Blog, interrupted

Once again, demands of real life are about to put a temporary halt to poker and blogging.

My mother's health has been failing for the past couple of years. Sadly, it is rapidly becoming untenable for her to remain at home. Tomorrow I'm driving back up to Salt Lake City to help my dad figure out what other arrangements need to be made.

I expect to be gone for a week or so, without much opportunity or motivation to be writing about poker. I trust you all will understand and be patient.

Guess the casino, #410

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




Answer: Excalibur

Guess the casino, #409

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




Answer: Flamingo

Deuce-Four day results

Just got back from a session at the Palms, leaving with a tidy profit. It all came in five big hands:

1) AA held up.

2) QQ flopped a set.

3) 10-10 flopped a set.

4) 5-5 flopped a set.

5) Apropos for the day, 2h-4h flopped 8-2-2, which then turned into a full house with turn and river 10s. Of course it was good. Duh!

Aces, sets, and 2-4 all not only holding up but taking down large pots is my definition of a favorable session.

February is off to a great start, poker-wise. (Some other things not so good, but I'll tell you more about that sometime in the next few days.)

How not to learn poker

Last night at the MGM Grand there was a 50-ish man who played nearly every hand--80 or 90% easily--and didn't care if there was a raise.

A while into the session, he told a story that pretty much explained it. I will relate it as closely as I can to his own words:

"The first time I played poker, about two years ago, the very first hand I got 7-3 offsuit. I knew from TV shows that this was a bad hand, so I folded. The flop came 3-3-7. I would have made a full house! I said to myself, 'I just learned something important: The hand doesn't really start until the flop. You've only got two cards. You need five before you've got anything.'"

So that's how he played. Predictably, he was clearly a long-term loser. He would frequently end up with hands such as top pair but a weak kicker and lose quite a bit of money, or he'd call down with bottom pair. Of course, once in a while he'd make some sort of monster hand with a weird starting combination that nobody could see coming, but I have zero doubt that those wins are seriously outweighed in his long-term results by all of the smaller losses along the way.

Now, maybe he doesn't care that he's a long-term loser. Maybe he doesn't even keep records and therefore hasn't realized that he is. Or maybe he knows it, chalks it up to bad luck, and keeps playing. Or maybe he knows that he's not very good, but enjoys the game and accepts the losses as his cost of fun--and playing every hand is sure more fun than patiently waiting for the premium ones, all else being equal. I'm certainly not in any hurry to educate him on how to change himself into a long-term winner. He's happy with how things are, and so am I.

But his story caused me to reflect once again on how easy it is to learn the wrong things from playing poker. As many before me have observed, the game messes with our natural method of learning. You often do exactly the right thing and get punished for it, or do the wrong thing and get rewarded for it. The little squirts of dopamine in our brains will tend to engrain the wrong lessons from such experiences.

I remember that once when I was a little boy my mom had left the iron and ironing board out. For some reason, it seemed important to me to know whether the iron was on. Not being sophisticated enough to have figured out any other way of eliciting this vital information, I reached out my right index finger and touched the surface. It was on. Ow! I cried. When mom asked how I burned my finger, I told her I had touched the iron. "Why did you do that?" "To see if it was on." She laughed, which didn't make me feel any better. But I learned from the experience. I never touched the surface of a hot iron again. I figured out that I could put my hand close to it and feel whether it was radiating heat, without getting burned. In this instance, my brain's automatic learning processes did exactly what evolution has programmed them to do.

This educational method doesn't work in poker, at least not very well. You raise with aces, get a couple of callers, bet the flop, bet the turn, bet the river, get raised, call, and find out that somebody caught runner-runner straight on you after having started with 5-9 offsuit from first position. You feel the burn of all the money you lost, and your brain, completely unbidden, starts formulating plans on how to avoid feeling that pain again. This is how people develop the habit of limping with aces; they can't quite bring themselves to just muck them, but they have evolved a strategy of losing less. Others, conversely, put in such massive pre-flop raises that nobody calls them, and they win only the blinds. But both types of players have successfully learned how avoid the pain of a large loss, which has become a more important goal to them than maximizing long-term profit. Their automatic learning circuitry has led them down the wrong path.

Imagine if touching a hot iron sometimes caused a painful burn, but other times--more or less at random--the same action instead triggered some intensely pleasureable, quasi-orgasmic sensation? It would be much harder to learn not to touch it. Poker is kind of like that. It's not too hard to learn to like touching hot irons.

During my first month in Vegas, I was playing at the Golden Nugget when I was dealt J-4 in the big blind, with no raise. The flop was J-J-4. I don't remember whether the pot was large or small, but I won it. That was the first time I had ever flopped a full house. You know how certain scents immediately take your mind to some place and time when that odor signified something wonderful, like homemade bread, or your first girlfriend's perfume? Well, the J-4 is like that for me. It was such a rush, it left such a stamp of pleasure on my hippocampus, that every single time I see J-4 in my hand, I have an involuntary flashback to that flopped full house. No other poker hand triggers a specific situational memory like that for me.

But I don't play it, unless, like that previous situation, I can do so for free. I know it's a dog and causes far more trouble than it's worth. It will lose a lot more money than it will ever win.

So what accounts for the difference between me and the guy I played with last night? Why is he now basically a slave to the bad lesson he learned from his first hand of poker, while I get the visceral reminder of the thrill of flopping a full house but am nevertheless able to resist playing the same hand in an effort to replicate that experience?

I don't know all the anwers, though I think it's a really interesting question. Some of it probably has to do with my having played a lot more hands of poker than he has, and thus seeing more action/consequence pairs. Maybe I'm better at filtering out results that I know are anomalous, and giving them less weight in my later decision-making. Maybe I am better able to put faith in the poker authorities I read, and put less trust in an anecdotal personal experience that runs contrary to the received wisdom.

Whatever it takes to overcome the temptation to learn lessons from single hands of poker, we've got to do it. Those lessons are nearly as likely to be wrong as right, and integrating the experience in the same way that we integrate experiences about the world at large (e.g., it hurts to touch a hot iron) can end up being very, very costly.

But if you run into that guy from the MGM last night, please don't let him in on the secret, OK?

Happy 2-4!

As all of my good acolytes know (the date being circled in red on their calendars) today is the holiest day of the year: 2-4. (European readers are allowed to make April 2 their major celebration, since they tend to write the date in reverse order compared to us 'Mericans.)

More than any other day, you must seek out opportunities to play the deuce-four, bet and raise with it. The poker gods are watching and will reward your fealty.

If perchance you are a new reader and have not yet been introduced to the most powerful hand in hold'em, just click that "deuce-four" label at the end of the post for a list of all the pertinent stories that have been recounted here.

Happy Deuce-Four Day!

Upgrade at Hooters

(With that title, it's tempting to lead with a photo of before-and-after breast implants. But I shall refrain. Besides, I'm an au naturale kind of guy; I think implants usually detract from rather than enhance beauty.)

The last time I was at Hooters was exactly a year and a day before last night's visit: February 2, 2009, a fact that I did not know when I set out across the street after finishing up at the MGM Grand. I just knew it had been a long time.

The main reason I have avoided returning is that Hooters was one of just a handful of poker rooms that still allow smoking right at the table. (The others, to the best of my knowledge, are Arizona Charlie's--Decatur, Boulder Station, Club Fortune, Palms after 2:00 a.m., and Texas Station.)

I was surprised, therefore, when nobody was smoking when I sat down. As more and more time passed without anybody lighting up, I gradually realized that the policy must have changed. When the floor guy substituted in to give the dealer a break, I asked him about it. He said they changed it nearly a year ago.

Mind you, this is still one of the smokiest rooms you'll find; players need only step away from the table about three feet to light up. But it's amazing what a difference that small distance makes. Yeah, you'll still leave with clothes reeking, but it's not the gag-inducing injection right up your nostrils that it was when the sidestream was 12 inches away.

On that basis, I'm moving Hooters from category 6 up to category 5 in my list of degrees of smokiness in Vegas card rooms.

Also on that basis, there's a good chance I'll be patronizing the place a little more often than I have in the past. It's one of the softest rooms in the city, an easy place to make money if you can stand the smoke and the raunchy behavior of the other players. (Having the entire business themed after female body parts seems to eradicate any inhibition customers might otherwise feel about making sex the continual centerpiece of conversation. I can't recall a single mention of a woman in a few hours last night that wasn't about her body and/or sexual performance. It's true: Men are pigs.)

As an added bonus, Hooters poker room now gives $1/hour in comps that can be used at its restaurants or retail shops, like most every other poker room in the city does. They didn't used to do that (as far as I know). They also have a $100 aces-cracked bonus all day every day (highly unuusal), high-hand jackpots, and a bad-beat jackpot ($1000 shared--not sure of the distribution) for aces-full beaten.

The hatred is ebbing

I've been whining lately about sets treating me badly. Tonight the pendulum swung back in the direction I'm more used to. I spent a few hours at MGM Grand, then went across the street to Hooters, a place I tend to hit only once or twice a year. Between the two rooms, I hit seven sets, and didn't lose with any of them. Three yielded only small or medium pots, but with four of them (kings twice, jacks, and fives) I doubled up or felted an opponent. That included my kings cracking aces on a flop of K-Q-9 for the biggest pot of my night. I also never lost a big pot to somebody else's set.

As a result, I am experiencing considerable diminishment of my loathing for flopped sets.

Guess the casino, #408

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




Answer: Caesar's Palace

Guess the casino, #407

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




Answer: Sam's Town

Guess the casino, #406

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




Answer: Circus Circus

Guess the casino, #405

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




Answer: Aria

Yes, I'm still hating sets

I already declared myself to be a set-hater, of course. Today I was given two additional reasons for my position.

Reason #1:

Here's how I went out of the WBCOOP final event today, exactly nine minutes into it:




Three of hearts on the river would have been super-sweet, but no.


Reason #2:

Playing at Mandalay Bay today, I picked up 8-8 in middle position, and raised a couple of limpers. They both called.

Flop: 8-9-10, with two spades and one diamond. First limper shoves. Second calls, but is clearly not too happy about it. I reshove, for what is only $14 more, and get called by #2, obviously.

First guy has J-Q offsuit for the flopped straight. Second guy has Kd-10d for just top pair.

I don't remember the exact turn and river, but they were both diamonds that didn't pair the board, and limper #2 takes it all with a backdoor flush.


As you can see, if matters not one whit whether the set is in my hand or my opponents' hands. Either way, I lose. They have been my complete undoing this month. And yes, since you ask, I am feeling plenty peeved about it.

Guess the casino, #404

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




Answer: Venetian

Poker gems, #343

Steve Brust, as quoted in Chris Wallace's column for Poker Pro magazine, February, 2010, p. 77.


Probably the biggest thing I'm working to overcome is fear--fear of losing money, and fear of looking like an idiot. The answer to fear is math: if the numbers say it is profitable to make a certain play, then you make that play. Math overcomes fear. If word of this gets out, it may change the world.

Guess the casino, #403

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




Answer: Venetian

Problem dealer at Planet Hollywood

In early December, Las Vegas Michael, editor of the wonderful allvegaspoker.com site, posted some notes about the Planet Hollywood poker room, after playing a few sessions there for the first time in a while. Among other things, he wrote:

Many Dealers, though friendly, seem to not be knowledgeable on proper
mechanics. I have too often seen dealers matching stacks on all ins, rolling the
deck, squaring the muck, and significant amounts of extraneous talking and
theatrics. I will grant that the theatrics and talking might be a venue driven
situation, since at PH, the atmosphere is significantly more casual than other
properties, but the procedural issues with stack matching, etc, are
unacceptable.

In reply, I posted this quick observation:

Strange--my experience with the PH dealers is almost 100% positive. There
is one that I would deem genuinely incompetent. A couple of weeks ago I was
involved in a big three-way all-in with a side pot, and she attempted to
completely screw it up. Fortunately, I was paying close attention, and THREE
TIMES in the same pot kept her from making what would have been disastrous
errors (first reading the hands wrong, then trying to shove the whole pot to one
player, then counting out an amount for the side pot from the biggest stack, but
LEAVING that with the player and trying to take the other part of the stack).
She just doesn't pay attention to what's going on. But other than her, I think
the PH dealers are a good bunch. I do notice the technical flaws, but they don't
bother me as much as they do LVM. Keeping things (1) moving, (2) enjoyable, and
(3) under control (i.e., in terms of enforcing rules) are generally done quite
well.

I was there playing again last night, and again had problems with this same dealer--enough now that I'm ready to label her as among the worst in the whole city.

The setup

First I need to tell you how we got to the situations that provoked this post.

My first hand at the table (before the dealer in question joined us) was AA, one off the button. This is only the third time that I can recall getting dealt aces in my first hand in a session. It's a bit of a rush, but also somewhat problematic, in that I have no sense for how people are playing and hence how to get maximum value. I put in a raise to $15. Only the small blind called. The flop was K-10-x rainbow. He checked to me. I bet $25. He check-raised to $105. He was the big stack at the table, and I had to wonder whether he was just bullying. Alternatively, he might have thought that I was trying to take control of the table by raising my first hand with any two cards, and had decided to quash that effort. I'm perfectly capable of folding aces when I'm convinced I'm beat, but he wasn't convincing me. I called. The turn was check-check. On an apparently innocuous river, he bet $100. I still wasn't persuaded. I thought a while, then called. He instantly mucked without showing, so apparently my read was correct. I moved from my $300 buy-in to about $520 in one hand.

Just a few hands later I was in the big blind with the horrible 6-10 offsuit. But the pot was unraised and I flopped two pair. I bet it and got called on the flop and turn by two players, taking my stack to about $590.

First offense

At this point, the former big stack two seats to my left went on an extended break (he didn't return until just before I cashed out), and we were joined by a nice young married couple. I was in seat one, she took seat two, and her husband took seat four, so they were effectively the two positions to my immediate left.

As I've reported here many time, I usually don't talk much at the table--or in any other social situations, either. But I was in an unusually good mood, and I do keep reminding myself that being Mr. Nice Guy is something I really need to work on, for reasons of increased profit. I could tell in a heartbeat that these two were novices to casino poker. They were unsure about all the rules and procedures, and each bought in for the minimum of $50. But they were smiling and laughing, clearly there to have a good time. So I decided that this was a fine opportunity to channel Mike Caro and pour on the Mr. Friendly act.

I chatted them up, asked about their trip, made dumb jokes that they laughed at, etc. Almost as soon as they sat down, the husband noted my chips and said, "Looks like you're doing well." I brushed it off: "Just got really lucky in a couple of good spots."

Maybe one orbit into their time at the table, we now have Bad Dealer in the box. I'm in the big blind. Wife limps from under the gun. Husband raises to $6. There's a couple of other callers. I have K-6 offsuit. I call. Flop is J-7-6, giving me bottom pair. I check. Wife checks. Husband bets $6. It's folded around to me. I call. Wife calls. Turn is a king, giving me two pair and the likely winner. I check. Wife checks. Husband bets $12. He's now into the hand for $24, has only about that much left, and there is about $55 in the pot. I assume he'll feel pot-committed, so I check-raise to $50, which, of course, is enough to cover both of them. Wife folds. Husband folds, surprisingly.

I don't want to look like a bully, so I show the two pair. While doing so, I say, "I'm sorry--I just got ridiculously lucky on you. This is a terrible hand. I should have folded before the flop, and I should have folded again on the flop."

I meant it as a phony self-deprecating remark.* I specifically had in mind Caro's suggested script, which I liked and remembered from having posted it here:

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

The husband took it well, smiled, and said, "Oh, nice hand!"

To my shock and chagrin, at this point the dealer injected herself into the conversation. She turned to me and said, "But he didn't raise before the flop." Before I could regain my composure and figure out how to respond, she corrected herself. "No, wait--he did, but it was only a small raise, so it was OK for you to call."

GAAAAAAAAA! Is she really this clueless? Well, yes, apparently she is. First, she has no business commenting on the play of a hand, whether it's in progress or completed, period. Editorializing is not in the job description. It is virtually certain to annoy somebody who was in the hand. Second, she's trying to assuage me, apparently, because I'm saying that I played the hand badly. But the result is that she is implicitly--and darn near explicitly--criticizing the guy that I'm trying to assuage and be friendly with! Her remarks serve to (1) alert him to raise more to prevent the kind of play I made, and (2) make him feel that he misplayed the hand. How can she think this is a good thing to be doing?

Second offense

A short time later I'm on the button with A-10 offsuit. There are a few limpers. Sometimes I'll limp along in this kind of situation, but this time I decided to raise, maybe pick up dead money, maybe narrow the field. I made it $14. An early-position player (let's call him A) called. A middle-position player (let's call him B) looked at his diminished stack and decided to move all in, for a total of $27. I quickly did the math to confirm that I could legally raise. I preferred to isolate and play against just the all-in guy, without having to be faced with more decisions to make with such a mediocre hand. I also didn't think that A would want to keep putting more money in. So I announced a raise: another $30 on top of B's all-in bet.

I put in the amount of the call, but before I could add the extra $30, the dealer stopped me. She said I couldn't raise because my original bet was $14 and the all-in was $27, which wasn't quite double.

I wasn't too surprised by this. It's an easy mistake to make, and the amount was so close that I had had to silently double-check myself before I was certain that a raise was legal. I pointed out that my original raise was $12, and B's reraise was $13 more, so that reopened the action to me.

This kind of situation has happened a few times before, and every previous time that I can recall, the dealers immediately recognize their mistake and we go on. Not this time. She continued to argue with me. She wasn't even a little bit uncertain, as far as I could tell from her words and tone. She was absolutely positive that all that mattered was that my bet was $14, and B's raise was to $27, which wasn't a full raise, so I was not eligible to reraise. I had to go through the whole thing twice more, explaining that my $14 bet was a raise increment of only $12 over the big blind, which was what mattered. She finally caught on and allowed the raise, as I was on the verge of asking her to call the floor over, on the assumption that she was too thick-skulled to ever figure it out.

This seriously annoyed me, her insistence on sticking to an incorrect conclusion even in the face of being told differently by somebody who, if she had a lick of sense, she would realize seemed like he might actually know what he was talking about. I also resented that I basically had to come out of "hiding"; the interaction made it perfectly clear to everybody at the table that I was very experienced and understood the rules of the game better than the dealer did. That is not the image I was shooting for.

I'm pretty forgiving of occasional dealer errors. Nobody's perfect. I don't ask that dealers never make mistakes. I only ask that they respond appropriately after making one: fix it, call the floor if necessary, apologize, and move on. But this particular dealer has now exhausted my tolerance. She doesn't pay attention to the game and she makes critical errors at a much higher frequency than anybody else that works there. Now, on top of that, she goes out of her way to interfere with me trying to make another player feel good about his play, then irritates the bejesus out of me by refusing to acknowledge that she was wrong until I finally had to badger her into recognizing the situation for what it was.

(Incidentally, here's how the hand played out: Player A surprised me by moving all-in. It was only $11 more than my $30 reraise, so of course I called. I showed my cards, as did my opponents. I was up against K-Q and K-J. It hardly mattered, though. The flop came an incredible A-10-10, giving me a full house, and leaving both opponents drawing almost dead. This not only won me a nice little pot, but gave me a chance to make further jokes with my target couple about how skilled I was to be able to flop full houses when I needed to.)

In general, I think that the team of dealers Planet Hollywood has on staff is one of its strongest assets. But this one dealer is a black mark on a room that I otherwise like quite a bit. I don't like the thought of anybody losing his or her job, but she just isn't up to the task, and there are scads and scads of unemployed dealers who would handle the responsibility far more professionally than she does. I hope she is replaced by one of them.



*In retrospect, however, what I said was probably true. In light of the low implied odds being offered by the short stacks this couple had, I really should have folded that crap.


Addendum, April 14, 2010

In retrospect, I should not have check-raised the tourist couple. Another of Caro's frequent teachings is that check-raising carries a high risk of destroying the light spirit of a friendly game. It's too war-like and aggressive. It might maximize profit for that one hand, but it will tend to make the opponents much more wary of you thereafter, thus reducing profits for the whole session. He suggests betting out or check-calling instead. That rings true with me, and if I had it to do over again, I would just bet out on the turn, after having made two pair.

Aria

Last night I finally made it to City Center for the first time. I must be the last local to set foot in the place.

I won't bother with a full review of the Aria poker room; if you're interested, then by now you've either been there or read what everybody else has written about the place (e.g., here). I'll just add that it is indeed as nice as they all say. Aria is simply the most lavish, gorgeous, visually compelling casino I've ever laid eyes on.

With pictures as with the commentary: others have already done it far better than I could, so I'm keeping them to a minimum. (The first four are actually from Crystals, the shopping mall through which I passed on the way from the pedestrian bridge across the Strip to Aria. But hey, it's all City Center.)

It's a beautiful room, certainly on par with Wynn and Venetian. It seems somewhat louder than either of those places, though, with slot-machine and pit noise more prominent. I hate noise. Other than that, it's hard to find fault.

I was tired and played for only an hour, winning just over $100. That was mostly on a rather daring all-in check-raise bluff on a big scare-card turn; it completed both trips and a possible flush, and I was pretty sure my opponent was on an overpair and wouldn't dare call. He tanked for about three minutes, but then folded in disgust. Thankyouverymuch.

I will most certainly be back there many times.

Draggin' the pot?

I saw this amusing card protector in use last week at Caesars Palace and forgot to post about it at the time.

Guess the casino, #402

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




Answer: Caesars Palace