Some nights the money comes in by dribs and drabs: a raise and c-bet here, a small pot there, here a bluff, there a bluff, etc. Other nights, essentially the whole session's profit comes in one or two big chunks. I don't have any real preference, as long as the "check out" amount is greater than the "buy in" amount was. But tonight was most definitely in the "big chunks" category. Moreover, both hands were, to use my new favorite poker word, highly diseased.
Diseased hand #1
When playing at the Imperial Palace, where I was parked for the evening, I often go to either a little ice cream shop between the parking garage and the casino, or pop next door to an ice cream place in the food court at O'Shea's. I've been eating ice cream while I play poker, given the opportunity, since back in the Hilton days. I've even been caught in the act on Twitpic.
And here's the crazy thing. In a weird effect so consistent that it has become close to a superstition with me (and I have very few of those), while I have the ice cream and for a short time thereafter, all sorts of good pokery things happen. I can't explain it, but it's true, and has been for four years now. Quad queens happened right after my ice cream, e.g., at the very same table as I was at tonight.
Tonight I made my usual ice cream run about an hour into my session, returning with a single scoop of Nestle Toll House Cookie ice cream. In a waffle cone--obviously (as if one really needs to specify that). I returned to my place at the table, seat 1. Usually I'll wait for the big blind, because that gives me a chance to reduce the mass of the ice cream before I have to juggle playing and eating simultaneously. But as it happened, I was just one off the button, and didn't want to wait nearly a full orbit. So I tossed in my $3, and was rewarded with Q-Q.
There was a button straddle from Seat 2. Seat 3--in a move unprecedented for him--open-raised to $25 from the small blind. (At Harrah's properties, a button straddle forces the action to start in the small blind, which I think is an awful rule, but there's not much I can do about it.) Anytime a player makes a conspicuously large opening raise, I immediately think that his most likely hand is J-J, and I prove to be right about that a large fraction of the time. But you have to be careful, because once in a while you run into somebody who plays aces that way--the regular at Mandalay Bay that I wrote about here, for instance.
Even stranger than an open-raise that large was that it was called in two spots--specifically, seats 4 and 6--before action got to me. This was already causing me to wonder what the hell was going on, because nothing even remotely like this had transpired during my time at this table. The two callers happened to be exactly the players that I had identified as the weakest and least potentially tricky ones in the field, which was helpful, because I didn't think either of them would play aces or kings that way.
I raised to $60. Seat 3 folded, though he seemed reluctant, which solidified my sense that he probably had jacks. Seat 4 moved all in, as I had expected him to do, because he had only about $25 more behind the first $25 he had committed.
I turned over my queens, at which point the man next to me kindly pointed out that Seat 6 had yet to act. Oops. This is a level of boneheaded error that I make pretty rarely, on the order of once or twice a year. The reasons it happened are obvious in retrospect. First, even though I had seen Seat 6 call the $25, and even though his money in the pot was one of the reasons I picked $60 as the reraise point, I had subsequently forgotten about him, because I was focused on whether Seat 3 was going to fold or four-bet it, the latter action likely meaning I'd have to surrender. After he had folded, I just focused on the expected action of seeing the rest of Seat 4's chips go in, and, with that happening, I felt done with the things I had been anticipating. Balancing the ice cream cone and watching for drips at the same time surely didn't help, nor did the fact that Seats 3 and 4 were in my immediate field of vision, while Seat 6 was off in the periphery.
But what's done is done and cannot be undone. (Bonus points for naming the original source for that, without Google.) I shrugged, smiled at the guy in Seat 6, and said, "I guess you get the advantage of playing the hand knowing what I have." To make matters even crazier, Seat 4 had taken the cue from me and turned over his cards, too! He was showing a suited J-9.
By the way, let's pause and reflect on Seat 4's decision-making here. He called a $25 raise--half of his stack--from an early-position, solid player, when there were still eight people left to act behind him, with J-9. Let's call that Bad Call #1. (There will be others, as you shall see.)
So Seat 6 got to make his decision seeing both opponents' hole cards, a rare luxury for him. He thought for a while, then called. Call me crazy (you probably already do, and, really, who could blame you?), but my read of his thoughts while he considered this was that he was plotting to take the pot away because of my error. That is, he thought that if he bet after the flop, I would have to conclude that I was beat, because surely he wouldn't bet a hand he knew to be losing. Maybe he was really thinking that, or maybe I was just projecting on him what I would be thinking in that spot--which is exactly that. But in either case, he ended up making the call. I thought his most likely holding was A-K. Surely he wouldn't put that much in just set-mining with a smaller pair after seeing my Q-Q, I thought, and I had already ruled out A-A and K-K when he had flat-called the initial $25. A-K seemed the only thing left in the likely range that would put in the second call of that huge initial pre-flop raise.
The flop was 3-4-5 rainbow. Not bad for queens, all things considered. Seat 6 quickly grabbed $45 in chips and pushed them across the line. I read him as scared. I was not ready to believe that he had hit that flop as hard as he wanted me to think, especially given what I had concluded about his likely narrow range based on the pre-flop action, combined with my suspicion about how he had been planning to take advantage of my gaffe.
So I shoved. He had just under $100 left now, and I had him covered. At first his face fell. I thought I had caught him in a bluff, and he was going to fold. But to my surprise, he thought for a few seconds, then called. To my even greater surprise, he then turned over A-Q offsuit.
That's right. He had first put in $25 pre-flop after an early-position raise and call. Let's call that Bad Call #2. Then he had called an additional $35 after seeing that I had him crushed, and after seeing that Seat 4 had two of the cards that might otherwise contribute to making him a miracle straight. Bad Call #3. Then he tried to steal the pot, knowing that he was ahead of Seat 4 and in a good spot to win a nice pot if he could drive me away. OK--I can't blame him for that attempt. But when I saw through it and put him to the test, he then called off another C-note, knowing that he had only seven outs (three aces and four deuces). Bad Call #4.
Turn and river were a 10 and a king, changing nothing, and I scooped it, in spite of my horrendous brain fart.
I'm telling you, it's the ice cream. It has magical powers.
Diseased hand #2
About an hour later, we had the same setup: the button and a button straddle at Seat 2, and an opening raise from Seat 3 in the small blind, this time to the more modest and standard $8. There were three calls before it got to me, so I gladly added my $8 after seeing that I had been dealt the Mother of All Hands, the Mighty Deuce-Four.
I rather enjoyed seeing the flop of 3-5-6 rainbow. Just the second nuts for me, in a situation where it seemed highly unlikely that anybody was sitting on the only hand that had me beat (the 4-7).
When it was checked around to me, I made a small $10 teaser bet. Let's see who wants to play. The button raised to $22. Given his pre-flop raise and this move, an overpair seemed the most obvious conclusion. I was stunned to see all three of the others in the hand each make the $22 call in turn. It's hard to figure how five players can all have enough of a hand at this point to want to continue.
I decided to reraise, not because I was afraid of any draws (really, only somebody with a 7-8 could be on a pure draw and have a decent chance of hurting me), but because I was convinced that one of these guys had a set and was slow-playing it, and I wanted to get his stack committed now. If the turn paired the board, I would have a horrible decision, and if it brought a 2, 4, or 7, it could scare off any chance of felting somebody who had a flopped set.
So I reraised to $100. Fold, fold in rapid succession. But then the folding stopped with Seat 6 (a different player than Seat 6 in Diseased Hand #1). He looked anguished. Bingo, I thought. There's my victim with the set, probably 3s, and he has now shifted from sly, confident slow-playing to a sick feeling that he is up against a bigger set. The call would require all of his $70 or so remaining. He pondered for nearly two minutes, then finally put the chips in. The final remaining opponent mucked.
I showed the Mighty Deuce-Four. Seat 6 grimaced, as if he had known it would be bad news. He revealed (drum roll, please) Ad-4d. He could win with two running diamonds, but otherwise was drawing to three cards just to claim half of the pot.
I think we can legitimately label this Bad Call #5.
I don't remember what the turn and river were, but they provided no miracle. How could they, really, when pitted against 2-4?
Ho-hum, flop the nuts, stack a guy, win a big pot. This is just what Deuce-Four does, despite there remaining a few hard-core unbelievers in the poker world.
When you've got ice cream, Deuce-Four, and a few pathological calling stations working together on your behalf, it's hard to lose.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Two diseased hands
Sheldon Cooper likes Vegas
I can be a little slow to get on the bandwagon. I just started watching "The Big Bang Theory" this season, its fourth year on the air. Had I known how smart and funny a show it is, I would have started tuning in a long time ago.
So now I'm going back and catching up on what I've missed. I liked this description of Las Vegas from an episode toward the end of the second season. Sheldon has an idea for cheering up his friend Howard after Howard got dumped by a woman:
"You know, I am given to understand that there is an entire city in Nevada designed specifically to help people like Howard forget their problems. We can replace them with new problems, such as alcoholism, gambling addiction, and sexually transmitted diseases."
As they say in the forums, QFT.
Some beautiful things
There is probably somebody in your life who would think you the best husband/boyfriend/partner/son/daughter/brother/sister/friend/partner/parent/uncle/aunt EVAR if on Christmas morning she opened a box from you and it contained the most beautiful, luxurious silk scarf she had ever seen.
My sweetheart Cardgrrl has designed and hand-made some of the most gorgeous scarves on the planet, and is now selling them at her new web site, http://www.quellebelle.com/. I hope you'll do me the favor of taking a look at them.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Aces cracked
Image from: http://pokerchaos.blogspot.com/2006/04/cracked-aces.html
Yesterday was, I think, the first time I have played poker during an aces-cracked promotion since moving to Vegas--and I did it twice, first at Flamingo, then again at Harrah's. Yesterday was definitely the first time I have ever been dealt pocket aces during an aces-cracked promotion, and thus had to decide how to play them. I went for the standard approach with a raise and a continuation bet. A short stack shoved and I called. I won, though less than the $100 bonus I would have earned by losing the hand.
I first encountered an aces-cracked promotion back when I was living in Minnesota and playing at an Indian casino in Wisconsin. I quickly tired of the inevitable stupid arguments that would break out over whether one should play to win the hand or play to lose it and pick up the jackpot. I maintain that avoiding having to listen to such arguments endlessly repeated is an excellent reason to stay away from poker rooms during aces-cracked promotions. They make me want to stick an ice pick in my eardrums.
The argument should be purely mathematical, though precious few of those engaging it seem to understand how to evaluate it.
The first part of the analysis is straightfoward, thanks to marvelous tools such as PokerStove: What is the probability of losing when you have pocket aces? Here's the answer, given the number of opponents (assuming that they all stay in the hand to the river):
1--14%
2--27%
3--36%
4--44%
5--51%
6--57%
7--61%
8--65%
9--69%
As you can see, you have to drag five people all the way to the river to have even as much as a 50% chance of having your aces cracked. Even in loose-passive games, that does not happen very often.
But the math gets murky after that point. If you're playing to lose--i.e., limping and check-calling--you can't control how much your opponents like their hands, and therefore how much they'll charge you to stay to the river. Furthermore, your attempts to minimize the pot will often--usually, in fact--backfire when you end up winning in spite of yourself, and raking in a much smaller pot than you might otherwise have won.
Knowing the statistically predictable frequency of loss is easy. But determining the optimal strategy also depends on knowing how much equity you'll sacrifice by having minimized the pot when you win, and how much you'll have to put into the pot on calls when you lose. Those numbers are not at all obvious, and they will vary tremendously with the style of play of your opponents at any given table. They are effectively unknowable, and at best can only be guesstimated.
If the jackpot were, say, a million dollars, the conclusion would be obvious: try to lose. Conversely, if the jackpot were one dollar, the conclusion would be obvious: ignore it and try to win the hand as usual. The problem is that the jackpot--typically $50 or $100--is in a range such that one's assumptions about the costs of trying to lose make all the difference in the world about one's conclusion as to the optimal strategy.
And that is why the table arguments about how to play aces are so pointless: nobody knows what is actually best because the answer is completely contingent on unmeasureable and constantly changing input variables.
Because of that, I had decided long ago that if I found myself in such a situation, I would play as usual, try to win, and take the jackpot as a consolation prize if I lost. That may or may not be optimal for any specific mix of opponents, but, in its defense, (1) it is not clearly wrong or suboptimal for typical conditions in a $1-2 NLHE game, and (2) it saves me having to try to run complex math at the table.
Given that aces-cracked promotions are relatively common, you might wonder how it is that I can say that I think yesterday was the first time in 4+ years I've encountered one. First, they typically run during hours that poker rooms are slow; management is trying to get games going when the room would otherwise be idle. I am usually not playing during those hours. Second, I usually try to avoid rooms running such promotions, because I seriously dislike how they distort the game. Yesterday I was seated at both the Flamingo and Harrah's before I knew that the promotions were in effect.
Since leaving the Midwest, I have therefore had a blissful respite from hearing nits criticize somebody who plays his aces aggressively, or stupid laments from a nit who is so "unlucky" as to win with his aces, or endless speculation about what would have happened if an aces hand had been played differently from however it was actually played--a respite which came crashing to a halt yesterday. These are among the most pointless and annoying, yet seemingly inevitable, conversations that will ever afflict a poker table, ranking right up there with jackpot discussions when a bad-beat bonus has become unusually rich.
Spare me. I hope it's another four years before I have to listen in on another round of it.
Guess the casino, #706
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Monte Carlo
A rare public admission
Shane Schleger, one of the bright, rising stars of tournament poker a few years ago, on Thanksgiving Day put up this blog post, in which he admits that he is now toward the end of his third consecutive losing year. It's pretty painful to read, but for those of you who have aspirations to make this game your livelihood, you literally cannot hear of such failures too many times. It can be more brutal that you probably realize, even if one is greatly talented, as "Shaniac" undeniably is. Sobering stuff.
Hat tip: Jen.
Stratosphere: Two failures, one success
In March, 2009, I posted this letter that I had written to management at the Stratosphere, complaining about how they had failed to keep track of my hours of play, and on that basis refused to comp a meal. An excerpt:
When I ask, for the first time in 17 trips to the poker room, for a lousyI never received any sort of response.
meal comp, and am effectively told that I haven’t earned it, that I’m not a
sufficiently valued customer for you (that’s the corporate “you”) to have
bothered taking note of my presence, I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive to
find that an affront.
Today I learned that they have not bothered fixing the problem.
During football season, I usually hang out at Mandalay Bay for Sunday poker. I had an impulse to do something different today. I have long wanted to try a cute little retro place inside the Stratosphere called Roxy's Diner, and today seemed like a fine time, with poker to follow after lunch.
I presented my player's card at the poker room desk and asked them to check how much food comp credit I had accumulated, at the usual rate of $1/hour of play. The answer? He couldn't find me in the system--at all. He asked me whether I had ever played there before, meaning, obviously, that he didn't recognize me. (This is one of the hazards of trying to remain inconspicuous and not call attention to myself--I tend to succeed.)
In addition to the 17 times I had played there prior to that March, 2009, blog post, I have played there seven more times subsequently, for a total of 21.8 hours. Comp credits expire if not used within a year, but five of those sessions, adding up to 16.4 hours, have been within the past year. Four of those sessions and 13.3 of those hours were just in the month of October (2010), when I was finally starting to warm up to the place again.
I have diligently checked in and out every single time. But as far as the Stratosphere poker room is concerned, I've never been there. Somehow they have managed to utterly lose all evidence of my 24 sessions playing in their room, and, at the same time, don't recognize my face or name.
The shift manager behind the desk admitted as how their computer system for this stuff is "totally messed up." Yes, I know that. I have known it for nearly two years. I just had this crazy idea that you MIGHT HAVE BOTHERED FIXING IT BY NOW! (That's my San Kinison impression.)
The only redeeming point in this was that the guy apparently found me credible in my claim that I had played there several times, and gave me a $15 comp ticket on faith alone. I do appreciate that gesture, but I would appreciate it a hell of a lot more if they would straighten up what might be the most miserably useless, screwed-up, unreliable poker-room comp system in the city.
Comp ticket in hand, I mosied the very short distance to Roxy's and was quickly seated. I indulged my urge for a chili cheese dog. It was excellent--and HUGE.
But just as delightful, I found, was the entertainment. Predictably, and in keeping with the diner's theme, they have an Elvis-heavy rotation of oldies playing overhead. That, though, is punctuated, two or three times an hour, by one of several of their waitresses grabbing a microphone and singing live as she wanders through the restaurant, wearing a poodle skirt. One of them even keeps a hula hoop going while she sings, which I would think isn't easy.
None of them is going to win American Idol, but they all had perfectly decent voices, and offered what seemed to me to be genuine enthusiasm for the project. I appreciated their effort and charm.
Sufficiently sated, I went back to the poker room. They had one no-limit table going. I was first on the waiting list. I sat down with my magazine and read. And read. And read. I waited about 45 minutes. It's really, really unusual to have no seat in a game open up in that much time. (My rule of thumb is that a typical game will rotate one player about every 15 minutes, so if there are three tables going, wait time will probably average only about five minutes.) I looked over the players, and got no sense that any of them was getting ready to leave anytime soon, so I gave up.
As it turns out, I maybe should have stuck with the usual Mandalay plan. Sahara had no game. Imperial Palace had no game. O'Shea's had no game. I got a seat at the Flamingo, but it was a table of non-gambling rocks, at which I managed to squeeze out a big $5 profit in an hour and 15 minutes before deciding that there was no prospect for improvement. I ended up at Harrah's, where I played badly and took a small loss before I decided that my heart really wasn't in playing today, and headed for home.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Guess the casino, #705
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Hooters
Here we go again
Once again, I have had somebody grouse about my alleged bad behavior when he was the one at fault.
It happened at Imperial Palace tonight. I limped from early position with Jc-10c, then called a late-position raise to $8 from a big, bald, British, tattooed guy, who I shall call BBBTG. Flop 10-J-Q rainbow. I liked having two pair, but this is about as dangerous a flop as you could name for two pair. I was beaten by 10-10, J-J, Q-Q, Q-10, Q-J, A-K, and K-9, all of which were probably in his pre-flop raising range. I was obviously currently ahead of any one-pair hands, but A-A, K-K, and A-Q all had lots of outs, and even A-J, A-10, K-Q, K-J, and K-10 would give me a good sweat. I didn't want to risk a free card, so I bet $20, the size of the pot. He almost instantly moved all-in for $46 more. This only narrowed his range a little, by effectively ruling out pocket pairs lower than 10-10, which wasn't much help to my decision. The vibe I got from him was more "I'm not going to let you weasel this pot away from me" than "Let's please get all the money in because I have the nuts." So I called.
He did not show right away, so neither did I. The turn was a 4, I think. The river was another 10. That helped me, but was by no means a cinch. I was still losing to J-J, Q-10, and Q-Q. He wasn't moving, so I reminded him, "I called you, sir." He announced, "Two pair."
Not good enough. You don't get to win the pot by just declaring what your cards are, even if you're more specific than "two pair." Oddly enough, other people might not believe you. You have to show them to win. This concept seemed too advanced for the feeble mind of BBBTG to grasp, so I gave him another reminder, more slowly this time: "I. Called. YOU."
He finally took the hint and rolled over his pocket aces, whereupon I quickly showed my full house and took the pot.
Had that been the end of it, I wouldn't be writing this. But it wasn't. BBBTG was playing next to one of his friends, and I overheard scraps of their ensuing sotto voce conversation, the gist of which was that I had acted with unspeakably atrocious manners by not showing my hand when he declared himself to have two pair, because I must have known I could beat any two-pair hand.
Grrrr. How many times do we have to go through this, people? Could it be that there are, somewhere in the world, poker players who do not read this blog regularly, and thus have not heard the word about one's showdown obligations? Hard to believe, but perhaps that is the case.
If you take the last aggressive action, and somebody else calls, then you have the responsibility to show your hole cards first. Alternatively, if you're embarrassed about them, you can just throw them in the muck. But your obligation is not discharged by saying what you have, nor by showing just one card. The even more annoying practice of starting to quiz your opponent about what he has is, or at least should be, grounds for execution on the spot. At least BBBTG didn't do that. (Being a merciful kind of guy, I would be willing to commute his death sentence to castration with a dull, rusty knife and no anesthetic, thus ensuring that his rudeness and stupidity genes were not passd on to the next generation.)
No matter how long I play this game, I will never understand why so many people have such a hard time understanding and complying with this simple, universal rule and practice. Nor will I ever get why people who fail to abide by it feel comfortable bitching about those of us who do, as if somehow we are the source of the problem. It's like veering across the center line into oncoming traffic, then blaming the people who stayed on the right for the resulting head-on collision.
At least BBBTG didn't make me wait for the heat death of the universe. I hate when that happens.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Pre-flop thoughts
Over the years I have evolved a whole bunch of poker-related routines. Some of these I have shared with you, others not. Most of them are just unforgivably boring, such as why I like one particular style of shirt as my poker "uniform." (No, I'm not going to explain it--like I said, way too boring.) Others might be of interest to some readers. For no particular reason other than that it occurred to me just now, I'm going to try to relate what I think about between pre-flop betting and the flop's appearance.
First I recheck my hole cards, memorizing both ranks and suits. I never want to join the players who see two of a suit on the flop and then look at their hole cards again to see if they have a flush draw; rather, I want to be the one who already knows that, and watches the others to see who is looking.
Next I recheck my position relative to both the button and the others in the hand. Am I going to be first to act? Last? Somewhere in the middle? I count how many are in (dealers are supposed to announce this, but they get it wrong too frequently to rely on) and make a mental note that I'm third of four, or whatever. I also note who is first to act, because my habit is to glance at the flop, then move my eyes to whoever is up first.
Side note: There are lots of players who have learned from various sources that they shouldn't look at the flop as it is being put out, but instead should watch for opponents' reactions to the flop. I understand the reasoning behind that advice, but only partially incorporate it. Maybe I'm just too dull to pick it up, but my experience is that very few players give away overt reactions to the flop. The most prominent exception is the classic tell of how long a player gazes: Longer stares at the board often mean a complete whiff, with the player continuing to look, struggling to find something in the flop to like, such as a backdoor draw. It takes me not more than about a third of a second to take in the flop, at which point I shift to watching the first player--which is why I want to know in advance who that will be, and not have to go searching. This practice not only lets me get most of whatever he might give off, but the set pattern of eye movement helps prevent others from reading anything on me.
But back to pre-flop thoughts. The next thing I do is estimate the pot size. There's no need to be precise to the dollar. If there has been a raise to $10 with three subsequent callers, $40 will be my estimate, and I ignore any limpers who folded, what the contribution from the blinds might have been, what rake will get taken out, etc. Irrelevant details.
Based on that, I decide on an amount that I will bet. That doesn't mean that I will bet; the "whether to bet" decision depends on lots of factors, such as the flop texture, my relative position, whether I was the pre-flop raiser, what I know about other players' tendency to aggression, stack sizes, etc. But I want to have in mind what you might call my "default" bet size, what I will bet if I decide to bet and it's either checked to me or I'm first to act. It's usually in the range of 2/3 to 3/4 of the pot. I always reserve the option to change this if there is some compelling reason to do so. E.g., I might overbet the pot if it's highly coordinated and I want to make a draw more expensive than usual, or perhaps I have a big hand and a suspicious opponent, and I want to look like I'm trying to buy it with air. But the point is that having decided on a default bet size in advance removes one set of mental gymnastics that I would otherwise have to perform while everybody is waiting for me and watching me.
After I have rehearsed my hole cards and relative position, estimated the pot, and settled on a default bet size, if there is still time, I look around at opponents' stacks to remind myself about which players in the hand have the big stacks and can therefore either felt me or double me up, which ones have the short stacks and might shove light but can't hurt me much, etc. To the extent that I can, I also try to refresh what I know about my table image, and what mental state the players in this hand might be in: winning, losing, distracted, bored, on tilt, ready to go home, etc.
The goal of all of this mental scut work is to clear the runway, so to speak. I want all of the above information fresh in mind for instant access, so that I can direct my attention to two other things: (1) Analyzing how the flop lines up against my opponents' likely pre-flop ranges, and (2) watching the action transpire, along with interpretation of whatever I might happen to see. If the basic information required for these more demanding mental tasks--i.e., the things I just listed above--has been clarified and put front-and-center in my brain, then my limited cranial resources are freed up for figuring out the poker. Any mental processing effort that you have to devote to, e.g., checking your position or hole cards or stack size is brainpower that can't be used for performing crucial, more difficult tasks, such as running through lists of possible hands sitting under your opponents' card caps, or noticing and deciphering a player's initial move for chips followed by a check instead. Is that a monster hand and he made a last-second change of plan from a lead-out bet to a check-raise, or is it a phony attempt to dissuade you from betting so he can get a free card? You have to notice it first, then figure it out, and it will be harder to do either one if your attention is on rechecking whether your red cards were hearts or diamonds.
Every day--heck, every hand, practically--I see other players chatting, watching TV, and engaging in various other distractions during what I consider to be critical, precious few seconds of mental time between the close of pre-flop action and the flop hitting the table. I can then watch these same players as they try to catch up: whose turn is it? how much is in the pot? etc. You can see it on their faces as they look around, trying to put together the core information they need at the same time that they're struggling to make an analytical decision. You can see them go on overload and make mistakes. They also give off a ton of revealing information about how much they like their situation, because they're mentally so preoccupied figuring everything out all at once that they have no extra attention to keeping a poker face, and they leak tells. I like to think that I almost never do that.
I'm far from perfect at all of this, but I have had a lot of practice, and the set, prioritized list of things to be thinking about, I have found, is a great boon to keeping my thoughts on topic and disciplined. If you don't have such a pattern established for yourself, give it a try and see if you find that it helps you focus better on the hard poker decisions. If you do try it, I'd be interested to hear via the comments section whether you find it useful.
Oh, and one more thing: If you're ever at a poker table with me, and you try to talk to me during what might appear to be unimportant down time in a hand--after I've bet but before the flop hits--now you'll know why I'm likely to ignore you, or dismiss you with a curt "Wait a minute, please," or shoot you an annoyed look that is meant to convey, "Shut the hell up." Frankly, I'm pretty busy right about then, even if I don't look it.
Leftovers
(Toon found at http://www.toonpool.com/cartoons/caveman%20invented%20leftovers_37804.)
I just realized that in not just one, but TWO recent posts I have failed to include a story that I had intended to write up. So while everybody is starting to tire of cold turkey sandwiches, it seems an appropriate time to throw at you a couple of poker leftovers. Both involve specific forms of bad behavior I've never seen before, even though I thought I had seen them all.
Palms
This happened yesterday. I was in seat 10 and not involved in the hand. The pot was contested between Seat 1 and Seat 8. On the river, Seat 1 checked, Seat 8 bet $55, with four to a straight on the board. Seat 1 grabbed a partial stack of chips, enough for a call plus a little bit--maybe three or four chips extra. He put the stack about halfway between himself and the dealer and said, "Could you count it out for me?" That was an odd request, so I leaned forward to watch, trying to figure out what was going on. I could immediately see that the reason he wasn't trying to count the chips himself was that his hands were shaking like a heroin junkie needing a fix. (We would soon learn that he had pocket aces, which explains why he was experiencing an adrenaline surge.) The dealer counted out $55, pushed the extra few back to the player, but left the stack where it was, in the "staging" area. As she was to explain later to the floorman, she felt that she couldn't push them across the betting line (which the Palms poker room enforces) for the player.
At this point, Seat 8 announced, "I have a straight," and showed his cards. Too late, the dealer tried to stop him. She turned to Seat 1, pointed at the stack of 11 red chips, and asked, "Is that a call?" Seat 1, now seeing that he had lost, said, "No, it's not a call. I fold." He showed his aces and mucked them.
It was pretty clear to everybody that his intention had been to call. Why else would he have the chips cut out? Yes, sometimes a player will cut out the chips for a call in order to see what he will have left if he calls and loses, but (1) that's much more a tournament than a cash game thing, and (2) I got no such vibe from him here. There was no indication that he was mulling over what to do. His failure to push his chips across the line was simply a combination of him being lost in the moment and his not understanding that the Palms relies on the betting line--until the dealer pointed this out to him, and he suddenly realized that he had an escape, a way of saving himself $55. All he had to do was lie about his intention.
Floor was called. The dealer gave an admirably clear, complete, and concise explanation of the relevant facts. (Not all dealers can do this. Floor people often get confused because dealers tell incoherent stories, including irrelevant points and neglecting crucial information. It drives me crazy when I have to sit there and listen to the issues get lost in the jumble.) Floor guy was clearly a bit stymied about what to do, and there followed a period of uncomfortable silence.
This void started to be filled by other players saying things like, "That's not right, dude." "That's wrong--you were calling." This went on for maybe 10 or 15 seconds, with no floor decision yet forthcoming, until finally the tension was broken by Seat 1 resigning himself to the situation. He picked up the $55 in chips and tossed them across the table to Seat 8. Floor left, there being nothing more to resolve.
Interestingly, Seat 8 verbally acknoweldged that he was partly to blame for the mess, as he had not waited for action to be clearly finalized before making his announcement, so he gave Seat 1 half of those chips back. (I'm not sure if it was five or six.)
Indeed, both players were at fault. Seat 8 should have waited to be sure that there really was a call locked in before exposing his cards. (In this post I described two situations in which I had to ask for clarification of whether there was a river call before showing my hand.) But his mistake was just that--an innocent error, with none of what attorneys in the area of criminal law like to call the mens rea, the guilty mind.
Seat 1, by contrast, was being dirty, trying to angle-shoot himself an extra $55. I don't think he had malice aforethought; he didn't ask the dealer to count the chips for him as the first step in an elaborate plan to fake a call and withdraw it if he found out that he had lost. Rather, it was a spur-of-the-moment attempt to take advantage of a situation when he realized that he could. Still, it reveals an ugly personality. A player who is at heart honest and ethical simply would not stoop to that, either by planning or on impulse.
Secondary lesson: Betting lines cause more problems than they solve. Erik Seidel says they are "an angle-shooter's paradise." About all of which, see here.
Venetian
The second story is an incident that occurred when I was playing with Grange95 at the Venetian, in the session I wrote about here. (I think this was before BWOP joined us.) This pot was contested between a young man in Seat 1 and 40ish woman in Seat 5. On the river, she bet, he called, saw that he had lost, and momentarily lost control of himself. He threw his cards hard, hitting his opponent in the chest with them.
At first glance, it looked like he had deliberately thrown them at her. That was clearly the interpretation placed on the action by the dealer--Sabrina, whom I have known since she worked at the Hilton back in 2007. Sabrina is a no-nonsense type, with zero tolerance for bad player behavior. (That's not a criticism--it's praise. I wish more dealers adopted the same attitude.) She immediately started calling for the floor, and was fully prepared to have Seat 1 thrown out on his ear--no warnings, just gone, BOOM.
(I am torn at this point as to which pop culture reference to incorporate. Option A, Monopoly: "Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200." Option B, Pulp Fiction, with Jimmie, played by Quentin Tarantino, explaining what will happen if his wife comes home and finds all this "gangster shit" going on: "I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced. No marriage counselling, no trial separation, I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced." Go ahead--you pick. I can't decide which one is more amusing and appropriate.)
But something interesting happened. The instant those cards hit the player, Seat 1's face fell. He was aghast. He started apologizing even before Sabrina could react. He said he had been aiming for the muck. Actually, I believe him, not only because of how quickly and sincerely he reacted, but because I had noticed that the cards took a weird sort of trajectory, initially dipping down, then catching some air and rising up again. The fact that the player hit by the flying cards was the woman who had just beat him in the pot was purely a coincidence--they would have struck whoever happened to be in that seat, as it was on the far end of the line between Seat 1 and the muck.
The victim was incredibly cool about it. In fact, it was only her immediate and complete bestowal of forgiveness that got Seat 1 off the hook. He was truly humbled by his gaffe, and ended a profuse string of apologies by noting, "I need to learn to control both my temper and my aim."
Indeed.
Guess the casino, #704
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Boulder Station
Palmistry
Chips
I played at the Palms today. They had two new chips in circulation:
The first girl looks like a dream, and you'd probably live happily ever after if you married her. As for the second one, well, before you go falling in love with her, you'd better take a good look at her backside.
Wait. That didn't come out right.
You should take a look at the back side of her chip.
Yeah. I don't think anybody wants to be waking up to that. Morning breath is bad enough.
Nemesis
There's a guy I seriously dislike--because he is rude and brash and full of himself--and with whom I have had two major prior confrontations (poker ones, not personal ones), described in way too much detail here and here. He got the better of me the first day we met, but I took a measure of revenge the next.
He joined my game after I had been there a couple of hours:
I was looking forward to stacking him again. He was playing his usual game, full of crazy bluffs and bluster. I was disappointed that in the relatively short time he played we had no large pots together. One time I folded a 4-5 offsuit to his raise because I was out of position. The flop came 6-7-8, and he won it with a continuation bet. Oh, how I wish I had stayed in. It would have been epic.
Mr. Slot Machine
There was a man in a slot machine costume walking around handing out small cash prizes to people playing what I gather is a new game they're trying to promote. He looked so silly I felt obligated to snap a photo, for which he enthusiastically posed:
Here's what I wondered about him: What does he fill in for his job description on his tax forms? I fear it's probably something boring like "Casino promotions," or "Public relations." I think he should make it more interesting, like maybe "Professional slot machine impersonator."
Food
The plans I had made for Thanksgiving didn't end up working out quite the way I had expected, and I ended up just eating some leftover Mexican food at home by myself. (Cue the sad violin music.) I decided to make up for it today. Fortunately, you can sort of cobble together a decent imitation of a Thanksgiving feast just about any day of the year by dropping in on any of a couple dozen different casino buffets.
I had never tried the Palms buffet before, but I had a lot of food comp dollars unused, so I decided to tap into them today. I was surprised that the lunch buffet is only $12. I loaded up my plate with turkey and mashed potatos and gravy and veggies and bread and rice (that's right, tripled up on the carbs), with cherry pie for dessert. It was still a little lonesome, but it felt that I had set things mostly right again. I played poker in a mild turkey stupor.
What about the poker? Sorry. It was pretty boring. I was down, I was up, I got lucky, I got unlucky, blah, blah, blah--nothing sufficiently interesting to write up. Maybe next time.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Today's fun history lesson
I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to find that gambling was going on in our prisons.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/prison-casino-is-history-110786919.html
Hat tip: Mrs. Lederer.
Guess the casino, #703
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Aria
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Guess the casino, #702
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Tuscany
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Guess the casino, #701
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Rio
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Small bit of thanksgiving
I'm playing a HORSE tournament on PokerStars at the moment, and seeing how this hand (in which I was not involved) turned out made me feel very thankful that I am not a poker dealer having to handle this in a casino with stacks of chips and several tense players watching my every move.
Dealer: AARALAA has a pair of Kings
Dealer: AARALAA has 7,6,4,3,2 for Lo
Dealer: Poooookie has a pair of Queens
Dealer: Game #53178663910: AARALAA wins Hi side pot-2 (73) with a pair of Kings
Dealer: Game #53178663910: AARALAA wins Lo side pot-2 (73) with 7,6,4,3,2
Dealer: Apache B has a pair of Aces
Dealer: Game #53178663910: Apache B wins Hi side pot-1 (4,869) with a pair of Aces
Dealer: Game #53178663910: AARALAA wins Lo side pot-1 (4,869) with 7,6,4,3,2
Dealer: gabrielle674 has a flush, Ace high
Dealer: Game #53178663910: gabrielle674 wins Hi main pot (4,623) with a flush, Ace high
Dealer: Game #53178663910: AARALAA wins Lo main pot (4,623) with 7,6,4,3,2
Dealer: Poooookie finished the tournament in 56th place
Good read about degenerate gambling
The real pain of poker, the only chronic, threatening pain, comes from the
daily loss of livelihood—how a player views himself in the face of losing. Pain
tolerance, then, is not measured in how well the player can take a bad beat or how long he can sit at a table without questioning what the fuck has happened. Rather, it is how the player handles an inevitable losing streak and the extent to which he will allow losing to affect his idea of himself. After a month straight of losses, a player can become convinced that losing is his role. Going broke becomes his thing to do, his inevitable outcome. The fog of losing, which feels like a seething, dirty steam in the veins, seeps into everything.
That is the pain of poker that must be endured and held at arm’s length: the existential pain that causes you to turn your vision of doom into a fate-bound story, as tragic and merciless as fiction.
Hat tip: Katie
Guess the casino, #700
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Plaza
Monday, November 22, 2010
In memoriam
I just spotted this little notice in Card Player magazine about the death of Annie. Very nice, whoever did this.
You can read about my experiences with Annie here and in the posts linked therein.
Guess the casino, #699
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Answer: Mirage
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Tech question (blegging)
I used to use Vonage. I stopped the service a year or more ago. But my internet connection still runs through the Vonage router before heading down the Ethernet line to my computer. It's not doing any harm, but I can't see that it's doing me any good, either. So the question is this: is there any advantage to having a router stand between the cable modem and the computer, when there is only one device (the computer) that the signal goes to? I ask because I heard once that a router acts as a kind of firewall, even if you don't need it for connecting multiple devices to your cable modem. True? Or should I unplug and bypass the old Vonage router and save myself the few watts of power it draws?
Cardinal sin in online poker design
I'll get right to the point. When playing online poker, anyplace you click to designate your action in advance should correspond to the same action when the "it's your turn" set of controls pops up. The reason for this is that once in a while you go to click your action in advance of your turn, but just before you click the mouse button, it's suddenly your turn, and you're clicking on a set of controls that wasn't the same a split second before.
Bodog is a prime offender in this respect:
If you go to click on "fold," but the set of controls suddenly changes, now you're not clicking on the "fold" button, but instead on either "1/2 pot" or "3/4 pot." It's not a total catastrophe, because to confirm the bet you have to either click on the "raise" button or hit "enter" on the keyboard, so you can abort.
Still, it's an obvious design flaw that would be easy to fix. I don't understand why they don't.
Guess the casino, #698
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Mirage
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Poker gems, #397
Dusty Schmidt, in Card Player magazine column, November 17, 2010 (vol. 23, #23), p. 58.
I spend probably two to four hours a week actively watching cash-game episodes on the website pokertube.com, where almost all poker-related television from the past four years has been uploaded. I always say that 20 percent of the time that you devote to poker should be practice, and I consider this to be a big part of my practice time.
In fact, I consider it irresponsible not to watch. If you have the opportunity to watch Phil Ivey play hundreds of highly focused hands, and you get to see his holecards, that's something you seriously need to do.
Guess the casino, #697
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Harrah's
"I'm dealing the game"
Last night I was playing at Planet Hollywood. At one point there was a hand with strange action starting with a straddle, several calls, then a big raise, call, min-reraise, couple of calls, and a shove. In the process, I thought that the guy shoving was illegitimately raising himself, because I momentarily lost track of where the raises had come from. I started to point out the problem to the dealer, but after about four words got out of my mouth, I realized my error, and said, "Oh, sorry--never mind." The dealer's response was unusual, in my experience. He said, rather pointedly, "I'm dealing the game here, guy."
It's hard to interpret this as anything other than, "Shut up. I don't need your help. I don't make mistakes."
The fact is, when I speak up to point out a problem in the game, I'm right most of the time. I don't keep track exactly, but it's probably in the neighborhood of 90%. The most common kinds of problems I spot are button location, hands being misread/pot going to wrong player, and illegal raises. Most of the time, dealers appear grateful to have somebody helping get things right.
For example, just last week, at the table next to the one I was at last night (different dealer), there was almost a catastrophe when an all-in on the flop was a set against an overpair. On the turn and river, it seems that everybody was just watching to see if the player with the overpair would catch his miracle two-outer. When he didn't, he started to leave the table, and the dealer started to push the pot to the guy with the set. What nobody except me had noticed was that the final board was a 2-6 straight, though completely jumbled so that it wasn't obvious at a glance. I stopped the dealer and pointed out that it was a chopped pot.
Maybe 10% of the time that I speak up, though, there is something akin to what happened last night: I think there's an error when there isn't. I pretty quickly figure it out and retract my objection with an apology. By far the most common reaction from dealers is along these lines: "No problem. I'm glad you're watching, because I do mess it up once in a while."
So I admit to being a bit miffed at effectively being rebuked by the dealer last night for starting to interject myself. He's somebody who has dealt to me dozens of times, and surely recognizes that I'm a regular and have at least some idea what's going on. I'm not exactly a chatterbox or busybody, trying to wrest control of the game from the dealers at every opportunity.
But beyond that, even if he had never seen me before, it strikes me as both arrogant and unwise to squelch players' attempts to point out and correct errors. The attitude that one doesn't make mistakes and/or that players' vigilance to help prevent problems is unnecessary and unwanted seems to me an invitation to disaster. I told the story of an even more obnoxiously arrogant dealer at the Imperial Palace here. The fact is, dealers make mistakes with some regularity. There's a lot going on, and lots of ways to screw it up, and usually only one way to get it right. Getting everything right all the time is hard. No, not hard--impossible. Dealers should welcome players who are paying enough attention to notice when something gets out of whack, and who care enough to point it out and keep everything kosher, even if it means sometimes having to reassure such a player that things are, in fact, right this time, and the apparent error really isn't one.
About ten minutes after my verbal slap on the wrist, there was a big two-way all-in hand. I was in seat 9 (of 9, to the right of the dealer) and on the button. I noticed that in the commotion of declaring the winner, shoving all the chips his way, etc., the button did not get moved from its place in front of me. The dealer changed decks, made the cut, and dealt the first card to seat 1--at which point I stopped him and pointed out the problem. (The big blind didn't notice that he was going to be paying the big blind for the second time in a row, because he was busy stacking up his new mound of chips.) The two players in the blinds quickly agreed that they had just been the blinds on the previous hand. The dealer set things right and went on with pitching the cards.
I admit that I was deeply, strongly, mightily, intensely tempted to rub his face in it: "Hey, I thought you were dealing this game."
But I didn't.
Where to go?
A question for my readers:
If, hypothetically, I wanted to meet up with Cardgrrl for a few days over the year-end holidays somewhere other than Vegas, Atlantic City, or Washington, D.C., where might we go? Requirements are that it have poker reliably available most of the time, but also have enough other interesting things to do in the vicinity to keep us entertained. Also, it needs to be a Harrah's property, which is perhaps the most limiting criterion. The most obvious choices are New Orleans, Biloxi, and Tunica. But there are less-famous possibilities in places such as Council Bluffs, Joliet, Kansas City, Phoenix, and Hammond.
Recommendations welcome via comments.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Guess the casino, #696
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Excalibur
O'Shea's fun
About an hour ago I got home after spending the evening playing at O'Shea's (not my first choice, but Imperial Palace had no game going). At one point we had @davidstetler, @mjpitts, @dmuzio, @alaskagal1, me, and @sevencard2003 all playing, with @mitzula standing by watching. It appears that @caitycaity arrived soon after I left. It's not often that six people I follow on Twitter (and who I think all follow me) are simultaneously within card-throwing distance of me.
Why am I writing this? Because somebody on that list (I'm not naming names) told me that he or she expected to see something about it in my blog. So even though I don't have any good stories to tell*, now a wish has been fulfilled.
*I could tell one very funny story, but it would embarrass the butt of the joke, so I am refraining out of mercy.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Guess the casino, #695
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Binion's
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Harrah's = Classy (not!)
An email I received today:
And here's the web page it linked to:
(Notice that which Playmates are promised to appear somehow changed between them sending the email and me clicking on it about two minutes later. Notice also the wonderful headline, "House of Blue Poker Open." As in, y'know, B.B. King sings the blue.)
This is, of course, the same Harrah's corporation that earlier this month introduced had scantily clad young women holding seat number signs as the final nine players in the Main Event were introduced.
This is also the same Harrah's that claims, with a straight face, to hold a special women-only poker tournament in the WSOP because it is trying to make women feel more comfortable about poker.
You figure it out. I can't.
Harrah's = Stupid
A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Harrah's inviting me to enter a freeroll tournament. I could choose between poker, slots, and video poker. Well, that's a no-brainer. The offer includes up to two nights at either Harrah's or Imperial Palace.
Today I finally got around to trying to make my reservation. The first problem was that even though the email said that I could use the Harrah's Total Rewards web site to make the reservation, I actually couldn't. I kept trying to enter the offer code from the email into the web site, but the web site kept responding that that was a code that had to be handled by phone instead. Why can't companies get such little things straight?
Fine. I called. I worked my way through the idiotic menu. I gave them my Total Rewards card number and the offer code. The nice lady on the phone asked which nights I wanted to make my hotel reservations for. I told her I didn't really want to say in their hotels, I preferred just staying home in my own bed, since I live in town, and all I was really interested in was the poker tournament. She was sympathetic, but said that it was all a package deal, and if I didn't take the free hotel room, I couldn't get the free tournament entry.
Fine. The tournament is on November 29-December 1, so I picked November 29 for my hotel reservation, at Harrah's. We got that arranged. Then I asked about the poker tournament. She didn't know anything about it--you know, little details like what time to show up. She assured me that I would be given all the necessary information when I checked in to my hotel room.
You do see the flaw in this plan, don't you? She didn't. I gently explained that if I'm checking into my hotel room on the evening of November 29th, that's just a wee bit too late to be giving me information about a poker tournament that will have started earlier that day.
She gave me to understand that there are, in fact, three separate tournaments, and I can enter two of them, so on the evening of the 29th I will be given the required information and can enter the poker tournaments on both November 30th and December 1st.
I'm not going to stay in the hotel room. I know some locals love getting a free "staycation" at the casinos. Not me. To me it's just a bother having to pack stuff for an overnight bag, to be followed by a sub-par night of sleep in an unfamiliar bed and room, followed by having to get up in the morning and drive home before I can do my morning routine things like check my email and RSS feeds. It's just a bother to me with no compensatory up-side.
So what I will do is play poker at Harrah's (or maybe IP) that afternoon or evening, do a fake check-in at the Harrah's desk (I worry that even if I got the detailed tourney info somewhere else, if I don't actually complete the check-in process as scheduled, they'll cancel my tournament eligibility), get the required information and/or tournament entry receipt or whatever, then immediately hand them back the room key and tell them I'm checking out.
This "can't have one without the other" would make some sense if I were paying for the room, like a "buy one get one free" offer. But that's not what this is. It's a free room. I don't want the free room, I only want the free poker tournament entries that come with it. I suppose the corporate thinking is that if I'm physically staying in the hotel, I'll gamble and eat in their restaurants, drink at their bars, and they'll make money from me that way. But I won't, other than poker. Even if I did stay overnight (which isn't my plan), I would either just drive home to eat, or maybe have a free breakfast at their cafe, using my Total Rewards comp points.
It's sheer corporate idiocy. Why can't they just give me the free tournament entry, without making me jump through stupid hoops that will end up costing them money (an unused room, staff time to get me checked in and out, etc.)?
Guess the casino, #694
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Aria
Why is Caesars lying to its guests?
I played poker at Caesars Palace this afternoon. On my way in, which requires a walk past the sports book, I noticed this sign. Actually, I've seen it there other times, too, but just not thought much about it.
If I had seen such a sign three years ago, it would not have surprised me. I remember the Hilton security people being absolutely fanatical about people being on cell phones in the sports book area, even if they were obviously just passing through quickly and paying no attention to the Big Board of Betting Lines.
But such a sign is out of place now, because the Nevada Gaming Commission repealing the regulation cited (22.135) in August, 2008. You can see the letter announcing this on the state's own web site, here.
That means that Caesars Palace, by continuing to have this sign out, is engaging in an ongoing lie to its patrons.
Why are you doing that, Caesars?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Guess the casino, #693
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Treasure Island
Monday, November 15, 2010
What am I missing?
During the run-up to the recent elections, I was puzzled by a series of Twitter posts from well-known professional poker players not only expressing their support for Harry Reid, but saying or suggesting that he would be good for online poker, while his opponent, Sharron Angle, would be bad for online poker. Here are the ones I remember, from Andy Bloch, Howard Lederer, and Barry Greenstein:
Erik Seidel took a more humorous approach:
I responded to a couple of these, asking what evidence they had that Reid had been or would become a friend of the online poker industry. My questions were ignored.
I have not heard of any explicit public statements from either Reid or Angle on the subject of online gambling generally or online poker specifically. (Lederer provided no pointer for his claim about Angle's stance. I checked at the time, and could find nothing about it in her web site's list of formal positions.) I thought that I was sufficiently tuned in to poker-related news that if either of them had made an election point of either supporting or opposing online gaming, I would have heard about it. But the Twitter statements from Lederer, Greenstein, and Bloch left me wondering if I had missed something.
Apparently not. In the current issue of Poker Player newspaper, Wendeen Eolis reviews what the last election did for online poker. Here are a few excerpts about Reid:
The powerful Majority Leader who won a hard fought election helped the
Democrats hold onto control of the Senate. He was the beneficiary of substantial support by online poker interests but yet to be settled is his commitment toward affirmative online gaming legislation this year.
The wily Senator, whose constituents include casinos around Nevada, has been slow to warm up to online gambling. Even in the face of vigorous support by the likes of Harrah's, Sen. Reid has done little more than give equivocal lip service toward U.S. Rep. Barney Frank's supportive bill to regulate online poker.
As of today, Senator Reid is still holding his cards close to his vest....
The online poker lobby sought to turn Sen. Reid's hotly contested re-election bid for his Senate seat into an opportunity, plowing significant support into his campaign, but Reid has continued to hold his cards close to the vest, presumably weighing the incomplete unity of the casino industry. Casino operators remain splintered over the best strategies in the development of online gambling....
Sen. Reid's continuing equivocation has been matched by Representative Frank's fading optimism toward passage of a bill during the upcoming lame duck sessions.
So I appear to have been correct: Reid has neither expressed nor demonstrated support of online poker. Here's a political truism: If a politician seeking your support during an election is unwilling to go on the record as being in favor of your interests, he's not.
Of course, the same would have been true of Angle. I would not have counted on her to support any expansion or explicit legalization of gambling. Even lacking any clear statement from her one way or the other, it's easy for me to believe that her hard-core religious views would win out over the general ideas of freedom, leaving people alone, smaller and less intrusive government, etc.
In short, neither of them could be considered a champion of liberty generally, nor of online gaming in particular. If I had to guess, Reid's loyalties will lie with the brick-and-mortar casinos, and if he ends up supporting anything at all, it will be something that favors established casino corporations entering the online realm, almost surely at the expense of established online operators such as PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. (See, e.g., Grange95's analysis of the amendments to H.R. 2267 earlier this year.) Reid has certainly been a political friend of Nevada casinos, and I see no reason to expect him to be removed from their back pocket anytime soon.
Which brings me full circle. Reid has not been a supporter of any proposal to license, regulate, or explicitly legalize online gaming, and if one had to guess where he would throw future support, it would be toward facilitating Harrah's, MGM Mirage, etc., moving online, and making life difficult for the current online providers. (It is hard to see those two factions ever not being in opposition over legalization, as each would like to preclude competition from the other.)
So why on earth were prominent representatives of the world's two biggest online poker sites shilling for him? Either they're missing something, or I am.
Guess the casino, #692
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Santa Fe Station
Now I'm officially a poker slut
I played in Gadzooks64's PokerSlut tournament tonight. I played it last week, too, when it was HORSE, and bubbled. Grrrr. Had to make up for it tonight, even though the game was scheduled to be stud/8, which is far from my specialty. And I succeeded. Here were the standings when we were on the money bubble:
Yeah, maybe I can make something happen when I have SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT OF THE CHIPS IN PLAY!
When we got down to heads-up, I had a 7:1 chip lead, and thought it would be a cakewalk. It wasn't. Things kept going wrong for me, the lead kept slipping, and then vanished. And it kept getting worse. At one point he had me down about 3:1 in chips. I was despondent, because I couldn't close the deal. But then the cards came back my way when the limits were sky-high, and I finally finished him off, claiming my proud $27.50 trophy. But I think it was nearly an hour of two-handed play, and I was on edge most of the time. Some players just won't roll over and die the way they're supposed to!
And that's MISTER Poker Slut to you guys.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Simple English FAIL
I saw a print advertisement similar to the above, then took the screen shot of this ad from here. Yet another case in which it seems that a casino and/or its advertising agency has nobody with basic English skills.
Even if I were feeling inclined to forgive the unnecessary hyphenation of bimonthly (which I'm not), using bimonthly (which means every two months) where semimonthly (which means twice a month) is intended is simply wrong.
Yes, I'm aware that many modern dictionaries now give "twice a month" as an alternative definition of bimonthly. That, however, is simply a surrendering to the frequency with which people make this mistake. Allowing bimonthly and semimonthly to mean the same things is intolerable, as it renders both words completely useless. If both definitions are considered legitimate, then one must always follow the use of either word with more words explaining which meaning is intended, in which case it is pointless to use either word to begin with.
There are points of English usage on which reasonable people can differ in opinion. This is not one of them. See, for example, what has become of the American Heritage Dictionary's usage note here. They have basically given up, and advise writers to avoid either word. That is a ludicrous and cowardly solution to a simple problem. The far better solution is to point to the guilty party and laugh in derision, thus shaming him or her into future compliance with the conventional definitions. If necessary, one can taunt the person a second time.
Of course, this error is hardly the Cannery's greatest failing as a company, but I thought it worth pointing out nonetheless.
All-in fake-out
I played at the Rio last night. At one point, with a large pot between three players, the action was to start on Seat 2. The guy in seat 1, who was not in the hand, loudly said, "All in!" The dealer was looking down, counting her tray at the time, and so didn't immediately know where the announcement had come from, and without looking up just repeated for the table, "Player is all in."
There followed a few seconds of confusion for the other players in the hand--just as the joker had intended--but it got sorted out before any apparent damage was done.
When the hand was over, one person who had been involved was visibly upset at the jokester. He told him, "If you do that again, and it causes me to react and somebody else gets a read on me as a result, I'm going to have the floor make you put all your chips in the pot without any cards."
Well, that's just silly. There is no rule that would either allow or require one player to forfeit his chips to another with no cards.* I can't imagine any floor person in any poker room making that kind of ruling.
But the upset guy does have a perfectly legitimate point. An "all in" announcement at a critical moment by somebody not in the hand--especially when repeated by the dealer, as happened last night--could very easily cause a muck by a player not paying full attention, or could cause some sort of dismayed look on the face of one player with a mediocre hand that could be noticed and acted upon by somebody else. While there is no specific rule that directly forbids such a phony outburst, it is surely sufficiently covered by the general admonition not to talk about the hand that is in progress, because it has obvious potential to queer the action.
I was surprised and disappointed that the prankster last night was not even given so much as a warning from the dealer or anybody other card room employee. The outraged player's stupid threat was all that was said about it. Had I been the dealer, I would have called the floor over. Had I been the floor, I would have sternly warned both the offender and the rest of the table that any future such action would result in expulsion from the room. Like telling the TSA employee that you have a bomb in your luggage, such things just cannot be tolerated, even if done jokingly.
I remember one time on an early season of "High Stakes Poker," there was a hand between Daniel Negreanu and Antonio Esfandiari. Esfandiari folded when Negreanu wasn't watching him, so didn't realize what had happened. Esfandiari took advantage of the situation to scare Negreanu with a verbal "All in." Oh, look--I found the clip on YouTube!
There's nothing wrong with this little prank, as the action was over, so there was no way to influence the outcome of the hand. But I wonder if people have seen this and decided that it's a good joke to emulate, not realizing that it's an entirely different matter when there is still action pending.
*Certainly a player can be ejected from a tournament for a variety of rules infractions, and his chips forfeited, but they are simply removed from play, not given to any other player. Also, it is possible for a player to have to forfeit his chips to another with no cards in the specific circumstance where he has legitimately declared himself all in, gets called by a bigger stack, then fails to protect his hand and his cards are accidentally mucked by the dealer. But, obviously, neither of these situations is what I had in mind when making the generalization above.
Nice editing, morons
This notice (probably actually an ad disguised as copy; I am cynical enough to suspect that companies have to pay to get mentioned in this kind of feature) showed up in the November issue of Poker Pro magazine.
Notice a slight contradiction between the text and the image?
Well, what can you expect from a magazine that claims to cater to professional poker players, but spends the last couple pages of every issue listing hand rankings and the best hold'em starting hands?
Problem solved
Ever since I got the new computer with Windows 7, I have had problems with the sound files on both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. On Stars, the alerts sounded clipped, as if it would play the first bit of the sound file but not the whole thing. On FTP, some alerts played, others didn't, and it would sort of randomly shift over time which ones worked. Neither playing with the audio options nor reinstalling the software helped.
Today during a tournament break I tried searching to see if others had reported such a problem. They have--along with a fix. Somebody on 2+2 posted this reply he got from Stars support when he asked them about the problem:
We have received a handful of reports such as yours regarding sound synchronization issues on Windows Vista systems. At this time we
believe this issue to be caused by a buggy Vista feature that attempts to
simulate surround sound on ordinary stereo speakers, when used in conjunction with integrated sound systems of certain motherboards. Of note are AC97 sound systems by Realtek, integrated into many ECS, Asus, and Abit motherboards.
You may disable this surround sound emulation in Vista using these
steps:
1) Right-click the speaker icon in the system tray (lower right)
2) Select "Playback Devices"
3) Select "Speakers" and then choose "Properties"
4) Choose the "Enhancements" tab
5) Check the box that says "Disable all enhancements"
6) Click "Apply", and then "OK" to close the dialog(s)
This should return your sound to normal while playing in a PokerStars
game.
Good luck in your games, and thank you for playing on PokerStars.
Voila! I am using Windows 7, not Vista, but the same series of steps solved my issue perfectly, on both Stars and FTP.
As an added bonus, I had been mildly annoyed at how the "virtual surround sound" feature on my computer treated human voices in sound files, adding something akin to reverb, though not quite. It always sounded as if everybody were trying to do the voice of God from "The Ten Commandments." That, too, has now been switched off. And yes, I do have a "Realtek High Definition Audio Default Device," as the PokerStars memo suggests as the culprit.
If only all of life's problems could be fixed so easily.
Guess the casino, #691
To reveal the hidden answer, use your mouse to highlight the space immediately after the word "Answer" below.
Answer: Planet Hollywood
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