It's the little things that count

The little cards, that is.

Last night I was playing at Aria with my friend Poker Lawyer, who was in town for a few days. Shortly before the events described herein transpired, we were also joined by another friend, Stump.

I had 2c-4c on the button and called a raise to $15 from a middle-position player. PL was on my left in the small blind, and reraised to $45. I called, and it was just us to the flop. I don't remember what hit, except that it was completely uncoordinated and had a 4. Which, of course, was plenty of reason to call her $50 flop bet, knowing that I either already had the best hand (if she was playing A-K), or would improve to it with two pair or trips on the turn or river. Turn card was a blank. She checked. I moved all in for my last $110 or so. She folded. I showed. She said, "Every trip to Vegas I lose $100 to you when you have that hand!"

She is, apparently, learning, however. She won a big pot with 2-4 when I was away from the table on a phone call.

Not long after that 2-4 hand I had 6s-3s. The 6-3 is a hand that my friend Grange95 and his other Iowa poker-playing friends call "The Spanish Inquisition," because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. (I have written about this a few times before. See here.) I raised to $13. The guy to PL's left called. His play was a completely straightforward, conservative, ABC style. (He also bragged to us about his niece the porn star, but that's another story.) Flop: 6-3-6 with two diamonds. OK, that might be good for me.

I was surprised that Porn Star Uncle led out with a $20 bet, but I was happy that he had a hand that he liked well enough to do that with. I was guessing a medium pair, 7s or 8s or 9s. He tended to reraise pre-flop with 10s or higher. I didn't really think he had a flush draw, because he was not the type to take over the betting lead with a draw. I also didn't think he had a straight draw, because even if he had called me with a 4-5 (presumably suited), I didn't think he would lead out with it. I hoped against hope that he had 3-3 in the hole, though this seemed unlikely. I called.

Turn was 4d. This time he bet $35. He was not one to lead out betting twice without a hand that he liked a lot, so I felt confident now putting in a raise to $100. He rechecked his hole cards before calling. Aha! He probably has a big pair with a diamond, and he was playing it more cautiously pre-flop than most people would. I don't think he would call that raise with just an overpair unless it included a big diamond, hoping for a flush. I mentally joined him in hoping that he would get there.

He did. The river was the 7d. Now, this put a four-card straight flush on the board, which gave me a bit of pause. But he checked to me. If he had the 5d, I didn't think he would take a chance on missing a value bet if I got scared by that board and checked behind. I also didn't think he would have bet out on the flop with just a gutshot straight-flush draw. Furthermore, since both the 4d and 6d were on the board, he couldn't have started with suited connectors that included the 5d, and I didn't read him for being somebody who would play gappers after a pre-flop raise. And, finally, if I flop a full house and lose to runner-runner straight flush, well, them's the breaks, and I'm going to feel like I just got ridiculously unlucky, not that I played badly. However, failing to value-bet a full house when I think my opponent has just made a big flush, because of "monsters under the bed syndrome," would indeed be playing badly.

So I shoved. He called instantly and flipped over pocket queens, including, of course, the Qd. I showed the full house. Judging by his facial expression and sputtered words, I think it's safe to say that he did not expect the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapon is surprise.

Frankly, I'm still puzzled by his call. He should have been worried that I had Ad-Kd or Ad-Jd when I raised the turn, or that I had an unsuited big ace with the Ad that beat him on the river. He had seen me bluffing before, but never for anywhere near this amount. Maybe he didn't notice that those had been much smaller pots.

Anyway, he had me covered just barely, and I ended up doubling up with that $680 pot. Nice work if you can get it.

PL and I told the table about our strange Iowa friends and their love of the Spanish Inquisition. The next hand I played was again a 6-3. I raised, bet the K-4-5 flop, got a caller. Turn was 2, giving me the nuts. I bet and the other guy folded, his face registering obvious suspicion. I showed again.

Within five minutes, I had S.I. a third time. This time I just called somebody else's raise. Flop again had a 4 and 5, so I called. Turn 7. He checked. I bet. He folded.

By this time, everybody knew. It was no longer true that nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, everybody was fully anticipating exactly what I had, and they were right.

Lesson: A hand that nobody expects has diminishing returns as they learn to expect it. Which, of course, means that you move on to other hands that they are not expecting. In big-bet poker, a disproportionate share of your profit will come from hands that are outside of the range your opponents will think you are playing in a given situation.

One player joked to me, "I see you winning with 2-4 and 3-6, and I feel that I'm learning the wrong poker lessons here." I corrected him: "No, you are finally learning the truth about which hands are actually the strongest. The books you've read have it all wrong."

A tip o' the hat to Grange95 for cluing me in to the power of the 6-3. It's no 2-4, but clearly it will do in a pinch.

Poker gems, #464

Andrew Brokos, in Card Player magazine column, November 14, 2012 (vol. 25, #23), page 40.


I'd rather have a good hand and the best position than the best hand and poor position.

"Touch-bet"

I have twice recently come across the phrase "touch-bet" as a poker term, and I don't know exactly what it means.

Both times have been in Poker Player Newspaper columns by David "The Maven" Chicotsky. First, in the September 25 issue he wrote:

Remember also that even though our continuation bet of 375 is very small relative to the pot, it still represents about 25% of our opponent’s stack left behind. Quite often we’re able to use our stack leverage against our opponent by making polarized bets that are very small or big relative to the effective stack in the hand.  

This is one of those examples where I’d prefer to see us make a value- oriented-bluff touch-bet on the flop, or put our opponent all in. Just because you’re used to betting a certain size on the flop, doesn’t make it the optimal size for the given situation.

The second example is from his November 19 column (not available online yet):

We are able to bet larger or small in an attempt to mitigate risk; betting larger with a naked draw or betting smaller with absolute air (such as a touch-bet). Sometimes betting smaller gives off the impression that we have a strong hand against thinking players. It's possible to come up with a bunch of reasons to bet more or less than our normal default bet sizing. 

Obviously the context is virtually identical for these two instances. I can get a general sense that it's a small continuation bet after missing the flop. But is there something more precise about it than that--more conditions that define it or set it apart from other continuation bets? The fact that both instances of its use come from Chicotsky makes me suspect that it's a term that he and/or his pal Ari Engel came up with. But so far a Google search has been fruitless in coming up with a clearer description of what the phrase means.

Anyone? Anyone?



Addendum, November 13, 2012 

I asked Chicotsky via Twitter for an explanation of his terminology. His response:

Pocket guide

A bunch of copies of this book were in the magazine rack in the poker room at Mandalay Bay when I was there yesterday. Last week I saw somebody in my Twitter feed mention having picked one up at Treasure Island, I think.

It's a guide to the poker rooms of Las Vegas. Each room has either one or two pages, with details about location, contact information, games spread, tournament schedule, and promotions.

Nothing in the book indicates who compiled or published it, or why. At first glance you'd think that it's paid for by advertising. But the only ad anywhere is the back cover, which is a splash for the Venetian poker room.

A printed book is a strange medium for this kind of information these days. The details change so fast that the book was guaranteed to be out of date the day it hit the stands. And it was. Two of the poker rooms it lists have already closed (Jokers Wild and Aliante Station). One promotion listed expires December 15, another expires at the end of November, and several more at the end of the regular NFL season, further assuring that the book will very quickly be hopelessly outdated. The entry for the Suncoast poker room mentions a promotion that was good only during August!

Even All Vegas Poker, a web site dedicated to tracking what's going on in the city's poker rooms, has difficulty keeping up with the ever-changing promotions and tournament schedules. My understanding is that they call every poker room manager every week to see what's new. My guess is that it's rare that a single day passes without at least one piece of information found in this book changing. When most people are carrying around a web-enabled smart phone, a book like this just doesn't make much sense.

And, by the way, you'd have to be Captain Kangaroo to have a pocket big enough for this "Pocket Guide," which is 5 1/2" by 8 1/2".

Whoever published it also could have used a good proofreader. The table of contents lists "The Strip" a second time instead of "Off Strip" for a section header. It calls the Eastside Cannery the "Eastside Canner." There are odd errors inside, such as a reference to free meal as a "compliment buffet." Fremont Street is misspelled as "Freemont" all three times it appears. The plural of "ace" is written as "ace's." "Please" is spelled "Pleas."

This book is just an all-around mystery. Who produced it? Why? And if you're going to bother with putting such volatile information out in a book format, why such a bad job of it?

Once again, the world baffles me.

One last plug for Gary Johnson

Then I'll shut up about him. For a while, anyway. (I fully expect he'll be running again in 2016, and I fully expect to be an enthusiastic supporter again then.)

This is one of the more interesting pieces I've seen about Johnson. It emphasizes his ability to be more a pragmatist than an ideologue: "“I think libertarians need somebody who can articulate getting from A to Z. But you know, if G is achievable, how about it? Let’s get there!”

I also like his willingness to say "I don't know" when asked about something he hadn't considered before, and his unwillingness to declare all use of military for humanitarian reasons off-limits. I think he is right that we can't stop all atrocities around the world, but that we have to remain open to stopping genocides when we can.

By the way, you can watch what should be an interesting debate between Johnson and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, 9 pm EST/6 pm PST tonight, streaming here: http://rt.com/

Oh, and have I mentioned that Johnson is the only candidate who openly advocates your right to play online poker, and has spent time hanging out at the WSOP trying to reach out to poker players as a constituency? I have? OK, then--never mind.

I'll leave you with my two favorite paragraphs:

A curious thing about Johnson’s candidacy is that if you are not a libertarian – but you are liberal who believes in basic civil rights, the right to due process, personal privacy, an unregulated Internet, a peaceful foreign policy, marriage equality, and an end to crony corporatism and pro-wall street policy-making, for example, then Johnson – not Obama – is much closer to you on policy, but you’ll probably vote for Obama. Similarly, if you are a conservative who believes in the Constitution, small government, free markets, balanced budgets and the Fed out of huge areas of your personal and economic life that could be better handled by yourself or even the States, then Johnson – not Romney – is much closer to you on policy, but you’ll probably vote for Romney.... 

There is a greater difference between the end of the two party system and its continuation than there is between an Obama presidency and a Romney presidency. A choice between two things that are the same is no choice at all. Much nonsense is written about “wasted votes”. By any accurate definition, a wasted vote would be one that, even if repeated indefinitely, could change nothing of substance. A vote for the duopoly, whether you prefer Obama flavor or Romney flavor, would be such a vote. When you see that, you see that the only way not to waste one’s vote is to vote to break the duopoly, which means to vote for Gary Johnson.

String theory

At Mandalay Bay today I saw what I thought was an interesting situation that called into question the way I have thought of the string-bet rule.

A player had all of his chips in two stacks. He was first to act on the river. He picked up one stack with his left hand and moved it forward. Without letting go of it, he then moved the second stack forward with his right hand, with it ending up next to the first stack, and then he released both of them at the same time.

Was this a legitimate all-in move, or an illegal string bet?

I asked this on Twitter and got quite a variety of responses:

If you think the answer is perfectly obvious one way or the other, then consider these variations.

1. Does it matter to you if the interval between the forward motion of the two stacks is, say, 10 seconds versus half of a second?

2. What if he verbalizes "all in" between the two motions?

3. Does your answer change if the first stack was all of his red ($5) chips, and the second stack was all of his blue ($1) chips?

4. Does your answer change with the size of the second stack, i.e., a big stack of 30 chips versus one or two stragglers?

I do not like having the application of a rule depend on discerning a player's intention, because (1) it's too subjective a process, and (2) the process can be abused and manipulated by experienced players to their advantage.

Here, however, I'm forced to conclude that there is no way to do anything but attempt to figure out his intention. If he was betting, say, close to $200 with the first stack, and had left behind just one blue chip, and it appeared that he noticed it only after he had already moved the first stack into position and was doing his best to rectify his oversight, and he did so almost instantly, it's hard to assign to him any angle-shooting motivation. But the more you stretch any or all of those parameters, the murkier his intentions become.

If he had two equal stacks of red chips, and clearly paused for a long time to think after moving the first one forward, then we have to conclude that he did not form the mental intention of putting himself all-in before he started his move.

In between those rather clear-cut cases on either end of the spectrum, it's all kind of murky.

It's easy to pontificate that if he hasn't verbalized his action first, then if he is using both hands to move chips, they have to be synchronized. But that just moves us to the question of exactly how perfectly synchronized they have to be. We humans aren't capable of actual simultaneity. Shoot a sufficiently high-speed video of the action and you'll find some discrepancy, even if only tiny fractions of a second. It would be absurd to write the rule in a way that requires the two stacks to hit their final resting point within some precise interval of time of each other. But if you're not going to do that, and yet you agree that some intervals are short enough to be OK as an all-in while others are too long to deserve that supposition, then you've necessarily reduced it to a subjective judgment call.

What actually happened today was that the first stack was all of his red chips, and the second was all of his blue chips. But they were roughly equal, maybe 25 or so of each. So he couldn't have just overlooked the second stack. Furthermore, he paused briefly with his left hand on the first stack after having moved it forward, announced, "All in," then picked up the second stack with his right hand and moved it next to the first before releasing both of them. I think that what happened was that at first glance he thought that his red chips alone were enough to cover his opponent's stack, but then he realized a beat too late that the two of them might be closer in total chips behind than he thought, and he probably shouldn't leave his blue chips out of the bet, so he did a quick mid-move correction.

In other words, it makes no sense to attribute to him any actual ugly angle-shooting, because the difference in the total amount of the bet was not enough that it would make much difference in an opponent's decision. Furthermore, his mid-move correction came quickly enough that he couldn't have been trying to gauge his opponent's reaction before deciding whether to add more chips to his bet. But it also wasn't just the classic "oops I meant to go all in but I forgot the one blue chip that I'm using as a card cap." He had a real change of mind, I think, but one that didn't actually alter the situation by very much.

Because of that, I think a reasonable argument can be made to let the bet stand (because it changed the absolute amount of the bet by a fairly small percentage, not enough to plausibly affect whether an opponent would call), AND a reasonable argument can be made to make him take back the second stack (because he probably did not start his move with the intention of including it).

The dealer didn't hesitate at all. She disallowed the second stack. Nobody argued the point, and I was probably the only one that thought it even pointed to an interesting question.

Two poker rooms closed this week

So says Dave Ferrara, writing for Pokerati. Specifically, Jokers Wild and Aliante Station. See http://pokerati.com/2012/11/hpt-rolls-through-town-ante-up-tour-takes-off-jokers-not-so-wild/.

By my count (I'm looking at the records of where I have played), 64 different casinos currently have a poker room or have had one at some point since I moved to Vegas in July of 2006, two of which (Speedway and Railroad Pass) I never got to play at while they were open. Current count is right around 50. Thinking about each of them individually, I count only 23 that have been open continuously and in the same location since I've been in town, and I really think that two or three of the ones I virtually never visit have moved, though I can't picture exactly where they used to be, so I'm crediting them with constancy. If 23 out of 64 have gone basically unchanged in six years; 41 out of 64 have moved, closed, and/or opened in that time span.

Ya think things change fast around here?

How to vote for limited government

To people who care deeply about limited government as a principle, it's perfectly obvious why one cannot vote for Barack Obama. But Judd Weiss provides an excellent explanation of why such people also cannot reasonably cast a vote for Mitt Romney. A few choice excerpts:

Both Romney and Obama will drive full speed towards the cliff. The only difference is Obama will drive a little faster, but it's a negligible difference, and certainly not one worth spending energy on.  

Our only hope to prevent a bleak dystopian scenario from unfolding is to send a powerful NO!! in the face of the forces that are pushing us there....  

People complain about politicians not having principles, but that's only because it's the ones without principles who win. If having principles makes a politician unelectable, that's not an indictment on the politician, it's an indictment on the voters....  

It's not just that Mitt Romney lacks clear principles, he is actually worse on economic principles than many of the Republicans that the Tea Party overthrew in 2010. 

Everything the successful Tea Party stood for is abandoned with Romney. Sure there's limited government rhetoric, mixed with statements like "Regulation is essential. You can't have a free market work if you don't have regulation".

If you think Democrats are sorely disillusioned with Obama after 4 years of disappointment, can you just imagine how most Republicans will feel after 4 years of daily nonsense like that from Romney?  

...Romney doesn't actually understand or have concern for limited government free market principles, he's only concerned about coached talking points. Romney doesn't even understand principles, period. He spends much of his time defending himself from his inconsistencies.  

I cannot for the life of me see how Romney represents hope for something better than Obama....  

If we get enough votes for Johnson, and Romney suffers a decisive loss against a weak President as a result of it, you can be sure that it will be noticed. Gary Johnson is a very effective protest vote to let the rest of the political establishment know that there is a strong movement for liberty that you dismiss at your own peril.  

Obama was an embarrassing mistake for those on the left. Romney will be far more embarrassing and disastrous. Don't constrain yourself to options that you know are awful. There is no hope for anything good to come out of a Romney presidency. If we want limited government principles but we all jump on board and vote for Mitt Romney anyway, then we truly have no hope for the future, and we have ourselves to blame.

Fremont Street Halloween

Last night I walked over to the Golden Nugget for a little of teh pokerz. I won some money, which was about as exciting as I have just made it sound.

The trip over and back, however, was as amusing as it has been every Halloween that I've been in Vegas. First, I ran into a parade that I didn't even know was going to be there:





After playing, I just meandered through the crowd for a while, looking at the people in costumes. It occurred to me that most of you probably had not had the experience of pushing through the Downtown Vegas Halloween Scrum, so I just turned on the video and shot what I was seeing as humanity and I streamed past each other. By far the most popular costume theme this year was "zombie."

Warning: This video is just 14 minutes of me milling around in a crowd, looking at whatever caught my interest for a few seconds. If that sounds worth watching to you, great, have at it. If not, move on. Either way, no complaining allowed.





I was in costume, too, though you can't see it. As is my tradition, I went as "sexy poker player."

Finally I came across an opening in the crowd where a bunch of amateur street performers were just unleashing their version of "Gangnam Style."




And so ends the fun and nuttiness of another Halloween in Vegas.

"Repeat critical violations"

A few months ago I tried, liked, and recommended to you a Cuban/Mexican restaurant just a block from my apartment building.

Tonight I walked by it, noticed that it was closed, thought that that was peculiar, and looked more closely. This sign is posted on the front door:

It's from the health department. The place is ordered closed because of "repeat critical violations" of the food code.

That does not sound good.

I hereby retract my recommendation.

Addendum: Apparently it's been closed for a while now, and I never noticed:

http://vegas.eater.com/archives/2012/04/10/mamitas-stays-closed-after-health-district-reinspection.php

Life in Summerlin

No poker content, but there is blood and gore ahead!

The target for this morning's bike ride was this chain of trails (marked in red) out in Summerlin, the rich part of town.

Have you ever wondered what the city provides when it builds bike trails where the wealthy people live that it does not provide when it builds bike trails where we working-class folk live? Well, I'm here to answer your question!

You get beautiful, manicured trailheads!

Trees!

A ginormous floodwater basin!

(I had to digitally stitch together several shots to make this panoramic composite, and it still doesn't adequately convey the size. I checked on Google Earth, and it's about 120 yards across, and just over 2/3 of a mile long. The volume of water that has to be contained when we get one of our occasional flash storms is just staggering.)

Tunnels!

Tennis courts!

Soccer fields!

More tunnels!

Bridges over the busy streets so you don't get killed crossing them!

Purple shrubbery, sufficient to placate the most demanding forest knights!

Whole parks and playgrounds!

More bridges over busy streets!

Baseball fields!

Skateboard parks!

Mormon churches!

Sign posts!

Benches!

Doggie doo bags!

(They have boxes just like this along the trails in the poor parts of town, too, but I look at them as I ride by, and have never, ever seen one that was stocked with bags. 100% empty. In Summerlin, every single one that I passed had bags in it.)

Nicely maintained trails! No broken glass! Lights for night riding!

For when the weather's not nice, an indoor sports complex!

Exercise equipment!

Basketball courts!

Picnic tables and drinking fountains!

I also saw six--six!--very cute chipmunks, but none of them stuck around long enough for me to pull out my camera and take his picture.

The difference in the quality of the amenities provided in the suburb-like Summerlin neighborhood and the central, working-class neighborhoods in which I did my first rides is nothing short of stunning. I'll bet that city politicians would try to claim that such differences have nothing whatsoever to do with the income (and consequent political influence) of the residents. I would laugh in their faces.


Oh, I almost forgot the blood and gore part of the program! That skateboard park was deserted, and it sorely tempted 14-year-old me. At first I just rode around the perimeter, marveling at how lethal everything looked. But then I saw some gentler slopes at the far end, and that mischievous 14-year-old me took over. I can do those! No problem! So I swooped down into the pit and in my lowest gear pedaled hard, and came to a triumphant stop on top of the crest. "See?" said the 14-year-old. "Easy!" He even stopped to take a picture looking down over the handlebars:

He texted that photo to his girlfriend, and coasted down. Whee! Exhilarating! The 51-year-old me thought that that little taste of long-ago recklessness was enough. But the 14-year-old me looked at the next slope over, which was just a little bit steeper, and said, "That one! We can do that one!" Against my better judgment, I gave in to him.

And we almost made it. "Almost" being the key word there.

Just about six inches from the top, Impetus, the Great God of Momentum, looked down upon our foolishness and thundered from Mt. Olympus, "No more of that for you!" Quicker than I would have thought possible, I switched from rolling forward to rolling backward, an eventuality for which I was wholly unprepared.

I wish somebody had been shooting video, because I suspect it would win a prize on "America's Funniest Home Videos." Legs flailing wildly, handlebars twisting this way and that, all while rolling backwards, in a desperate attempt to keep the wheels under me. I did manage to make it to the bottom of the slope before I toppled over, so there was only minimal sliding along the concrete.

As gravity was taking over, the only thing I could think was, "This is not going to end well."

My handlebars were knocked out of alignment. There's some scraping on one brake lever. My helmet--which I'm very glad to have been wearing--has a little scuff mark on one side. My shirt and pants got dirty but, surprisingly, not torn. I got a couple of boo-boos:

There was, fortunately, no damage to expensive things, like my teeth and glasses. Or bones.

In spite of these massive wounds, the 14-year-old in me still thinks that that place looks like it would be hella fun to play in, given a bike better suited for such shenanigans. Sadly, the 51-year-old me realizes that the 14-year-old me is no longer in charge of the reflexes and balance part of the riding process. He could have done it. I don't think that I can, or should.


Oh, and one other little thing about the biking, since if you've read this far you must find something interesting about it (though I have no idea why you would). I've rigged up this front fork mount for the back of my car to keep the bike from flopping around when I drive:

The rear wheel tucks up between the front passenger seat and the frame, like so: 

Note that the larger side of the rear seat stays usable in its normal position. Pretty nifty, eh?

Better lucky than good

Today I played at Mandalay Bay. All of my profit came from one big hand, which I played so badly at every decision point except the last one (after a lucky winning card had come my way) that I'm not even gonna tell you about it. It's too embarrassing.

So there.

Gary Johnson

The guy I met a couple of weeks ago at Mandalay Bay--the one who gave me the Gary Johnson t-shirt--invited me to a private "meet the candidate" thing tonight at the Palazzo. I went, but I had incorrectly remembered the starting time, and ended up getting there just as Mr. Johnson was telling the crowd, "Thanks for coming. Gotta run and catch a plane!" And he was out the door before I had a chance to shake his hand. I was going to tell him that he's the first presidential candidate in my lifetime that I am enthusiastic, rather than lukewarm, to support. Oh well. I'm sure he's heard that thousands of times already.

The gathering was at the Dal Toro restaurant, which I had never even heard of before. This created a bonus situation. You see, they have a small but nice collection of cars there, and I got to walk around and lust after them when there was almost nobody else around to get in the way. Some bonus pictures for you:

In other news, today I did a 24.1-mile bike ride, including about 1100 feet of up then down. It was the full length of that trail I first tried last week. I am now ready for the Tour de France. Well, as soon as I can walk again anyway.

What are these?

Out on a bike ride this morning, I saw these things that look like trapeze bars hanging from power lines:

Right-click on photos to see them full size.

The ones in the first picture are over a wash. The ones in the second picture are over the adjacent bike/pedestrian trail. The lower one in the second picture is obviously broken.

I can't figure out what they are. They look like they're made for somebody to hang from, but that can't be right, because hanging from a thin power line, they couldn't support much weight.

So my second thought was that they are height markers of some kind, like the bar you pass under before entering a parking garage, to warn too-tall vehicles not to proceed. But that doesn't make sense. They're hanging over a wash, where there shouldn't be any vehicles to warn. Besides, they're way high--you'd need a cherry-picker kind of thing to reach them. There's nothing else anywhere around of comparable height for which they could serve as a height marker.

I'm stumped. But I'll bet that somebody among my highly intelligent readers will know the answer, or at least be able to guess at it better than I have.

Newspaper editorial board endorses Gary Johnson

The Chattanooga Times-Free Press gets it exactly right: "Romney may be less eager to tax, spend, attack personal freedoms and disregard the constitutional limits on government than his Democratic opponent, President Barack Obama, but only slightly."

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/oct/24/1024b-fp1-gary-johnson-for-president/?opinionfreepress

Poker gems, #463

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, October 17, 2012 (vol. 25, #21), page 36.


If it's nearly impossible against certain players to get your sets paid off for 200 big blinds, doesn't it follow that your monster bluff is a near lock to work against these same players?

Decision time--conclusion

Sunday I published a post in which I set up a decision I had to make and asked you to think about what you would do if faced with that same situation. If you have not already read that post and wish to do so before seeing the spoilers below, go here.




OK, so I had a medium-strength flush, was facing a raise, and had to decide whether to raise or fold.

This was a close decision. It could have gone either way. But in the end, I decided to raise all-in. (A smaller raise was never a consideration, since I would be pot-committed anyway and might as well maximize whatever fold equity I might have, though I judged it to be pretty small.) I was nudged to this side of the decision largely by the two pieces of information I discussed previously: The intel that he was a bad player who had just had the luckiest night of his poker life, and the fact that he rechecked his hole cards only after the third heart had hit. I decided that his most likely types of hands were, in descending order of probability, (A) something other than a flush, (B) a flush higher than mine, and (C) a flush lower than mine. I thought that the sum of (A) and (C) was greater than (B). Hence the shove.

ABP called.

He actually had 4h-5h. He had flopped an open-ended straight-flush draw and turned a small flush.

The river was the 6d, changing nothing, and I won the pot.

To be honest, I had not considered the possibility of a combo draw like this, so shame on me for that. As to my other thoughts, I had been both right and wrong. I was right that he was a sufficiently bad player that he might raise me with a worse flush. But I was wrong about assigning the relative probabilities of the categories of hands he could have. I was also wrong about the tell, at least as it pertained to ABP. (It might have been accurate with respect to the third player, but I'll never know.)

I think the advance notice I had been given about him being a bad player was accurate. Raising the turn was dangerous, given that flush draws would be a large part of my range there, and every possible flush draw was bigger than his. Furthermore, he had another player yet to act behind him, who might also have made a higher flush. If he wanted to raise as a probe for my strength, he could have made it a smaller amount. Then, when I moved all-in, he could have safely concluded that he was facing a higher flush and that he therefore had just two outs to win and should fold.

The beauty of the straight-flush draw seduced him. He freely explained that that's what he was counting on, and that he was pretty sure I must have a higher flush. Plus, he cited the always-popular, "Besides, I had so much in there already."

As a final thought, consider what an interesting and exciting card the 7h would have been for the river.

Stinkeroo

Wow, this trailer for a poker reality show with Johnny Chan looks unfathomably awful in just about every possible way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkzGYtUJ4Mc

The only redeeming feature is that it shows The Mighty Deuce-Four winning a big fat pot at about 1:54.

Decision time

I'm just home from my favorite football-Sunday hangout, Mandalay Bay. I thought one hand was worthy of a blog post. As usual in this occasional game I play with readers, I'll set up the decision point as thoroughly as I can, lay out my options and the arguments for them, then give you 24 hours to register with comments about what you would do, before a second post reveals what I decided to do and what, if anything, I know about the ultimate outcome.

I was in Seat 10. We had a new player in Seat 1. He had been there maybe 15 minutes. He played a lot of hands, mostly passively, but had not been involved in any big pots. If he had shown any hands, I had either missed it or they didn't register as giving me any useful information about his play.

The most potentially useful intelligence I had on him had come a couple of hours earlier. He was hanging around our table, chatting with the players in Seat 7 and Seat 8. Apparently all three of them had been in a game together at M.B. Saturday. Our villain had cashed out for a remarkable $2200. After the three of them chuckled over a few stories from yesterday, he walked away. As soon as he was out of earshot, the two players with whom he had been chatting began telling us all what an awful player he was. Both of them were somewhat above-average tourist-level players, and they had no particular reason (as far as I could tell) to be spreading disinformation about him, so I tended to credit their accounts as reasonably reliable. They said that he was having the lucky night of his life--calling raises with garbage and hitting every board. Because this Allegedly Bad Player (I'll refer to him as ABP here) had walked away, I assumed that this insight was not going to be useful. But then, as I mentioned, a couple of hours later he showed up again and took the seat to my left.

So to the hand of the day: I had 9h-10h under the gun. I limped in. This was not an aggressive table, and I thought it likely that I would trigger a cascade of limpers, which it did. Five of us went to the flop, which came Kc-3h-6h. I bet $6 and got two callers--ABP and Seat 4, a timid player with a short stack. I didn't much like getting two calls, because the most likely scenario seemed to be that one of them had a king that he was unsure of, and the other had a flush draw, which was most likely going to be higher than mine.

Fourth street was the 8h. This completed my flush and even gave me a one-card shot at a straight flush. But I sure wasn't going to count on the latter coming in, and I had to doubt whether the former was good.

As I was pondering (though only briefly) what to do, I looked left and noticed both of my opponents rechecking their hole cards. This gave me more confidence than I would otherwise have had, because most amateur players will recheck the suits of their cards on the flop if they think they might have flopped a flush draw. After that, they don't need to check again when and if it hits. (I discussed the operation of this tell in some detail here.) I had not noticed either of these guys checking their cards on the flop, but it's possible that they did and I missed it.

Based largely on the inference that neither of them had just made a higher flush than mine, I bet again--$16. ABP quickly raised to $50. Third guy folded, and action was back to me. I had another $125 left, and ABP had me covered, having bought in for the $300 max.

My $16 had been something of a probe bet. If both opponents had a weakish king, I would expect both to fold. A nut flush might either call or raise, depending on propensity to trappy play. If one of them made a non-nut flush I would expect a raise to prevent the agony of a river draw-out to somebody who had just the Ah.

Basically, I had asked a question, and I had received an answer in the form of a raise, so I should fold, right?

Maybe, but not necessarily. It all depended on how bad a player ABP was. He might think a smaller flush was good. He might not be used to seeing people bet flush draws (especially from out of position), and on that basis conclude that I probably had just a top-pair kind of hand. If so, then a raise here would make sense, since he would fear me having the king of hearts, which might bink a higher flush on the river if he didn't guard against it. With similar reasoning, he could well raise with any set or two-pair hand. Heck, I suppose he might even raise with something like Kh-Qx.

So I had a genuinely difficult decision to make. Folding was a perfectly reasonable option, given the good probability that I was facing a bigger flush and had just one out (to the straight flush). Raising was a real consideration, because if he did, in fact, have anything other than a flush (top pair and a flush draw, two pair, or a set), I would want to get all the money in now if I could. Calling was not seriously on my mind, since it would just suck me deeper into the hand with no more information about where I stood. Furthermore, basically every river card except the 7h would force me into an even more difficult decision to make from out of position, a situation I try to avoid. So I'll give you this much of a hint: I did not call.

Put yourself in my shoes (my spiffy new shoes). As Karl Malden used to ask on behalf of American Express traveler's checks, "What will you do? What will you do?"

More bike stuff (no poker content)

Clark County has been aggressively expanding the number and reach of what they called "shared-use" paths; they're for walking, running, biking, dog-walking, horse-riding--basically anything non-motorized. (For an overview of the projects completed and underway, see here.) I've explored the ones that I can reach on my bike from home. Today I took a big step forward by throwing the bike in the back of the new car and heading out to what is probably the best urban trail the city has to offer.

It's the West Beltway Trail, which runs from across the street from Red Rock Casino to Tropicana Avenue. From there, you can ride on the sidewalks for a mile or so, then hop on to the Tropicana/Flamingo Wash Trail. Together these stretch about 12.3 miles end to end. There are also some branches off of them, which I did not explore. There's a nice review of the ride (plus directions on how to bridge the gaps in it--one big fault is that the county does not post good signs to guide people across the gaps) on Yelp, just posted a couple of weeks ago, with the route highlighted on a Google map.

Here's a sign from the trail that shows the whole system of which it is the backbone:

I started at the northwest end. I think that was a mistake, in retrospect, because it gave me the downhill half first, and the uphill half last. The grades aren't daunting, but you definitely feel them. I dropped, then rose, about 1100 feet over the course of about 9.4 miles each way. I stopped a couple miles short of the end because I was having a really great time and didn't want to spoil it by having the return half be so long and onerous that I'd be miserable by the time I got back to where I had parked the car. In retrospect, I could have made it and been only a little more sore than I am now, but I don't mind having erred on the conservative side. I rode 18.8 miles, which is a substantial increase over my previous longest ride of 14.8 miles. So I am stretching my legs, both literally and metaphorically. (Incidentally, if you're wondering why I'm sitting at home in front of my computer, writing about bike trails on a Friday night instead of out playing poker, it's because I'm stiff and sore enough not to want to take any more steps than necessary for basic life functions. I'll be fine in the morning, though, judging from past experience.)

One of the highlights of the journey is the recently completed bridge over Town Center Drive. I wish I had taken pictures of it. I assumed I would be able to find them online, but there isn't much. Too new, I guess. This one is from the county's web site linked above:

But it doesn't show you the best parts, which are the beautifully graded S-shaped ramps. They're gentle enough that you can climb them without killing yourself, but still steep enough that you can let loose and really get flying by the end on the way down. Great fun!

Here's an overhead shot from Google Maps, taken (it appears) when the north half was completed but not the south end:

You also pass what must be one of the largest holding basins for regional floodwaters, with an enormous concrete spillway controlling the gradual release of the water. Again from Google Maps (the spillway is that odd zigzag structure in the upper right, which looks tiny here, but is really impressive from the distance of the trail):

I had perfect weather for today's ride--about 80 degrees, clear, sunny. For the stretch that parallels 215, you get a mostly uninterrupted view of the bluffs to the west, and glimpses of Red Rock Canyon to the northwest.

This whole thing was far, far nicer than the mixed-use trails accessible from downtown. While it's nice to have those, their aesthetic qualities and utility are both severely marred by terrible maintenance. In particular, they are strewn with dirt, sand, and rocks washed over them by recent rains, and really uglified by all the junk that thoughtless people dump there. Worst of all, there is shattered glass everywhere. I don't know how often crews go through and clean them, but it's not often enough. By contrast, the trail system I rode today was almost entirely pristine, and I even saw a crew picking up debris between the trail and the wash. Does this have to do with the difference in wealth (and, hence, political influence) between people who live in the inner city versus those in Summerlin? The question is left as an exercise for the reader.

Here's my route mapped out on RideWithGPS.com, showing the gradual elevation changes in the graphic along the bottom:

It's really as lovely a path as you're likely to find in this city. I see on Yelp some gripes that there are no public restroom facilities, water fountains, trees, shade shelters, and other amenities. Which is true. But I guess my standards got set by those first city trails I rode, compared to which this West Beltway/Flamingo Wash trail is a luxurious upgrade, one I'm eager to experience again.

I wish I could say that my bicycle was as pleasing as the trails. The damn thing keeps needing trips to bike shops to fix problems. Remember that clunking sound from the cranks I mentioned? It turned out to be a bottom bracket (the thing that connects the pedals to the front chainring) in need of adjustment. I've ridden less than 25 miles since that was done, and that cursed clunking started up again today toward the end of this ride! I've also had it in twice for adjustment of the rear derailleur. Basically, I get to go for a nice ride, have a problem develop along the way, and take it in to the shop. I get it back, go for another ride, find another problem, take it back in. Four trips to the shop in less than two months of owning it, and a total of well under 100 miles of riding. That's just appallingly bad reliability for a brand-new bicycle, even if it is a cheap one. I don't know if I just got a lemon, or if all of Schwinn's mass-market retail bikes are this poorly built, but I have already decided that I will never, ever buy one from them again--especially given the unconscionable warranty policy they have (as I mentioned in that previous post).

But I'm trying not to let that deter me from having fun, enjoying exploring parts of the city I've never seen before, and getting my first taste of semi-regular exercise in decades. Today's ride was absolutely delightful in just about every way. If you live around here and have a bicycle, you really owe it to yourself to take it for a spin along these trails that a big chunk of our tax dollars have built.