they can continue to put their money in bad and not notice or not mind that that's what they're doing. Which made me wonder, "Is that what this guy is doing for me? Does he see me as the live one here, the one that needs TLC so as not to get mad or despondent and leave the game?" Because if that's what he was thinking, well, it just makes me even more irritated.

So here's my message: Just take the money and shut the hell up about it.

Poker gems, #312

Daniel Negreanu, in ESPN's World Series of Poker Main Event coverage, broadcast September 22, 2009.


I don't think bubbling is a bad thing at all. If you're a bubble boy, that means you've got guts. It's the guys who squeak in the money like little rats--those are the ones who should be embarrassed. The guy who goes out with a blaze of glory and says, "I am the bubble boy," y'know, he should be applauded. This is a guy that's going to make it some day.

Guess the casino, #277

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




Answer: Paris

Guess the casino, #276

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




Answer: Imperial Palace

Mac King

There are a bunch of magic shows around town. I've seen a few of them, and they're pretty much interchangeable and forgettable. For a long time I assumed that the "Mac King Comedy Magic Show" was another of them. But then I saw some random comment from Penn Jillette about Mac King being the most innovative magician on the Strip. That caught my attention, and I started looking for opportunities to see the show. When Cardgrrl checked into Harrah's on a recent visit, they gave her a discounted coupon for the show, which she passed on to me. Yesterday I finally used it.

The show is really great. Except maybe for the cutting-the-rope trick at the beginning, essentially everything is presented in ways I haven't seen before. He is constantly foiling the expectations you have developed from a lifetime of seeing other magic shows. Because I never knew for sure where tricks were going, they surprised me, and made me wish I had a videotape of the show so I could go back and watch to figure out how things were done. Most magic shows leave me much less curious than this one did.

It is far and away the funniest magic show I've ever been to. The guy is just naturally funny. For example, at one point a female audience member was instructed to keep a few cards secure. She chose to tuck them inside the front of her bra. When it came time for the cards to be revealed, he asked for them back. She seemed a bit unsure of what to do. She tentatively reached toward the top of her shirt, and but then stopped to ask, "Should I take them out?" Without missing a beat, he responded in deadpan, "Just the cards."

At another point, a young woman was told to write her name across the card she had selected. She was a little unclear on the concept, and used the giant black pen to write her name across the BACK of the card. He rolled with it, and had a great time pretending how difficult it was to pick out the right card with the deck face down.

And if you don't laugh when he dons the "cloak of invisibility" and tiptoes around the stage, well, there's just something wrong with you.

I've never seen free tickets for this show, but it was well worth the discounted $10 apiece price, and I would readily go to see it again.

Famous pros' blogs, real or otherwise

Just a quick note to point you to this funny post from Daniel Negreanu's blog, in which he parodies what other well-known professional poker players' blogs actually are like, or might be like if they wrote them. Enjoy.

Something I hadn't heard of before

I use Yahoo as my home page, and the news feed on it has a "local" section. Today it featured a story from the Las Vegas Sun on the one-year anniversary of the opening of the Erotic Heritage Museum, which had somehow escaped my attention before now. Something, well, different to do when you're visiting next time.

Guess the casino, #275

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




Answer: Suncoast

Guess the casino, #274

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




Answer: Palms

That's the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) I like it (uh-huh, uh-huh)

Mandalay Bay has recently become my default place to play on Sunday afternoons. I have played there four Sunday afternoons of late, booking no losses and averaging $353 per session. This week was no exception, even though it was actually the smallest of my wins.

It was one of those rare sessions in which nearly everything went the way I wanted it to. Because my ex-wife is visiting, I have had to modify my poker schedule to leave more time for playing host. Sunday that meant that I had only three hours to play while she did shopping and window shopping in the Mandalay/Luxor/Excalibur complex.

I hoped to be able to pull in $200 in that time frame, though it wouldn't really be right to consider that a "goal." I know from long experience that one has only limited control over hourly win (or loss) rate in a given session, so it's pretty silly to set specific monetary goals. But $200 was enough that I wouldn't feel like I was hurting my income to have just a short session, so it was what I was hoping for.

The ex arrived back in the poker room five minutes before the three hours was up, and I was up exactly $201, having hit that mark just about three hands before, which was very satisfying. Moreover, I had not had a single difficult decision to make the entire time. Every bluff I ran won me the pot (though that was only three or four). I made only one erroneous river call. I built my stack gradually, with no huge pots; I never won or lost more than about $60 in any hand. The only time my entire stack was at risk was when I was all-in, but I had the nuts at the time, so the risk was minimal--and we ended up chopping that pot.* I used table image and position to get enough respect that I usually won with a raise pre-flop or a continuation bet or check-raise on the flop. Few hands went further, which is why I wasn't faced with any really difficult decisions. In fact, I only lost two hands at showdown. One was the call I shouldn't have made for about $30. The other was when I made a pre-flop raise with some junk, a very short stack moved all in for so little more that I was compelled to call, and I didn't get lucky on him.

Overall, it was the classic Aesop's "slow and steady wins the race." And that, in turn, meant that it was basically stress-free poker.

Days like that are rare, but when they occur, they make me think, "Gee, this is EASY!" Then I usually get snapped back to reality the next time out.


*Here's how I Tweeted that hand. It's worth retelling because it was the only funny (though unintentionally so, on the part of the speaker) thing that happened all afternoon:

Unclear on the concept story: Board is Q8KK. Opponent and I both go all in. We
both show KQ. He says, "I knew I was good unless you had pocket kings."

Guess the casino, #273

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




Answer: Hooters

Another reader learns the 2-4 lesson

See: http://six8suited.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-ones-for-grump.html

Cheap stuff to do in Vegas

I won't ever make this blog primarily about Vegasy things, but today's email from http://savelv.com pointed me to this L.A. Times article about things to do in Vegas for under $21. It listed a bunch of stuff I had never heard of before, so I assume it will be helpful to others, too.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-vegas21-2008sep21-pg,0,450572.photogallery?track=rss

Lookie what I got!

I got a package in the mail today. My dear friend Cardgrrl had told me to expect something. (Did everybody notice that she changed the title--or, more precisely, the subtitle--of her blog after the big decision of last week?)



It's a hoodie sweatshirt! Yay! I love my hoodie sweatshirts for cold poker rooms.

But look more closely:



It's Grumpy! With my name!

Is that the most awesome thing ever, or what?!

Thank you, Cardgrrl. I love it. Instantly my favoritest sweatshirt EVAR.

Guess the casino, #272

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

Comment: This one breaks a rule that I had set for myself, which is that features not accessible to everybody would be off-limits. As you might be able to tell, this photo was taken inside of a men's restroom, which puts female readers at a disadvantage. However, for all I know there are the same or similar doors in the women's restroom. Besides, I think you can take a pretty good guess at the casino just from the general motif, even if you haven't personally been inside this room.




Answer: Caesars Palace

Guess the casino, #271

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




Answer: Texas Station

Poker gems, #311

Mike Caro, in Poker Player newspaper column, September 28, 2009, pp. 4, 25.


Question 2: Don't players get upset if you make them feel foolish by tricking them?

Yes. You should never deliberately upset opponents.... So, immediately after you've tricked an opponent and won a pot, utter something friendly that indicates you were just having fun. I like to say things that suggest I played the hand badly and simultaneously enhance my loose image, such as, "I was hoping you'd call, because I've been out of line so many times. You're way ahead of me overall, but I'm still trying the same stupid tricks." Just giggle and move on. Your opponent isn't likely to be offended, because you're talking about your bad plays, not how superior you were with this one....

Question 6: If I'm feeling uncomfortable about tricking my opponent, what should I do?

I strongly recommend solitaire.

Shows 'n' stuff (no poker content)

I did some non-pokery stuff this week.

1.

Monday night I got two free tickets to "X Burlesque" at the Flamingo. Tickets came from a subscription service I've mentioned before: http://lv.houseseats.com/ The performers (seven of them, I believe) are unarguably attractive women who hit the genetic jackpot in terms of matching contemporary society's ideals of beauty. But I thought the show was pretty lifeless and dull. I didn't even stay to the end. Not my cup of tea.

2.

Also through the houseseats.com service I scored two freebies for Cheap Trick performing the Beatles' "Sargeant Pepper" album live at the Hilton Tuesday night, in what was once Elvis Presley's theater. You can read more about the show here and read a review of it here. My friend Shamus also wrote about the whole deal here. (I offered him my extra ticket, but, for some strange reason, he didn't put his entire life on hold and fly across the country on 24 hours' notice. Same thing with Cardgrrl. Go figure. And these people call themselves my friends. Ha!)

This was one of the most enjoyable shows I've been to in Vegas. The band did not just do a slavish copy of what one hears on the album, as an unimaginative "tribute" band probably would. Rather, one gets a definite sense that Cheap Trick is playing music that they love, respect, and admire, but doing it their own way. For example, tempi were usually faster than the Beatles played. It's highly evocative of the original, but not merely an auditory copy. Of course, some things just shouldn't be changed--e.g., having a prominent clarinet part in "When I'm 64," and it was delightful to have a live orchestra with Cheap Trick making their major contribution. (Hey, Shamus, while I'm thinking about it, here's an idea: Next time you post a hand history and need some pseudonyms for your opponents, how about "Vera, Chuck, and Dave"?) The whole thing was just a glorious celebration of some of the best music that the rock genre has produced, with the band having every bit as good a time as the audience.

3.

I get a daily email from http://www.savelv.com/, announcing one or two free or cheap things to do in Vegas. Today's was an interesting surprise: An exhibition of dinosaur fossils at the Venetian. It's in preparation for a big auction coming up next month. See details here. My ex-wife is in town for the next week, and we were both kind of interested in this, so we went. You can see my photos here. It's a little odd seeing all these things with estimated bidding ranges attached to them. Usually such things are in a museum, not for sale.

4.

After that, we went to Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, also at the Venetian. I had never been there before. I had one free ticket and a $10 off coupon for another ticket, so it cost only $15 for both of us (usual price $25 each). It's OK, but nothing that's worth going out of your way to see. You can see my pictures here. You might even see your favorite Grump (hint: "Make it so"), and/or your favorite Grump's ex-wife (hint: bunny ears). Also, don't miss the last few photos: odd items for sale in the gift shop.

New poker site seems to be unclear on the concept

Above is the banner for a relatively new online poker site, "RedBack Poker."

You see the problem as quickly as I did, don't you?

Black widow spiders have the famous red hourglass mark on the ventral side (underside), not on the back. See here and here, e.g.

So not only is the picture wrong, if the site's name is supposed to be referring to the spider, then the entire name of the business is misguided.

And as for that slogan underneath the photo, well, that's just too weird to need further comment.

More poker dreamin'

Last night I visited Barry Greenstein's mansion. No, not the one that everybody has seen on the televised tours he has done. He has a second, secret mansion. It's underneath the log flume at a major amusement park. (I was sworn to secrecy about which one.) The entire mansion is underwater. So it was a swimming tour. I had a hard time holding my breath at first, but soon I learned to breathe underwater, which is probably a really useful skill to have generally.

Also, Chris Ferguson was there. He had just received the first shipment of copies of the new book he has written, so I was one of the first to get to look through it. For some odd reason, he thought it would be more personal if they reproduced his handwritten manuscript exactly as it was--a page by page photographic reproduction. That is, you have to read the whole book in his own handwriting, mistakes and crossouts and all. He thought it was brilliant. I had my doubts, but kept them to myself.

The end.

Guess the casino, #270

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




Answer: Sahara

"How much do I have to raise?"

Last night I was playing at Mandalay Bay. My most profitable hand of the night, by far, was this: A straightforward player open-raised from second position to $10. I was one off the button, but by the time it got to me the player to my left had his cards in hand, cocked, ready to muck, so I knew I effectively had the button for this hand. There had been two callers ahead of me. I had 8-10 offsuit. I decided to take a flier here.

Good thing I did. The flop was 8-8-6. Bingo! The pre-flop raiser's range was already pretty much defined as being either a big pair or a big ace, because of his unimaginitive style. I hoped for the pair, of course, because with something like A-K he'd likely fire once, then give up unless he improved on the turn. He bet $20. One middle-position player called, as did I. No need to tip my hand yet, nor chase away the guy in the middle, who probably had some middling pair. Turn was an offsuit 3. Original raiser fired another $25. Middle guy bowed out. I decided to milk it further, and smooth-called him again. Let him think I'm on a draw with something like 4-5 or 5-7, or perhaps have pocket 9s or 10s and don't credit him with a bigger pair.

River was the case 8, giving me quads--and, if my assessment was right, giving my opponent a full house for which he would pay dearly. He bet $25 again. I raised to $75. He called so fast that I wished I had pushed for more, but oh well. I showed my 8-10. He flashed his pocket jacks before disgustedly throwing them away.

He had arrived with a friend, who was sitting on his left. I overheard pieces of their subsequent conversation. He said, roughly, "Once he flops trips, I can't blame him for playing it the way he did. But why would he call the $10 in the first place? What I want to know is, how much do I have to raise to get rid of the people with crap hands like that?"

Of course I don't call every pre-flop raise with junky speculative hands. But I do sometimes when the situation seems favorable for trying to hit a well-concealed monster, as here. I had a player whose range I could narrow down to just a few possibilities, one who I believed would pay me off if I hit (he had bought in for the max, so was plenty deep to be worth trying to bust), with position, with a solid table image that would make my actual hand unthinkable, and with a couple of other people having called ahead of me to start swelling the pot. That is what I consider a nearly perfect alignment of the stars to try to hit the big one.

I wonder if my opponent really thought through his question and its answer. If his goal is to be extremely confident that he will drive away all the junk hands that might call and draw out on him, then he could, of course, open-shove. But in that case he'd only get called by the hands that had him in terrible shape: K-K, and A-A, maybe Q-Q if somebody was feeling brave. When nobody had one of those, he'd win the $3 in blinds. Win $3 or face an 80% chance of losing $300--not a pleasant pair of prospects. He could be less drastic and raise to, say, about $50, but the effect would be essentially the same. He'd shoo away all the speculative hands, get raised by the bigger pairs, and have to fold, so his choice would be losing $50 or winning $3. Again, not exactly optimal poker.

Actually, the whole premise of his question is wrong. You do not want to chase away all of the opponents who have lesser starting hands that you hold. You want at least some of them to call your raise and stay in. Their failed attempt to improve to better than what you have is what generates the profit from big pairs.

So how about the other extreme, just limping in? Well, that tends to start a cascade effect that nets you seven or eight opponents and a small pot, which, again, is hardly the optimal situation. There has to be a happy medium.

Mike Caro addressed this a few years ago in what was for me an eye-opening Bluff magazine column titled, "The flawed concept of thinning the field," available online here. For every hand there is a mathematically optimal number of opponents, in terms of maximizing profit--and it is rarely just one, though that's the situation that usually makes post-flop play easiest. Whatever the theoretically optimal number of opponent is, however, that's not always the number you actually want in real-world situations. You prefer keeping in weaker players and driving out the stronger ones. All else being equal, you would also prefer keeping in the ones on whom you have the positional advantage and shooing away those who are behind you. Like with most things in poker, the number of opponents that you want when you're holding a strong starting hand depends on a bunch of different variables.

During my first year of playing in Las Vegas, I experimented with different pre-flop opening raise amounts, trying to find the optimal balance between keeping-in and driving-out. What I eventually homed in on was a formula that I've never shared here before. For a $1-2 no-limit hold'em game, I start mentally counting with $6 if the under-the-gun player folds and $7 if he limps in. I then add $1 for every subsequent player who folds and $2 for every player who limps. So, e.g., if I'm fourth to act and there have been two limpers and one folder before me, the raise amount will be $10. If I'm on the button in a ten-handed game and everybody has limped in ahead of me, that's seven players, and the raise will be to $19. If I'm in the big blind and everybody has limped, it will go to $23. Those big raise sizes don't happen often. It usually works out to between $8 and $16. If I'm under the gun, I make it either $7 or $8, depending on my mood. If there is a straddle, I usually add $4 or $5 to the amount. If there is a raiser and I'm inclined to reraise, I don't use any formula, but fly by the seat of my pants. The formula is adjusted but similar for $1-3 games.*

The reasoning is that, all else being equal, you want to raise more when there are already more people in the pot, and you want to play bigger pots when you're in position than when you're out of position. My formula accomplishes both goals rather nicely. There isn't any perfect formula, and I have to tweak it some depending on the table's propensities, but I have found it to be a extremely useful way of balancing the competing considerations without having to expend a bunch of mental energy selecting a bet size when I really want to be paying attention to my opponents' reactions. It also has the advantage that it looks fairly random to opponents, because there is no way they can watch me over enough hands to deduce what the formula is. I have to say, it has served me well. It may sound overly complicated, but it's really quite simple and has become completely automatic for me.

Key, of course, is that the raise size does not depend on the hand strength. If I'm raising from the button, the raise will be the same whether I'm doing it with A-A, J-J, 2-2, K-Q, 7-8, or 2-4. Whether I raise is not subject to any formula, being completely situational, but the size of the raise is determinate. Of course, opponents don't know that, and they frequently assume that my variable raise sizes are reflecting different hand strengths. Occasionally a player who fancies himself sophisticated and attentive will even say out loud something like, "I noticed that you made it $10 when you had jacks and $15 when you had aces. I'm on to you!" Yeah--good luck with trying to use that, Skippy.

A necessary result of this scheme is that sometimes I'm stuck with a small initial raise from early position, and a whole bunch of callers. But, frankly, I'm OK with that. I don't really want to be playing from out of position through the whole hand anyway, so if I don't improve on the flop, the fact that I've put in only a small amount of money makes it psychologically easier for me to give up on the hand, which is probably how it should be.

I do not, however, have as a goal to drive out every opponent who has a junky, speculative hand, the way the guy from last night seems to want to do. In the long run, I pay my bills when weaker opponents with weaker starting hands keep putting money into the pot with little more than "that hope which springs eternal in the human breast." (Brownie points for the first reader who can identify both the proximal, popular source of that quotation and what classical work it was alluding to. It's cheating to use Google.)

The answer to his question is this, in a nutshell: You're asking the wrong question. What you seem to need more work on is recognizing when you're beaten, so that you stop throwing away additional money. If you can do that more consistently than your opponents, you will deny them the proper implied odds for chasing your jacks with their 8-10 offsuit and similar crap hands. At that point, you have the best of both worlds: You'll make money when opponents chase and miss, and lose the minimum when they hit. That, my friends, is profitable poker. (No, I don't claim to have perfected that technique--not by a long shot. Surely, though, I am at least somewhat better at it than the average tourist, or I couldn't be a long-term winning player.)

But as long as you're going to be what Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari derisively refer to as a "POW" (pay-off wizard), worrying about the correct amount of a pre-flop raise is, as the saying has it, like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.



*Long after I had devised this scheme for myself, I became aware of similar formulas employed for tournament situations, phrased in terms of number of big blinds, depending on the number of limpers and folders that have gone before.

Guess the casino, #269

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Answer: Palace Station

Guess the casino, #268

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Answer: Hard Rock

Guess the casino, #267

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Answer: Stratosphere

How poker room jackpots and promotions work

Over on allvegaspoker.com, friend and reader Grange has written a truly excellent, detailed description of the most common forms of jackpots and bonuses offered by Las Vegas poker rooms, including such things as eligibility rules, how to expect the poker play to be affected by the presence of the promotions, and who are the demographic long-term winners and losers at these things. You can read it here.

I have seriously toyed with the idea of writing a book that would teach casino poker newbies all the little things that we regulars tend to take for granted. (As one of many, many examples, I have several times heard first-timers ask if they can leave their chips at the table while they go to the restroom. It's kind of funny, but you can't blame them for not knowing things; there just aren't any good sources for such information other than asking.) If I ever get around to actually writing it, I wouldn't bother writing a chapter on jackpots and promotions. Instead, I would just try to get Grange to let me use his explanation as chapter guest author. My ego is such that if I think I can't improve on the writing of something in a subject that I know pretty thoroughly, well, it's about as high a compliment as I can pay.

Guess the casino, #266

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Answer: Plaza