A reminder: Deuce-Four always wins...

...even when it's the worst possible hand! 

Pottymouth

Notice the chat from just-knocked-out player handycrab11.

Here's the bad beat I put on him that got him riled: 

Yeah, I reported him. Hope he gets chat-banned. Poker doesn't need stuff like that. 

PokerNews article #95

How to break your bad poker habits.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/resolutions-arent-enough-change-your-bad-poker-habits-23723.htm

Deuce-Four rides again!

From the same tournament as the previous post:

Finished up in third place, $76.

Strangest hand in the history of razz

This is from a HORSE tournament on Carbon Poker that I'm still in as I post this. So no time for analysis and discussion. I'll just post this hand history and let y'all ponder the weirdness of it.

PokerNews article #94

This one is about how a small sample size of observations can badly distort your view of an opponent's playing style, and thus lead you into a bad decision.


http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/call-or-fold-a-dilemma-caused-by-small-sample-size-23694.htm

PokerNews article #93

When you lose money at poker, it's gone forever, and you can't win it back. But that's OK. Here's why.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/you-cant-win-back-what-you-lost-previous-session-heres-why-23644.htm

PokerNews article #92

3 ways poker can help you make better decisions in your life.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/three-ways-poker-can-help-you-with-life-decisions-23579.htm

Deuce-Four update

It's been quite a while since I wrote about the Mighty Deuce-Four, so I thought I'd tell you that it's still working. I just played this hand in a HORSE tournament:

Of course I made a flush. And of course it beat the other guy's straight.

LDO.

The problem, in a nutshell

Read from the bottom up here:

Those tweets were soon followed by this series of replies, all from one dude asshole:  

So a female poker player reports a session in which the sexual harassment was so thick that, in recounting it, she even forgot to mention the rape threat--and a male poker player is willing to go on the record publicly telling her that she has no right to play without being harassed, that she should "get over it," that she's being a "baby," that harassing "the new girl is not over the line," that she shouldn't "whine about it," that if she's being harassed she should "leave" and/or "man up," that "nobody cares" about her harassment, that her harassment is "Part of the game" and "standard," that she's being "2 sensitive," that surely what she perceived as harassment was said "in gest [sic]" (despite him not having been there), and that her complaints are "crap that doesn't matter." 

I think there are relatively few men who would lay on the sexual harassment at a poker game to the point that somebody like Cate Hall--who strikes me as quite evidently tough-minded and resilient--would take to Twitter to denounce it. But I think there are a very, very large number of male poker players who share one or more of Andrew's reactions to it: It's part of the game, it's not over the line, it doesn't matter, she should respond by leaving or enduring it without objection. 

IMHO, it is the latter group, rather than the former, who make this such a difficult problem to eradicate. If it were only handful of obnoxious jerks who were quickly, reliably, and sternly rebuked and shunned for their crass behavior by everybody else at the table (and, not incidentally, ejected from the game by the poker room staff), it would soon be extinguished. It's the fact that women end up having to deal with the ill-bred mouth-breathers all alone--with the silence of others constituting tacit approval--that makes their conduct so damaging. 

Thanks, Andrew, for encapsulating the problem so perfectly. 

(Please insert here all the standard caveats that as a male I can't know what it feels like, shouldn't be mansplaining, etc.) 

ADDENDUM: At first I couldn't figure out who "Andrew" was. But then it occurred to me to do a Google image search on the photo he uses on his Twitter account. The photo is of an Andrew Liporace; see here. Hendon Mob info is here. I assume, but do not know, that that's who we're dealing with here. 

Winner

The epic last hand:

PokerNews article #91

Could your game use a little cognitive-behavioral therapy?

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/training-your-brain-could-your-poker-game-use-a-little-cbt-23505.htm

Mahjong raid

"Police had to take action. If the cops had allowed elderly mahjong players to win more than $10 at a time, middle-aged poker players might think they could get away with the same sort of thing. What a terrifying world that would be."

https://reason.com/blog/2015/11/30/florida-cops-shut-down-old-ladies-mahjon

I could've had...

...a royal flush.

But I folded.

Strange rule at Harrah's Cherokee

I was at Harrah's Cherokee over the weekend. While I was waiting in line at the cashier, I noticed this list of house rules on one of the monitors. Look at the third one.

I suppose banning Google Glass has some rationale, because one might theoretically use it to beam images of one's cards to somebody outside the game and surreptitiously get advice on how to play via an earbud. But I'm unable to come up with a justification for banning "smart watches."

Any plausible ideas?

PokerNews article #90

Daniel Negreanu made an offhand comment during a hand of this year's WSOP Main Event. He probably didn't intend it to be a strategy lesson--but I made it into one.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/thinking-ahead-one-sentence-poker-lesson-daniel-negreanu-23382.htm

Part 2 of "Bust"

Just as riveting as part 1, linked yesterday.

http://bittersoutherner.com/bust/part-2

Home poker game gone really, really wrong

Fabulous long-form reporting by my friend Brad Willis:

http://bittersoutherner.com/bust/part-1

PokerNews article #89

This one is about how poker players tend to use and misuse the idea of some event being "due."

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/think-youre-due-to-flop-a-set-this-time-think-again-23316.htm

PokerNews article #88

This one doesn't have any practical strategic advice, but hopefully will open your eyes to the weird ways that randomness works in poker.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/on-improbable-events-in-poker-learn-how-to-take-your-lumps-23242.htm