Oh, what a feeling!

Last night I played another tavern poker tournament.

At one point, I raised with A-J.

Flop: A-A-J.

But wait, it gets better!

I made a small bet and got four callers!

But wait, it gets better!

Turn: the final ace. I think I probably have this locked up.

But wait, it gets better!

I made a bigger bet. Three callers!

But wait, it gets better!

Some irrelevant card on the river. I move all in. TWO CALLERS!

Both were shorter stacks than mine, so a double knockout. And I became monster chip leader.

It's all skill, ya know. You have to practice for many years to learn how to flop a full house, and improve it to quads.

PokerNews article #64

Another batch of angle-shooters, and how to foil their evil intentions.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/still-more-angle-shooters-and-how-to-defeat-them-21511.htm

Are there other angle-shooting techniques that I have not covered in these two articles? I have about 3 more, but not enough for another full article. Let me know what I've missed, and maybe I'll get a third compilation out of it.

Hellmuth vs. Negreanu

I never get tired of seeing Phil Hellmuth lose.

"The most weirdly played hand in the history of poker"

Of course, they shouldn't use the word "beat" in the title, since the queens were ahead all the way.

PokerNews article #63

Seven dirty poker tricks--and how to fight back.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/seven-dirty-poker-tricks-and-how-to-fight-back-21436.htm


By the way, I had almost as many more examples that I didn't use because of space limitations. Was that enough, or would you like to see a second article with more? Let me know in the comments.

PokerNews article #62

Six things to think about before the flop:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/preflight-checklist-six-things-to-think-about-before-flop-21368.htm

Should you go pro?

A sobering look at the financial realities of trying to make it as a professional poker player, from one who has been there, Daniel Negreanu, here.

Poker and "Jeopardy"

Great story from Nolan Dalla.

http://www.nolandalla.com/the-best-performance-ever-by-a-poker-player-on-jeopardy-eddie-timanus/

PokerNews article #61

When you flop a big hand, should you play it slow or fast? Here's how to decide.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/to-bet-or-not-to-bet-that-is-the-question-21299.htm

Top Pair podcast (again)

I'm not a guest on the latest episode (April 18, 2015), but the guys chat about the PokerNews article that I wrote after appearing as a guest on the previous installment. You can listen here.

Catawba Falls

Yesterday was my monthly all-day date with Nina. The highlight was the three-mile (round trip) hike to Catawba Falls, a spot about 20 miles west of Asheville.

Nina noticed this critter, which I think is one of the many species of "Appalachian mimic millipedes."

Getting to the falls from the parking area requires crossing shallow parts of the Catawba River a few times. This is Nina trying the wading method. I tried the rock-hopping method, which kept my feet and pants legs only marginally more dry.

We passed by a couple of abandoned buildings...

...and some rusty steel cables.

Then, of course, there was the river and falls and rocks and trees and, well, nature in general.

It's hard to either describe or show how pretty it is in the little part of the world called western North Carolina. I guess you'll just have to visit--or move!--here and see for yourself.

PokerNews article #60

A bunch of miscellaneous tips that were too short on their own to merit a full article:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/five-tips-to-make-your-poker-game-happier-and-more-profitabl-21233.htm

Negreanu on the perception of luck

This is one of the best things I've seen Daniel Negreanu write:

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-journal.php?subaction=showfull&id=1428280619&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&

PokerNews article #59

This one is about how one's primary goal for playing in a home poker game is different for that of playing in a casino.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/strategy-for-home-poker-games-it-s-not-what-you-think-21182.htm

Slow-roller punished

This is the best poker thing I've seen in a long time:

https://paddypowerpokerblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/andreas-gann-takes-8th-place-for-e26750-deserves-it/

Best part about that clip is the other players immediately laying into Gann with their disgust at his conduct.



ADDENDUM, April 7, 2015

According to one of the commentators in that video clip, he spoke to the culprit shortly after the incident, and learned that he had previously been exclusively an online player, and had no idea that what he did would be considered bad form. Furthermore, when he was told that it was, he immediately sought out the slow-roll victim and apologized to him.

http://www.irishpokerboards.com/forum/showpost.php?p=888949&postcount=220

"Top Pair" podcast

I was the guest on the latest episode (April 4, 2015) of the "Top Pair" poker podcast, which focuses on home games. You can listen to it here:

http://www.toppair.net/pls/apex/f?p=810:6:0::NO::: 

We talked about my history of getting into poker, my experiences with home games, and my poker writing here and for PokerNews.

They also spent some time in their previous episode (same link, scroll down a bit to March 21, 2015) talking about my PokerNews article on playing with cash on the table. It's from about 19:00 to 31:00 in that episode.

The cards can change

Great story on how your cards can literally change, if you're not paying attention:

http://blog.pokerjunkie.com/wsop/the-cards-dont-change-except-when-they-do

PokerNews article #58

This one is on my personal rules for approaching poker--and life in general.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/never-complain-never-explain-other-unwritten-rules-of-poker-21116.htm

Date with Cardgrrl

Once a month, Nina and I schedule a whole-day date. For March, it was yesterday.

We started with some flowers for my girlfriend--Gerbera daisies. (Right-click/open in new tab for maximum embiggification.)

Then we were off to breakfast at Biscuit Head, which is not only the best place for breakfast in Asheville, NC, but in the whole wide world.

Our next big plan was to head to a place called Max Patch for a hike. But there were lots of things to stop and see on the way there. First we spotted a burned-down house, which required exploration.

Much of the winding road to Max Patch follows the course of a lovely stream, which has many little rapids like this one:

This was the sight at one scenic overlook, on our heavily overcast day:

On the last few miles of the climb up to Max Patch, it began to snow. There was a brief window of time when the snow coated the tree branches, but was melting when it hit the ground, creating an effect lovelier than I could capture in photos, though I tried.

When we finally arrived at Max Patch, it was too cold, snowy, and windy to make for a nice hike, so we basically just turned around and drove back down the mountain. But the trip was a worthwhile adventure anyway.

Out next stop was an appointment for an hour in a hot tub. The Hot Springs Resort and Spa has a bunch of hot tubs fed by a natural geothermal spring, so that the water is a constant 102 degrees year round. The tubs are in private enclosures, some lined up along the French Broad River, some along a stream that feeds into the river. (We were told that tubs 5 and 8 are the best positioned, but we didn't know that in time to request them.) It was a lovely, relaxing way to spend an hour.

This is me, getting in the way of you seeing the nice view that we had from the tub (photo by Nina):

Then we headed back to Asheville, to the opening of the annual orchid show at the North Carolina Arboretum. There were so many spectacular orchids on display that it was hard to pick just one--or even just a few--to show you.

Our last stop was dinner at an excellent Nepali restaurant in downtown Asheville, Cafe Kathmandu.

Finally, we went back to Nina's house for a couple of cutthroat games of Quiddler.

And that is what it's like to spend a whole day with my girlfriend. I kinda like it--and her.

Shuffling

Robbie Strazynski (@cardplayerlife) pointed me to this YouTube video about the mathematics of shuffling a deck of cards into true randomness:




You might watch that and think, "OMG! The way poker dealers shuffle doesn't come anywhere close to meeting that standard!" And you'd be right. But you wouldn't be right to worry about that fact.

When the professor is talking about a deck that is not fully randomized, so that one could guess the next card more often than chance alone would dictate, he's talking about having started from a deck that is as it comes from the factory--or, to use the casino term, a deck that has been "spaded"--with the cards in rank order within each suit.

But if you don't know what order the cards are in before the shuffling begins, it makes no difference how much shuffling you do. Your ability to guess the position of any specified card is 1 out of 52 before the shuffling procedure begins (by definition of what it means not to know what order the cards are in), and it is the same after one riffle shuffle, or two, or ten.

For purposes of a poker game, it makes no difference whether the order of the cards in the deck after the shuffling process can pass a statistical test for random distribution compared to the order they were in before the shuffling process. All that matters is whether any player can know or guess the identity of any card. For example, suppose that I see that the first card I'm dealt is the queen of clubs. Can I guess the identity of the next card--which will be dealt to the player on my left--with any accuracy better than a 1 in 51 guess based on that one piece of information? No. And that's all that matters.

Of course, if one is paying attention, one can know at least roughly the position of some of the cards before the shuffle, because you can watch the dealer turn face-down the board cards and any players' hands that were exposed, and watch where those cards end up in the deck. Suppose you notice that the river card on the previous hand was the ace of diamonds, and the way the dealer gathers up the cards causes that ace to now be on the bottom of the deck before the shuffle.

You could, if you really wanted to, watch what the dealer does, and get a general sense of where that ace ends up. The dealer will typically do two riffle shuffles, which will leave the ace within the bottom few cards. Next he will do a "boxing" shuffle, which is an on-the-table equivalent to the second type of shuffling shown in the video. It moves a few cards at a time as a packet from the top of the deck to the bottom. So now you know that the ace is somewhere near the top of the deck--probably within the top ten cards. Now the dealer does another riffle, which will leave the ace near the top. Finally, the deck is cut, which will put that ace somewhere in the middle.

If you're playing ten-handed hold'em, 20 cards will be dealt to the players. Is that enough that one of the last ones dealt will be that ace of diamonds? Maybe, maybe not--it depends on how large the packets of cards were during the boxing shuffle, and on where the cut was made. If the ace doesn't get to one of the players, will it end up on the board? Maybe, maybe not. The dealer will go through 8 more cards (5 on the board and 3 burn cards), so the river will be what had been the 28th card in the deck at the start of the hand. But the ace might be above or below that point. You can't be sure.

This shuffled deck would not pass every test for randomness, because you could, for example, profitably bet that the ace of diamonds will be found in the middle one-third of the deck, which will prove to be true more than it being in the top or bottom thirds--a condition that would not obtain for a truly randomized deck of cards. But in real-world practice, your ability to track the position of a card is so diluted, and the poker edge you could gain by a general sense of where in the deck that one card will be found is so weak that they might as well be zero.

And all of that is for just one card, and only for a person who is really watching closely. If the dealer does a wash of the cards before the shuffling (some casinos' procedures require that, some leave it up to the dealer, or it may be done at a player's request), it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to follow the position of even that one card you were trying to track.

Furthermore, if the casino uses a Shufflemaster machine with alternating decks, you have no chance at all, because the machine truly randomizes the deck. It has a random number generator, and moves each card to a randomly selected spot (1 through 52) in the newly ordered deck.

All of which is a very long way of saying this: The standard poker room shuffling procedure, if done correctly, is plenty good enough. It may not pass rigorous statistical tests of randomness, but it effectively leaves every player thoroughly ignorant of where any card is going to show up, which is all that matters.