Josie, again

Josie and I played some more Sunday afternoon. I told her I wasn't planning to post about the results--and it was the truth, I wasn't planning to. But I changed my mind. It was only a $5 single-table SNG, with nothing on the line between us for lasting longer except pride. But I played so well that, gosh darn it, I just have to crow a little itty bit.

Josie was hit by the deck early on, achieving the first knockout when her pocket jacks flopped a set. Meanwhile, I was going the opposite direction, with nothing working out right. She was one of the chip leaders through most of the tournament, while I was scratching and clawing to avoid elimination. It wasn't looking good for me to outlast somebody who usually had a stack several times the size of mine.

But I hung in there, didn't panic, let the big stacks get bigger as they knocked out the other shorties. I was still short on the bubble, and it wasn't clear I would cash. But then Josie knocked somebody out in 4th place and I was at least into the money.

The other guy with us in the end was a total donkey, and he spewed chips off to me so badly that I took over the chip lead for a while.

Did it annoy Josie that "Fatboy 137" (his screen name) was making me healthy again? You could say that. I think she won't mind me quoting this snippet of a rant from the chat we had going on the side:

I cannot FUCKING BELIEVE that you are the chip leader.
I dominated that game from the start
seriously
thats effing crazy
and that fat boy sucks at poker
no wonder hes givng you chips hand over fist

Heh heh heh!

But in spite of the unfairness of it all, Josie took out fatboy with this hand:

Game #56077281-118: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #3: fatboy137 (BB), $2307.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (D), $6906.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (SB), $3612.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 200.00

fatboy137 posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Ah 7d ]

VeryJosie raises with 800.00

Rakewell0 folds

fatboy137 goes all-in with 2307.00

VeryJosie calls 1907.00

fatboy137 shows [ 4d 4s ]

VeryJosie shows [ 6c 7c ]

*** Flop *** Pot: 5614

[ Qd 3c 9s ]

*** Turn *** Pot: 5614

[ Qd 3c 9s ] [ Ts ]

*** River *** Pot: 5614

[ Qd 3c 9s ] [ Ts ] [ 6d ]

fatboy137 is out

VeryJosie wins 5689.00

(Side note: I know that text hand histories are both difficult and mind-numbing to read. But I spent over an hour looking for a way to convert Merge Network hand histories to animation, and found none. If there's a better solution than this, let me know, because this sucks.)

So then we were heads-up, Josie having more than a 3:1 chip lead, me starting with less than eight big blinds. But I doubled up on the second hand:

Game #56077281-120: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (D SB), $9888.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (BB), $2962.00

*** Blinds ***

VeryJosie posts the small blind of 200.00

Rakewell0 posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Ac 4c ]

VeryJosie raises with 1037.00

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 2962.00

VeryJosie calls 2325.00

VeryJosie shows [ Qs Js ]

Rakewell0 shows [ Ac 4c ]

*** Flop *** Pot: 6924

[ 4h Ks As ]

*** Turn *** Pot: 6924

[ 4h Ks As ] [ Kc ]

*** River *** Pot: 6924

[ 4h Ks As ] [ Kc ] [ 3c ]

Rakewell0 wins 6774.00

That got us to basically even. Nine boring hands later, this happened:

Game #56077281-129: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $6751.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $6099.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 200.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Td 8h ]

Rakewell0 raises with 1000.00

VeryJosie calls 600.00

*** Flop *** Pot: 2200

[ Js 8c Jc ]

VeryJosie bets 1025.00

Rakewell0 calls 1025.00

*** Turn *** Pot: 4250

[ Js 8c Jc ] [ Ad ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 checks

*** River *** Pot: 4250

[ Js 8c Jc ] [ Ad ] [ 8d ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 bets 2250.00

VeryJosie folds

Rakewell0 shows [ Td 8h ]

Rakewell0 wins 6350.00

Now I was the one with the substantial chip lead. But Josie took a chunk of it back here:

Game #56077281-135: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $3876.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $8974.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 200.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Kc 7d ]

Rakewell0 raises with 1000.00

VeryJosie calls 600.00

*** Flop *** Pot: 2200

[ 8s 6h Ts ]

VeryJosie goes all-in with 3276.00

Rakewell0 folds

VeryJosie mucks [ ]

VeryJosie wins 5326.00

Which left me with a much smaller lead, until I got her to raise-fold twice by putting in all-in three-bets:

Game #56077281-138: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 200.00/400.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (D SB), $5301.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (BB), $7549.00

*** Blinds ***

VeryJosie posts the small blind of 200.00

Rakewell0 posts the big blind of 400.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ Ad 9s ]

VeryJosie raises with 1250.00

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 7549.00

VeryJosie folds

Rakewell0 mucks [ Ad 9s ]

Rakewell0 wins 9249.00

Game #56077281-150: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 300.00/600.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (D SB), $4576.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (BB), $7924.00

*** Blinds ***

VeryJosie posts the small blind of 300.00

Rakewell0 posts the big blind of 600.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ 5h 5s ]

VeryJosie raises with 1575.00

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 7924.00

VeryJosie folds

Rakewell0 mucks [ 5h 5s ]

Rakewell0 wins 10199.00

Now I had about 90% of the chips in play and could taste the win. Not so fast, pal, sez Josie. She shoved a bunch of times when I had such crappy cards I felt I couldn't take the risk. So my lead got whittled back down to about 2.5:1 when the next big chip movement occurred:

Game #56077281-155: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 300.00/600.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $3651.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $8849.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 300.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 600.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ 8c As ]

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 8849.00

VeryJosie goes all-in with 3651.00

VeryJosie shows [ Ts Ad ]

Rakewell0 shows [ 8c As ]

*** Flop *** Pot: 13400

[ Qd Th 4c ]

*** Turn *** Pot: 13400

[ Qd Th 4c ] [ Qh ]

*** River *** Pot: 13400

[ Qd Th 4c ] [ Qh ] [ 3d ]

Rakewell0 wins 4898.00

VeryJosie wins 8602.00

Dammit! She won't die! And now I'm the one in jeopardy again! But I won't die easily, either:

Game #56077281-159: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 300.00/600.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $6302.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $6198.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 300.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 600.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ 9s Jd ]

Rakewell0 calls 300.00

VeryJosie checks

*** Flop *** Pot: 1200

[ 9d 2d 5h ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 bets 800.00

VeryJosie calls 800.00

*** Turn *** Pot: 2800

[ 9d 2d 5h ] [ 8c ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 bets 2100.00

VeryJosie calls 2100.00

*** River *** Pot: 7000

[ 9d 2d 5h ] [ 8c ] [ Kd ]

VeryJosie checks

Rakewell0 checks

*** Showdown *** Pot: 7000

VeryJosie shows [ 2c 7h ]

Rakewell0 shows [ 9s Jd ]

Rakewell0 wins 7100.00

That put me back in the driver's seat, and set up the final showdown:

Game #56077281-161: Racoon Room - No Limit Holdem Tournament - 300.00/600.00

Seat #4: VeryJosie (BB), $3402.00

Seat #8: Rakewell0 (D SB), $9098.00

*** Blinds ***

Rakewell0 posts the small blind of 300.00

VeryJosie posts the big blind of 600.00

*** Pre-Flop ***

Rakewell0 got hole cards [ 4d 4s ]

Rakewell0 goes all-in with 9098.00

VeryJosie goes all-in with 3402.00

VeryJosie shows [ Kh Jc ]

Rakewell0 shows [ 4d 4s ]

*** Flop *** Pot: 13400

[ 7s 5h Tc ]

*** Turn *** Pot: 13400

[ 7s 5h Tc ] [ As ]

*** River *** Pot: 13400

[ 7s 5h Tc ] [ As ] [ 8s ]

VeryJosie is out

Rakewell0 is out

Rakewell0 wins 5396.00

Rakewell0 wins 8104.00

And that was all she wrote.

As I said, I was pretty pleased with myself for hanging in there so long, striking at pretty much all the right times (after the first few hands I played went bad), and getting fatboy to donate most of his stack to me.

Josie played well, too.* In fact, I think the only fair way to describe the overall story is that she crushed the game for the first 80% of it, then I rallied at the end just enough to snatch a W from her.

Things went less for both of us in the rematch. Josie was first out when her 9-9 ran into my A-A. I survived just long enough for the 3rd-place min-cash. Meh, but I'll take it.

Josie was much less trash-talky today than yesterday; she only called me a whore eight times (by actual count). Maybe it was her Sunday church-going good behavior. But she was actually very nice and complimentary to me (in between blasts of "WHORE!"), which made the whole thing a fun, enjoyable time, and would have been so even if the outcome had been different.

(EDIT: Josie's account of the game is here.)

*The only time I thought she made a clear mistake was when we were three-handed. She raised, I shoved, and she folded, but stack sizes were such that she really should have called with whatever she had. (To quote the great line from Joe Sebok's WSOP final table commentary when Darvin Moon made an eye-poppingly bad fold, she should have called even if all she was holding was "a Snickers wrapper and a tarot card.")

"Get ready for a butt kicking"

That right there is what Josie said upon accepting my suggestion of a little heads-up poker this afternoon.

We didn't make any side bets on the outcome, but decided on a best-of-seven series of $10 heads-up SNGs on Black Chip Poker.

But I quickly took down the first two matches--including an epic comeback from a short stack in game #2--prompting Josie to tell me, "I dislike you very very much." (This is on top of her calling me a whore practically every time I won a hand.)

She won game #3 by hitting a backdoor flush draw after all the chips were in. I guess for some people that's the only way they can win. I'm just sayin'.

I took #4, then she won #5 when my computer suddenly crashed and I lost a bunch of chips while offline trying to revive the stupid beast. Again, for some people that's what it takes for them to win at poker.

But with the computer recovered, I won game #6, our longest of the bunch. Which, for those keeping track, means that I won the series by the extremely appropriate score of 4-2. Cuz that's just how I roll. Or I should say, that's just how I roll over Josie.

If that's a "butt kicking," I guess I'm a masochist, because I liked it.

Poker gems, #456

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, May 16, 2012 (vol. 25, #10), page 38.

Whenever you beat players in a hand and they complain about how you played it, you're officially in their head.

Poker gems, #455

Andrew Brokos, in Card Player magazine column, May 16, 2012 (vol. 25, #10), page 37.

There is one reason to check and call on the river, and that's to induce bluffs. If you don't expect your opponent to bluff the river, then your options are either to value bet the hand yourself or to check and fold. Checking and calling makes no sense in this situation because virtually any player's calling range will be wider than his value betting range.

Poker gems, #454

Roy Cooke, in Card Player magazine column, May 16, 2012 (vol. 25, #10), page 32.

Deceptive plays have value when being deceptive prevents your opponent(s) from defining your hand and therefore playing correctly against it. There is no point in being deceptive if your opponent can't read the situation anyway or would play incorrectly even if he knew your holding. That might be due to a lack of your opponent's hand reading ability or deficiencies of his play knowledge; but it is also becomes [sic] the case when your hand range widens and even quality hand readers wouldn't be able to narrowly define your hand.

Convert

Praises be, we have another convert to the Gospel of the Mighty Deuce-Four!

http://robvegaspoker.blogspot.com/2012/05/most-powerful-hand-in-poker.html

Language mystery

Last month my friends Martin and Jennifer wrote a pair of essays for the Woman Poker Player web site about poker players' use of the word rape to describe bad beats, coolers, or just generally running bad. I didn't say anything at the time, because I thought they covered the matter so well that there wasn't much left unsaid. Martin in particular expressed exactly what has long been my sense of squeamishness when such terminology gets tossed around so casually. My only disagreement with Jennifer is that I'm uneasy about expanding the use of penalties for linguistic offenses. I think that over the long run social opprobrium is a better tool than the rulebook, at least in this case.

I did have one lingering question about the subject, though, and almost wrote a post about it at the time. In the end, I didn't have any good answer to my own question, so I let it drop. But it came up again Sunday evening, so once again it's on my mind.

Rob's friend "Prudence" was indisputably having a bad night, with a never-ending stream of second-best hands. At one point she exclaimed in frustration, "I'm getting murdered here!"

This was precisely the counterpoint that occurred to me when reading the essays about the offensiveness of rape language: What about similar use of various forms of the word murder? It is almost universally agreed that murder is a worse crime than rape, as evidenced by harsher criminal penalties for the former than the latter in every jurisdiction that I know of. So why is poker players' figurative use of murder less likely to provoke outrage (whether expressed or not) than the identical use of rape?

If this is hypocrisy, I confess to sharing in the guilt. I certainly noticed Prudence's language, because I spent a few minutes pondering this very conundrum just a few weeks ago, but still it didn't strike me with the same reflexive wincing and squirming that would have occurred if she had said, "I'm getting raped here!"

Why is that?

I'm still stuck with the same dilemma I had when I thought about writing this up last month: I don't have a good answer. But this time I'm going through with sending it out into the ether, hoping that somebody else does.

Eclipse

I didn't prepare any special eclipse-viewing glasses or apparatus. Vegas is 20 or 30 miles south of where one would have to be to see the true annular eclipse, anyway. But it's still a sufficient rare event that I wanted to see what little effects could be seen. This was made more difficult than I anticipated by the fact that it occurred so late in the day, so both sunlight and its resulting shadows were nearly horizontal. But I wandered around my neighborhood looking for spots where light was diffracting around edges or through holes. None of them are exactly worthy of National Geographic, but you can certainly tell that something strange was happening with the light.

When it was over, I drove to the MGM Grand, where I knew that fellow bloggers Grrouchie and Rob were already playing. I had met Grrouchie once before, but not Rob. I got there, found them, and moved to their table. I was there with them for about three hours, during which time we absolutely did not EVER talk about either Josie or Tony. Not even once. Isn't that amazing?

Grrouchie epitomized the danger of playing with fellow poker bloggers when he said to Rob, ""I can't wait to get home and make fun of you."

Of course I had to impress upon them the awesome power of the Mighty Deuce-Four, so that they will join me in spreading the gospel. The only time I was dealt it, I called a small pre-flop raise in position, and flopped 2-2-Q. My opponent was the woman Rob refers to in his blog as "Prudence." She bet $10, I called. Turn was a jack. This time she bet $15, I raised to $45. She called, but with apparent consternation. At about this time, Grrouchie was shooting me a look from his end of the table that said, "Do you really have what I think you have?" I gave him a little nod of affirmation. (Prudence was not looking anywhere in my direction, so I didn't risk giving anything away. Besides, she doesn't know who I am, so even if she noticed an exchange of glances, she wouldn't know what it was about.) River was an ace. She checked, I moved all in, she folded. I showed the hand, obviously. So now I have two more bloggers who have personally witnessed the power at work.

Poker skills are transferable

I play a lot of "Words With Friends" (WWF) these days. In case you've been dwelling in a cave for the last few years, WWF is a ripoff of Scrabble (so close that I'm surprised there hasn't been a patent infringement lawsuit) played on Facebook or smart phones or tablet devices. My brother, David, is my most frequent and most tenacious opponent. He works for himself from home, so he can take as much time as he feels like to study out the perfect move. He routinely trounced me when we started playing, but in the last few weeks I have achieved something close to parity with him.

For the most part, there isn't much poker-like reasoning in WWF. There's just no way to know what tiles your opponent might have, except when they've all been distributed and you're on the last few moves of the game. But a couple of weeks ago David and I played a game in which thinking one level deeper than he did made all the difference between winning and losing.

Through the first half of the game, we had stayed entirely within the bottom half of the board. This wasn't planned; it's just the way it worked out when each of us took our most advantageous moves. But then something strange happened: He passed a turn. He had never done this before, except at the very beginning or very end of a game when he had no possible moves. He had occasionally done a tile exchange instead of placing tiles. But just outright skip a turn? Unheard of.

It puzzled me, but I didn't spend much effort trying to figure it out. I wrote it off as an anomaly, and just made my next move.

He passed again.

WTF? Now he had my full attention. It was time for some poker hand-reading skills.

One of the keys to high scores in the game is making "bingos," a term borrowed from Scrabble, in which you play all seven of your tiles at once. This not only makes big words, but you get a 35-point bonus for the feat. If you can do that across a double-word or triple-word square, so much the better. David's game centers on two strategies: Making high-scoring bingos, and blocking the avenues I might use to do the same.

If he had one or two tiles in his rack that made bingoing difficult (letters like J, X, V, and K tend not to lend themselves to flexibility in making words), he would play those where he could, hoping to replace them with letters of high bingo potential--vowels and easy-to-use consonants like N, D, and S. I had seen him do this hundreds of times. If he were really stuck with a completely unusable set of letters, he would trade in a few to gain playability. What on earth would prompt him to just skip a turn?

As I thought about it, there was only one logical explanation: He had a perfect rack for making a lot of different bingos, but had no "hook" on which to attach any of the possible letter combinations he could make, because our game had become so constricted in the lower half of the board. He must be thinking that the lower half was played out, and I would very soon be forced to make the first extension into the upper half, at which point he could stick a bingo onto nearly anything I put out there.

Upon deducing that, my counter-strategy became obvious. It's the same as it is in poker: Once you know what your opponent wants you to do, you do the opposite. So I did. I played one and two letters at a time, finding all the little nooks and crannies in which I could add a tile or two to the already-crowded bottom half of the grid. I was passing up opportunities for higher-scoring plays that I could make if I ventured north, but I was getting free turn after free turn without David scoring any points, so I was happy to continue. I came to think of myself as Brer Rabbit in the briar patch, not wanting to come out where Brer Fox could eat me. Or you could think of me as the tortoise, progressing slowly while the hare was taking a nap.

I knew that David must be thinking, after each turn, "OK, that's it, he has played all he can down there." Of course, he had good reason to think that. Every time I took a turn, I reduced the number of playable spots even further, so his expectation that I would be forced out of the thicket become inexorably closer to being true.

Because of this, I knew that he wouldn't deviate from his plan. With each successive round, it made even more sense for him to skip another turn, because it was ever more likely that I would have to abandon my small-ball strategy. But he badly underestimated how long I could keep playing by myself. I didn't keep track, and the game was now too long ago to be able to retrieve the history, but I'm sure I got at least 15 turns in. He was likely guessing, at first, that I could go no more than two or three.

Eventually, of course, I had indeed filled up every spot that I possibly could, and had to stick a line of letters up into virgin territory. He promptly laid down a bingo, as I was sure he would. But it was too little too late. My extended stay down in the land of the little scores had inflicted the death of a thousand cuts. Picking up five or ten points at a time had both given me an insurmountable lead and depleted the supply of available tiles. The game was over a couple of moves later.

He texted me, "That didn't work out the way I had planned." I asked him to explain his unprecedented tactic (as if I didn't already know it). He told me precisely what I had deduced: He didn't want to wreck his high-flexibility board by playing one or two tiles at a time, thus risking picking up a tile that would impair the bingo potential, and instead decided to wait for me to create a hook for him to make a big score off of--but I didn't cooperate.

I told him that I had guessed that that was exactly what was happening, and that I had intentionally devised a way to foil his nefarious plot. He replied that it was not nefarious, but, in fact, a grand and glorious plan, "opposed only by evildoers who hate America."

That gave me a genuine LOL. He is always a good sport, win or lose.

Would I have figured out what he was doing if I hadn't played so many hours of poker? Maybe. It's hard to say. But what I'm certain of is that it was poker experience that gave me the reflexive impulse (1) to crack the code of his line of play, (2) to infer from it what sort of tiles he was holding, (3) from that to project what he must be thinking about what I would do, and (4) figure out a way to frustrate his intentions.

That, my word-playing friends, is pure poker.

Poker gems, #453

John Vorhaus, in Card Player magazine column, on playing suited connectors, May 2, 2012 (vol. 25, #9), page 50.

Know how suited connectors win? By betting the flop and having nobody call. That's pretty unlikely in a multiway pot, but much more likely when the pot is shorthanded or, in the best case, heads up. Then your 8-7 suited wins without a fight. You don't have to make a hand to win. You could have 8-7, 2-7, a pair of chickens, whatever. Here it is in a nutshell, folks: Since it's hard to make a hand in hold'em, your best outcome is not making your hand. Your best outcome is winning without a hand.

A 100% true poker advertisement

I noticed this ad in a recent issue of Poker Player newspaper. I was impressed by its honesty. It says, "Many have paid thousands for poker know-how like this... but YOU won't!"

And they're absolutely right--I won't!

Home game done

We have us a winner! Congratulations, "what is 7x6"! In addition to the free Stars bucks and bragging rights, you have won an entry into the inaugural $1,000,000 buy-in bracelet event at this year's World Series of Poker! Please remit the $999,999 processing fee to me at your earliest convenience, and I will take care of getting you registered.

Thanks for showing up and entertaining me, all.

Mother's Day PokerStars home game tournament

I just had, and yielded to, an impulse to create a HORSE tournament tonight for my PokerStars home game club (ID# is 383761, invitation code "playgrumpy"). No real money involved, obviously--just 20 fake dollars and bragging rights are at stake. 9:00 p.m. EDT, 6:00 p.m. PDT.

But there is one proviso: In order to be allowed to play, you must not only be a member of the Grumpy Home Game club, but, for today's event only, you must qualify under one of the following categories:

1. You are now or at some point in the past have been a mother.

2. You now have or at some point in the past have had a mother.

3. You are now or at some point in the past have been a horse.

Please note that this requirement will be very strictly enforced, with no exceptions made.

Unclear on the physics

So I'm reading along in the May 21 issue of Poker Player newspaper. There's a column on page 14 by somebody named A.C. Clark. His author's blurb says that he is in charge of the publication's Northwest advertising sales, and he's a high school teacher. Why that qualifies him to write a column about poker escapes me. He's also not qualified to write a column about physics, but he sorta tries to do that.

He says that he has recently felt very inspired by reading a book with an unusual title:

212: The Extra Degree, by Sam Parker and Mac Anderson, intrigues the mind while making perfect sense. At the core is the notion that water is hot at 211 degrees. Then, at 212 degrees, it boils. With boiling water comes steam, and steam can power a locomotive. Think of that...what a statement. Just simply raising the temperature of water one extra degree means the difference between something that is very hot and something that generates enough force to power a machine. Point made: Small things can make major differences.

(Alterations in original.)

The former college physics major in me threw down the yellow penalty flag on this argument. It may make "perfect sense" to Mr. Clark, but it doesn't to anybody who understands classical physics.

It takes about 4.2 joules of energy to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. So if you add 4.2 J of energy to 1 gram of water that is already at 99 C (I don't feel like doing the Fahrenheit conversion), you get 1 gram of water that is at 100 C, or 212 Fahrenheit. But you do not get steam.

To convert water in its liquid form to steam takes an enormous amount of energy, relative to the energy it takes to elevate its temperature. In order to convert 1 gram of water at its boiling point into steam, you have to add another 2260 J, or more than 500 times the amount of energy that it took to elevate the water's temperature from 99 C to 100 C. This is called the "heat of vaporization." That energy does not further elevate the temperature of the water; it goes into overcoming the molecular bonds that attract the water molecules to each other.

This is not to say that small changes never make big differences. They can. A sniper making a minute adjustment in his scope can mean the difference between hitting and missing a target 800 yards away. A boulder precariously balanced on the edge of a cliff requires only a small push to send it tumbling down toward the road below. And so on. But you have to pick such examples carefully, because for the most part small changes make only small differences; effecting large differences requires large changes. In the water example, you not only have to elevate the temperature that last one degree to get it to its boiling point, but you then have to apply more than 500 times that much energy again to create steam. That is no trivial matter.

To bring the point back to poker, as Mr. Clark attempts to do, you can't triple your hourly earning rate by, say, learning how to pick up one additional kind of tell in opponents. You can only expect a change in earning that is probably too small to detect against the background noise of variance. Still, small changes are important, because most us get better, if at all, only one baby step at a time, and they add up. But it's unrealistic to expect vast differences in poker outcomes to arise from small differences in input.

I suppose, though, that I should thank Mr. Clark for saving me the trouble of reading the book. If the authors so fundamentally misunderstand the workings of the system that they used as both their title and central teaching point, I can feel quite confident that the book is not worth reading.

Poker gems, #452

Lou Krieger, in Poker Player newspaper column, May 7, 2012 (vol. 15, #23), page 6.

For some, tilt has ended otherwise promising careers--even some WSOP main event champs, who were not able to control their emotions at the table--and many big-money winners who have gone completely broke, due to an inability and an unwillingness to deal with being on tilt. In other words, the willingness and commitment to get up from the table when stressed, and to take a short walk every hour or so, has cost some players millions--everything they earned and every dollar they had--while a simplistic little remedy might have prevented it all.

...When it comes to managing tilt, you are the one in charge. If you are unable to deal with it, the fault is entirely yours.

Taking on the luckbox

I was at the Riviera tonight. There's a big pool tournament going on there, and it's the busiest I've ever seen the place. For the first time ever, I could not find a spot in the parking garage and had to resort to the surface lot east of the garage.

The poker room had three $1-3 NLHE games going when I arrived at about 8:00 p.m. On a typical Friday night they would have one that's having trouble being sustained. I have seen two no-limit games going at the Riviera before, but I don't think I've ever seen three. And a fourth one started up while I was there.

The first seat that opened up was to the immediate left of the table drunk. He was incredibly annoying, paying no attention to the action, playing out of turn, slowing everything down whenever it was his turn, talking about the hand, flashing his cards both deliberately and inadvertently, etc. But he was so awful that nobody complained much, for fear that he'd be kicked out, and that would be tragic.

He was the prototypical drunk luckbox. Shortly before my tussle with him, he had twice in ten minutes come out on the good side of set-over-set situations, stacking two good players who had patiently waited for their chance to trap him. The second of these profited him about $600, and he was sitting on about $1400 when the key hand occurred. (I had a mere $320 or so, just barely above my buy-in.)

He would frequently raise without looking at his cards. He would just grab a handful of chips and toss them forward helter-skelter, with no idea how much it was. This appeared to happen randomly, without respect to position. I kept an eye on him so that I would always know whether or not he had looked at his cards before doing this, because if he looked, he actually had a respectably tight raising range.

To the matter. He and I were the blinds. The player to my left straddled, and picked up a bunch of callers. Drunk Luckbox--who had not picked his cards up off the felt--yielded to one of his urges to raise in the dark, and tossed a bunch of chips forward. The dealer counted it as $31.

I had J-J. This is, of course, comfortably ahead of two random cards, so I slid two stacks of $50 across the line, which was followed by rapid-fire folding around the table. DL finally figured out that it was his turn again, and the dealer informed him of my reraise. He looked annoyed and said, "Now I'm gonna have to LOOK!" He did, quickly followed by, "I'm all in."

There is just no way to know what range of hands he will do this with, as such a situation had not occurred before. There's also no way to get inside his head and deduce what he must be thinking about me and my range, etc., because he's just too wild and erratic for logic or third-level thinking to be of any use. I felt that all I could do was go with the math: If I have J-J, the probability that anybody at a full table was dealt a higher pocket pair is only about 13%, and if he has anything less than that, I'm OK getting all the chips in with my edge. In my first few minutes at the table I had seen this guy call all-in for about $300 pre-flop with A-Q offsuit, hit top two pair and win. The way I see it, he might well shove with a baby pair or an ace-rag hand. In fact, I had seen him reraise all in with 10-10 once, probably because he didn't want to play it post-flop. Given his past history, I thought it would be crazy to put in a third of my stack, then fold.

I insta-called, as I had actually made up my mind in advance that that's what I would do if he pushed, knowing that he might do so relatively light.

We turned up our cards. My J-J was up against his...

A-A.

Mother-effin' snakes on a mother-effin' plane!

There are three hands he could have that were a favorite to my jacks: aces, kings, and queens. There are six ways to make each of those hands. That means that out of the 1225 possible two-card combinations he could have been dealt, only 18 of them would have me in trouble. And he had to have one of them right now?

Sigh.

Flop: 4-5-7.

Turn: 5.

Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;

It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled with a crack,

For from the cards left in his hands, the dealer found a jack.*

That's the second time in a week that I have misread an opponent for being weaker than he actually was, got all my money in at a severe disadvantage, and got my butt rescued by the fall of a lucky card. It's not really the way I prefer to make my money, but I'll take it and be grateful.

Sometimes, in order to win, you just gotta outluckbox the luckbox.

***********

Incidentally, this is going on a few steps outside of the new location of the poker room at the Riviera. It seems that some of the players at the tables find this distracting. I can't imagine why.

* From "Casey at the Bat," by Ernest Thayer, very slightly modified.

Blegging for tech help

I've got an annoying tech problem that I can't work out. At some point today, I suddenly lost the ability to hear the audio tracks on YouTube videos. Video is fine, but no sound. This affects all browsers, and is the same whether viewed on the YouTube site or embedded on other pages. I updated the Flash player add-on for Internet Explorer (which I rarely use), and that changed nothing. My main browser, Google Chrome, apparently has Flash integrated--at least the Adobe web site says that I can't and don't need to upgrade anything.

I can see and hear what are ostensibly Flash videos (.swf files) on other sites, such as Metacafe and Hulu. I can also watch downloaded Flash files (.flv) with any of several standalone media players, and the audio is intact. Audio is fine from every other source I've tested (mp3 files and a DVD, for example), which demonstrates that there is nothing wrong with the sound card, the default speaker settings, etc.

As far as I can tell, it is just YouTube and just the audio portion that are affected. And no, I didn't change anything before this started happening (not knowingly, anyway). Computer is an Acer Aspire 7500 series laptop with an AMD Athlon II X2 processor, running Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) Service Pack 1 (build 7601). I've run Belarc Advisor, and don't see anything amiss in its reporting on multimedia systems.

Antiviral suite (Trend Micro Titanium, fully updated) is and has been up and running. I ran a routine weekly virus scan yesterday (using SuperAntiSpyware), all clean.

I'm well and truly stumped by this. Suggestions from my techy readers?

Poker gems, #451

Andrew Brokos, in Card Player magazine column, May 2, 2012 (vol. 25 #9), page 40.

The first habit you should break is comparing your stack to those of your friends or opponents. When you're online, that means no checking the average stack size or where you are in the rankings. Until the end of the tournament, that information is meaningless and can only influence you for the worse.

Maurice Sendak

No poker content here. If that troubles you, move on now.

I've had kind of an emotional afternoon reading and hearing more about Maurice Sendak than I've ever known before. NPR's "Fresh Air" devoted the whole program to replaying excerpts of interviews that Terry Gross has done with him over the years:

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/08/152248901/fresh-air-remembers-author-maurice-sendak

The last interview was especially wonderful. I listened to it three times. When it was recorded late last year, the author was frail and vividly aware of his own mortality, yet more saddened by the deaths of those close to him than by the prospect of his own. Much of the interview, done by telephone from his home, was conducted through his tears and quavering voice, and I found it incredibly moving.

A sample:

TG: You don't believe in God.

MS: No, I don't.

TG: I think having friends who die, getting older, getting closer toward the end of life, tests people's faith, and it also tests people's atheism. It sounds like your atheism is staying strong.

MS: Yes. I'm not unhappy about becoming old. I'm not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me, and life gets emptied. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. And it's like a dream life. I'm reading a biography of Samuel Palmer.... He believed in God, you see, and he believed in heaven, and he believed in hell. Goodness gracious, that must have made life much easier. It's harder for us nonbelievers.

But you know, there's something I'm finding out as I'm aging: that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio, and I see my trees, my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old. They're beautiful, and I can see how beautiful they are, and I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music.

...I have nothing but praise now, really, for my life. I mean, I'm not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can't stop them. They leave me, and I love them more....

Oh, God, there are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die! But I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready.

...I wish you all good things. Live your life. Live your life. Live your life.

Bill-paying, or not? Conclusion

If you haven't read yesterday's post describing the decision I had to make, you might want to go back and do so before reading the end of the story here.

After thinking for a while, I decided to push. This wasn't tilty desperation. It was an educated guess that my top-top was ahead of more of Bill's range than it was behind. The specific table dynamics made that more true than it ordinarily would be with me taking just top pair against the range with which Bill would be expected to play this aggressively back at me.

The shove was somewhat problematic, in that he would mostly call only with the hands that beat me, and fold the ones that I beat. (The exception was if I somehow persuaded him that I had A-A or K-K, he might fold J-J or Q-Q.) But as I said yesterday, I thought calling was the worst of my choices, because it would make subsequent decisions even murkier, and from out of position to boot.

He took less than two seconds to call, which triggered all of my "uh-oh" reflexes. I showed my A-10, and he showed his...

...pocket jacks.

Damn.

I had misread him. Maybe I had overthought it. Maybe I had given too much weight to the situational dynamics being likely to broaden Bill's range, and too little weight to the simple fact that in years of playing with him, he had almost never been this pushy against me unless he had me beat.

But just as I was filling my brain with regrets and second-guessing, the dealer slapped down an ace on the turn, giving me top two pair, and leaving poor Bill with just two cards in the deck he could catch to win (the remaining two jacks). The river blanked, and I got a very lucky double-up. I wasn't proud of the win, but I wasn't going to give the chips back.

Sometimes in poker you do the right thing and lose, sometimes you do the wrong thing and win.

Poker gems, #450

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, May 2, 2012 (vol 25, #9), page 34.

The regular's strategy of folding a lot and playing big pots only with nut hands has a major strength. Any time the pot gets big, the regular will be a favorite to win it.

Does it, therefore, make sense to play a strategy against this player that relies on winning big pots to be successful? Does it make sense to try to hit big hands and get paid off against this player?

Of course the answer is a resounding NO! If your opponent's strength is having good hands in big pots, why on earth would you play a strategy designed to try to win a big pot? It's not going to work! Why bang your head repeatedly against the deadbolted and barred front door when the back door might be left wide open?

Bill-paying, or not?

A hand I played last week is one of those that keeps sticking in my mind, unsure whether my decision-making was sound.

Bill is a 60-ish local. I've spent many, many hours at the tables with him, though mostly in my first couple of years in town, when we both played a ton at the Hilton poker room. Since it closed, I've only encountered him a handful of times. For the most part, he is the stereotypical local TAG nut-peddler. But he's entirely capable of pulling a switcheroo now and then, and he's absolutely not afraid to turn up the heat when his BS alarm goes off.

A few people had left the game in rapid succession, leaving us temporarily five-handed. The table was almost entirely passive, with a disgusting amount of limp-calling and limp-folding going on. I had been taking advantage of both of these facts to go on a mini-streak of raising and stealing. But the only time anybody had tried to keep me honest lately was when I was good, with A-J on an ace-high board, beating her ace-rag for good value. In spite of that hand, I had the feeling that I was getting under these people's skin with raising so much more than my fair share, and somebody was likely to be feeling the need to draw a line in the sand very soon.

Just as I was thinking that it might be time to back off for a while, I found Ac-10c in the big blind, and everybody ahead of me limped in. I hate playing multi-way limped pots, especially out of position. A suited ace-ten had a very good chance of being the current best hand, so I decided to extend my raising streak by one more pot before dropping down a gear. I made it $15, which was my biggest pre-flop raise yet. If these people were going to make me play a vulnerable hand like this from out of position, by God they were going to have to pay to do it, thinks me.

Everybody folded except for Bill, who was UTG+1 (which was also one off the button).

The flop was 10-7-3 rainbow (one club), giving me top pair/top kicker, plus an overcard and backdoor flush draw as emergency reserve chutes. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice. I bet $20 into the roughly $30 pot. Bill didn't hesitate a bit, grabbed a handful of chips, dropped three stacks of four across the line, plus one more, thereby raising to $65. He sat back and stared at me, looking quite smug and comfortable. I had started the hand with about $210, and Bill had me covered.

Calling was not a reasonable option. That move would give me no chance to win the pot right then, would give me no additional information, and would put me on the defensive out of position. I also couldn't put in any raise that didn't pot-commit me, so it was shove or fold.

What could Bill have? Well, I felt I could be reasonably confident that he didn't have an overpair to this board. With pocket jacks or better, he surely would have raised pre-flop. He can't be on a draw with this flop. I don't think he would have paid $15 to play any hand that could have flopped two pair here. Set-mining? Yes, that's always a consideration, given his limp-call. But on a board this dry, and him having position on me, I think it's more likely that he'd smooth-call and let me fire again on the turn.

I decided that the two most likely types of hands he could have were top pair (A-10 matching mine, or, even more likely, K-10 or Q-10) or a pocket pair, specifically 8s or 9s. I was comfortably ahead of both of those categories. Because of the table dynamics I described earlier, in this particular situation I thought I could extend his range further than I usually would. He could plausibly have a small pocket pair, or even have no pair (A-Q, say), and be trying to send me a message: "I know you can't be strong every time you're pretending to be. It's time for you to knock it off." This possibility, too, would be good for me, as I happened to have hit the flop about as well as one can reasonably hope to, and better than he might expect.

On the other hand, because he has a tricky streak in him, I couldn't entirely rule out an overpair. And the set thing always strikes dread into my heart, because I would be drawing nearly dead if that were the case. As mentioned, his pre-flop limp-call was perfectly consistent with set-mining. Why would he drop the hammer now instead of waiting until fourth street? Maybe he just wanted to end the drama now, and not risk giving me some sort of monster combo draw if the turn was a Broadway card that matched the suit of one on the flop.

So that was my dilemma. I felt that I was ahead of more than half of Bill's range here, but I was in terrible shape against a smaller but still substantial portion of it (the sets and overpairs). I loathe putting in my entire stack on one pair--even if it is top pair with top kicker--especially against a player who historically has usually had me beat when he comes out with this kind of aggression. But perhaps this was one of the uncommon situations where it was justified, because he was misreading me as (1) stealing from the limpers yet again, and/or (2) putting in a continuation bet with little or nothing to back it up.

It was even possible that, in the unlikely event that he had J-J or Q-Q, I could convince him that I had A-A or K-K and induce a bad fold. Conversely, I was unlikely to induce a bad call with a shove, because Bill is too smart to stack off with less than what I had. If he had top pair with a lower kicker, or a smaller pocket pair, he'd snort and glower a bit, but most likely fold to a reraise.

So, dear readers, what would you do? All in or fold? Or is there some justification for just smooth-calling that I'm not adequately taking into consideration?

I'll go write up what I did and set it to post in about 24 hours.

Running it twice

I remember vividly the first time I heard about "running it twice" in poker. It was during one of the first episodes of "High Stakes Poker" on the Game Show Network, and I had no idea what they were doing until Gabe Kaplan explained it. After learning a bit more about how it worked, I decided that if I were ever faced with that decision, I would just run it once. Among other reasons, that's how Barry Greenstein did it, and he was the consummate professional, my favorite of the regulars on HSP.

It was years before the option first presented itself. I was in a cash game at the Palms soon after their new manager, Joe Viator, had taken over. He had put in place some new rules, including what is still, I believe, the only low-stakes game in town where players can agree to run it twice. [Correction: on second thought, there's at least one other: the Tropicana, as I mentioned here.] At one point I went all in and was called, and my opponent asked if we could run it twice. I said no purely on the basis of having pre-made that decision years earlier, rather than based on any particular strategic consideration. It worked out for me that time.

Since then, the only times the issue has come up have been during the Pokerati games at the Palms, which I have done about five times now. It's half NLHE, half pot-limit Omaha, changing every orbit, with $1 and $2 blinds. My approach to the question in that setting has been to let my opponent decide, so that I don't cause any resentment from players who strongly prefer one way or the other, since I didn't feel I cared very much.

That's a noble enough goal. But lately I've read two things that are changing my mind on this point.

First, Phil Laak wrote in one of his recent columns for Bluff magazine (not available online yet) that he has switched his practice. He used to embrace running it as many times as he could get an opponent to agree to, in order to reduce his variance. But he has now decided to embrace the variance. (I think that was his exact terminology.) He feels that he is more even-keeled than most of his opponents, better able to absorb a big loss and still keep playing well. If he wins, though, he is likely to face an opponent who is stuck a lot of money, angry at the loss, and desperate to get back to even. That makes for a great opportunity for winning even more money.

A similar point is made in the newest issue of Card Player magazine by one of the publication's newest columnists, Bart Hanson. But he adds another argument that I had not thought about before:

Players commonly ask when deciding whether or not to make big calls all-in if the other player in the hand will run it more than once. This is an issue especially when you are trying to maximize your fold equity with a draw. Why would you want your opponent to know that you will run it more than once and not instill the fear that he could lose all of his chips? It also works the other way around when players try to push you around with their draws. If they know that you will run it more than once, they are more likely to make an aggressive action because if they get called there is less of a chance that they will lose all of their chips.

That seems like sound reasoning to me. So on the basis of these two considerations, I have decided to revert to my original plan from years ago: I am now a run-it-once player. I embrace the variance.

Two quickie restaurant reviews

I played at Binion's tonight. About an hour in, I made a bad read, got all my money in bad, but got rescued by a five-outer to more than double up.

Poker has been brutal lately. I've had seven losing sessions in a row. I don't think that beats my record, but it's coming close. It has been starting to get to me--as in, I start to think not just that I've forgotten how to play, but that maybe I never knew how to play in the first place.

I was confident there was more money to be made at the table, and I didn't have any particular reason that I needed to cut the session short. However, psychologically I really needed to be able to enter a W in the ledger for the day, after seven L's in a row. I think Ed Miller gave great advice on this point once:

Go ahead and book a win. I know a lot of people think booking wins and setting stop losses is hogwash. But playing top poker (particularly no-limit) requires confidence in yourself and your decision-making. And if you lose seven days straight, your confidence is likely going to be in the can no matter who you are. So if you start a session and you’re up a few buyins after bit, wrap it up. Book the win. And pat yourself on the back. You’ll be more confident during your next session.*

So that's just what I did. I ended my losing streak, and hopefully tomorrow I can go back to attacking the game with my usual state of mind, instead of with the cowering and confusion and second-guessing that comes from an ugly string of losses.

Anyway, I was in no hurry to get home, and decided to get something to eat. I mentioned late last year that a place called the Heart Attack Grill opened between my apartment building and the downtown casinos. It has been in the news lately because two customers have had to be taken away by ambulance mid-meal. They're not kidding about the name.

It's not really the kind of place I frequent. In fact, I've been eating fried food generally and hamburgers specifically a lot less than I used to. I have been making some modest efforts to make my diet healthier, as I feel the ol' arteries hardening with age. (Having a vegetarian girlfriend also tends to push one in this direction.) So it has probably been two months since I last had a burger. I decided I could stand one indulgence.

But they wouldn't serve me. I declined to wear the silly hospital gowns that they hand out at the door. I assumed that this was a "fun" gimmick that most customers decided to participate in as part of the ambiance. I had not anticipated that they would consider this a requirement, like the way some fancy places make you wear a jacket and tie. I was floored when the waitress told me it was mandatory. I told her I'd like to eat there, but I wasn't going to wear a gown to do so. She had me talk to the manager. I assumed that the manager would waive the requirement if I asked. After all, they surely want to sell me food more than they want to enforce their stupid rule, right? Nope. "You have to have on a gown to be in here," the manager told me. I said, "That's the stupidest rule I have even encountered in a restaurant. But if you don't want my money, OK, I'm sure somebody else does." I'm still stunned that a restaurant of mostly empty tables would turn away a customer eager to do business with them in the middle of a recession. But hey, there are probably 30 eateries within 100 yards of that spot, and I figured that I could pick one of them and not have to argue with a manager and beg them to take my money.

I stopped into a place that I have walked by dozens and dozens of times, always thinking that I should try it, but never had. It's a Cuban/Mexican place called Mamita's, just a block from my house. I had noticed previously that its customers were about 90% Hispanic, which I thought was a good indicator. In fact, it had nearly all the markings of a place where one could find good food at a good price, as argued recently by economist and foodie Tyler Cowen. Besides, it was Cinco de Mayo--how could I not have Mexican food?

Before I even sat down, I noticed that this place had the ultimate marker of an authentic Cuban restaurant: Fidel Castro sitting at one of the tables. Seriously!

The picture doesn't do him justice. He really is a spitting image, uniform and all. In fact, I think he is there just to provide a touch of Cuba. He was there when I arrived, still there when I left, and he wasn't ever doing anything. He didn't eat, didn't read a book, didn't talk to anyone. Maybe he makes a little extra scratch letting people take his picture for tips. It's not every day that you get to have your picture taken with the world's longest-reigning dictator. (I suppose that Joe Biden would insist that Castro, like Hosni Mubarak, is not a dictator, but I think anybody who doesn't swallow the current administration's delusions on foreign policy would judge otherwise.)

The music they had blaring was deafening. As soon as I sat down, a waitress rushed over with a menu, smiled, and asked how I was. I told her I would be better if my ears weren't being assaulted. She immediately said, "I'll see if I can get them to turn it down." She stepped away, spoke to somebody, and it worked! It was still louder than I would have liked, but it was tolerable.

Wow--catering to a paying customer's special request. What a concept! Maybe the Heart Attack Grill manager should walk down the block and take a lesson.

Anyway, I've dragged this out long enough. I had a carnitas burrito, and it was just right. Whole meal, including side dishes and tip, was less than $14. I should have been coming here long ago.

Summary: Heart Attack Grill sucks. Mamita's rules.

*As quoted here. I could not find the original source to link to.

Seeing red

I was at the Palms tonight--the poker room's first day in its new location and under new management. The casino has contracted out management of both the poker room and the sports book to Cantor Gaming, which some industry observers think is a trend of the future. You can read a bit about it here.

The new room is just inside the doors from the west parking garage, adjacent to the food court.

The wall of televisions in the sports book has to be seen to be believed. It's enormous, sharp as a tack, and impossibly bright. (Notice in the photos above that it completely blows out the sensor in my digital camera, so you can't see any detail.) In fact, the brightness is so intense it's a problem for the poker room. You'll think I'm exaggerating about this until you go there and experience it yourself, but when the picture on the two biggest screens suddenly changes to something really bright--a little text on an all-white background for an ad, for example--it changes the ambient light level in the poker room so much that everybody turns to see what happened. It's like suddenly turning on an additional set of lights, or setting off a camera flash: even if you're not looking in that direction, you not only know it happened, but it diverts your attention, at least briefly.

The poker players spend a lot of time looking at the wall of sports action--far more than they used to with a couple of ordinary TVs on the far side of the room. The things occupy such a large fraction of one's visual field that it's pretty hard not to be distracted. This caused the games to lag noticeably more than they did in the old room, because people weren't paying attention.

A related problem is the sound level. They don't play sports in silence--whatever is on the biggest screens has the audio track filling the room. And it is LOUD. It was so loud that it made it difficult for players and dealers to hear each other. It was so loud that it gave me a headache after an hour or so.

These two problems interact in an unfortunate way: Players are looking somewhere else when it's their turn, but the dealer can't get their attention by saying, "Sir," because nobody can hear what is being said at the table. I'm not just being hypersensitive about this--the games were at least one-third slower than has been my experience at the Palms before, all because of this combination of overwhelming sight and sound from the sports book.

My final gripe is that the room was cold--one of the coldest I've experienced in a long time. And wouldn't you know it, this was one of the rare times I didn't take a sweatshirt with me. I saw "Titanic 3D" this week, and the Palms poker room made me appreciate what it must have felt like to jump off the ship into the icy North Atlantic. No--scratch that. I would have welcomed the chance to go swimming among those frozen corpses so that I could warm up a little.

These three problems are serious enough that if they aren't fixed, my time in the new room is going to be severely limited. One of the things I most appreciated about the old room was that it was small, quiet, and isolated. The new room is none of those things. The room launches a multi-faceted assault on one's physical comfort.

On the plus side of the ledger, the appointments are plenty nice--assuming you like your red juiced up on steroids.

The new tables don't have built-in cupholders, however, which annoys me. I dislike having to find one of the portable ones and jam it under the rail.

In one of the pictures above you can see a single table inside a glassed-in room, which I assume is for private and/or higher stakes games.

They finally have the Genesis Bravo system with card readers at the table, instead of logging in and out at the desk.

No poker magazine racks are in evidence. I'm told that that will be remedied in the future.

The entire sports book area has been designated no-smoking. That surprised me, because I can't think of another sports book in town that is smoke-free, but I'm sure not complaining. When I first saw that the new poker room was actually inside of the sports book, one of my first thoughts was that there would be a lot of smoke infiltration. I was wrong. I never caught a whiff of smoke in 3 1/2 hours of play. There's also a set of restrooms inside the sports book, so you don't have to penetrate of wall of smoke to get to them.

To sum up, the place looks really nice at first glance, and it's far more smoke-free than one would guess from the layout. However, the combination of the problems of player distraction, painful noise levels from the sports book, and a temperature that made me yearn for a big dose of global warming are daunting to me, and are likely to make me choose other venues when I would have hit up the Palms if they had stayed with the old room.

The Palms used to have a poker room. Now they have a few poker tables inside a sports book. The sports-book environment is so intrusively, unrelentingly oppressive that you are unlikely to forget even for a single second that that's where you are. This is a wholesale change in the character of the place, one that I deeply wish they had not made.

Winner, winner--no chicken dinner

One of the earliest submissions in the win-a-chip contest was my favorite, and I thought was unlikely to be surpassed. From "k9dr":

I personally believe that I should win the chip because U.S Americans are unable to do so because uh, some people out there in our nation don't have chips and I believe like such as South Africa and the Iraq everywhere like such as and I believe that Oshea's here in the U.S should help South Africa and the Iraq and the Asian countries so we can build up our future for our children and I can win the chip.

If you don't understand why that's funny, you may be the only person in the world who hasn't seen the video clip it is parodying.

But a last-minute entry snatched away the win. I'm afraid it exposes that my sentimental streak is even stronger and deeper than my snarky streak. From "Andy":

I can't believe this place is closing. It has a very special place in my heart. Here's my story.

I was playing blackjack there in 2003 with a buddy. We were sitting at a table with 3 girls from CA. We started a conversation with them and I was pretty quickly smitten with one of them. We ended up handing out with these girls the rest of the night and I ended up spending most of the rest of my trip with this one girl.

To make the story short, we ended up having a long distance relationship(I lived in NC, she in CA) for two years. We tried to see each other at least every 3 months and for the most part, we did.

After two years, we decided we didn't want to live apart anymore and she moved to NC to live with me. We were married a year later and will celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary next month.

We go back to Vegas at least once a year together and always go back and spend some time there. I am going back in July for the WSOP main even and it will be strange for that place not to be there anymore.

I would love to give that chip to my wife on our anniversary next month. I know she would love it.

OK, Andy, you win, and I hope your wife will like getting the chip. (But, HINT: You might want to sweeten the anniversary gift package with something else.) Now, however, I have to find out who you are. Please submit a comment to this post with your full name and address (I won't publish the comment, so don't worry about exposure), and I'll pop the thing in the mail within a few days.

I hope the story is true. But if it's just a giant bluff (which I clearly indicated was OK), well-played.

Answering a question from Dad

After my post with the pictures of the new O'Shea's chips, my father asked me via email about the colored sections along the edges of the chips. I told him that I didn't know much about that, except that they are called "inserts" by chip collectors, and apparently make the manufacturing process more difficult to duplicate by would-be counterfeiters. He replied, "I have the impression that for the same chip design, the edge markings might vary from day to day or week to week, maybe. In most of the chips I’ve seen in your blogs the edge markings seem to be pretty irregular and sometimes somewhat sloppy."

I dismissed this at first as a not very interesting observation. There always seems to be one player at the table who, out of boredom or compulsion, stacks his chips with all the edge markings lined up neatly. I've never seen chips with which one could not do that, so they must all be the same.

And they are. Pretty much. But it finally occurred to me that right now I have means to see just how identical ostensibly identical chips are. After all, I have in my possession four brand-new ones that at a glance sure look like peas in a pod.

On closer inspection, though, not so much.

First I lined up the faces to see how much offset they were, as judged by the edge markings:

This didn't surprise me. I had noticed years ago that the inserts do not have a consistent relationship to what is printed on the faces of the chips (AKA the "inlay"). I assume that this works something like mints for coins: the chips are first made as blanks, with the obverse and reverse added later, and that as a result the orientation of the inlays is essentially random with respect to the inserts.

So then I carefully lined up the dividing line between one pair of blue and lavender marks on each of my four O'Shea's chips:

If you look closely (click on photo for larger version), you can definitely see variations in the markings.

Next I carefully turned the set of chips about 120 degrees in order to photograph the next set of inserts:

There's even more variation in this set.

Finally, I did one more 120-degree rotation to capture the last set of marks:

Again, one finds easily noticeable variations from one chip to another. Not huge, but it doesn't exactly require a microscope to see the differences.

This is obviously an artifact of the manufacturing process. It's hard to find online much detail about how casino chips are made, presumably due to trade secrets and desire to keep information from counterfeiters. This Wikipedia entry tells as much as I've found anywhere, plus having a nice photo of a broken chip so you can see what its guts look like. With respect to what causes variations in the inserts, this seems to be the key passage:

The edge spots, or inserts, are not painted on; to achieve this effect, this area of the clay is removed and then replaced with clay of a different color; this can be done to each chip individually or a strip can be taken out of a cylindrical block of material and replaced with the alternate color before the block is cut into chips.

So now you know as much as I do about the whole matter--which isn't a lot, but maybe more than you knew five minutes ago.

Slim

News reports are saying that Amarillo Slim died a few hours ago. This is not surprising, as he has been on death's door for several days now. On April 17, Doyle Brunson tweeted, "Looks like Amarillo Slim is I'n critical shape. For the record, no way was he ever a child molester." (From what I've been able to gather from public reports on the incident that led to his plea deal, I'm inclined to agree that he was wrongly accused.) Then on April 19, Brunson tweeted, "Just talked to Amarillo Slim. He is I'n hopice but is fighting hard. Tears came to my eyes as we said bye." And, further, "Amarillo Slim had faults as we all do, but he started the poker boom as we know it. Look him up on google."

Well, Doyle, I don't need to look him up, though I agree that today's players should know more about him than they seem to. I wrote a post about him, and how strange it was that a good player I ran into had never heard of the man. I'll point readers to it as my little tribute to his passing:

http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/maybe-hes-never-heard-of-babe-ruth.html

A contest! With a prize!

The times they are a-changin'. Harrah's/Ceasars has a crazy idea about building a giant Ferris wheel behind what are now its mid-Strip properties, and that means some other things have to go. Among those things are O'Shea's, in its entirety, and Imperial Palace, which will be remodeled and reopened as something else. (Read about it here.)

O'Shea's is closing permanently Monday at noon. So last night I went there to play one last time. I had heard on Twitter that the casino had issued a chip in honor of its closing--a strange finale that I don't recall any other property ever doing before. You can see the front and back of it above.

I bought four of them from the cashier, uncirculated. I'll keep one for my collection and try to sell two of them on eBay. The fourth I've decided to give away as a prize to a reader.

To win, simply use the comments section to submit, in 100 words or fewer, why you should be the one to receive this exceptionally valuable prize. Be imaginative. Feel free to lie, if you think it will help you. I'm not sure exactly what criteria will be used to determine the winner, other than it will be the one I like best. That might be because of sincerity, or pathos, or creativity, or humor. We'll just have to see what tickles my fancy. You have 24 hours from when this is posted. Note: Answers based on preexisting relationships, with nothing more, will fail. I mean, heck, my dad reads this blog, and he could submit, "Because I raised you," and it would be pretty hard to top that, y'know? So I'll be judging on what is written, independent of whatever claims or baggage you may have as a person.

Winner will receive the chip in the mail, whenever I get around to making a trip to the post office. U.S. addresses only. Don't be dopey and submit your entry as "anonymous," because then I'll have no way of verifying who sent it in. Make sure that whatever nickname Blogger knows you by is linked to or matched by your blog, your Facebook page, your Twitter account, your email address, or whatever, so that when I select a winner I don't have more than one person plausibly claiming to have been the author.

Go.

Addendum, April 29, 2012

I was about to pick a winner, but then realized that this post went up in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Because my page views spike on Monday, I know that many readers don't check in here on weekends. So, in order to give more people a chance to enter my little contest, I'm extending the deadline to Monday night.

What happened Friday night...

...in the form of a rebus:

If you can't figure it out, you could look here for an explanation.

"In the poker world...we only have our good name"

Many people in my Twitter feed today have posted links to and/or comments on this wonderfully ironic short video of Howard Lederer expounding on business ethics. It's just too rich not to share--especially this: "People always remember that you were that guy that stiffed everybody and didn't pay back."

That's a mighty powerful hand you have there, sir

Because of my interest in recreational/competitive shooting, I subscribe to the Twitter feed of the web site Guns.com for news updates, etc. Tonight whoever runs that account posted the above photo with the comment, "No bluffing needed with this hand." I was puzzled for a few seconds--only four cards? But then I figured out the mystery.

Game theory on TV

One of my regular non-poker reads is a blog called "The Agitator," by Radley Balko. He posted this YouTube clip today. It's brilliant. I've never heard of this game show before (I assume it's shown in Britain), but you don't need to know the rules, the host explains enough. Watch now if you're going to, because spoilers will follow.


 

 Of course, the problem presented to the contestants is just a minor variation on the age-old "Prisoner's Dilemma." But I love, love, love how the guy on the right solves it. He presents an utterly convincing case that he is going to steal, and therefore the only way that the guy on the left has any chance of getting half of the money is by selecting "share," trusting that Mr. Right will be as good as his word and split the money after the show. This is perfectly plausible to Mr. Left, because he can't think of any reason that Right would be lying about which ball he is going to select (though of course he might be lying about his post-show intentions). But in fact, the whole song-and-dance was just a ruse to manipulate Left into picking "share." It was Right's way of making sure that Left didn't try to steal. Right had me completely convinced. I was stunned when he revealed "share." It took me a few seconds to process what had happened, but then when I got it, I wanted to tip my hat to him for a stunning piece of applied game theory. Absolutely perfect!

You know that poker concept of thinking one level deeper than your opponent? Well, my hunch is that the guy on the right would be one fearsome player.

In case you missed it

Just a few minutes ago, Jennifer Harman posted the above photo on Twitter along with an explanation that it came from a hand of Stud-8 she had just played at Aria. Four players made ace-high flushes. Three players had low hands, including (if I'm reading the blurry image correctly) one wheel for the nut low (second hand from the left). She said that they generated a $27,000 pot in this $300/600 game.

Live poker is SO rigged.

Betting versus check-raising

I like Ed Miller's columns in Card Player magazine. He is the writer who is most likely to have a specific idea that offers a relevant way to tweak my game, something concrete that I can implement the next time I play.

In the April 4, 2012, issue, he discusses a hand played by one of his students. In a $1-2 NLHE game, the student raised under the gun with Js-Jc and picked up three callers. On a flop of 9d-7d-4s the student checked, had an opponent bet, which folded the other two still in the hand. The student then check-raised. When asked about his play, the student said that his goal with the check-raise was to get his opponent to fold.

Miller spends most of the column discussing (appropriately) how wrong-headed this is. Not that he needs my two cents, but here's how I would have phrased the general idea:

I don't make money when my opponents make correct decisions. I make money only when they make mistakes. The most fundamental categories of mistake they will make are bad folds (when they have the best hand) and bad calls (when they don't). Of these two basic types of error, bad calls are far more lucrative overall. This is because of two factors. First, bad calls result in bigger pots than bad folds. Second, bad calls are a much more frequent error than bad folds, especially among low-stakes players such as those that populate Vegas's $1-2 games.

The consequence of these observations is that opponents' bad calls are the single most important key to making money in poker. Well, I'll qualify that. One could argue that avoiding making bad calls oneself--or, more generally, making fewer and less costly mistakes than one's opponents--is even more important. But in terms of what you might be able to manipulate opponents to do, inducing bad calls is the vein of gold.

One of the most frequent post-hand commentaries that bad players offer shows how poorly they grasp this concept. Hardly an hour of play goes by without somebody making a prohibitively large bet on the flop, folding the field, then showing an overpair with a comment like, "I didn't want anybody drawing at that flush/straight." If you ever want to show the poker world that you're unclear on the concept, be one of the guys who does that. What you should really want, of course, is for players to call too much money with inferior or speculative holdings, while simultaneously being able to deny them proper implied odds for the call by being able to get away from your hand on the occasions when they hit their draw, miracle two pair or trips, etc.

All of which is a long way of introducing what I thought was the most mysterious lacuna in Miller's column: the near-total lack of comment on his student's check on the flop. At the end, he does add this: "The irony of all this [i.e., his long criticism of his student's stated goal] is that I like his raise just fine. (I would have simply bet the flop, but given his check, I like the raise.) It's just his reasoning that was bunk. I like the raise specifically because lots of worse hands--tens, nines, diamonds, straight draws, and so forth--will call. My student raised thinking he would get folds, but in fact his bet is going to get action from all the right hands."

I don't disagree, but I would have put much more emphasis on what is passed over lightly with just the parenthetical remark. I would insist that betting out should be the default plan, with a check-raise an acceptable alternative only if the student can articulate very specific facts about his opponents that can justify it. Perhaps there's an aggressive player on the button who always bets when everybody checks to him. Maybe the student has been playing in a perfectly straightforward manner--check/folding flops when he has less than top pair, betting them only when he has better than that--and he has reason to think observant opponents have noticed this tendency and will try to steal from him. He may know one of the other players always bets draws rather than trying to take a free card. But there has to be something very specific about this particular confluence of opponents and circumstances to make going for a check-raise a viable alternative to betting.

I would give two reasons for this argument. First, as Mike Caro repeats ad infinitum, the obvious, straightforward action is usually the right one, and you need special circumstances to make deviating from it profitable. A continuation bet while holding an overpair to the board is clearly the most obvious, straightforward choice, the one least likely to trigger the fatal consequences of Fancy Play Syndrome.

Second, on a relatively draw-heavy board, giving a free card to three opponents would be a mortal sin, not forgivable with any subsequent act of atonement. One would need to be highly confident that a bet from one of them was going to be forthcoming before choosing to go for the check-raise. In this particular hand, without running any numbers, offhand I'd put the requisite level of confidence in an opponent betting at something like 80-90%. In order to have that high degree of confidence, one would need to be able to articulate specific facts about the situation based on previous observations and patterns.

So my only criticism of Miller's column is that I think he passes too lightly over the bet versus check-raise decision, as if it's kind of just a matter of taste or style. That may, in fact, not be his view of it. Maybe there just wasn't room to go into it while still airing out his main point about the flawed rationale his student gave. But I think that the check on the flop (assuming there were not adequate, specific justifications for it) it as big a problem as the warped reasoning about inducing folds.

Josie...

...has a very important story to tell you about a little online poker bet that went down between us today:

http://veryjosie.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-ass-hurts.html

I cashed in one of the two SNGs we were playing, but outlasted her in both of them.