Something cool that has nothing whatsoever to do with poker

Last night I was listening to the radio as I drifted off to sleep. It was a talk show, and they were interviewing James Nestor, who wrote a book and runs a web site both called "Get High Now." One of his favorite subjects is auditory illusions--kind of like optical illusions, but for your ears. On the radio they didn't work very well (especially since my bedside radio is mono), but today I went to the web site and tried them through headphones. Interesting. Mind-blowing, even, in some cases. I stress the need for headphones to appreciate the weirdness of these things.

The index to the auditory illusions is here: http://gethighnow.com/audio-highs/

I particularly liked "Cambiata Illusion," "Chromatic Illusion," "Risset Rhythm," "Shephard-Risset Glissando," and "Shephard Tones." But best of all was "Holophonic Sounds."

Go have fun.


P.S. The optical illusions are pretty cool, too: http://gethighnow.com/visual-highs/

Guess the casino, #293

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




Answer: M Resort

Guess the casino, #292

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Answer: Harrah's

Poker gems, #318

Norman Chad, on this week's World Series of Poker installment on ESPN:


See, ace-jack is like ace-queen with fleas--it's just trouble.... Ace-jack looks pretty good, but it's a one-way ticket to Palookaville.


[For a contrary view on ace-jack--pardon me, jack-ace--see here.]

Poker gems, #317

James McManus, in Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, being released October 27, as excerpted in Card Player magazine May 9, 2007 (available online here). (Thanks to my friend Shamus for reminding me of this in an email this morning.)


By the 1870s, as the nation tentatively recovered from the bloodiest conflict in human history, genuine and self-proclaimed experts began publishing books on the new poker variants brought home by veterans. Among the most lucid of these was math professor Henry T. Winterblossom's The Game of Draw Poker (1875). The 72-page primer begins with a brief history of cards, followed by caveats about the morality of playing for money: "Poker, unfortunately, is one of the few games that cannot be played so as to afford any pleasure, without the interchange of money. Indeed one might as well go on a gunning expedition with blank cartridges, as to play poker for 'fun.'" He puts its corrupting potential on a par with faro and betting on horse races, even warning prospective readers: "If they have never indulged in the game, they are earnestly exhorted at this point to seek no further information, but to remain happy in their innocence" - which sounds like a quaintly Victorian selling point similar to warning viewers about the Strong Sexual Content of an HBO series. "It is unnecessary to say that the game should never be permitted to enter the family circle, no matter how trifling the stake proposed may be," he tut-tuts, all part of his wobbly balancing act. "Those who have winked at [the morality of poker], and those who have denounced it, may both be in the wrong. It must be admitted, however, by its most bitter enemy that, as a source of recreation, when moderately indulged in, and stripped of its objection-able features, it presents advantages not to be obtained in any other amusement."

...

[H]e advises readers to "keep steadily in view the principle of conservatism." He admits that while this strategy "may perhaps to a limited degree be open to the charge of timidity, no one will regret in the end having pursued it. The most brilliant play is rarely satisfactory when it terminates in a loss."

As one of the first pokeraticians to focus on psychology, he notes that "a thorough exhibition of each individual character is revealed at every step of the game." More than that, "even the most casual observer cannot help perceiving that the commodity known as selfishness predominates to an unlimited degree, notwithstanding the various contrivances the players adopt to conceal its presence." In keeping with Adam Smith's and Alexander Hamilton's insights about market capitalism, he makes clear that poker is "not only a selfish game, but one that every subterfuge that can be brought to bear is introduced; every artifice that the laws of the game will permit, is pressed into service; and all directed at one object, viz: to win your money."

Guess the casino, #291

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Answer: Gold Coast

How to make poker more fun

I have an idea for how to make hold'em better.

Rather than the dealer pitching cards around the table one at a time, he takes two in a row to give to each player. Additionally, the dealer looks at them first and arranges them with the higher card on the bottom, then carefully slides them to the player with that order undisturbed.

Can you see why this is a great idea? Assuming you lift up the cards so that you see the bottom one first, you will never be disappointed by what the second card is. Never again would you see a lovely king, followed by a wretched four. If you see a king first, you would know that the other card awaiting your eyes can only be another king or an ace! Happy days!

I don't care that this would slow the game down to about half the current pace. The avoidance of that big letdown would be worth it.

Protect your cards

This isn't the first time, and it sure won't be the last, but in this week's episode of the World Series of Poker main event on ESPN we have the situation of a player's cards accidentally being mucked by the dealer. The difference here is that it's the rare case where the entire thing is caught on videotape.

Here's the "victim" (one of the last three women left in the field at this point):




The situation is that J.C. Tran had made an opening raise. Ms. Denis moved all in, later claiming that she had pocket aces (but nobody else saw them, so we have only her word on that).

Here you can see her stack forward and the dealer's hand grabbing her cards. Note that she has no card protector, and her attention is elsewhere.




And, predictably, about one second later her cards are mixed into the muck. She still doesn't know what has happened, because she isn't paying attention:




A few more seconds pass before she realizes that her cards are gone. Then begins the predictable sequence of events: She complains to the dealer, tells him what her cards were, floor guy gets called over, he calls over his supervisor, etc.

One unusual step happened that I don't think should have, though in the end it made no difference. When the supervisor arrived, he allowed Ms. Denis to whisper to him what her cards were. He then went to the muck and lifted the corner of what appeared to be the top two cards, after which he declared her hand dead. Apparently, then, the top two cards were not the ones she claimed to have had. This isn't surprising, since the dealer made no effort to place her cards on top of the muck.

This was a bad decision from the supervisor. The WSOP rules make clear that they will not attempt to retrieve cards from the muck in this situation:

73. If a dealer kills an unprotected hand, the player will have no redress and
will not be entitled to his or her money back. An exception would be if a player
raised and his or her raise had not been called yet, he or she would be entitled
to receive his or her raise back.

The Tournament Director Association's rules are nearly identical (not surprising, since the WSOP rules are derived from them):

39. Unprotected Hands
If a dealer kills an unprotected hand, the player will have no redress and
will not be entitled to a refund of bets. However, if a player had raised and
the raise had not yet been called, the raise will be returned to the
player.

(The latter part of both rules was followed. Ms. Denis had to forfeit the chips required for a call of Tran's bet, but got the rest back.)

There are no wiggle-room words there, such as the player "may" have no redress. Her hand was unprotected by any chip or other object, unprotected by her hands, and unprotected by her attention. It should have been declared dead without any attempt by the supervisor to verify whether the top cards in the muck were the ones she claimed to have been dealt. At least he didn't plow through the entire muck looking to see if he could find two aces somewhere in there to give back to her. That would have been a far worse travesty.

I hated how ESPN covered this. Throughout the drama, they commended the player for taking it so well. I disagree. The only way I would give her credit for taking it well is if she uttered words along these lines: "It's my own damn fault." She never did. She placed the entirety of the fault on the dealer.

Of course the dealer made a mistake, and shares in the blame. But players--especially those in the two seats next to the dealer, where this occurs most commonly--have to know of this possibility and take simple precautions against it. Placing a small object of some kind--or just your hand, as long as you don't cover the cards so that others can't see that you're still in--is essentially 100% effective at preventing this dealer error.

Ms. Denis didn't bother taking that simple precaution. She didn't pay attention at the critical moment. She suffered the consequences, as have many, many before.

I'll never understand why some players refuse to learn from the mistakes of others, but I have no sympathy for them. Not even a little bit. Tough noogies. That's what you get for being stupid and careless.

For previous similar stories, see here and here and links therein.

My WSOP bracelet

In the same spirit with which Barack Obama has just accepted the Nobel Prize for peace, I am humbled today to accept Harrah's bestowal upon me of a World Series of Poker bracelet--not for anything I have actually accomplished, but in recognition of the fact that I'm currently doing things which may, with some time and luck, eventually lead to having earned it.

Thank you.

Guess the casino, #290

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Answer: Excalibur

One hand from the Mookie

Not everybody reads the comments, I suppose, so you may be missing the discussion that Heffmike started in response to my post last night about the Mookie tournament. He suggested that the hand in question is interesting enough to warrant a post of its own. He may be right. So here it is. (If you've already read these things in the comments to the previous post, there's nothing new here, so move along.)

For reference, here's the hand in a replayer (not very exciting to watch, since there's not much action, but it does tell the basic facts of the story):




First, Heffmike's original comment:

Nicely done... but this...

I was short-stacked and she was trying to knock me out when any sort of opportunity arose for it. A critical moment, in fact, was when I shoved from the big blind with A-5 offsuit after she raised from the small blind with what she later told me had been 8-8. She folded after a long think.

I hope she doesn't make raise/folding a pair BvB three handed a habit. She let you off the hook and you took advantage of it.


My overly long reply:

Well, Heffmike, she was definitely kicking herself afterward for not calling. But your comment prompted me to go review the hand history, which I had not done before. It goes to show that I shouldn't rely on my memory too much. We were not on the bubble; we were down to three-handed already when this hand occurred. (Four were paid.) Also, it was not blind versus blind; she was the button, I the small blind. Finally, this was at a point when I had slightly more chips than she did. So about what I wrote above? Uh, never mind.

Here's the hand history:

Full Tilt Poker Game #15194480191: The Mookie (110330420), Table 2 - 400/800 Ante 100 - No Limit Hold'em - 0:31:06 ET - 2009/10/08
Seat 1: Rakewell (24,651)
Seat 2: Bone_Daddy84 (38,698)
Seat 9: cardgrrl (23,651)
Rakewell antes 100
Bone_Daddy84 antes 100
cardgrrl antes 100
Rakewell posts the small blind of 400
Bone_Daddy84 posts the big blind of 800
The button is in seat #9
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Rakewell [As 5d]
cardgrrl raises to 3,200
Rakewell raises to 24,551, and is all in
Bone_Daddy84 folds
cardgrrl has 15 seconds left to act
cardgrrl has timed out
cardgrrl folds
cardgrrl is sitting out
Uncalled bet of 21,351 returned to Rakewell
Rakewell mucks
Rakewell wins the pot (7,500)
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 7,500 Rake 0
Seat 1: Rakewell (small blind) collected (7,500), mucked
Seat 2: Bone_Daddy84 (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 9: cardgrrl (button) folded before the Flop

Should she have called there? I don't think that's clear. She had put in about 15% of her stack with the raise, so she definitely wasn't pot-committed. She risked going out in 3rd place because I had her covered. What range should she put me on to shove there? Well, I think the broadest possible range would include any ace, any pair, and any two Broadway cards. Against that range, PokerStove says her 8-8 is about 58%/42%. If my range is only pocket pairs, she's exactly 50%/50%. If it's any pair and any ace, she's about 59%/41%. If my range is, say, only pocket pairs of 5-5 and better plus any ace with a 7 or better kicker, then she's about 52%/48%.

So yeah, a call is probably the right move there if all you consider is the numbers. This might be especially so because of thinking that I might be reading her for a blind steal from the button and thus defensively shoving with an even wider range than listed above. And she knows I have a tendency to (1) blow up and go crazy at critical moments in tournaments, (2) believe opponents don't have anything and are making moves--both of which should widen my expected range here.

On the other hand, I had been playing fairly conservatively, not shoving lightly. In fact, I had been letting go of lots of stuff, trying to creep up the money ladder like a little rat (to quote Daniel Negreanu). She had certainly noticed this, so had decent reason to take my shove with some caution. Also, she presumably realized that my decision to shove was made knowing that I had the big blind behind me yet to act. That would have the effect of making her credit me for more strength than would otherwise be the case.

All in all, I think it's a really tough spot and not clear whether it's best to be brave with the 8s or reliquish 15% of the chips and wait for a spot where the equity is more heavily weighted her way.

You can see from the history that she timed out. She was so focused on figuring out what to do that she failed to request more time. In any event, the one thing she was most definitely NOT doing was donating chips my way out of the goodness of her heart. It was a genuinely difficult position to be in, without a single clearly best solution, IMHO.


Heffmike replied:

Yeah, this makes a lot more sense given actual hand history.

It's actually an interesting spot that would make for a decent post in and of itself.


Cardgrrl then added:

@Heffmike: I was getting close to the decision to call, in fact, when I timed out. D'oh! FWIW, if Rakewell hadn't had me covered, it would have been much more of a snapcall.


So that's the discussion so far. Readers, how would you have played it? Would you have shoved in my spot? Would you have called in Cardgrrl's spot? Why or why not?

Guess the casino, #289

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Answer: Boulder Station

Climbing out of the hole

At the end of July I published this brief observational post:

If you start off a poker session digging yourself a deep, ugly hole (as I did today), but manage to claw your way back first to even then to being up (as I also did today), walking away with what is objectively a pretty mediocre and pathetic $103 (which, yes, I also did today) feels like an absolute fortune in one's pocket.

If, conversely, one starts off like gangbusters, raking it in hand over fist, enjoys the pleasures of "stacks and towers of checks I can't even see over" (see here), then gives back nearly all of the gains, and one walks away with the same $103 net profit on the day, for the same number of hours of play, it feels like you've lost a fortune.

It's all relative. And, of course, it's all completely irrational. But like most of us, I have to confess to retaining pockets of irrationality in my brain.

I have, of course, experienced both sides of that relativity. But it's not often that I experience both sides of it in such close proximity as I did this week.

It was just Tuesday that I wrote up what had happened during my session Monday at Mandalay Bay, giving back virtually all of the profit I had accumulated. Today I got to be on the other side of things.

I went for an unusual (for me) afternoon session at Bally's. Bally's is not one of my favorite card rooms, but lately I've seen a spate of Twitter messages from Las Vegas Michael about his sessions there, and the seeming ease with which he has been walking away with ridiculous hourly rates of profit. This has made me think that maybe I should try playing there more than has been my habit. Hey, the Venetian is a much nicer place to be, but if there's a ton of low-hanging fruit at a less desirable venue, I'll grab for it.

Anyway, less than five minutes into the session, I had the two black aces on the button, flopped top set on a monochrome board, and ended up losing to a flopped baby heart flush. My opponent slow-played it until I was pot-committed; I basically had to call his all-in check-raise on the turn, because of the amount that was in the pot, even knowing by that point that I would probably have to pair the board to win. I didn't. That hand cost me about $145.

I spent the rest of the session digging out of that hole. It was pure grinding. Getting-back-to-even poker is never fun poker. But I did it. The pot that put me over the top ("the top" here meaning back to even) actually got me ahead by $21. My plan was to finish that orbit then head home, because I was planning to play in the Mookie tournament on Full Tilt. (See immediately preceding post.) But I got lucky and won two more small pots immediately thereafter and finished up the day ahead by $47.

At one point in the grind, I sent a text message to my friend Cardgrrl to apprise her of my status. After relating the AA/flush hand, I wrote, "Now up to -$85. Monday breaking even felt like a L. Today it will feel like a W."

And it did.

Now, trust me--I know that $47 for four hours of poker is nothing to brag about. But the strange thing is how triumphant it felt. After getting used to the fact that that money is gone and you can't reverse time and get it back, that becomes the reality. Then when one does get it back (not the same chips, of course, but they're fungible, so who cares?), it's like a gift.

But you know, even after writing that, I have to say that it's not quite right. There's nothing gift-like about it. In fact, that's one of the things that felt so good about the result: I earned it. I didn't go on tilt and steam off the rest of my chips. I didn't get desperate or despondent. I just realized--not especially happily, but at least with a quasi-professional equanimity--that I had a job to do and I'd better get cracking at it. And then I did it. I didn't get hit with the deck or anything, but I found the good spots to push and took them. I played well enough to get paid at a rate of right around $50/hour, which, in a $1/2 no-limit hold'em game is not too shabby.

Cardgrrl has written forcefully on several occasions about the feeling that results from this kind of cash-game grinding work (and let's not kid ourselves--it is work). See, for example, here and here. In fact, come to think of it, I wrote a similar post about a year ago, and rereading it just now I still like what I had to say there. Having a sufficiently even keel to recover from that kind of early knock-down is one of the necessary traits for long-term success in this game, and I take a measure of pride that on most days I possess that characteristic in pretty decent quantities.

Of course, it's a lot nicer when I can avoid falling into a hole early in the session. But some holes can't be avoided. When I'm in one, it's good to know that I have both the technical and emotional wherewithal to climb out of it and walk away a winner in spite of what was thrown my way.

The Mookie--I winz it!

Last week I came in second in the Mookie. Thus inspired, when on Tuesday night my pal Cardgrrl told me she didn't have any particular plans for tonight, I suggested we try playing the Mookie again. She agreed. Much to my surprise, I won the thing! To make it even better, Cardgrrl came in second!

And yes, it genuinely was a surprise. I was short stack on the bubble and was just sure that I was going to wind up busto with nothing to show for it. At that point, Cardgrrl and one other player had such dominating chip stacks that I despaired of being able to end the tournament well. (It would be embarrassing, I'm afraid, to reveal the gloomy, fatalistic--and, well, let's face it, grumpy--comments that I was sending Cardgrrl via our IM chat while we played.) But I got lucky in a few key spots and ended up not only surviving the bubble, but knocking out both the 4th- and 3rd-place finishers, thus entering heads-up play with Cardgrrl with a big (just over 3:1) chip lead on her.

Actually, Cardgrrl was chip leader through most of the entire tournament, starting just a few hands into it when she doubled up with QQ versus AK. I think that after that point she was never out of either first or second spots on the leaderboard for the entire tournament (except very briefly when we were down to three), which is a pretty impressive accomplishment.

There's not a lot to report on. It's not like I played so phenomenally well that I want you all to pore over my amazing, brilliant play. But there were a few highlights.

I lost this hand to the deuce-four. I was drawing dead from the time the cards were dealt, obviously.





This may have been the most satisfying hand of the tournament, because I knocked out one of the two rude jerks from last week. He bet, I raised, he called. On the flop he check-raised me all-in. Easy call. What's that they say about revenge being a dish best served cold?




Then late in the game I lost yet another hand to the deuce-four, this time its power being compounded by being in crubs, which got there, naturally. This was all-in on the flop. I flopped two pair, which usually in three-handed play would be practically a guaranteed winner. But deuce-four looks at two pair and just laughs at its puniness. The hand is so powerful that sometimes it works even for those troglodytes and heathens who refuse to believe in it.




Embedded below is an animated replay of the final hand of three-way action, followed by the short (14 hands) heads-up portion of the match, for your viewing enjoyment. Nothing too exciting, though, I'll warn you.





Once again, anybody who suspected that Cardgrrl and I would soft-play each other because of our friendship need only review the hand histories from the bubble play on. I was short-stacked and she was trying to knock me out when any sort of opportunity arose for it. It was scratch and claw. A critical moment, in fact, was when I shoved from the big blind with A-5 offsuit after she raised from the small blind with what she later told me had been 8-8. She folded after a long think. Had she called, she probably would have won and knocked me out on the bubble. [Edit: I got this wrong. See comments.]

This probably sounds peculiar to people not in the poker world, but I'm proud to have as a close friend somebody who has enough integrity to take her best shots at me every time. I wouldn't want it any other way. I was fortunate to come out on top tonight, though that's not usually the case.

Guess the casino, #288

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




Answer: Bally's

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

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




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

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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

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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

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Answer: Luxor

Guess the casino, #278

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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.