Hooker story

It seem that the poker bloggers have informally decided that this is Hooker Week, so who am I to buck the trend? Sadly, I can think of only one relevant story, so paltry is my experience with the breed.

This happened at the now-defunct Hilton poker room. A middle-aged man from the deep South, with a drawl to match, broke a long silence with this observation, made to nobody in particular: "I stopped for a drink in that bar out there before dinner tonight, and I swear I have never seen so many hookers in one place."

Somebody asked him the rather obvious question: "How did you know they were hookers?"

He paused to think of how to phrase his answer, before putting it like this: "Cuz there ain't that many women that actually think I'm handsome."

Adapt or die

This week I started reading a book my sister gave me for Christmas: The Gun by C. J. Chivers. I first learned about this book just before its publication date in October, when the author appeared for a long, fascinating interview on NPR's "Fresh Air," which you can listen to here.

The book is a history of the AK-47, and how dramatically this one weapon changed the way that wars are fought. As an owner of two of the myriad derivatives of the original form (I have a Romanian-made semi-automatic rifle chambered for .223, and a Russian-made semi-automatic 12-gauge shotgun variant, the Saiga-12), I was eager to learn more about this story. However, the book's first 140 pages are spent laying out the 80 or so years of history of automatic weapons prior to Kalashnikov. This was completely unfamiliar ground to me.

What I found most interesting was how astonishingly slow even the most sophisticated armies of the day were to adopt their tactics to the new weaponry. Chivers asserts (page 113):

Military bureaucracies, as they considered incorporating machine guns into their armies, dawdled indecisively in every Western country but Germany. The thinking was fully blinkered. Senior officers recognized the effects of withering bursts of fire upon massed combatants, having heard reports of the felling of heaps of Arabs and Africans who advanced in formation toward machine guns. They were somehow unable to accept what might happen when such fire was directed against their own ranks.

Lest the reader disbelieve Chivers's claim that the world's most sophisticated military commanders were incredibly slow to figure this stuff out, he spends the next 25 pages providing the proof. His mention of "Arabs and Africans" is in reference to stories he has already told about how European colonizers in the 1880s and 1890s effectively annihilated more primitive armies of vastly larger numbers by simply mowing them down as they charged forward with their spears. It was slaughter of an efficiency and ferocity these opponents could not have even imagined when heading into the battle, with those at the rear having to clamber over piles of the bodies of the dead in order to take their turns at being gunned down.

So military commanders certainly understood the power of automatic weapons. But, as Chivers said, it somehow just could not sink into their skulls that their own men were just as vulnerable. In 1904, the Japanese skirmished with the Russians in Manchuria. Even after seeing wave after wave of men cut down, never getting anywhere near the Russian machine guns, the Japanese commanders kept ordering more troops to follow them until there were none left.

OK, so the Japanese are rather notorious for cherishing suidical acts of "courage" in warfare. They're an exception to how modern armies dealt with opponents' automatic weapons, right?

Nope. In World War I, despite having literally decades of experience with machine guns, the mighty British army was still training each recruit that the bayonet affixed to the end of his single-shot rifle was his most important weapon; practice with it constituted the majority of pre-deployment training.

Two years into the first major machine-gun war, the British had still not changed the basic tactic that they had used to attack an entrenched enemy for as long as anybody could remember: sending masses of men charging at the defended positions. This was done knowing that those in front would suffer high casualty rates. But given how long it took to reload older rifles, a sufficiently large number of soldiers would eventually be able to overrun the enemy. In retrospect, it is blindingly obvious that this same approach was sheer folly when the enemy had guns that spat out hundreds of rounds per minute. Somehow, though, this self-evident truth just could not penetrate the concrete, old-fashioned thinking of senior military types, and they kept trying the same thing over and over again, despite repeated heavy losses and little gain.

The insanty reached its zenith on July 1, 1916, in the Battle of the Somme:

Watching from behind their machine guns, German soldiers were amazed. They had weathered fear and frustration through the shelling, waiting for the immense attack they knew was coming. As they peered over their parapets in the sudden quiet, the sights astonished them: thousands upon thousands of men, strolling exposed in neat lines.... "The English came walking, as though they were going to the theatre or as though they were on a parade ground," one German soldier said. "We felt they were mad." Another saw waves in which the men were so densely packed they "were like trees in a wood." Some of the Germans whooped. They were professional soldiers, the product of a German military system in which conscription was nearly universal.... They had never seen such targets before. The time for killing was at hand. One German machine-gun team alone would fire at least twenty-five thousand rounds.

In this withering fire, a Yorkshire battalion, Company A of the Seventh Green Howards, lost 108 of 140 men in minutes. An even more galling destruction fell upon the Tyneside Irish, a brigade of three thousand men, which had to cross almost a mile of open ground behind its own front-line trenches just to reach the British edge of No-Man's-Land. It took twenty minutes under fire to complete this march. Bullets slammed into the soldiers the entire way. The surviving Irish were ordered on, to press the attack across five hundred yards of open space.... Of the three thousand men who had stepped off, fifty fighting men remained. The New Army, Lord Kitchener's grand two-year project to replace the battered British Expeditionary Force with volunteers from all walks of British life--the mines, the factories, the clerks, the schoolhouses--was being cut down in an hour. The Dervishes had fought this foolishly. So had Japanese soldiers, who saw duty in death. Now the British army was doing it, too.

A darker hour for England would be hard to measure. By one estimate, 30,000 British soldiers were killed or wounded in the first sixty minutes. The midday tally reached 50,000. By the end of the day, 21,000 British soldiers were dead, 35,000 wounded, and 600 more had been taken prisoner. The survivors were emotionally devastated. One lance corporal, a signaler who had not been assigned to advance, watched his friends try to cross, only, he said, to be "mown down like meadow grass." He stayed back, weeping.

(Chivers, pp 133-134.)

This colossal failure finally, finally caught the attention of the Allied commanders. It slowly dawned on them that maybe charging massed men across open fields into the teeth of machine gun batteries wasn't the best idea.



Why this historical reflection? Well, even those who have disdain for overly casual or frequent analogies between poker and life in general must admit that poker and war have much in common, and much to learn from each other. One particular truth that they share is this: If you do not adapt your tactics to those of your opponents, you will be defeated.

I see this as having both micro and macro applications. In the micro setting, you have to adapt to the players currently at the table. As an extreme example, I remember a guy who used to come in to the Hilton poker room occasionally. His approach was extreme: He would buy in for $100, then repeatedly move all-in blind--without looking at his cards--until he had either built up $400-$500, or had lost about the same amount. If the former, he would move to an aggressive but at least fairly rational style of play. If the latter, he'd laugh it off, decide it wasn't his day, and go home.

This immensely frustrated some of the other players--particularly the older, nittier crowd. It both offended them as the "wrong" way to play poker, and intimidated them. Their desire for a slow, conservative, low-variance approach was utterly frustrated by this tactic. In the presence of such a wild player, it is clearly a mistake to respond by tightening up even further, but that is exactly what they would do. They would welcome the chance to call his blind all-in, but only if they had aces or kings in the hole. But by doing so, they left lots of money on the table. In order to profit from that extreme degree of looseness, you have to loosen up yourself. A hand like K-J offsuit is a substantial favorite over a random hand, and one you should be willing to take against him (at least one on one; having other players also calling complicates things, however).

As more familiar examples, if you repeatedly try to bluff a calling station, you are just giving away money. If you back down to an aggressive, bluff-happy bully every time, you might as well just hand him your wallet and go spend your time doing something more enjoyable than watch your stack of chips erode.

Maybe the poker situation that most resembles the history related by Chivers is the unwillingness to let go of pocket aces or kings in the face of unmistakable evidence that they are no longer good. When the table rock calls you on the flop and check-raises you on the river when a third diamond falls, aces dwindle in stature to nearly nothing. But time after time you can see people react to such a counterattack by stubbornly moving all-in, throwing good money after bad, refusing to accept the reality of the situation. They might as well be a British recruit trying to charge an entrenched German machine gun with a bayonet.

Then there is the macro sense of adaptation, too. Poker is a game that evolves over time, and one must change with it. The first poker strategy book I ever read (because of its prominence in James McManus's Positively Fifth Street, which was the first poker book of any kind that I read) was Cloutier and McEvoy's Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold'Em, published in 1997. Consider some of the advice that the authors give on pages 152-156 about how to play ace-king. (The "I" here is clearly Cloutier, with McEvoy acting sort of as his amanuensis.)

Say that you have raised with Ace-King from a front spot and one or two people have called. The board comes with 9-7-3, three suits. What do you do with your A-K? I don't care whether or not I've raised before the flop, I never bet A-K when the flop comes three rags....

By betting you have shut off your opportunity to get a free turn card and
possibly make your hand. If you check-check, you have found out information without it costing you anything. An aggressive player like Phil Hellmuth [Grump notes: It is a separately amazing thing that Hellmuth--now taunted for being overly passive--was once considered to be an unusually aggressive player.] may have a tendency to fire on the flop head-up; that's his style of play. But you can burn up a lot of chips that way. I don't continue with A-K unless I flop a hand that relates to it in some way, a hand with some strength in it....

Now, let's change the scenario: The action is two-handed, but you're sitting behind the other player.... The flop comes three rags and your opponent checks to you. You don't bet: You check right back at him. That way, you're not shutting yourself out. For example, what will you do if he checks, you bet, and then he raises you? What are you going to do with your hand then? So, you may as well take this opportunity that his check has given you and get a free card by checking along....

A lot of players will fire at the pot one time in these types of situations. When they see a baby flop, here they come! But I think they're making a mistake when they do that: You have to give an opponent credit for having something to have been able to call your raise to start with....

If a guy bets in front of me against that nine-high flop when I'm holding A-K, he wins the pot. It's that simple. I don't care what he has, he wins it right there.

Perhaps that advice constituted "championship" play in 1997; I don't pretend to know. But I do know that trying to play either a cash game or a tournament today by following that recipe will get you run over by nearly every player at the table. They will quickly figure out your transparent strategy, bluff you out of your shorts, and not pay you off when you actually do make a hand. You will not win the tournament. You will not make the final table. You will probably not even cash. You will have circles run around you. This is not just bringing the proverbial knife to a gunfight; it's bringing a knife to a machine-gun fight, and you'll be shot to pieces. There is a reason that you don't hear about Cloutier winning any tournaments lately.



Now if you'll excuse me, it's Saturday night of Super Bowl weekend, the Guest Gauge is "very busy," due to the confluence of that game, a UFC match at Mandalay Bay, and the Chinese New Year. I go off in search of poker players foolishly charging across open fields with their pocket aces.

Pain, relived

A post yesterday told a story about a Venetian dealer named Mark, and mentioned that I have known him, well, basically ever since I moved to Vegas, as he was then working at the Hilton, which was my primary poker hangout for a long time.

A reader asked if he was the same dealer "Mark" mentioned in another old post. The answer is no, that was a guy at the Orleans. I don't think I've ever talked about Hilton/Venetian Mark before, at least not by name. However, the question reminded me of a post that's old enough that I think many readers will not have encountered it, or perhaps did three years ago when I wrote it, but won't remember it.

Mark was the dealer for what was undoubtedly the most painful ten minutes of poker I've ever experienced, and my guess is that it was a sufficiently striking experience that he still remembers it, too. Some good did come out of it, though; I think it is still one of my best stories, and one of my best posts. Since it cost me something like $475 to have the experience, I might as well get maximal mileage out of it by referring you back to read it again (or for the first time)!

http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/irony-poker-story-in-4-parts-non-grumpy.html

Quads and laws

Once again a post from my buddy Shamus provides today's inspiration, on two unrelated fronts.

1.

While playing at a Florida card club recently, he flopped quads for the first time ever. That made me reflect a bit on how many times that has happened to me. Offhand I can remember flopping quad deuces at the Palms, fives at Planet Hollywood. There was another set at the Orleans--in 2007, I think--that I'm pretty sure was also fives; I remember the incident because I had raised before the flop, which back then wasn't my usual practice with small pairs, then got rewarded with the quads. I thought I had written about that hand, but now can't find it in my archives.

But the best one was when I flopped quad aces in a hand against Phyllis at the Hilton. Phyllis was one of the most likeable characters from my Hilton days. She was Rocky "The Rock" McRockerson when she played most of the time. But on the days that she chose to drink, she would usually have too many, and then she actually became a dangerous player, because she played much more loosely and mixed a large number of bluffs in with her strong hands. It was on one such day that I had the button, the pocket aces, plus the other two of them on the flop. Phyllis bet into me. I called. On the turn she bet bigger. I called again. On the river she bet yet again. By now the board had two pairs plus a king. I raised all in. She responded, "I call. I'm playing the board." I smiled and said, "I'm not," and showed her the quads. She laughed. (That was another thing about Phyllis--she hated to lose when she was sober, not so much when she was drunk.)

There may have been one or two other flopped quads that I'm no longer remembering, but there have been at least those four sets of them.


2.

The second thing from Shamus's post that I wanted to comment on was the statutory situation in Florida:

I spoke with Scott Long of Ante Up! (who co-hosts the show with Chris
Cosenza) just to make sure I was clear on what the current laws were. Indeed,
the $100 max-buy in remains in place for NL games, as does the $5 limit on bets
in limit games. The maximum buy-in for tourneys is $800 or thereabouts (Long
says some places have managed to find a way to finagle up to $1,000 buy-ins
somehow). Long shared with me the comparison he and Cosenza often make when
highlighting the present absurdity of the poker-gambling situation in
Florida.

“I can go down to the Kennel Club and bet $50,000 on a dog running around
the track, but can’t buy in for more than $100 to play poker,” explained Long.
He added how the motorcycle-riding thrill-seeker Evel Knievel, who lived his
latter years in Florida prior to his death a couple of years ago, apparently
used to go place $10,000 bets on the greyhounds from time to time, screwing up
the odds considerably when he did.

It does sound as though the law to remove caps and betting limits has a
good chance of going through this summer, though, and so perhaps the situation
will be different in Florida soon.

One of the things that most reliably gets my dander up is stupid laws, especially stupid laws passed by legislators who are trying to protect people from themselves. The more I know about a subject, the more obvious it is to me that the people writing the laws about it have no idea what they're doing. Firearms laws is one such example, though today I'll spare you a rant about how ill-conceived most gun laws are. I'll stick to poker instead.

The Florida case is a good example of legislative idiocy, but Minnesota is at least its equal. Maybe ten years ago the state first made it legal for horse racing tracks (of which there was only one at the time) to have card clubs, too. But because the bleeding-heart lawmakers didn't want people to lose too much money playing poker, they put in place a maximum of $60 per bet. What that means in real terms is that Minnesota poker rooms can offer $30-$60 limit games, but not a game such as $1-2 no-limit hold'em--the most popular form of poker in the country these days.

Most of my readers play a lot of poker, obviously. So you tell me: in which game is a bad player likely to lose more money, $30-60 LHE, or $1-2 NLHE? For the few readers who don't play enough to make the answer apparent, I'll just tell you that I wouldn't go near a $30-$60 LHE game, for fear that one unlucky session would wipe out my bankroll. It's a much bigger game than the standard capped buy-in no-limit game, despite the potentially misleading labels of one being "limit" and the other "no-limit." I might lose $300 in one hand of poker once a month or so, certainly not more frequently than that on average. But if one played $30-$60 limit, losing $300 in a hand would be expected to happen more than once in every session.

No rational legislator who understood poker could possibly set up the laws the way they did with the goal of protecting players from losing too much money. It's insane. (Of course, I could also point to the UIGEA as an example of a law passed by a bunch of legislators who had little or no idea how idiotic and vague and overbroad and philosophically inconsistent it was. But you all already know about that, whereas you're less likely to know about Minnesota statutes.)

Unfortunately, that's the system we have: laws are made by people who, for the most part, have only the barest understanding of the subjects they are trying to govern, and who care more about scoring points with favored interest groups than passing laws that are actually rational. The last thing that would ever occur to them is that maybe the citizens are capable of making their own decisions about how to live their lives and spend their money, without Big Brother putting stupid, arbitrary restrictions in place. I will never understand why so many people--legislators being only the example du jour--have such strong desires to restrict and control what others do. Power-hungry madness for the most part, I think.

Stepping off soapbox in three, two, one--now.

Today's helpful hint: Ask about the cash

A couple of weeks ago I posted a story from the Venetian in which I anticipated a potential problem about how much money a guy was playing and spoke up, trying to get it resolved before it became a crisis. I admit that I was kind of surprised that not a single commenter agreed with my action. (Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that the player involved, the dealer, and the chip runner all bear part of the blame for the situation arising as it did.) I reject the specific form of criticism that was based on the retrospective observation that the player involved got mad and left, when he was clearly a donkey and likely would have donated a lot more money to the table. That was completely unknowable in advance, and it might just as well have turned out that my intervention saved him money and made him grateful and happy. Still, although I don't exactly conduct myself according to reader-majority rule, it has given me cause to reflect, and I'm now not sure that I would do the same again.

But thinking about that experience and whether I did the right thing triggered memories of a tangentially related class of incidents in which there has been uncertainty about cash playing.

The most common rule in Vegas poker rooms is that $100 bills on the table are in play the same as chips (and are subject to the same buy-in cap), but other denominations of currency are not.

(In card rooms that take the rake in half-dollar increments, there are a bunch of weird and inconsistent rules about when and whether the half-dollar coins you get back are in play. E.g., they might be usable for paying your blinds, but not count if you're all-in, or only count in full-dollar amounts, or other such nonsense. For purposes of this post, I'm only talking about bills, not coins.)

However, there are variations on this. The most peculiar one I know of is the Sahara, where all denominations of currency are in play--even $5 and $1 bills. At the old Hilton poker room, no bills played, nor did $25 or $100 chips. Their reasoning was that it was too easy for other players to overlook these items and thus inadvertantly misjudge an opponent's stack and make a crucial error.

The Imperial Palace is an example of a room that follow this same policy now. A few weeks ago I was playing there. On the river I missed a flush draw but made some sort of small pair. I checked. Opponent moved all in: he had a single $1 chip and a single $100 bill, both of which he pushed forward. The bill had been sitting in front of him for several hands at least, but the dealer had failed to notice it until this moment. He informed the player that the bill was not in play, so the all-in bet was only $1. Floor was called and made the same ruling. The player was livid. I called his $1, though I was about 99% sure I was losing. He had the nuts--a straight. He was ranting about how he was being cheated out of $100. I reassured him that $1 was just about the most I would have called, so the error actually made him an extra dollar that he otherwise would not have gotten, because if his bet had been $101, I would have folded. That calmed him down.

The point, though, is that dealers frequently don't notice currency on the table. Last week at the Venetian I noticed that a player had a stack of $20 bills sitting behind his chips. I don't know how long they had been there before I spotted them. I waited until the hand was over, then told the dealer, "We should probably get clarified whether that cash is in play." The dealer, too, had failed to notice whenever it was that the player had added the money to his stack. He got it changed for chips, and all was well.

Similarly, during the last week of the World Series of Poker, I was sweating Cardgrrl as she played a juicy $2/5 game at the Rio. At some point I noticed a similar situation--a player had quietly added some $20 bills to the table. I was pretty sure that the Rio followed the standard rule of only $100s playing, so I whispered to her that she might want to ask the dealer about it between hands. She did. Again, the dealer had not noticed the issue, and it got resolved before it became a big blow-up.

The obvious problem is that when this sort of thing goes unnoticed and unresolved until there is an all-in move, somebody is going to end up unhappy--whoever has or believes he has the winning hand will want as much in the pot as possible, and the loser will be arguing against counting whatever he can. That's the worst possible time to try to resolve the matter.

Yes, dealers should always notice when a player adds cash to his stack, both to be sure that it is eligible for play and that it does not violate any buy-in cap. But dealers have a lot to do, and this kind of thing slips by unnoticed all the time. So today's helpful hint is to simply ask. Don't assume that any particular poker room follows the standard rule if it's a place where you are not a frequent visitor and certain of the house rule. If you're told that no cash plays and there is cash on the table, or that only 100s play and there are 20s on the table, just wait until the current hand is over and ask the dealer to clarify. Of course, once in a while the player affected will get upset, because people can be irrational and stupid. But you'll be doing everybody at the table a favor by getting the question resolved definitively before there is a big blow-up.

More professional poker cheaters

The newest issue of All In magazine (vol. VI, issue 6; no date given) has a feature about Chad Brown and Vanessa Rousso (pp. 56-61). I was very surprised to find this confession in it:

That's not to say that poker romance is without its own unique pitfalls.
For one thing, there's the potential of having to compete against your partner
in an activity so rooted in individual success. "Early on in our relationship,"
recalled Rousso, "we had to acknowledge the possibility that we'd end up at the
same table." Both considered the idea of soft-playing one another to be
unethical--not to mention antithetical to their competitive instincts. "We
basically have an agreement that in the rare occasions we're at the same table,"
said Brown, "the one thing that we don't do to each other is to trap ... That
can, uh, ruin the romance."

[Ellipsis in original.]

This is an obvious internal contradiction. If you rule out trapping, then you're soft-playing. I don't see how it can be thought of otherwise. If trapping would be the highest EV way of playing a particular hand, and you exclude it a priori as a possibility because of your relationship, that is soft-playing.

And it is cheating.

Of course, there's cheating and then there's cheating. This obviously ranks well below, say, owning an online poker site and using insider access to look at opponents' cards while you play against them. But it is clearly a violation of the rules.

I used to play frequently at the Hilton with a married couple, and they made it clear to all that if it was just the two of them left in a hand, they would check it down every time. They weren't trying to be sneaky or underhanded about it; everybody understood it, and if they became aware that somebody wasn't familiar with their practice, they made it explicit. I got to know them well enough to be completely convinced that they saw nothing unethical or improper about this.

But it is unethical. It puts other players at a significant disadvantage. My guess is that this couple never thought through how this could be so.

One of the major considerations in deciding whether to call a bet on the flop in hold'em--especially in no-limit games--is the implicit threat the bettor is making that you may have to call even larger bets on the turn and river in order to get to a showdown.

Now imagine a situation where Wife is first to act after the flop, to be followed by an unrelated player and then Husband on the button. Wife has an advantage now that she would not have if it were two unrelated players in the hand; if her husband happens to have a monster hand, and the in-between player folds, he will just call and she won't have to make a difficult decision about whether to call a raise. That effectively increases the range of hands with which she can make this early-position bet. She can also use that knowledge to her advantage in bet sizing. She can afford to make a larger bet than she otherwise might--hoping to drive out the player in the middle--because she knows that if it works, it's the end of the money she has to put into the pot. That ability puts the middle player at a direct disadvantage.

Husband also has an advantage. If the in-between player drops out, Husband can then safely call without having to worry about facing additional bets on the turn and river. If he is on a draw, say, he knows that he gets both turn and river cards for the price of the call, whereas any other player in his spot would have to figure his pot odds based on getting only the turn card for the price of the current bet. His decision is made easier all around.

Of course, what Brown and Rousso claim as their only limited version of soft-playing isn't this explicit. It would be extremely difficult ever to prove, for any given hand, that one of them played the hand in a straightforward manner, rather than slow-playing and trapping, out of consideration for the relationship. But in a sense, that makes the practice all the more insidious. At least with the couple from the Hilton, what they were doing was out in the open.

Anytime you soft-play an opponent--especially in a tournament situation, which seems to be the bulk of both Brown's and Rousso's play--you are hurting everybody else. If Brown does not maximize his chance of crippling or knocking out Rousso, he keeps a skilled player in the game longer and/or with more chips than would otherwise be the case. If he doesn't go for the kill when he could, it negatively affects every other player in the tournament, and especially the others at that table.

Of course, it is true that one tends to play more cautiously against opponents that one knows to be skillful and dangerous. Brown and Rousso obviously know that about each other, and will naturally tend to be more leery of building a big pot without the nuts than they likely would be when contesting a pot against a random donk. Taking a conservative line against an opponent known to be a thoughtful and skilled player is not soft-playing, not cheating, not against the rules. It's common sense.

But what Brown is saying goes well beyond that. If "no trapping" really is agreed upon in advance, then they each bring to the table a big advantage that nobody else has. If one of them makes a substantial bet and is called by the other, the bettor can be assured that the caller is not slow-playing a monster hand, with the intention of dropping the hammer on a later street. The call pretty much must therefore represent either a draw or a medium-strength hand. A position call is often enough to shut down the bettor on the next round, for fear that the caller is trapping. Remove that from the equation, and you greatly narrow the range of hands that you might be facing. That knowledge would be an enormous advantage, and it is one that is being granted to nobody else at the table.

That is soft-playing. It is against the rules. It is cheating.

Is it really possible that Brown and Rousso are incapable of seeing that?

Smelly and me

I ran into Smelly again a couple of weeks ago. He got up and left the table. It was one of the most tangible markers I've yet been given that I have gotten better at this game.


Back to the beginning of the story: As most readers know by now, the Hilton was the first poker room that really caught my attention as a quiet, friendly, comfortable, convenient, and profitable place to use as my default poker destination when there was not some reason to go elsewhere. I naturally ran into a lot of the same people frequently. One of them was a guy that I'll call Allen (not his real name).

Allen is a sourpuss. He could call himself the Poker Grump more accurately than I can. He also had questionable personal hygiene. One day when I was waiting for a table, I chatted with the person at the front desk. One of the high-hand jackpots had been capped at its maximum for an unusually long time, but that day I noticed that it had been reset to the minimum, meaning that somebody had hit it the previous day. I asked if it had been won by somebody I would know. She said, "Yeah, it was Allen." There were two frequent customers named Allen, though. One of them was dating one of the Hilton poker dealers. So I asked, "The one who's dating [so and so]?" She replied, "No, Smelly Allen."

I almost died laughing. Up until that point, I had no idea that the dealers had adopted that nickname for him for use behind his back. When they needed to make the distinction, there was "Nice Allen," and there was "Smelly Allen."

My first few months in town, I found Smelly to be a challenging opponent. Here's how I described him in an email to a friend back in Minnesota on September 20, 2006: "He’s erratic and tricky, very unpredictable, and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost more to him than I’ve won from him. When we’re in a hand against each other, he seems to be able to get away from me when I’m strong more easily than I get away from him when he’s strong."

Over time, though, I started noticing patterns to his play. For example, one of his favorite moves was a huge raise from the big blind when several people had limped in. After a while, I could even predict when he was going to do this, which meant that he was doing it largely independent of what his cards were. I also noticed that he would fold to a reraise, and wouldn't take any heat after the flop if somebody called him in that situation. So although in any one hand, that move might look like he has a big pair, seeing it occur many times made it clear that he was often doing it with air.

Another pattern that I started to notice was that he would usually put in a continuation bet after the flop, if he had raised before the flop, but he wouldn't fire second and third bullets if he missed the board.

The reason for that 9/20/06 email was to describe my turning point with Smelly. I limped in with 9-9. He raised, I called. At that moment, I had something of an epiphany. I could see the different paths that this hand might take at each decision point, all simultaneously. It wasn't a vision, exactly, but a weird sense that I knew the things he might do at each decision point, what each of them implied about his cards, and, therefore, how I would need to respond to them, for all of the remaining three betting rounds. Basically, most flops were going to go check-bet-call, because I knew that I needed to see what he did on fourth street to know whether he had (1) either started with a big pair or started with two big but unpaired cards and had hit one of them, or (2) he had started with two big cards and whiffed on the flop.

The flop was 10-10-2. Check-bet-call, as expected. Turn was a rag. Check-check. Aha! I was confident then that he didn't have an overpair. His pattern would have been to fire again if he did, and let my response dictate what he would do next. (I.e., if I check-raised, he would probably fold.) Now my only concern was that the river not be an overcard that might pair him up. It was another small card. I bet, and Smelly insta-mucked.

The hand had followed one of the paths that I had foreseen. Now that I have about a billion more hands of experience, nothing about that seems particularly remarkable. But it was the first time that I ever had an advance sense of the ways in which a whole hand could play out, instead of just taking each decision separately as it came. It was also one of the first times that I had been able to apply betting patterns of a particular opponent from previous sessions to a specific current hand. (Of course, I had at least some facility with observing and adjusting to players over the course of a session, but cumulatively gathering information on people over weeks and months was a skill I was just developing.)

The pot wasn't very big, but it was a huge turning point for me. From then on, I didn't fear Smelly. I realized that he wasn't nearly as tricky and unpredictable as I had mentally labeled him. The tide turned between us. I started winning more of our encounters.

By the time that the Hilton poker room closed about a year after that, Smelly largely stayed away from me. It was crystal clear that he had been burned enough times that he decided it was better to pick on other people and stay out of my way.*

Since the closing of the Hilton poker room, I have bumped into Smelly only three or four times, all but one of them, I think, at Harrah's. Our old pattern on those occasions seemed to continue--he would rarely contest pots in which I was taking the lead. He seemed to want to avoid me.

Then, as I alluded to at the top of the post, a most interesting thing happened a couple of weeks ago. I joined a game at the Monte Carlo where Smelly was playing. Within five minutes, he stood up and cashed out without saying a word.

It's impossible to know for sure that I'm the reason he decided to leave, but I have a strong hunch. He hadn't just lost or won a large pot, and didn't have a particularly short or large stack that would suggest itself as the reason for him calling it a day. I believe that he simply decided that he could find an easier table somewhere else. (That wasn't entirely due to me. I discovered that there were other good players at that table. But I think that I was the final straw in his decision to look for better hunting elsewhere.)

I can't think of any other opponent with whom I have that kind of history--starting off with me intimidated by him, and ending up the other way 'round. It's highly satisfying, because it's a pretty unmistakable sign that I have made progress (and had even made measurable improvement between early July, 2006, when I started here, and late September of the same year, when we played what proved to be that pivotal hand). Smelly, I'm afraid, has basically stayed at the same level of play.

And he still has questionable personal hygiene.



*Every time I write something like this, I feel the need to throw in my usual disclaimer: I do not view myself as any sort of poker prodigy. I'm not especially good at the game. No real pros would find me scary or difficult. I have a basic level of competence that is probably about as low on the scale of poker talent as one can possess and still manage to squeeze a living out of the tourists. Readers should not mistake what are intended as fairly objective statements about me being a better player than some particular other one as suggesting swagger on my part.

Not ashamed of being stupid

The other day as I was leaving a casino I noticed a familiar face, though he didn't appear to see me. It wasn't until after we had passed that I was able to pull from the ol' memory banks who he was. His name is Josh, and he used to play at the Hilton on a fairly regular basis. He was extremely friendly and generally pleasant, though a lot more talkative (and loud) than is to my personal liking. He was pretty easy to win money from, because he bluffed incessantly.

But the most memorable thing about him was an incident from what was, I think, the first time I played with him. It's a story I recorded during the first month I lived in Vegas, as it was published in the "Bulletin Board" section of my home-town newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, to which I used to be a frequent contributor.

Last week, a young man next to me at a poker game ordered a Corona. When it
arrived, he noticed that the lip of the bottle was cracked. He commented on it,
and I could easily see the broken glass, too. He then shrugged his shoulders and
took a swig of it anyway. Then he got a strange look on his face, and spat the
beer back into the bottle. He complained that he had glass in his mouth. Soon
after, he left the table, saying that his mouth was bleeding. (It was -- but
only a little, as far as I could tell.) He spent the next hour wandering around,
complaining to anyone who would listen how the casino gave him a beer in a
broken bottle. None of us at the table were very sympathetic, since he had made
a big deal of the bottle being broken before he put it in his mouth.

Mind you -- the beer is free to the poker players (it keeps them at the
table longer), and even if he had paid for it, he obviously could have asked for
a replacement bottle if he had been willing to wait five minutes for it.

Finally, he filed a formal complaint, and I was asked by the hotel security people to
fill out a description of what I had observed. I did. The security guy shared my
feeling that if I had been that stupid, I wouldn't tell anybody -- let alone try
to blame the establishment, or try to weasel a few nuisance bucks out of them.
The noive of some people!

Are you a Fanilow?

Yesterday around 4:30 I was getting ready to go out for some poker, when an email hit my inbox from http://www.houseseats.com/, announcing "last-minute" free ticket availability for Barry Manilow at the Hilton, 8:00 pm.

OK, time for a confession. I'm a straight male who likes Barry Manilow. Not crazy Fanilow level or anything, but I'm a sucker for a good love song or schmaltzy sad one, and Barry fills the bill.

So I speed-dialed my best friend, and, bless her heart, she was willing to sit through it with me, even though her musical taste runs more to the Beastie Boys, The Cure, and Linkin Park. So I nabbed the tickets and off we went.

The seats weren't quite as primo as the ones for Blue Man Group the previous night, but they were perfectly fine: about four rows from the back of the main floor, toward the far right, in what had once been Elvis Presley's theater. Paying full price would have been $137.50 apiece. (That's the second-cheapest price level. They run from $104.50 to $247.50.)

I can't add this to my list of best-ever Vegas shows, but it was certainly good enough that I'm glad I went. My complaints: (1) They started about 10 minutes late. (2) It was fairly short, about 1 1/4 hours. (3) They passed out chemical glow sticks, which just encouraged people to do that stupid slow arm-waving thing. (4) Some idiots in the audience always felt compelled to sing along, apparently on the assumption that everybody had come to hear them sing, rather than Barry Manilow. (5) It was much too amplified. (It's been said that if you think the music is too loud, you're too old. You can imagine, then, what it says about you if you find Barry Manilow too loud.) (6) I had a hard time seeing over the head of the guy in front of me--had to keep bobbing and weaving. (7) Even though the show is ostensibly meant to focus on Manilow's hits (the previous iteration of his Hilton show, "Music and Passion," featured on the poker chip shown above, is no more; this one is called "Ultimate Manilow: The Hits"), he did ultra-shortened and medley versions of many of my favorites in order to cram them in and get them out of the way to make room for pimping his soon-to-be-released album of other people's 1980s hits, as well as his other "decades" collections.

Perhaps most peculiar is that my friend and I both independently concluded that he was lip-syncing at least part of the time. There were spots in which he seemed out of phase with what we were hearing. Once I caught him whispering something to a fan in the first row while his singing voice finished the last second or two of a phrase over the speakers. This was all pretty mystifying, because for most of the show it was perfectly obvious that he was not lip-syncing. For example, he hit an off note once, garbled the lyrics of "American Bandstand" in one place, I heard his voice crack once, and at one point he paused a song to respond to something shouted from the audience--not things you would pre-record. His speaking voice sounded unusually raspy, so perhaps he has a cold or is developing a vocal cord problem, can't sustain an entire show, and thus has some voice rests built in, in the form of recorded music. I don't know. It was kind of weird.

In spite of the above nit-picking, I had a good time. It tugged at every sappy, soft-hearted, nostalgic bone in my body to hear "Weekend in New England," "Somewhere in the Night," "Trying to Get the Feeling Again," "Mandy" (done in an interesting manner: with Barry singing and playing the piano in parallel with the projected videotape of a 1975 television performance of the same song), "Looks Like We Made It," and my all-time choke-me-up favorite, "Even Now." Manilow is the king of wistfulness. If those last three songs can't reach something deep inside you that still pines for a lost love and wonders what might have been, well, you're lacking one of the emotions that make us human. Carrying an old torch is simultaneously happy and painful, and nobody can stoke those flames more effectively than Barry.

Two good shows in two days--excellent value from my houseseats.com subscription, I'd say. But enough of it for now. I need to get back to earning and to the main subject of this blog, which will soon return to being about poker.

Psychic abilities claimed, not proven

A trio of tales from yesterday's Day 1-D of the 2008 WSOP Main Event, all as told by the fine team of bloggers at PokerNews. See if you can spot what they have in common:

I Knew What You Had

On the turn, with the board showing Qs-10s-6d-Ks, Jennifer Tilly
checked to a player in the cutoff, who bet 1,000. Tilly called. On the river of
the 3c, the cutoff player bet out 1,250 and Tilly again made the call....

The cutoff showed As-4s and Tilly mucked. She told the player, "I knew you
had the flush. I pay you off on the turn and the river." She looked clearly
disappointed.

After the hand, Tilly is down to 12,000.


Lederer Better Than Yu

We recently passed by Blue #1 and saw that Howard
Lederer was all in for 13,400 against one opponent, Charles Yu of Dover,
Delaware, on a board of 3h-Jd-10h-2c. With the cameras rolling, the table talk
commenced.

Yu: "I know you don't have it."

Lederer: "Oh, I have it."

Yu: "Maybe you should bet 10,000 and I'll call."

Lederer: "OK, I bet 10,000." He reached for his chips to take some back,
then smiled and left them in the middle of the table.

A minute or so passed.

Lederer: "If you knock me out, they'll probably put you on TV."

Yu: "OK, OK. I fold. But I know you don't have it. If you had bet 5,000, I
would have called."

As Lederer was raking the pot, he chuckled. "I like that he claims he would
have called 5,000," said Lederer to the player on his left.

The discussion continued a few hands later, with Yu still not convinced
that Lederer could beat king-jack, the hand Yu claims he folded.

"You should have made the hero call then," said Lederer. "You could have
told all your friends to watch you on TV." Then he turned more serious, and
said, "I raised you from first position, I raised you on the flop, and I moved
in on the turn. Do you really think your jack was good?"

Yu had no response.

(Before I move on to the third story, I just want to add that there were about three more posts throughout the day of ongoing verbal and card clashes between Lederer and Yu, with Lederer coming out on top of all of them. For a guy who is usually nearly silent at the table, he did a splendid job using a few well-chosen words to (1) sell his image, (2) confuse his opponent, and (3) manipulate his opponent--which, by the end of the day, he had clearly done. Just based on those few reports, it was a virtuoso poker performance by a guy that I've come to think of more as a behind-the-scenes administrator than a serious player.)

More Hot Set Over Set Action

On a flop of Q-8-4, Jeff Weil moved all in with Q-Q and was called by his
opponent, holding 8-8.

"I KNEW it! I KNEW it!" wailed the poor soul with the pocket eights, as
most of his stack was shipped across the table to Weil and the ESPN cameras
swarmed.

"If you knew it, why didn't you fold" wondered Beth Shak aloud.

OK, it's not too hard to see the thread those stories share, especially given the big hints I provided in this post's title and photo.

I don't think I've ever blogged about this (though I discussed it briefly in my little contibution to Episode 4 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show), but "I knew you had that" (or close variations) is one of the more common stupid things that people say at the poker table.

Beth Shak asks the most obvious question that gets at the heart of what's so stupid about it. How can you claim to have known that an opponent had you beat, yet still call? If Jeff Wile's anonymous opponent really knew that he was on the bad end of a set-over-set situation--e.g., if Wile had turned his cards face up--he clearly wouldn't have called. If Jennifer Tilly actually knew that she was up against a flush that she couldn't beat, she wouldn't have called.

There have been countless times that I have heard an opponent fold while telling me, "I know you have [some very strong hand]"--and they've been wrong.

We never know what an opponent has, in any meaningful sense of the word, until the cards are revealed. We can have varying degrees of confidence, assigning an opponent to a range of possible hands that make sense, sometimes a very narrow range. But there's always the possibility that the opponent is doing something completely irrational, so that the clues available lead to an erroneous conclusion.

It is quite rare that I experience such a high level of confidence in a player's exact holdings that I will be surprised to see him turn over anything else. Such occurrences are usually when I'm not in the hand (for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, it tends to be easier to accurately gauge what's going on when one is not participating; this may be why poker dealers often overestimate their poker-playing skills, finding that their ability to guess players' cards erodes substantially when they're participating as an opponent rather just watching than as a neutral observer), and usually only after all of the action is completed, so that I'm operating with maximal information.

One time at the Hilton I was watching a multi-way pot develop. Barry, an off-duty Hilton dealer, was one of the contestants. When he made a big bet on the river, I had the highest degree of confidence in what exact two cards he had in the hole that I have ever felt in any poker situation. I would have been positively floored if he had anything else, because only one possible combination made sense. In fact, I'm ashamed to say that I blurted out, "I know what Barry has," with a little laugh. I instantly regretted it, because it could easily have queered the action. (He had the nuts and was wanting to get paid off.) It's the only time I've violated the rule about talking about the hand in progress in a way that could unfairly influence the betting and/or help or hinder another player. It blurted out of me because I thought it was so painfully obvious what he had, that, for that split second, I imagined that that conclusion must be equally apparent to everybody else, so what harm could there be in saying something? But then just as quickly I thought better, realizing that it might not be so clear to everybody. Indeed it wasn't, and Barry did get paid by one of the lesser hands. When it was over, I apologized profusely and repeatedly to both Barry and the whole table for injecting myself.

Anyway, the point is that that degree of pinpoint clarity is really, really rare in poker. And even then, it still doesn't reach what I would consider to be "knowing" what somebody's cards are.

It's another in the long list of stupid things to say at the poker table. Try to refrain from it.

Crass, tacky, and distasteful

While I was at O'Sheas the other day, I had to visit the men's room, and saw two of the above-pictured devices above the urinals. For a quarter, you can having a contest with your buddy about who has the fastest and/or greatest volume of output. (I was a little unclear on the details, and it's creepy enough taking a photograph in a public restroom that I didn't want to also lurk around long enough to read the fine print.)

This reminded me of something I always meant to gripe about from the Hilton: In their men's room, above the urinals, is a bunch of photographs of attractive women looking down on those using the facilities. The women are looking closely at what's being exposed, some of them reacting with obvious delight and admiration, others pulling out rulers and tape measures. If you see what I mean.

I'm sure that many visitors to these two facilities find these installations hilarious and enjoyable. As the title to this post suggests, I think they're just plain in bad taste.

I don't belong to that segment of society that experiences any sense of shame about human waste elimination. Personally, I wouldn't care a whole lot if all restrooms were unisex, because I don't really care if anybody is watching me; conversely, I have neither interest in nor disgust from seeing somebody else, male or female, urinating. I remember once being at the zoo in New Orleans, using the men's room, when an unfortunate female elementary school teacher, with her class on a field trip, had to enter and keep an eye on her young male charges--I suppose to be sure that they didn't get kidnapped or molested or something. She was a whole lot more embarrassed about the situation than I was. It's just not that big a deal.

But at the same time, I can't go so far in my relaxed attitude as to want to elevate it to institutionalized humor. Surely O'Sheas and Hilton management must realize that at least some of their guests will find such attempts at humor loathesome and vile. Why would you do something that you know will offend some substantial fraction of your customers, at least when there's little or no money to be made from doing so? (I put that condition on it because other things in casinos are likely to offend some people, but are undoubtedly revenue-enhancing, which at least makes the decision to have them understandable from a business point of view.) I can't imagine that whatever little enjoyment some segment of the population derives from crudeness like this outweighs the undoubtedly stronger negative thoughts and feelings that another segment will experience.

I guess I just don't get businesses going out of their way to be offensive.

Addendum, January 2, 2007

A friend pointed me to the following story about a downtown casino that has a piece of the Berlin Wall in its men's room: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/sights/sightstory.php?tip_AttrId=%3D12552. I'd have to agree that that is in even poorer taste than the two examples I cited above, though for different reasons.

Could I have found a new poker home???

Ever since the Hilton closed down, I've been adrift. I haven't had a default place that would tend to top my list of choices of where to play. I've just been wandering, hoping that someplace would strike my fancy enough to settle in.

The Venetian was coming closest. It's clean, well-run, good mix of locals and tourists, profitable, reasonably easy to get to (i.e., I can get in the back way without fighting Strip traffic), skilled dealers, quiet, smoke-free. So there wasn't anything to gripe about, but for whatever reason I just couldn't fall in love with it.

I tried Treasure Island. I really did. It shares many of the things I liked so much about the Hilton: Small, friendly, quiet, mix of locals and tourists, easy access. But for reasons that I never figured out, I just didn't make money there, despite trying and trying and trying. Maybe it was just strange statistical variance, or maybe it was something about the style generally played there that I couldn't ever put my finger on. But I can't keep playing at a financial loss.

I've also tried to love Mandalay Bay and the Monte Carlo, but can't. Suncoast is a place I like a lot, but it's a long drive for me, and there isn't a no-limit game going on with enough regularity. Caesars is OK, but, like the Venetian, bigger than I really care for, and fairly difficult in terms of parking/walking.

So basically I've been a bit depressed. I just can't deal with the fact that such a nice, cozy, profitable place like the Hilton closes while awful, abominable, atrocious, aggravating places (and that's only using the "a" adjectives!) sprout up and never die. The world ain't fair.

But tonight I have a glimmer of hope.

I've only walked into the Rio poker room once before, and I didn't have a great first impression. I had read largely negative reviews of the room at http://www.allvegaspoker.com/, so maybe that predisposed me to not liking it. I parked in the wrong garage, and it's an exceptionally long walk if you do that. Then, after the long walk, they only had one game going, and it was limit, and that day I just wasn't in the mood to play it, so I left. That was late last year sometime.

I gave it another shot tonight, and was pleasantly surprised about nearly everything. When I parked in the west ("Carnival") garage, the poker room was a shorter walk to get to than most places. Of course, there is the added pleasure of turning away from Strip traffic when coming off of I-15.

They had two no-limit games going and one $3-6 limit. Restrooms were very close, a fact of which my gradually enlarging prostate gland took special note. The poker room was open, or, I guess, sort of semi-enclosed, but it's not stuck among the slot machines and table games. Rather, it's next to the little bowling alley, the buffet, and the sports book, which gives it a completely different sound and feel than the rooms that are too close to the ding-ding-ding of the slots and the whoops from the craps tables. I detected no infiltration of cigarette smoke (and I have a sensitive nose for it), and it was pleasantly quiet. The room is about the size that I like.

The staff was attentive, friendly, and helpful. The dealers were outstanding--and that's something I'm pretty fussy about. Every one of the four on duty tonight was well above the industry average. Every one of them was fast, efficient, good at enforcing rules politely, and I saw not a single error made. Highly impressive.

During one hand, one player asked another to move his hands so that his chip stacks were more visible. An uninvolved player eyeballed the stacks in question and said, "Looks like $180 or $190 or so." This happens all the time, even though it shouldn't. I've never even once heard a dealer say anything about it--until tonight. This dealer politely said, "One player to a hand, please." The dealer was absolutely right. It's a minor thing, but unless a player asks the dealer to count down an opponent's chip stack(s), how he estimates the number of chips left is his own business, and an integral part of no-limit decision-making. Other players shouldn't stick their noses into it. As regular readers will know, I love strict enforcement of the rules, because that's how the game is most fair. I wanted to kiss that dealer--except that his moustache would have been a little bit scratchy, I think.

A poker room's cocktail waitresses are about eleventy-billionth on my list of priorities for reason to pick a place to play. But it was impossible not to notice the outfits these girls were wearing. I can't remember any other casino where the uniforms looked so much like a nightie a young woman might wear to bed on her wedding night. See http://www.vegasrex.com/2007/11/01/the-rios-new-clothes/ for more photos and comments.

The Rio poker room also has massages available at the table. This surprised me, because it's something I've previously seen only in the largest rooms (e.g., Venetian, Caesars, MGM) and in the Palms. I don't know how they can make a good living in rooms as small as the Rio and Palms, but I'm happy to have them there. It makes for a nice break in a long, tiring session.

I also learned that there is a weekly freeroll. Spend 15 hours at cash games Sunday through Thursday, and you qualify for a tournament the following Wednesday evening. The room puts up $5000 in prize money, but this gets pushed up, because people who don't qualify for free can buy in for $230. The shift supervisor told me that they average about 30 free entries and 20 buy-ins, so the prize pool gets to $8000-$9000. That may work out to more tournament equity per hour of qualifying play than the Hilton's monthly freeroll did, and that was often considered the best deal in town.

I was amused by the felt on one table, pictured above. Just in case you forget what beats what, it's right there on the table for you. I've never seen that anywhere before.

Three of the old regulars from the Hilton were there, so apparently I'm not the only one noticing that much of what was likeable at the Hilton is embodied at the Rio, too.

Another little touch I liked was the wide variety of commemorative chips. I like having a bunch of different chips in play. It gives me something else to look at and think about, because, let's face it, poker can have long boring stretches, and nobody can maintain focus on the game all the time for hours on end. I also like keeping a collection of the different unusual chips that casinos put out. Yeah, I know, that makes me a sucker, because I buy for $5 what the casino pays about ten cents to have made, but it's a little thing that makes me happy, having a few hundred different chips at home to play with. The Rio must have an enormous number of different ones, because I found the 12 pictured above just in what I had in my stacks when it was time to cash out. (You can click on the photo for a much more detailed view of them, if you're interested.) I usually only expect maybe two or three different ones the first time I visit a room that is new to me.

Last but not least, it was incredibly easy to make money. Of course, this is a sample of one night, which doesn't say much for the long run, but it was a promising start. I basically got run over by the deck, and made a profit of $225 in about 45 minutes of playing $3-6 limit while waiting for a no-limit seat. That is completely unprecedented in my experience. Then I bought in for $100 at the no-limit game and left with another $158 profit an hour later (not including the chips I kept as souvenirs, which I don't think the IRS needs to know about...), mostly coming from a three-way all-in when I had flopped a set of tens and they held up.

It's only one visit there so far, but kind of like you feel after a first date that went well, I'm a bit giddy, and having fantasies that maybe this is the place for me. I really liked everything about the room. Or, to put it another way, I can't find anything to be my usual grumpy self about. I can't wait to try it again and see if first impressions hold up.

Not talking about the hand in progress includes dealers, too

Nearly every time the flop brings three parts of a straight flush, or especially a royal flush, there's at least one player at the table who feels the obligation to point out this fact to everybody else. That's bad enough, but it's far worse when the culprit is the dealer.

Flamingo this afternoon. I'm not in the hand. Flop is A-Q-10, all diamonds. The dealer, Stephen, instantly says, "Oh my God, here comes a royal."

I shouldn't have to spell out everything that's wrong with this, but I will anyway. Any such discussion by another player or by the dealer is clearly forbidden, because (1) it might be helping a player in the hand (and simultaneously hurting another one), and (2) it can change the action as a result.

Yeah, the fact that three-fifths of a royal flush just hit the board should be obvious to everybody--but you never know when it's not. A player could be too drunk or distracted to have noticed. A player may have bad eyesight and mistakenly think that one of the red cards is a heart. If you are lucky enough to have the K-J of diamonds in this situation, you secretly pray that somebody else will make a full house or even quads and not even notice the possibility of the royal.

Comments like Stephen made can queer the action. Players who are suddenly alerted to the possibility of a jackpot hand get a different view of their effective pot odds. A player with the jack of diamonds might decide it's worth calling big bets in the hopes of hitting the royal, either just to be able to say that he got one once in his life, or in order to claim a high-hand jackpot. (Most high-hand jackpots require both of the player's hole cards to be used, but a high percentage of tourists don't know that, and will chase the draw, thinking that they're eligible for the bonus when they aren't.)

A dealer at the Hilton used to do this every time there was a possible straight flush. The first time, I quietly pointed out to him that he's not allowed to say anything in that situation. After that didn't stop him, I would inform the shift supervisor. But even though I reported his inappropriate comments at least three different times, he kept doing it. I'm afraid the most obvious explanation is pretty venal: he wanted to be sure that somebody with a jackpot-winning hand didn't muck it, and thus lose out on a potentially big tip for himself.

Similarly, I would wager a large sum that Stephen is perfectly well aware that he's not supposed to make comments such as he did, but he figures that it's not very likely anyone will complain about it, and speaking up might nab him a big tip that would otherwise slip away. Well, Stephen, I'm complaining. It's unprofessional. It's an unambiguous violation of the general rules of poker. I'm confident it is explicitly prohibited by the written rules for employees of the Flamingo poker room. And you presumably already know all of those facts, yet do it anyway.

That's reprehensible.

Define "emergency" for me

Another post taken from an old email home. The story took place at the Hilton on October 18, 2006.

*************

There are countless stories—some of them well-documented—about people having heart attacks or other major ailments at a poker table, but they stubbornly keep playing nevertheless.* Tonight I witnessed a strange variation on that theme.

Casinos have a wide variety of policies about cell phone usage in their poker rooms, but because of the specific configuration of the room we were in, state gaming regulations completely prohibit the use of phones (it’s complicated and stupid—don’t ask, just take my word for it), and the casino can get in a lot of trouble if the employees allow patrons to use the things. There are big signs informing customers “No cell phones allowed,” and they’re usually quite strict about it. But, naturally, there are always people who don’t see the signs, or think that the rules don’t apply to them.**

Anyway, at the poker table this evening was a woman who appeared to be in her early 60s. She was visiting from the Northeast. In the middle of one hand, her cell phone rang, and she answered it. The dealer immediately tried to get her to hang up. But from the woman’s facial expression and words, it soon became apparent that this was an alarming call. She began sobbing and folded her hand at the first opportunity. She kept saying “Oh no” and “Oh my God.” She was asking things like, “Are the paramedics there yet?” and “Are they reviving him?” The dealer astutely and compassionately decided to forego enforcing the rule in this situation. When the call ended, the woman apologized, saying “I know it’s against the rules, but it was an emergency.” The dealer assured her that it was fine, under the circumstances. I think we all expected her to gather her things and make a quick exit.

But instead, she kept playing. Over the course of the next hour, she kept receiving and placing calls on her cell phone, during and between poker hands. Obviously there was somebody back home in a medical crisis of some sort—somebody important enough to this woman for the situation to be upsetting, at least initially, but, apparently, not quite important enough to warrant quitting a good poker game.

This woman exploited to the fullest the first dealer’s humane reaction. Every time she took or placed a call, a dealer or another employee would politely try to intervene, but she would brush them off, saying, “It’s OK, it’s an emergency.” But she would keep playing her cards while on her phone—which conveyed pretty clearly just how dire this “emergency” was.

Now, personally I don’t much care if people talk on the phone (or watch football, or listen to music, or read a book) while they’re playing poker, because the more distracted they are, the more likely they are to make a mistake that will win me their money. But it was positively vile how this woman cared nothing for either the house policy or the difficult, uncomfortable situation in which she was repeatedly placing the casino employees by declaring herself exempt from the rules. The staff even offered to let her use the employee lounge (where the state regulations don’t apply) for her calls, but she wouldn’t leave the table. My compassion for her turned to disgust as her arrogance and callousness became increasingly apparent.

My hunch is that in the not-too-distant future, when this woman is next reunited with Cousin Joe—or whoever it was that had to be taken to the hospital—she will tell him how terribly worried she was when she heard the news, but will conveniently omit the fact that she managed to keep playing poker while the “crisis” played itself out.

*************

*For an example of this phenomenon at the 2007 World Series of Poker, see http://wickedchopspoker.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/06/paul_eskimo_cla.html and http://wickedchopspoker.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/06/paul_eskimo_cla_1.html.

**For those with any interest in a whole blog-rant on the topic of cell phones at the poker table, see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/cell-phones.html

Should one speak up when not involved?

Reading through my old emails today reminded me of one I wrote a year ago about a quandary I faced when, on two consecutive days, I witnessed with a situation in which a rule violation by one player put another at a disadvantage. The dilemma for me was whether to speak up about it or not, when the dealers didn't correct the situations. There is something of a tradition in poker that players not involved in a hand should keep their noses out of it. That's certainly correct insofar as giving advice to those involved, but I don't believe it should also extend to sitting by silently when a rule violation hurts a player.

I'll describe the situations, briefly explain my rationale for non-involved players taking the initiative to speak up, then open the question to readers for comments.

Story #1.

A $1-$2 no-limit hold'em game at the Las Vegas Hilton. After the turn card is dealt, Player A bets $15. Player B moves all-in for $25. Player C calls. The dealer turns back to A, who immediately pushes all-in for around $90. As the dealer turns to C for his action, I speak up and point out that A does not have the option to re-raise there. Before anybody can react to my comment, though, C calls (for a little less than what A had put in). It turns out that C--a fairly weak and inexperienced player--was on a flush draw and missed. He then left the table.

After the hand, Player A acknowledged that he was wrong. He had had a very strong hand, and was eager to get all his chips in. I believe that his mistake was inadvertent. The dealer also acknowledged that he missed the fact that B's all-in was not a full raise, and therefore A could only fold or call. OK--everybody makes mistakes, and the actions happened so quickly that it would be easy to miss.

But what bothered me most was that Player A and two others at the table chastised me for attempting to intervene when I wasn't involved in the hand.

Story #2.

The next day I'm in the same type of game at Bally's. Player A raises. Player B pushes all-in for a substantial re-raise. Player C reluctantly calls. Player A appears equally unhappy about the re-raise, but eventually calls, and as he does so asks C, "You want to just check it down?" C agrees. The dealer does nothing. This time I didn't speak up, largely because the damage was already done: clearly, even if the dealer tells them that such an agreement is in violation of the rules, they'll both officially rescind the deal, but check anyway.

But I think that part of why I didn't protest was having just been criticized the previous day for intervening when I wasn't in the hand, and I didn't feel like being the bad guy twice in a row. I did get up and talk to the floorperson privately about the situation. He came to the table and asked the dealer about it. The dealer said he heard the collusion, but it had happened so fast that he couldn't stop it.

My general thoughts.

To my way of thinking, no player can help another make a decision, but every player has a duty to the integrity of the game, and the integrity of the game includes giving every player the full protection of the rules.

In my first scenario, if the illegal re-raise had been halted in time, I suspect that Player C would have been happy to be able to see the last card for the cheaper price, and save his last money if his draw didn't hit. In the second scenario, Player B would presumably not be pleased with the agreement between A and C, since he would prefer to have one of them push the other out of the pot, and thus only have to beat one other hand at the showdown, rather than two.

I don't know whether the disadvantaged players in these games didn't know the rules, weren't paying enough attention, or were too shy or intimidated to speak up. But even players who don't know all of the intricacies of the rules are entitled to their protection--and if the dealer doesn't act to enforce the rules protecting one player from the illegal action of another, it seems to me that other players should do so. It's just the old golden rule: I would want somebody else to speak up if I were being disadvantaged by an action I didn't know was illegal (because of being inexperienced, distracted, or whatever), so I should do the same in return.

I would also argue that it's better for the game in the long run if weaker players are protected by the more knowledgeable ones; if they know that their inexperience isn't going to be taken unfair advantage of, they'll be more likely to keep coming back.

These two stories occurred shortly after I had bought and read Cooke's Rules of Real Poker. One of the points that had caught my attention in that new book was rule 16.17: "A player should speak up immediately when he sees an error such as an incorrect amount going into the pot; a pot that is about to be awarded to the wrong person; a card going to the wrong person; or a flashed or marred card."

Comments?

If you are so inclined, dear readers, I would appreciate any comment you might have on whether I was right to speak up in the first situation (although I wasn't quite quick enough to prevent the damage from being done), whether I should have said something immediately at the table in the second situation (versus just keeping quiet, or going to the floor person after the hand was over, which is what I settled on). Also, if you like, comment on how there developed in some circles an unwritten rule that players not involved in the hand should keep quiet about any perceived irregularities, and how we can change that part of poker culture (assuming that you agree it should be changed), or why we should keep such a practice (if you think that players not in the hand should keep mum).

"I am SO drunk!" (Non-grumpy content)

I'm just not feeling the inspiration to come up with an original rant, so I'm again going to the well of the stories I wrote to a friend back home last year, when I was just getting started in Vegas poker. This was written at 7:05 a.m., September 26, 2006, after an all-night session at the Hilton.

*************

The easiest read of an opponent ever: I have 9-9 on the button. I raise. One caller. Flop is a 10 and two small cards. He bets, so I think he has a 10 and I'm behind. But he's a pretty unskilled player, and extremely drunk, so I think maybe I can steal the pot from him. I put in a sizable raise. He calls. Damn.

Turn card is a blank. He checks, so now I think maybe he was just on a draw and won't pay to see another card, or maybe he does have a 10 but with a bad kicker that he won't want to spend more money on, or maybe I can convince him I have a pocket pair bigger than 10s. So I bet. He calls again. DAMN!

River is another 10--just awful. Now I think he has trip 10s to my measly pair of 9s, and I'm ready to throw the hand away and take my lumps. The guy leans forward to look closely at the board (he's drunk enough that he's having a hard time focusing), then picks up his hole cards, looks hard at them, gets a horrible scowl, and says, "Oh, damn! I am SO drunk! I thought I had a 10, and I don't! God, I'm so stupid! I can't bet at this. I check."

He is NOT acting. He really is way too drunk to be making this up as an act. I put out $40, and he instantly folds.

Sometimes, one doesn't have to be Doyle Brunson to figure out how to win.

Idiots blame the dealer

One of the most baffling things I see and hear at poker tables is players who blame the dealer for bad cards or bad outcomes.

Of course, there's always at least a bit of this from everybody, mostly joking and good-natured. For example, after 15 or 20 minutes of unplayable hands, I'll occasionally request that a dealer see if she can find it in her heart to pass me one face card before she completes her shift. After an especially bad beat, I'll sometimes try to lighten my own mood by telling the dealer, "You understand that I have to hold you personally responsible for that pot." I think, though, that I have always made it abundantly clear through tone of voice and facial expression that I'm kidding. Many times I have seen off-duty poker dealers sitting at a table as players, and they needle the dealers about bad cards and unlucky outcomes, too—and I have always had the impression that these comments were both made and taken with a wink and a nod.

Some players, though, aren't kidding about this. Some sincerely believe that particular dealers have it in for them. There was a regular at the Hilton who would always take a 30-minute break when a particular dealer came to the table, convinced that it was impossible for him to win a pot from that dealer. Dealers get cursed at, have cards and chips thrown at them, and in other ways take personal abuse from angry players—not for any breach of protocol, but simply because of an unfavorable outcome in the play of a hand.

This is one of the most puzzling attitudes I run into. I'd like to interview these players in detail, and ask them, "Just how do you believe that the dealer is carrying out this plot against you? Does she spend her breaks setting up the decks in a particular order to deliver you bad beats, then slip those decks onto the table when you're not watching?" The idea that casino dealers deliberately select starting hands or outcomes of pots cannot withstand even a few seconds of critical thought by anybody with more than about three neurons connected together within his cranium.*

H. Lee Barnes, in his book Dummy Up and Deal: Inside the Culture of Casino Dealing (University of Nevada Press, 2002) eloquently, if unscientifically, explains the reason for this irrational behavior, from the player’s point of view.** From page 2:

Barnum was right about [a sucker being born every minute]. But the players
refuse to see their pictures on a poster with P.T. Barnum pointing at them. Nor
can the players see the house. What’s the house, after all? A building with
carpet and walls and chandeliers? A corporation? What the players see is the
dealer.

“How can you do this to me?” a player asks.

The dealer can’t pass the blame off onto Blaise Pascal*** or the
player’s bad judgment or the house. The dealer must shoulder the responsibility
for his or her imagined power, no matter how absurd it is to think that the
dealer exercises any control. The dealer becomes not the medium through which
chance plays out its pure odds, but rather the conduit of luck…. What is left
after all the motion is the dealer standing behind the table in her uniform. She
must face the player.

“How can you do this to me?”

The most unflinching assessment of this phenomenon I have encountered is that of prolific poker writer David Sklansky, in Fighting Fuzzy Thinking in Poker, Gaming & Life (Two Plus Two Publications, 2000), p. 113:

Players sometimes throw cards at the dealer, insult him or her, or declare that they will never tip. Sometimes this happens because the dealer made a mistake. More often, it is because the dealer dealt the abusing player a losing hand.

While I have never knowingly abused a dealer, I have a confession to make—I like it when I see someone else do it! It’s not because I am a sadist; and it’s not because I secretly wish that I had the gumption to do it myself. Rather, it is because I am delighted to know that my opponent is an imbecile!

The fact is that any player who gets mad at the dealer for his losing cards, truly, is a complete moron, and his stupidity ought to make me money…. So to repeat one more time, if you don’t think the dealer is cheating, and you still abuse him or her when you lose, you simply are an idiot.

Most of the overt signs of irrationality I complain about from low-stakes players can also be seen among high-stakes professionals, at least occasionally: superstitions, asking for new decks of cards to try to terminate a streak of bad luck, rabbit-hunting, having "feelings" about what card was coming next, getting upset when a judiciously folded trash hand would have hit big, etc. Until this week, though, I had never seen a recognizable, successful, name-brand, professional player earnestly blame a dealer for the cards.

Then yesterday, while browing around YouTube for something else, I came upon this clip of David "Devilfish" Ulliott: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyzZDCG43hI (from which the first screenshot above was stolen). In it, he and Phil Hellmuth get all their money in before the flop, and Hellmuth gets lucky to flop a third 9 to beat Ulliott's pocket aces. As soon as he sees that card, Ulliott says, "Look at this fucking dealer." (The Brits are less squeamish than we are about language on television.) He manages to make Hellmuth look like a classy gentleman by comparison--which is quite a feat in itself.

In another episode of the same series, Ulliott again takes out his bad beat on the dealer--even though he was openly reprimanded for it after the first incident (by a voice off-camera; I couldn't tell if it was the tournament director or one of the television producers). You can see the situation in the second screenshot above, and the hand is shown at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSA0tzdx0yg. Again, all the money is in before the flop, with Andrew Black having attempted an all-in bluff reraise, which Ulliott called. As he walks away, he says something that is partially obscured by the commentators, but sounds like, "You'd better get coffee out to that dealer. She's fucking worse than the other one."

Yeah, Devilfish, it's the dealer for sure. Hellmuth and Black paid the dealers under the table to arrange the cards so that you would lose.

Really, what other scenario is possible by which it makes any sense to blame the dealer? But if Ulliott genuinely thinks that's what happened, then why not lodge a complaint with the tournament director, insist on reviewing the videotapes, scrutinize the security procedures, etc.? Of course, it's pretty unlikely that he actually believes this. But then, if he doesn't believe it, why say something so monumentally stupid, especially when you know it's going to be put on television?

When Hellmuth blows up, it's always at another player, whose idiotic play, in Hellmuth's eyes, resulted in whatever bad outcome he's currently bitching about. Mike Matusow, in his blowups, just blames bad luck, repeatedly claiming that he is simply the unluckiest player alive. These attitudes are stupid and demonstrably wrong, but at least they have some kernel of truth to them. Lots of Hellmuth's opponents do make bad plays, then get lucky--but he's no more a victim of this than every other professional who has to fight their way through large fields of amateurs to win modern tournaments. Matusow often blames bad luck when it was actually his own bad judgment at fault, but luck is certainly part of every hand. If he's not actually cursed with extraordinarily bad luck, in his blow-up situations it is at least true that he failed to get good luck where it might help him.

But blaming the dealer? Mr. Ulliott, in addition to being supremely ill-mannered, that's just moronic.

*I realize that there are countless schemes by which a dealer can manipulate a poker game. People playing in home games and underground cardrooms really do have to watch out for these "mechanics." But in casinos, using modern, standard security practices, it's almost unthinkable that any such shenanigans are going on. The dealer, if caught, would obviously be out of not just a job, but a career, as he or she would be forever unemployable in the gaming industry--not to mention facing criminal charges. Except at the very highest stakes, it would be impossible to win enough money from such a plot to make it profitable, after paying a dealer a large enough bribe that he or she might consider risking that much for it.


**This was written in the context of games in which the player is set against the house, with the house having a fixed edge, but the same psychology clearly carries over to poker, in which players are pitted against each other, with the house having no interest in who wins or loses.

***A 17th-century mathematician who, with Pierre de Fermat, basically invented the entire field of probability theory. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal.

Tick tock, tick tock

Before I had a blog, I wrote about my poker experiences in emails to a friend back home. Here's one from September, 2006:

****************
I forgot to tell you about an incident the other night at Golden Nugget. The guy in seat 10 was a real asshole--slowing down the game, criticizing other people's play, thinking he was funny by pretending to push all-in, then folding, etc.

In a hand I wasn't involved in, another player raised this guy's bet by $100. The guy took forever deciding whether to call or not. Finally, I asked the dealer for the clock. Any player at the table who thinks somebody is taking unreasonably long can call for the clock, which gives the player one minute to make a decision. If he does nothing by the end of that minute, his hand is automatically declared dead (i.e., it's the equivalent of folding).

In practice, it's rare to need to use this, because the vast majority of people are pretty reasonable in taking time to make decisions. When somebody has an unusually difficult call to make, the others are understanding about letting him take the time he needs. It's only when somebody is repeatedly slowing things down that he'll likely get the clock called. And even then, just the act of calling for the clock usually is enough to prompt the recalcitrant player to act. I've only called for it a couple of times, and I've never seen it actually get down to the end of the one minute.

So I call for the clock. The supervisor comes over with an electronic stopwatch, and calls out the time as the seconds elapse. One player at the table has never seen this process, so asks the supervisor what happens if the player doesn't act. The supervisor explains that the hand is dead--so even if the guy in seat 10 didn't understand that before (and, of course, every player is responsible for knowing the rules and procedures without them being explained to him personally), he is now informed of the consequence.

30 seconds. 20. 15. 10. Then 5-4-3-2-1, and the beeper sounds. The guy still hasn't done anything. The dealer reaches over, picks up the guy's cards and throws them in the muck.
At this point, the asshole really yells up a storm. "Hey, what the hell are you doing? I want to call!" Then he addresses the supervisor. "He picked up my cards when I was going to call!"
Fortunately, the dealer and the supervisor held the line and enforced the rule. Hand is dead. The guy, of course, keeps griping for several more minutes.

The player to my right thanks me for calling for the clock. Seat 10 is annoying everybody.
Why do some people have to be jerks?

Compare this to a guy at the Hilton recently. He hadn't played in a casino before. He was faced with an $80 raise. He wanted to see what his stack would look like if he called the bet and lost, so he counted out the $80 and set them in front of his cards, then looked at what was left, and said, "Nope, I don't think I can call you." But, of course, the act of putting the chips out constituted a call, and the dealer gently informed him that he had already called and couldn't take it back. It was obviously an honest mistake. The guy just said, "OK, I'm sorry, I didn't know. My fault. Do what you have to do." He lost the hand, bought more chips, and said, "Well, that's one way to learn what the rules are," and laughed at himself.

Why can't everybody be good sports like that?