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.

Winner

The epic last hand:

Beautiful quads

Or at least they WOULD be beautiful...

If this hadn't been *&$%^@# RAZZ!

By the skin of my teeth

After my success in Friday's HORSE tournament at Orleans, I decided to take a crack at their $100 Sunday night version. I have tried this one twice before, with nothing to show for it. But since then I've had the extra experience of three of the tough MGM Grand Tuesday night HORSE tournaments, plus the two Friday ones at Orleans, which I thought gave me enough additional practice at identifying live opponents' playing styles in the non-hold'em games that I might be due for a little success.

Things started off just the opposite of Friday. I sank like a stone. I was playing the same tight-aggressive style, but I had a never-ending string of missed draws and strong but second-best hands. We started at 7:00 with 10,000 chips, and by the first break I was down to 590o. At 8:50--4100. 9:00--2500. 9:10--2000. 9:30--1600. I think that was less than three big bets for that stage of the game.

But time after time when I found a spot to get all the chips in, my hand held up. By 10:00 I was up to 5000. 10:35: 6900. 10:40: 15,100, and above my starting stack for the first time all day.

By that point, the original 41 players had been whittled down to just 18, so I was still well below the average stack size of about 28K, but things were moving in the right direction.

Then at 11:00 I hit a monster, an ace-high crub flush in stud against two opponents, and zoomed up to 47,700 with 13 left, my first time above the tournament average.

At 11:40 I badly misplayed one stud hand, spewing half my chips on a draw that I should never have been chasing, but at 12:05 I got them all back when another club flush gave me the nuts in Omaha--back to 63,000, when the average stack, with seven people left in, was about 58,500. Next hand I hit something else that I didn't jot down, and was up to 87,000.

I stayed at about that stack while two more players were eliminated, and the final five of us were in the money.

The best player at the table was not me, but the guy on my right, who had an overwhelming chip lead. He was being smartly aggressive. Everybody was letting him run over them, because the other four of us had pretty much equal stacks and I assume we all wanted to climb up the pay ladder. He was appropriately taking advantage of our excessive caution.

I decided to play back at him, and doing so pushed me up to my peak of 116,000 at 12:50.

At that point, I should have backed off, changed gears back to tight, and let Mr. Big Stack knock out one or two of the shorties. But I didn't. I kept pressing it too long and too far, and paid the price. In quick succession I played two big hands where I was basically just playing on my table image, but--oops--was up against real hands (one against the guy on my left, and the coup de grace delivered by the big stack), and I was out.

So I'm unhappy with my end game, but very pleased that I exercised appropriate patience and spot selection when I was down so short. Fifth place brought me the minimum cash of $295, which is basically tripling my buy-in, and works out to about $32/hour for the six hours it took. It's far from life-changing money, but given how dismal things looked for me for so long, I deem the outcome an absolute success--nearly a miracle. Of course there is the question of what might have been, had I not overdone the aggression on those last two hands. But that's a lesson I can tuck away and remember for next time, without letting it defeat my pleasure at having snatch at least a partial victory from the jaws of defeat.

That was a close one

Today I played the weekly Friday noon tournament at Orleans, which is a $75 equestrian event--i.e., HORSE. I tried this for the first time last week, and though I went out mid-pack, I got the clear impression that this should be a hugely +EV event for me. With a handful of exceptions, the players are easily lumped into two categories: The uber-nits who fold everything except premium hands, and the passive, loose calling stations who play nearly everything they're dealt, and keep calling when there is any hope of improving. That makes playing against both types incredibly straightforward. Against the former, you stay out of their way when they proclaim themselves to have a real hand. Against the latter--who outnumber the nits something like 5:1, you play a significantly tighter starting range than they do, and value-bet the hell out of your hand as long as it appears you're good. Easy peasy.*

Note how different this is from the Tuesday night HORSE tournament at the MGM Grand. I've done that one three times, and you're lucky if you get one player per table who is so easily pigeonholed and conquered. That thing is mostly populated with the city's best lower-stakes mixed-game connoisseurs. I am not alone in this assessment. My friend Brad Willis, a.k.a. _Otis_, played it a few weeks ago. After a short time in the game, he tweeted, "It appears I grossly underestimated the quality of a $120 weekly HORSE tournament." A little while later, he added, "And I mean GROSSLY underestimated." As Bill Clinton might say, I feel his pain. I have never felt that I have any edge at all in that event.

The Orleans Friday noon, though--well, let's just say that it's a HORSE of a different color.

I started off like gangbusters today. I had a tricky tactical situation, with three of the passive calling stations on my right, but one of the rare ultra-aggro young guns on my immediate left. They called for completely different approaches, and when both were in the hand, it became challenging. But Mr. Aggro went away fairly early, after I got most of his chips in a razz hand in which I made a wheel while he had a 7-perfect. (His style was terribly ill-suited for the opponents he was up against. Trying to bully calling stations into folds is to commit tournament suicide.)

I was also getting clobbered by the deck: quads, flushes, wheels, etc. So 45 minutes in, I had doubled my starting stack, and I had nearly tripled it by the first break. That isn't terribly uncommon in big-bet games (no-limit and pot-limit), but in limit? Unheard of. This was the proverbial running like God.

But all good things must come to an end, and that 3x-stack benchmark seemed to be my upper limit. I couldn't exceed it for another two and a half hours. (When playing a tournament, I amuse myself by jotting down my chip count every ten minutes or so. It makes an interesting record of the ebbs and flows.) By then, I had long since stopped being chip leader, and was just a little above average with ten players left out of the original 25. That dropped to a little below average with eight left.

Then with just five left, disaster hit. I made a straight in stud and raised a guy who had been getting out of line more than his demographics would suggest likely. But he reraised me with a pair showing on 6th street. He could see my 6-7-8-9 plain as day, and it did not faze him in the least. I reluctantly concluded that he would only do this with a full house, and that I was therefore drawing dead. It hurt like hell to do so, but I folded, after having invested two-thirds of my stack. He gave me the courtesy show that I had been correct.

That made me the shortest stack with just five players remaining, and only three spots were to be paid today. It looked gloomy for me. I had that awful feeling of foreboding that I was going to be either bubble boy or bubble to the bubble.

I clamped down tight on starting hand requirements. With the blinds becoming huge relative to everybody's stacks, the chip lead was bouncing around the table, except for me. Finally, two huge hands collided, and one big stack knocked out another, putting us on the bubble.

At that point, somebody proposed a $75 save for the bubble boy; i.e., whoever went out next would get his entry fee taken out of the prize pool and returned to him. My stack was much, much shorter than the other three at this point, so I readily agreed to it. I would not ordinarily do so if I had a dominant or even reasonably competitive position, with somebody else's stack as crippled as mine was. Poker is not a game in which showing mercy is rewarded.

But I was not the one to take advantage of the save. I picked a couple of good spots to get the chips in and doubled up twice. Then I was the one to bust the bubble boy on my left, and we were in the money.

It was not immediately obvious who was ahead. All three stacks were comparable to a quick visual inspection without an actual count. We could guess that we all had between 60,000 and 70,000, and the limits were now 8,000 and 16,000--meaning that we all had around four big bets remaining. That in turn meant that it was almost purely luck as to who would go out in which position if we kept playing. I might get the $650 for first place, or the $390 for second, or the $260 for third, all with approximately equal likelihood.

With that understanding, we all quickly agreed to an even chop of the prize money. We decided that whoever had the biggest stack by actual count would get the odd extra dollar. That turned out to be me. I had 68,500 and both of the others were in the low 60s. So I'm just gonna go ahead and say that I won the tournament. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I got $434, the other two $433 each. We each put $20 into the dealer tip pool.

It was quite a ride, going from hitting everything early, to stagnant for a few hours, to critically short, to a miraculous rebirth just in time for the payout. It was kind of like, oh, I dunno, riding a bucking bronco?

I'm not about to commit to making this a weekly affair. But I'm pretty well convinced that there is a lot of value to be mined, if one can tolerate the large variance due to the luck factor, and I think I will keep it in mind for semi-regular sampling.

*Given the venue, the type of game, and that description of the most common players, you might form a general impression of the typical player demographic. You would be correct. At age 51, I was easily the youngest among the final five left in the tournament, and there were no women among the final ten or so. This is a geezer game.

Stud rule

Yesterday I played the weekly Friday noon HORSE tournament at the Orleans. Went out mid-pack, nothing exciting.

During one stud hand, the player to my right turned his up card face down, but then looked like he might be second-guessing himself and wishing he had played it. I ignored this and went on with my action, which was to complete the bring-in bet. The next player's cards were in the muck as soon as my chips were out.

At this point, the dealer held up his hand to stop further action, saying, "The action is still back here," pointing to the player to my right. I thought that was peculiar, but decided to wait until the hand was over to inquire about it. Player to my right folded, and the hand played out.

When it was over with, I asked the dealer, "Wasn't his hand dead as soon as he turned his up card face down?" The dealer said, "No, I don't think so. But I'll ask." He called the floor over, though appropriately continued dealing the next hand so as not to make everyone wait.

He was surprised that the floor confirmed my impression, and apologized for having been wrong.

So today I'm looking in my rule books to be sure that my memory on this point was indeed the standard rule. It is.

Krieger and Bykofsky, Rules of Poker, page 178:

7.3.10 MIXING OPEN AND CLOSED CARDS

Turning an open card or cards face down, or commingling open and closed cards together is tantamount to holding. The hand is dead.

Cooke and Bond, Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, page 25:

5.17. SEVEN-CARD STUD: TURNING UPCARDS DOWN; MIXING UPCARDS AND DOWNCARDS

A player who turns upcards facedown or mixes upcards and holecards together when facing a bet is deemed to have folded and his hand shall be declared dead.

So if you're ever playing seven-card stud (or razz, or stud-8) and are faced with the same kind of situation I was--the player on your right has turned his up card face down but has not yet returned his cards to the dealer for some reason--you can safely proceed as if it is your turn, because it is. His hand is as dead as if his cards were already in the muck.

So close

That's one way to play it

Here's a strange hand from the Merge Network daily HORSE tournament that I just played. This is 7-card stud. Imagine the lower window directly to the right of the upper one, to read the hand history:

On 3rd street, my opponent calls the 15 bring-in, then calls my completion to 60. He's in for 65 (including his ante), and the pot is 170. On 4th street I pair my queen, so I make the optional double bet of 120. He calls. He's in for 185, and the pot is 410. 5th street looks safe, so I bet again, he calls again. He's in for 305, and the pot is 650. I don't like him pairing on 6th street, because he may well now have two pair, but in for a penny, etc. I bet again, he calls again. He is now in for 425, and the pot is 890. On 7th street, I bet once more, and he folds.

Now, this might not seem too unremarkable, except for one crucial fact that the hand history does not contain: He started this hand with 440 chips. He spent 425 of them--97% of his stack--then folded, getting a rather incredible 60:1 pot odds for calling with his last 15 chips on 7th street.

Of course, one of the good things about 7-card stud is that in some instances you can be absolutely certain that such a fold is correct, because if you can't even beat what your opponent has showing, it's impossible to win the hand, and it doesn't matter what his three down cards are. But if that's the situation you're going to be faced with, it's far, far better to put in your last chips on 5th or 6th street when you still have a shot at winning than it is to leave yourself with one quarter of one small bet when you know you've lost. He should have either folded earlier, or tried to put all his chips in earlier.

Last year I wrote about seeing a guy fold the river when getting 20:1 on a call. But I'm not sure I've ever seen a 60:1 fold before.

Merge Network is having, um, issues

As I noted yesterday, Merge did a full revamp of their software Monday night. It took many more hours than they had promised, and even when they were up again, they immediately had problems. I, for one, couldn't display the main lobby correctly. My friend Stacey couldn't even log in.

This morning my buddy Shamus ran into problems using Hero Poker, one of the Merge skins. He tweeted:

Merge is so very screwed up right now. Here's how my SNG is going... we're in Level 6 http://t.co/H5jFvakg @heropoker @carbonpoker

The good news is after a half-hour I am leading the SNG currently, with none of us having played a hand. @heropoker @carbonpoker

Erm, I just went from 1st to last. Somebody is playing my stack. What applesauce. @heropoker @carbonpoker

SNG finally shut down... says $ refunded. All at cash tables complaining about various applesauce. Whatta mess. @heropoker @carbonpoker

In spite of that, Josie and I decided, perhaps foolishly, to try to play Merge's daily $11 HORSE tournament. She will be in town in a couple of weeks, and there will likely be some mixed-game shenanigans at some point, so she needs more practice with games other than hold'em.

My table was going fine, in technical terms. Josie's wasn't. It was slow as molasses, and it looked to be more of a software or server problem than anything that could be blamed on the players. E.g., hands would take forever to clear off the table after the pot was awarded.

She started out strong, while I started out with everything going wrong. So of course she offered a last-longer bet when she was already up 1875 to my 1341. I accepted it, because, apparently, I'm a sick, degenerate gambler.

Then she watched in horror as I mounted a comeback. I rivered a ace-high flush (crubs, obv) in a five-way pot in stud/8 when nobody had a low, and scooped a monster. This was followed immediately by making a wheel on 5th and scoring a double elimination super-scooper-dooper. Those two hands propelled me well above Josie's stack, and she was trembling in fear:

But then--disaster:

WTF?

A few minutes later, this email showed up in my inbox:

As Shamus says, applesauce.

We thought about trying another SNG, but while browsing for one, it looked like they were in the process of shutting everything down. There were very few games with "registering" status. My guess is that right about now they're offline completely, or about to be.

While I'm complaining about their software bugs, I might as well also complain about some features of the new redesign. They have a few nice improvements, such as a double slider for setting the upper and lower limits of buy-ins for tournaments that you're interested in playing. But they also made it harder to find some customization features. And what used to be a one-button click to see the previous hand is now completely hidden. Josie pointed it out to me. You click on the tournament number in the upper left-hand corner of the game--which is not marked in any way as having this function until you mouse over it--and it brings up a cascade of folders from your hard drive where the hand histories are stored:

(Note that they even got the date wrong. Josie checked, and hers correctly showed 6/6/12. No, there is nothing wrong with the date and time settings on my computer. No, I have no idea why it would be right for one player and wrong for another.)

If you click on any hand number, up pops that hand history, in the same format as they have always used. But it takes a lot more work, time, and thought to get at it than it used to. This is an improvement?

They really screwed the pooch on this software "upgrade."

Three HORSE hands

I recently discovered that the Carbon Poker network offers a daily HORSE tournament. It's only $11 and doesn't get very many players and the structure is fast, but it's something to reduce the shakes from my HORSE withdrawal syndrome. I just went out in 8th place in one for barely over a min-cash. Oh well. It was fun to play, and I got this post out of it.

First there was this strange hand. I think it's the first time I've seen aces versus aces in stud. We capped it every street, and I made a real monster, but some doofus kept calling trying to hit his low and got there for half the pot. Since I had two full houses, I think I should have gotten both halves of the pot.

Now that's what I call hitting a flop!

Here I hit a gutshot to make a straight with the Mighty Deuce-Four. As if there were ever any doubt.

Oh well

Not much happened at the WSOP HORSE event. I won the first hand of the tournament, and another soon thereafter, but after that it was slim pickin's. There aren't even any particularly interesting hands to report--I had notepaper ready, but wrote none down, because they were all pretty straightforward. I just couldn't catch any major breaks. 960 people entered, and I busted out in approximately 700th place, about six hours into the thing.

I'm not upset. I did my best. No regrets. At best I had only a 10% chance of cashing going in, so this outcome is what was to be expected. I was neither the best nor the worst player at the table. I needed to get lucky to progress, and it just didn't happen. That's the way it is sometimes--most of the time, in fact.

At various times I had Erica Schoenberg, Robbie Mizrachi, and Victor Ramdin as recognizable faces at my table. Other than that, it was just all kind of "meh." I can't even say that it was fun, exactly--my tablemates were a bunch of stick-in-the-muds, people who (to borrow a line from Mike Caro) were taking the whole idea of a few million dollars way too seriously. But it was a worthwhile little adventure to add to my poker resume. I'm glad I had the experience.

My second shot at the World Series of Poker

Today I decided that I was willing to spend approximately half of my profit from the Binion's HORSE event (i.e., about half of $200) to take a shot at entering the $1500 HORSE tournament at the World Series of Poker--which happens to be tomorrow (OK, technically later today, Friday).

I went to the Rio this evening and entered one of their 8-handed $215 HORSE one-table satellites, with the winner to receive the buy-in plus $70. Nothing for second place. I failed miserably--first one out, in fact.

I went to a cash game in the cavernous Pavilion Room, and thought about my performance as I played. The fact was, I had done it badly. I had not anticipated how incredibly fast the structure was, and too often I went partway with decent but not great hands. Given the short ratio of stacks to blinds, that was something I just couldn't afford to do. To put it bluntly, I had been too timid and unwilling to gamble.

I got lucky in the cash game and made $209 in 40 minutes. Ignoring that little $6 deficit, it felt like I was being given another shot. Yes, I know it's completely irrational to think of that win as reimbursing the satellite loss, or even to be thinking of the satellite buy-in as part of my winnings from Tuesday. They're all separate, or all fungible and intermingled as part of a life-long game, if you prefer. I get that. But there are times when my rational side battles with my irrational side, and this was one of them.

So I cashed out my winnings and entered a second HORSE satellite. Remarkably, three of the eight players in it were among the eight of us that had been at the final table in the Binion's event, so I had advanced knowledge of the playing styles of two opponents, which turned out to be a significant advantage in a few spots.

And I won it! With the turbo structure (whole thing took less than two hours), there was obviously a lot of luck involved, but I definitely adjusted for the pace better than some others did, and greatly stepped up my aggression, as the structure demanded.

I was kind of despondent going into heads-up play, because my opponent had me at a 5:1 chip disadvantage. But he played incredibly passively, never willing to put in any money unless he had a strong hand. Since most of the time in heads-up play you have nothing, that's an enormous leak. I just kept hammering at him, showing him that I wasn't afraid to get all my chips in, and he would back down time after time. I knew that he was thinking that he would just wait until he had a big hand and use my aggression against me, but the few times he played back at me, I just folded, and he never adjusted to account for that fact. After it was over, I was chatting with the dealer (one dealer for the entire satellite) about the turnaround, and he said that he couldn't believe how the other player squandered his lead and played so passively.

In the last hand I caught a lucky crub on the river (they always get there!) to make a flush in stud, beating his straight, check-raised him all-in, and that was that.

I collected the lammers:

which I then quickly exchanged for this:

which, in turn, I hope to soon exchange for something like this:

I can guarantee you one thing: I will last longer than I did on my previous attempt at a WSOP event (which was, shamefully, only about 20 minutes). It would be hard to go broke that fast in a limit event!

Must sleep immediately. (Sorry, Tony, but it's such a good closing line, I'm going to keep borrowing it.)

"I guess I should have kept my mouth shut"

One hand from yesterday's HORSE tournament is worth describing for you, I think.

I started the tournament in a deep hole, and for a while it looked like I would be among the first handful eliminated. But just before the first break I had a series of three consecutive miracle suckouts in razz hands (including one where I busted a guy when with the last card I made 8-6-4-3-A to edge out his 8-6-4-3-2) that got me back to my starting stack. Soon thereafter I got moved to a new table, which was much, much softer. Once I figured out how generally meek and passive this new table was, I was able to use a combination of stepped-up aggression and a run of good cards to build a stack that was more than double the tournament average.

(This included, unfortunately, busting my new friend Dave, with whom I had gone to the Lyle Lovett/John Hiatt concert. In an Omaha hand, he opened from under the gun with AAxx. I called for one bet from the big blind with the crummy K-9-8-4 double-suited. The flop was an amazing K-K-4, and I ended up taking his remaining stack. It never feels good to end a friend's tournament run.)

Soon after I got to my third table, the worst hand of the day for me occurred. I called a raise in hold'em with 7-7, and four of us saw the flop of 9-7-2 with two diamonds. The betting ended up getting capped on the flop, and again on the turn of a second 2, with the other two players (i.e., not the original raiser and me) getting all in, one of them with the nut flush draw, the other with 10-10.

The interesting point was when I put in the cap on fourth street, the original raiser was obviously disturbed by how things were developing. He finally called, but as he did so he said, "I sure hope you have pocket sevens and not the pocket deuces."

The tournament director happened to be standing there watching this hand play out, and he immediately and properly warned the player not to be discussing his hand, as it could be considered collusion against the two players who were already all-in.

Well, his words were about as clear as he could be that he had 9-9, and I had stumbled into the bad end of the dreaded set-over-set situation. There was a small possibility that he had aces or kings and was cleverly trying to fool me into thinking that he had top set, in order to shut down further betting, but I didn't think so. He sounded utterly genuine to my ears.

The turn was some brick, and he and I both checked. Sure enough, he flipped over 9-9 and scooped the biggest pot I had seen all day.

(Despite the enormous stack he earned here, he ended up busting out in either 8th place for a min-cash, chiefly because he kept severely overplaying one-pair hands. Slow learner, apparently.)

As he was stacking all of his newly acquired chips, he turned to me and said, somewhat remorsefully, "I guess I should have kept my mouth shut." He realized, in retrospect, that he may have cost himself more bets on the river. Indeed he did.

He ended up with more than half of the chips with which I started that hand, and it took me down to well below the tournament average. I had to play short-stack ninja for two or three hours to recover from that devastating blow. But it could have been even worse. I don't know how much more I would have put in on the river, because the overpair theory was starting to lose force with his willingness to cap it with me, but I think at least one or two more big bets would have gone in.

There are a few players who are skillful enough to talk to an opponent during a hand and extract more information than they leak, but they are few and far between. The vast majority of players who talk about their hands give away valuable information--and this guy was a prime example.

Tommy Angelo is on my mind this week, and I'm reminded of a column that Lee Jones wrote about the experience of playing poker with Angelo. It was in Bluff magazine in 2009, and can be found here. Angelo is famous for advocating "mum poker," and Jones describes seeing it in action and trying to emulate it. It's not the only way to play poker (Mike Caro routinely denounces it as not the approach that will make the most money), but it's worthy of your consideration.

Horsing around at Binion's

If you follow my Twitter feed, you saw about a jillion posts from Binion's yesterday while I played a tournament there. It was event #9 of the 5th Annual Binion's Classic, the $200 HORSE. There were 71 players, 8 spots paid. I finished in 6th for $625.

It was both pleasing and disappointing. Pleasing because I made money and, even more, because I twice had to make comebacks from being nearly eliminated, and I was proud of how calm and patient and calculating I was at picking spots.

But at the same time, disappointing, because once at the final table I had plenty of chips and could have finished higher, if not for what turned out to be an ill-timed bluff, the only three-barrel bluff I attempted in the entire 12 hours. It made me ultra-short, and I was out two hands later. Had I just continued my regular game, I might well have outlasted at least one or two more players and substantially improved my finish. On the other hand, I went with my read that the guy was on a draw that missed (either low draw or flush draw in an Omaha hand), and I was just wrong. That's going to happen sometimes, and if I never three-barrel in such situations, I'm leaving a valuable tool out of the box. Hence the mixed feelings.

It is nice to get tangible proof that I'm not just deceiving myself when I think that over the past three years or so of online play I have managed to teach myself these five games with a reasonable degree of competence.

There were two rules issues that came up. In an early round of Omaha I flopped top set on a board with no straights or flushes possible, and still held the best possible hand on the turn. I bet the requisite 600. Next guy called. Last guy intended to call, but did so by putting out one 1000 chip and one 100 chip in order to make it easy for the dealer to give him change by sliding him back a 500 chip. But he failed to announce "Call" before putting out these two chips.

The "half bet rule" says that in limit games if a player puts out an amount (other than a single oversized chip) that is greater than one half of the difference between a call and a raise, it will be deemed a raise, and he will be required to put in the rest of the raise amount. That seemed to apply here. I was about to bring it up, but an off-duty Binion's dealer playing at our table beat me to it, so I let him take the heat of the affected player's ire.

[Note added June 22, 2011: In retrospect, this isn't quite accurate. I think that proper terminology would restrict the use of the term "half-bet rule" to situations in which the player is all in, not a situation as here where there is either a mistake or an ambiguous number of chips put in. The analysis and ruling are correct as described, but I shouldn't have used the term "half-bet rule."]

The floor was called, and he said it would be considered a raise, despite the player's angry protestations that he was only calling, and was just trying to make the dealer's job easier. Well, bub, then you should have verbalized your intention. Uttering a single word before putting the chips out would have solved the problem. As it was, his raise allowed me to reraise, and both opponents called, so I captured four extra big bets than I otherwise would have. It may be a technicality, but poker is all about making fewer mistakes than your opponents, and taking full advantage of the ones they make.

In the second instance, many hours later, I had the 1500 bring-in for a stud hand with limits of 5000 and 10,000. A guy at the far end of the table picked up a 5000 chip and asked the dealer how much a call would be. Dealer answered, "1500." The player then asked, "And if I raise, it's to 5000?" Dealer responded, "Yes." The guy then dropped his 5000 chip on the felt.

The next guy to act asked the dealer, "So he raised, right?" I spoke up. "No, he didn't announce a raise. He just asked whether a raise would be to 5000." The player protested that he had intended to raise. Floor was called, facts were recited to him, including the player's exact questions to the dealer. When he heard that the player had made no announcement after receiving answers to his two questions, the floor man instantly and definitively closed the case: It's a call. The free card I earned by getting this ruling ended up not helping me, and I folded to a bet on 4th street, but it was worth a shot.

I think both rulings were clearly correct. Both actions are ones that would be an angle-shooter's paradise if the decisions were made based on what the player claimed his intentions were. In the first case, the guy puts out 1100 and watches to see my reaction. If I eagerly reraise, he can protest that he only intended it to be a call and the action was not reopened. If I look like I don't like it, when queried he can say that of course it's a raise, and he just accidentally left out one of the chips.

Same thing with the "If I raise..." question. If a later player treats it as a raise and reraises, he can say that he had not announced a raise, but was merely asking a hypothetical question, and lose only the call amount. But if it gets others to fold, he silently lets them keep thinking that it had, in fact, been a raise.

I don't think that either player intended such shenanigans in this tournament, but the rules exist to prevent shady players from taking such shots. Unless somebody does the same trick repeatedly, we can never be sure whether he's telling the truth when asked what he had intended. For the rules to be effective in preventing such ambiguity, they have to be enforced the same way every time, even if it upsets players who inadvertently run afoul of them.

I feel no sympathy for them. Both men were in their 50s, obviously experienced players, not novices. They have an obligation to know and follow the rules. The simple expedient of verbally announcing intention before acting solves the problem in both cases. If they fail to take such an easy precautionary step, tough--it's their fault, and they rightly suffer the consequences. They had the capacity to prevent the ambiguity with a single word, and they couldn't be bothered, so the rules prescribe how the ambiguity is to be resolved. End of story.

There was one other rules controversy, though I only know about it secondhand. My friend Katie Baxter tried to raise by announcing "all in" before tossing in her last chip--an oversized one. The floor apparently ruled that it was just a call. This seems to have been based on the bizarre notion that "all in" is not functionally equivalent to "raise"--but it sure seems to me that it is. "Raise all in" would obviously be acceptable, so why isn't just "All in"? Both unambiguously signal the same intention to the other players. If I've understood the facts of the situation correctly, it seems a terrible decision, though apparently Katie thinks that the opposite ruling wouldn't have changed the outcome.

OK, that's enough rants. It's late, and as Tony Big Charles always says, I must sleep immediately.

You really can't believe how badly they play

I'm thinking about entering the HORSE event at the Binion's Classic tomorrow. Hearing this, Cardgrrl, during our nearly-daily Skype video call, suggested that we do a play-money HORSE sit-and-go on PokerStars. Y'know, for, like, good practice. OK!

From having done this once before, we already knew that the quality of play would be about a thousand times worse than what we used to see in the $5 and $10 games we frequently did together, which was already laughable. But even after being prepared for it, we just couldn't get over what we were seeing.

Here are some examples.

In this first hand, the action was driven by the guy who ended up with tens full. Cardgrrl was obviously correct to call with her strong full house, and ended up taking the pot. But look at what other hands called two bets on the river. On a board with both quads and a royal flush possible, Cardgrrl bet, and a raise by Pol Arky was called by one player with a non-nut flush, one with a straight, and, most astonishingly, by one with a pair of 8s! That's a 53.5 big-bet pot there. (My cards are showing, but after leading out betting I folded to a raise and reraise on the flop.)

Here I raised to two big bets on the river with the nut low. Cardgrrl was still in the hand at the time, so I figured that even if I got quartered I would break even, having put in only one-fourth of the chips. When that raise got called in two spots, she reluctantly folded her AAxx, assuming that somebody must have a full house, a straight, or at least trip 7s. Nope. In addition to having the nut low all to myself, my top/top took the high, which was as much a surprise to me as it was to her. (It's possible that she uttered a naughty word when the hands were revealed. I'm not saying.) 31 big bets in that one.

Here's my final example. This other guy and I got into a raising war starting. With top set on the flop and top boat on the turn, I was happy to keep throwing as many chips into the pot as he would match. I expected to see K-Q or Q-8 at the showdown. Nope. Another 18 big bets my way.

Predictably, Cardgrrl and I finished in the top two spots, just like last time.

Now if only my opponents tomorrow are this clueless, next time you hear from me I'll have made a nice score!

HORSE and razz tournaments

Here's an updated list of when the two major U.S.-facing sites host HORSE and razz multi-table tournaments in the price range that I like to play.

Cruel game

I just finished a home game on PokerStars. I was heads-up with Mrs. Lederer for the title and $15 in first-prize money. She had survived into the money only because when there were five of us left, she sucked out both a low and a flush with AA3 to beat my AAK in stud/8, capped on 3rd and all in on 4th street.

I had taken a substantial chip lead when this hand came up, capped on 3rd, all in on 4th:

Then this was the final cruel blow, capped pre-flop, all in on the flop:

I had to settle for 2nd place and $9. So disappointing.

Coupla hands

I just finished a HORSE tourney a just out of the money (sigh--another 2 1/2 hours down the drain). But I did have these two moderately amusing hands along the way.

Here the money was all in on 4th street:



Yessirree, that's a gen-u-wine 2-outer there.

This one is pretty self-explanatory:



Where's my high-hand jackpot?

Small bit of thanksgiving

I'm playing a HORSE tournament on PokerStars at the moment, and seeing how this hand (in which I was not involved) turned out made me feel very thankful that I am not a poker dealer having to handle this in a casino with stacks of chips and several tense players watching my every move.


Dealer: AARALAA has a pair of Kings
Dealer: AARALAA has 7,6,4,3,2 for Lo
Dealer: Poooookie has a pair of Queens
Dealer: Game #53178663910: AARALAA wins Hi side pot-2 (73) with a pair of Kings
Dealer: Game #53178663910: AARALAA wins Lo side pot-2 (73) with 7,6,4,3,2
Dealer: Apache B has a pair of Aces
Dealer: Game #53178663910: Apache B wins Hi side pot-1 (4,869) with a pair of Aces
Dealer: Game #53178663910: AARALAA wins Lo side pot-1 (4,869) with 7,6,4,3,2
Dealer: gabrielle674 has a flush, Ace high
Dealer: Game #53178663910: gabrielle674 wins Hi main pot (4,623) with a flush, Ace high
Dealer: Game #53178663910: AARALAA wins Lo main pot (4,623) with 7,6,4,3,2
Dealer: Poooookie finished the tournament in 56th place