Maybe there's another way to play it...

I was at the Stratosphere last night. I witnessed a hand that left me completely baffled.

Our contestants both look to me like celebrities. Seat 5 reminds me of Captain Kangaroo, while Seat 6 looks and sounds just like William H. Macy's character, Jerry Lundegaard, in "Fargo." So I'll refer to them as Captain and Jerry.

Those two plus both blinds (including me, big blind, in Seat 9) limp in. The flop is 5-5-x. It's checked all around. Turn is a king. Captain checks. Jerry makes a pot-sized bet. We blinds fold. Captain calls. I don't remember the river card, but Captain checks, Jerry checks. Captain shows 5-5 for flopped quads. Jerry shows a king and mucks. Captain wins the special $599 flopped-quad jackpot that the poker room has going this month.

Let's consider some of the possible reasons that Captain would play his hand this way.

1. He misread his hand, didn't know what he had. Nope. Even before he revealed it he called out, "High hand bonus!"

2. He misunderstood the rules and thought that if his opponent folded before the showdown he would lose out on the jackpot. This is fairly common among inexperienced players who hit a monster hand, and suddenly realize that they don't know how the promotion works, and can't stop in the middle of the hand to ask. But that's not this guy. He's a local whom I have played with several times before. He shuffles chips expertly. He knows how things work, no doubt about it.

3. He was out of position, so was going for a check-raise. Implausible. This was an incredibly passive table generally, and Jerry was no more likely to get out of line than anybody else. Anybody who tried to play a trapping game was misreading the table unbelievably badly.

4. He was hoping that giving free cards would help somebody make a big enough hand to pay him off. This is plausible for the flop and turn plays, but not for the river. After all, you can't get your monster hand paid off if you don't bet. In fact, as soon as the hand was over Captain explained that he was hoping that Jerry would make a hand that would qualify them for the bad-beat jackpot, which was at $18,000+. Frankly, I don't remember for sure whether a straight flush was possible on the final board, but I don't think so. It was not double-paired, so quads-over-quads was impossible. Worse, by not betting he risked the pot not being big enough to qualify for the $599 bonus. The pot was only $8 before and after the flop. If nothing else, he should have bet at least $2 at some point, hoping to get a call to get the pot to the minimum $10 required for the jackpot.

In short, I can't think of any sound reason why one would not bet out on the river, even if you can imagine a justification for passive play prior to that. Suppose that a straight flush were potentially out there when the board was complete. Are you really going to assume that your opponent has the exact two cards that make that hand, and check out of fear of losing your stack to the only hand that can beat you? That is "monsters under the bed" syndrome on steroids. There will be far more losing hands (straights, flushes, and full houses) that your opponent can have with which he will call a bet or even raise you than ones that can make a straight flush, even when a straight flush is possible (which I don't think it was). Besides, even if you lose your $200 stack to a rivered straight flush, you will win many times that from the bad-beat jackpot. So why not go for some value?

As I said, going for a river check-raise seems unwise, even given Jerry's bet on the turn, because a generally passive player like him will frequently take one stab at a pot, then not bet again. There is clearly more value in leading out with a river bet and hoping for a call or raise than checking with the fairly slim hope of a check-raise.

When I posted the bare bones of the story on Twitter and expressed my puzzlement, my friend Shamus quipped: "He's setting you all up for later when he checks with nothing."

It might be the best explanation anybody can come up with.


CODA: When Captain received his $599 in chips, he asked whether he had to keep them in play. This is a point on which house rules vary quite a bit. Some places require the chips to stay on the table, some require any that will put you over the buy-in cap to be pocketed, some let the player decide. Captain wanted to immediately cash out the whole $599, and just keep playing with what he already had in front of him, which the floor told him was fine. But then an argument broke out about what he would be allowed to do if he happened to want to keep all of that money in play--would he be allowed to? Note that this was not the situation--it was purely hypothetical. Nobody was objecting to Captain pocketing the money. The only question was if he could keep the bonus chips in play if he wanted to. Yet the argument droned on for ten minutes, with players vehemently insisting on one rule or another, claiming that it's done this way or that way everywhere else, blah, blah, blah. Good Lord, it was pointless. The only thing worse than an interminable argument at the poker table over an esoteric rule question is an interminable argument at the poker table over an esoteric rule when there is no possible resolution that will affect the current situation in any way.

How not to play kings

Stratosphere last night. After a bad start, I had clawed my way back to a little on the plus side, sitting at about $220, when I found pocket kings on the button. Four people limped, then the guy on my immediate right raised to $15. He was absolutely the tightest player at the table, and this was the first time I had seen him be the pre-flop raiser, so naturally I had to be somewhat worried that he had pocket aces. On the other hand, this raise was larger than the table average (which was $8-$10), suggesting something more like jacks or queens.

Given his table image and the raise size, I thought that I would probably be his only opponent going to the flop, even without putting in a reraise. I would normally three-bet with kings, but I had not three-bet even once so far in this session (no premium hands), which meant that doing so now would essentially be playing with my cards face up. I decided to smooth-call instead, for dual purposes: It would disguise my strength and it would allow me to see if an ace flopped and re-assess Mr. Tight's demeanor before committing a lot of chips against a player for whom aces were a large part of his range. I think that reraising will win me about $20 most of the time, and lose me the amount of the raise when he has aces, though probably not my whole stack, because this is a player against whom I could fold kings if he four-bets it.

I was horrified to see the big blind call, followed by three of the limpers, meaning that six of us were seeing a flop with the pot already swollen to about $90. To use the technical term, this situation kind of sucked.

Flop was 9-6-2 rainbow, about as dry and unfrightening as they can come. I was not worried that Mr. Tight had hit a set, though I still had to be concerned that his pocket pair was one pip bigger than mine. Everybody checked to him, and he bet $35. I considered raising, but I was still in the dark about where I stood. I decided to be cautious and see if one of the players in earlier position was preparing a check-raise. I called.

Three of them folded, but I hated seeing who did not--it was the trappiest player at the table. As a general rule, the bigger the pot, the more you want to take it down immediately rather than trying to make it even larger and risk losing everything. I think that few players who had flopped a set in this situation would do anything other than either lead-out bet or check-raise. One of the few who would be daring enough to check-call here as a trap--from out of position, against two solid opponents--was this guy. Two pair was unlikely, as I didn't think any hand that could have flopped two pair would have put in $15 pre, and there were essentially no draws, so Mr. Trappy either had a set or one pair. If one pair, it was most likely top pair with A-9 suited, possibly pocket 8s or 7s or maybe even 10s.

Fourth street was a four and a second club. Mr. Trappy checked, which didn't tell me anything. Mr. Tight also checked. This didn't tell me much, either. Certainly with A-K he might have taken one shot at the pot on the flop and then shut down. But he could easily do the same with A-A or any other big pair. My table image was solid. I had never shown down a weak hand, and had hit two flopped sets and one flopped boat on my way back to even, all of which did get shown. Mr. Tight might therefore very reasonably fear that I was the one slow-playing a monster and check even aces.

I definitely needed to bet here, both for value and for information, but I didn't think it needed to be large. I settled on $50. Mr. Trappy pondered a long time, but finally mucked, which relieved most of my concern about this hand. Now it all came down to whether Mr. Tight had aces or one of his few other possible holdings. He thought a while and then called. Again, this didn't sort out the situation much for me, except to rule out A-K. I was either one rank behind or between one and three ranks ahead (or, as an outside possibility, tied, with him holding the other two kings). His range was now almost certainly down to one of the top five pocket pairs, and I was beating three of them.

River came an offsuit queen. I mentally winced a bit, because of the obvious possibility that Mr. Tight had just gone from loser to winner. He checked, with noticeably more hesitation than he had exhibited on the turn, which further fueled my anxiety. Now to me--check or bet? I decided that there were still twice as many hands with which he might well pay off a smallish value bet (namely, jacks and tens) as there were hand with which he would call and win (just aces), so I pushed out another stack of $50. He mucked within a few seconds. I still can't say with any confidence which pair he was throwing away. It easily could have been aces, though my best guess is jacks, with tens close behind in likelihood.

The net result? I profited about $195 with pocket kings, without improving, without showing my hand, against five opponents. I find that rather remarkable. It was, of course, extremely lucky, and the whole thing could have gone horribly wrong in about a million different ways. But none of the land mines exploded where they might have, and I lived to tell the tale.

I think I win this one

I'm just home from the Stratosphere.

I had been playing for about four hours, sometimes a little up, sometimes a little down, but no net progress. In fact, at the time in question I was down a little over $100 from where I had started, and had been stuck there for an hour or so. I was feeling tired and starting to make some dumb mistakes, so I decided to suck up the loss and call it quits at the end of that round.

But then the dealer started me out with 9c-10c, and augmented that with the well-chosen flop of 6c-7c-8c. It's been over a year since I last hit a straight flush in live play (at least that I wrote about here; but it's possible I hit one and didn't do a blog post and then subsequently forgot about it with my 50-year-old brain cells). That was at the Golden Nugget. It has been almost three years since I last flopped a straight flush (at the Hard Rock)--and back then I did so twice in a month. This was only the third time I've ever flopped a hand so big that it was impossible for anybody to beat me, no matter what they held and no matter what cards came on the turn and river. (The first was described here, the second here.)

I won only $30 or so from my opponent, but picked up a nice $450 bonus from the casino.

How many stories does the Stratosphere have?

Tonight, just four.

Story 1

I was in Seat 8. A middle-aged Asian gentleman, who kept falling asleep between hands and had an almost incomprehensibly thick accent, was in Seat 9 next to the dealer--one of my two favorite spots. He appeared about to leave. He picked up his chips and cash and took a step toward the aisle, apparently heading for the cashier. I told the dealer, "I'll take that seat." I was in the middle of a hand, so I didn't start moving my stuff right away.

But then the oddest thing happened: The guy did an about-face to his right, walked behind his seat, pulled it out, sat back down, and put his chips and cash back on the table.

I asked him, "Change your mind about leaving?" He said, "No, I do that for good luck. I haven't had any good cards in an hour. Now everything's gonna be changed." I asked him how that works. He replied, "I dunno. I'm just superstitious."

Really? I never would have guessed.

Story 2

Maybe 15 minutes later, I had my only all-in confrontation of the night. I had pocket aces. My sole opponent, a very pleasant young woman, had raised pre-flop to $8 and then called my $25 reraise. Then she led into me on the flop of 4-9-10 with two clubs. It left her with about $100 behind, and I had her covered. I thought a bit, and decided that it was pretty unlikely that she had me beat at this point, but if she were on a draw, she might call when the odds were in my favor. So I shoved. She agonized for a while, then settled on a call, even while saying that she knew I was ahead. I showed the aces, she showed Jh-Qh. The board ran out blanks.

As I was stacking the chips, I turned to the man next to me and said, "I think you did that for me. That little walk around the chair made me have good luck!"

He apparently didn't catch that I was joking with him. He adamantly denied it. "I had nothing to do with that! I do only for me, not for you!"

I wasn't done kidding him. I said, "I dunno. You know, sometimes when the gods throw lightning bolts, they miss. They may have intended to send you the good luck, but they missed and hit me instead."

This time he smiled, apparently having now figured out that I was just joshing him, and not actually trying to steal his mojo. But he still would have no part of it. He said, "My voodoo is only for me. You do your own voodoo!"

I laughed, and was going to make a Cole Porter quip, but I was pretty sure he wouldn't get it.

Story 3

At the far end of the table was Larry. I've played with him several times before, previously always at the Sahara. Apparently he has found a new venue, now that the Sahara poker room is virtually closed.

Larry is an ornery cuss. He's in his 60s, always disheveled, with a perpetual scowl etched into his face. I've never seen him smile or laugh. He's terribly slow to play, because he's never paying attention. He's an alcoholic, and has been drunk every single time I've played with him. In fact, on at least three occasions he has been a seriously obnoxious drunk, has been cut off from more booze, then spent the next couple of hours scheming ways to get around his ban. E.g., he'd find a different cocktail waitress, or wander off to one of the bars and sneak his bottle of beer back to the table under his coat, etc. I had some of his beer spill on me once when he tried that--immediately after I had asked him to put his beer on the table so that he wouldn't drop it, and he denied having one.

It was Larry about whom was uttered the strangest sentence I've ever heard at a poker table, as I wrote about here: "If you hadn't taken out your teeth, I would have won that pot." Larry is also the guy whom a Sahara dealer let get away with an absent-minded tapping that should have been considered a check, as I described here.

In case you can't tell, I don't like Larry much. Scratch that. I don't like him even one little bit. His sole redeeming quality, from my point of view, is that he's a really, really bad poker player. Taking his money is like the proverbial candy/baby situation. (About which, this Mythbusters test of that cliched expression is well worth watching.)

So anyway, Larry is in a three-way hand with the nice young woman mentioned above and our second drunk, who annoyed me by being way too chatty, but at least he wasn't an intolerably obnoxious old coot like Larry. On a flop of 9-8-4, all three got their chips in. Young woman, who was the first to shove, obviously didn't like being called, and said, "I need help." She showed A-K. Drunk #2 turned over his pocket jacks. Larry didn't move a muscle.

The turn brought an ace, which delighted the young woman. The river paired the board--another 4.

Everybody sat there waiting for Larry. He didn't touch his cards. I assumed that he had lost and just didn't want to admit it. He mumbled something to the dealer, which neither she nor I could understand. She asked him to repeat himself.

He said, louder and more emphatically, "Call the floor!" The dealer was confused. "Why? What's the problem?"

Larry said, with a strange mix of irritation and triumph, "Call the floor, so they can bring me my jackpot money." And with that, he turned up his pocket 4s, still scowling.

It was without a doubt the most deliberate, prolonged, mean-spirited, and uncalled-for slowroll I have ever witnessed.

Some people are pretty much worthless human beings. Larry falls into that category, if you ask me.

Story 4

Once in a while, you run into somebody who is so fixated on the etiquette of chopping the blinds that when somebody refuses, he feels it necessary to "teach him a lesson."

We had such a kid at the table. A new player joined us to the kid's left, pretty obviously inexperienced at casino poker. When they had their first chop opportunity, and the option was explained to the newcomer, he said, "Let's play." The kid looked disgusted at him, and quickly announced a raise to $15. Newbie called.

The flop came K-Q-3 rainbow. Check, bet, call. Turn was an apparent brick. Check, bet, min-check-raise, call. River another nothing. Kid moved all in. As the new guy was trying to decide what to do, the kid said, "You shoulda chopped. This is what happens." New guy thought some more. Kid said, "I have two pair, if that makes your decision any easier." New guy finally called.

Kid's face fell. He bashfully admitted, "I got nuthin'," and turned over A-2, for ace high. New guy flipped up his K-7 offsuit and took the pot. Kid stormed off.

I couldn't help laughing. "Nice hand," I said. "Nicely done."

And I meant it.

Some people like to see what they perceive as "justice" done to somebody who won't chop the blinds. (In this case, for what it's worth, I think the guy just had no clue what was being asked, nor that he committed what some consider to be a breach of etiquette by requesting to play it out.) I, conversely, loved seeing somebody who was trying to shame a green player get his comeuppance in a rather humiliating way--kind of like seeing the playground bully trying to push somebody down, but slipping and falling face-down in the mud himself instead.

Players are free to chop or not chop, so long as they're consistent about it, and I don't like others trying to apply social pressure to influence the decision or make somebody feel like an outlaw for wanting to play. After all, isn't playing why people sit down in the game? This is especially the case when somebody is an inexperienced player. After it's over, it's fine to explain to him that he might think about chopping in the future because of the difficulty of anybody making money in such a hand, etc. But do it in a friendly, helpful way--not trying to rub his nose in it.

The kid clearly thought that his opponent was going to get what he had coming--but it was the kid who got what he so richly deserved.

Image found at http://freehotelreviews.org/hotels/stratosphere-hotel/.

Compromises

I was playing at the Stratosphere last night. Two situations arose in which I thought that leniency on the house rules was in order. Because many readers think that I'm always in favor of strict, unbending enforcement of every rule of the game--when, in reality, I'm more of a pragmatist--I thought these incidents might serve as a useful corrective.

English only

The first problem centered around two young men who were speaking a foreign language (Czech, as it turned out). When this first occurred during a hand, and the dealer was ignoring it, I took my usual approach, which is to quietly ask the dealer, "Do you have an English-only rule here?" Of course I already know the answer. The purpose is to nudge the dealer into enforcing it, without being directly confrontational with either her or the players involved. As usually happens, this resulted in the dealer saying, "Yes," then turning to the two individuals and explaining that they must speak English only while at the table. (It incidentally confirmed my impression that she knew perfectly well who was violating the rule; she was just hoping that she wouldn't have to do anything about it. Dealers who wait for a player to ask them to enforce a rule earn my contempt.)

Let's pause here to consider three different ways that one might apply an English-only rule. The least restrictive would be to have it apply only to players who have live cards. This prevents them from secretly disclosing to each other what they hold, discussing how to trap a third player between them, or other nefarious activities.

The next level of strictness would be to have the rule apply during the entire time that a hand is going on--i.e., while anybody has live cards. This has some additional benefits for game integrity. It may be, for example, that somebody else at the table knows the foreign language well enough to eavesdrop on the conversation; he could thus gain advantageous additional information if the two foreign players, now out of the hand, discuss what they folded, what they think other players have, etc.

Finally, the most draconian level of enforcement would be to ban all foreign speech at the table, no matter what is going on. At least in theory, this would make it more difficult for two players to discuss signals that they will use in future hands, or whatever. As I understand it from the dealers, this is the way the Stratosphere's rule is.

In my opinion, the middle level is probably the best one to use, because that third level of enforcement has really marginal additional utility in terms of game security, while it imposes a pretty significant social burden on at least some players. Last night's game was a perfect demonstration of this. One of the two players in question was bilingual, but the other spoke essentially no English. Outlawing all non-English conversation at the table was thus, for him, effectively imposing a rule that he was not allowed to talk, and his friend was not allowed to talk to him. It's like dropping the Cone of Silence on his seat. It was clear to me from tone, body language, etc., that most of what they were talking about had nothing to do with the game. This was especially true when their wives/girlfriends were chatting with them from the rail a few feet away, which was a high percentage of the time they were there. Most of the stuff was, I'm confident, harmless chatter that was helping them have a good time.

However, because the dealers were being lax in enforcing the rule, the two men made no distinction between chatting during a hand and chatting between hands. That bothered me. I didn't really think that they were colluding (they would freely check-raise each other even when nobody else was in the hand, for instance), but recreational players are frequently too loose-lipped about talking about the hand in progress in improper ways, and I didn't want that going on in Czech any more than I want it going on in English.

At the same time, I didn't want the dealers to be so hard-assed about shushing all of their conversation that they would get mad and leave, nor even that they would stop having fun. Players who are enjoying themselves, drinking beer (as they were), flirting with their onlooking girlfriends, etc., are the ones I'm most likely to be able to make money from, not to mention being just plain more pleasant to share a table with than the hoodie-wearing, headphone-listening, sunglass-hiding, solitary grinder.

So after something like five dealer warnings to these two had done nothing to squelch the talk during hands, I went up to the desk and quietly spoke to the floorperson. I explained the situation and how strict enforcement of the rule would be a bad idea, but, at the same time, I was uncomfortable with them having no muzzle at all on. I suggested applying the rule strictly as far as that middle level, or even just the first level, but then leaving them alone to chat between hands. She agreed to so instruct the dealers.

And it worked, mostly. The dealers became more attentive to reminding them of the rule when they had live cards, but looked the other way the rest of the time. In fact, at one point it actually worked too well. We had a button straddle for the first time, which, at the Stratosphere, means that the order of action changes, and the blinds go first. Our foreign travelers had never encountered this before. The dealer explained it to them. Then, predictably, the bilingual guy translated the explanation for his friend. It was perfectly obvious what he was saying, from the context, the gestures, and the occasional untranslatable English poker word slipped in. But even then the dealer rushed to remind them, "English only!" And people think I'm inflexible!

Short buy

The second situation involved a short buy. Every poker room that I know of has a minimum buy-in. However, if you lose all your chips and don't have enough cash to rebuy for that minimum, they'll allow you a "short buy" one time, after which you'll have to make a trip to the ATM for your next full rebuy.

Last night there were two extremely inexperienced 60-something women friends playing. They were classic weak-tight players, transparently easy to read and beat. Of course I wanted them to stick around as long as they had any money to their names. But one of them lost her stack and at the same time wanted to move to a seat that had just been vacated. She wanted to rebuy for $50, as she had the previous time she went broke, although the table minimum was $100. The dealer tried to explain--in a thick foreign accent that the poor woman was having great difficulty understanding--that the minimum was $100. She somehow got the idea that the reason she was having to buy in for $100 instead of just $50 was because of changing seats, which, of course, had nothing to do with it. There was a cacophony of other players all simultaneously trying to explain differently to her, but it all just confused her. After a minute or so of trying to understand, she was fed up, frustrated, and embarrassed. She took her cash off the table, and said, "Never mind. I don't want to play anymore." She told her friend she'd catch up with her later, and stormed off.

There was still another empty seat and no waiting list. I, for one, would have been fine with her buying in for whatever she wanted. Hell, let her rebuy for $10 50 times in a row if she wants, just don't let her leave! In similar situations I've encountered in other poker rooms, the dealer has called the floor over. The floor person either just grants a waiver of the minimum buy-in rule, or asks the other players, "Does anybody object to letting her have another short buy?" I can't recall anybody ever voicing a complaint about it. Everybody understands that a player sitting behind $50 in chips is better than an empty chair.

Unfortunately, I didn't think and act fast enough to try to get such a solution imposed last night. When there is a cacophony of players all talking at once, it so seriously annoys me that I tend to tune out and go inside my own head to shut it out, trusting that some reasonable decision will be arrived at. When I finally realized that this woman was walking out (at first I thought she was just moving back to her original seat), it was too late to suggest the usual solution, which I had thought would be what would happen without me adding my two cents to the conversation. It was another situation in which bending the rules was so clearly called for that I just kind of assumed it would happen that way, so I didn't take active steps to facilitate it, and it ended unhappily. Maybe worst of all, it left a novice player with a bad taste in her mouth about her first live casino poker experience, and may thwart her from trying it again anytime soon. I think if I had been more assertive, I could have gotten it worked out to everybody's satisfaction. My bad.

Most poker rules should be strictly enforced most of the time. But there are circumstances that call for alternatives and compromises and creative solutions. When they arise, it's a mistake to be unwilling to look for and implement them.

Image is of a sculpture titled "Bending the Rules" by Ron Van Balen, found on his web site here.

Envelope Poker

A couple of weeks ago I was playing poker at the Stratosphere on a Friday, early evening, and learned that there was a promotion going on. Hitting a flush or better earned you the right to pick an envelope from a box, in which would be an amount somewhere between $10 and $100. This ran until the envelopes ran out--which, of course, happened right before I hit my first flush.

Last night I was at the Stratosphere again, and heard that the same promotion would be running today, starting at 11:00 a.m.. Apparently they have been doing it every Friday for at least several weeks. I was told that there was $2000 to be distributed, divided among 98 envelopes. I had evening plans, so I decided to put in my poker time in the afternoon. I also had played in the 10:00 p.m. tournament last night (came in second), which got me a coupon for an extra $10 in chips, good for the next 24 hours. So the Stratosphere seemed a logical place to hang out today. Neither the extra $10 nor the promotion really mean much to me, but free money is free money, even if only a little. Since the differences between one poker room and another are pretty small anyway, I thought I might as well take what I could get.

I started off playing my usual $1-2 NLHE game. After about an hour I had just broken even, running in place. I had hit one full house, drawing an envelope with the smallest prize: $10.

I had noticed, however, that the next table over, where they were playing $2-4 limit, was sending players to the desk to pick envelopes at a rather astonishing rate compared to ours. This isn't too surprising; it's much easier and cheaper to stay in a hand to the river in a limit game than in a no-limit game. Any promotion that depends on hitting a certain poker hand (high hand bonuses, bad-beat jackpots, the Palms "diamond flush" game, etc.) will always tend to shift the jackpot-drop money from no-limit games to limit games. It's one of the reasons that I would overall prefer that such promotions didn't exist, because as an exclusively no-limit player I will, on average, not get back from them what I contribute. But it's a small effect, so I don't spend much time worrying about it.

As I said, though, the hit rate at the $2-4 limit table was impossible not to notice. Every few minutes they were sending up one, two, or three players. In order to qualify for an envelope, one's hand need not be the winner, nor did one have to use both hole cards. If, for example, there was a flush on the board, everybody still in the hand at the showdown would win an envelope, as long as the pot had the minimum $10 in it.

A while after I had noticed the frequency with which that table was collecting envelopes, I started noticing snippets of their conversation. I put two and two together, and realized what was going on. They were not playing to win pots; they were playing only to hit envelope-qualifying hands at minimal cost.

I have never, in almost five years here, done the "play to win the bonus money" thing. If there's a bonus to be had, and I hit it, fine, it's a little something extra, but I don't go out of my way to try. In no-limit games, it's surely -EV to alter play so as to try to hit some particular combination of cards, because your opponents will just make it too expensive.

In the lowest-stakes limit games, however, that is not necessarily always going to be true. It was clear that the players at the table next to mine had decided, rightly or wrongly, that it was more profitable to try to play for the envelopes than for the pots. I thought this was kind of an interesting situation, one that I hadn't explored before, so I decided to join them.

(As a side note, I used to routinely play $2-4 limit games if that was the only thing available while waiting for a seat at a no-limit game. I eventually figured out, though, that it was a long-term loser for me. Maybe some people know how to play that game well enough to beat the rake plus tips, but I apparently don't. So instead I now carry a crossword puzzle and work on that if I have to wait for a seat. I am considerably happier that way. Now I sit in $2-4 limit games only on the rare occasion that I'm playing in order to be sociable with a visiting friend who doesn't want to play higher. Today was the first exception I've made in a long time.)

Sitting in the game, I quickly confirmed the hunch I had formed from a distance. The play was almost completely passive. People were limping in with what I assume was any two suited cards and any pair, and checking down nearly everything except monster hands. The pot was usually $10 just from the limpers. But when it wasn't, and somebody had a qualifying hand, he would make a little show of counting the pot, make a bet, and somebody would give him a courtesy call to get the pot big enough. Players were obviously willing to do this for each other because they could be confident that the favor would be returned if and when they needed it.

The only time I heard anything explicitly said out loud about what was going on was when one of a cohort of five friends at the table said to a newcomer, "We're not playing to win white chips. We're playing to win envelopes." But it hardly needed to be said. Anybody who knew of the promotion, and who had passing familiarity with how low-limit poker games usually play out, would have immediately noticed how this game was seriously skewed in exactly the direction that that announcement made clear. Players were, e.g., routinely checking flopped sets and two-pair hands, and one can only assume that the reason was to be sure the hand didn't end before getting two shots at turning it into a full house. There was no bluffing, and almost no semi-bluffing with flush draws. Many more pots than usual were checked all around on every street when nobody made a qualifying hand.

It wasn't to be my lucky day. I was at this limit table for about two hours, had a net loss of about $60, and hit only one envelope-qualifying hand. Even that one was bittersweet. I had 8-8, flopped a boat with 8-10-10 and bet it as hard as I could; since I already qualified for an envelope, I figured I might as well also try to win as big a pot as I could. An opponent with K-10 and I got into the only raising war I saw the whole session, which he won when his miracle king came on the river. Grrrrrr. My envelope had $30, which made me about even on the hand.

Others, however, were doing much better. In the photo above, I was in seat 1, so it was kind of hard to take a picture of the guy in seat 10, but you can see much of his stack. He had arrived right at 11:00 and had been playing for envelopes all day. In this picture you can't see that he has two full stacks of red chips. He was sitting behind about $500, an amount almost unheard of in a game of this size. He said, very plausibly, that he had earned $240 in envelopes so far. He was definitely one of the ones I had seen popping up to the desk most often before I joined the table.

I knew only one other player in the game--Cindy (PokerMuffin) from allvegaspoker.com. She, too, was trying Envelope Poker for the first time. Like me, she was failing. She hit only one in the two hours or so we were both there.

Late in my session, there was some sort of kerfuffle. I didn't know what was going on, except that the player sitting next to Cindy, who was one of the group of five friends, accused her of having turned them in to the floor person, who happened to be a friend of Cindy's. She denied it. I had no idea what this was about, but soon thereafter the five friends all racked up and left, saying that they were no longer feeling welcome.

After they had gone, I asked Cindy what that was about. Apparently one of the floor people had said something to one or more of the friends--out of my earshot--about them colluding. It's not clear to me whether they left because of a genuine sense of insult, or because they felt that they weren't going to be allowed to play the same strategy anymore. It didn't matter much, because this was all happening just as it was getting to be time for me to leave for a dinner date.

As I was cashing out, the floor person--who has come to recognize me as at least a semi-regular and somebody who knows the game reasonably well--asked me whether I had noticed "collusion" going on at that table. I said no, at least not in the traditional sense in which that word is used. That is, as far as I could detect, the group of friends was not playing against each other any differently than they were playing against everybody else. They were not building large pots with two of them trapping a stranger's second-best hand in the middle, or signaling each other what they held, or soft-playing each other while playing hard against the rest of the table.

But I told her that it was perfectly clear that they were playing to maximize their chances of earning an envelope, neglecting what would otherwise be optimal strategy to win the pot. I also told her about the one verbally explicit acknowledgement of what was going on that one of them had made. She smiled, thanked me, and said that was helpful information.

This all raises an interesting question: Is such play collusion? More generally, is it cheating of any species?

I don't think so. Suppose the casino put $1000 in every envelope, or $1,000,000 in, say, each of 10 out of the 100 envelopes. It would be positively insane to play in any manner other than what I saw--the players tacitly cooperating to maximize everybody's chance of picking up an envelope. I think that mathematically there is a serious question whether the amounts available in this particular promotion were high enough to justify abandoning most efforts to win pots in favor of earning envelopes, but the ethics are the same if we change the amounts so that it is crystal clear that winning envelopes is far more valuable than winning pots.

The players are simply adjusting their strategies to maximize their earnings in rational response to the rather perverse incentives that the casino has offered them. As far as I could tell, they were not breaking any rules. They were just adapting their poker strategy as the situation warranted (or at least arguably warranted). It is no more cheating than when players slow-play aces during an aces-cracked promotion, preferring to win the bonus over maximizing the pot. It is no more cheating than when players drop down to the cheapest limit games and broaden their starting-hand range to include any two cards that can make quads or a straight flush when a bad-beat jackpot is bulging.

When casinos set up incentives that change what poker strategy will make a player the most money, they shouldn't be surprised that players do exactly that. If the room managers are too dense to anticipate how players will adjust their play to take advantage of the promotions offered, the problem lies with them, not with the players. If the room managers don't want the play of the game distorted, then they should not offer incentives that will predictably result in distortions. It is, in my opinion, misguided for the casino to blame players for responding to game-distorting incentives that the casino has put in place. Accusing them of cheating under such circumstances is muddled thinking, if you ask me.

Poker room managers should also be capable of anticipating that a promotion like this will result in many, many pots that just barely make the minimum size requirement, and that this, in turn, will result in lower-than-normal rake for the poker room while the promotion is running. This seems pretty dumb and self-defeating to me--but then again, nobody ever promoted me to be a poker room manager, so what do I know?

(Caveat: What I heard about the accusation and the players' reactions was almost all second-hand. I could have easily misunderstood something, or drawn an incorrect inference from the partial information available to me. Furthermore, it's possible that there was some sort of collusion going on that I didn't notice or know about. I don't believe that there was, but I hold open that possibility. But if the casino geniunely had evidence that there was, then I think their response should have been far more vigorous and definitive than an accusation or warning.)

What if these five friends had explicitly agreed in advance--in an arrangement that they did not disclose to the other players--that they would play this way and after the game make an even split of the profits? Would that be cheating? (I have no knowledge that this happened; I'm just constructing a hypothetical to further probe into the ethics of the situation.) I'm less confident about this opinion and more subject to being convinced otherwise, but my inclination is to say no, because the resulting play does not disadvantage anybody outside their group any more than if ten strangers sat down, each independently arriving at the realization of how silent cooperation would optimize chances for winning envelopes, and played accordingly. Just as when players silently cooperate to "gang up" on a short-stacked, all-in player late in a tournament, it is not cheating because each is still making decisions in his own best interest.

My understanding is that today was the last day of this particular promotion. Sometime next week, the Stratosphere is shifting to some version of the more common progressive high-hand bonus structure. I do not know whether the envelope promotion is ending because the room managers felt that it was being abused, or just that they change things once in a while to keep it interesting, and this one had run its natural course. Either way, I won't be sorry to see it go. It was mildly fun and interesting to experiment with a radically altered playing strategy for a couple of hours, but I don't think it's the best use of my playing time, and I'd rather not have my contributions to the jackpot pool so distortedly be given away in games I'm not going to be playing. A single two-hour trial of Envelope Poker was enough for me.

Stratosphere: Two failures, one success

In March, 2009, I posted this letter that I had written to management at the Stratosphere, complaining about how they had failed to keep track of my hours of play, and on that basis refused to comp a meal. An excerpt:

When I ask, for the first time in 17 trips to the poker room, for a lousy
meal comp, and am effectively told that I haven’t earned it, that I’m not a
sufficiently valued customer for you (that’s the corporate “you”) to have
bothered taking note of my presence, I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive to
find that an affront.

I never received any sort of response.

Today I learned that they have not bothered fixing the problem.

During football season, I usually hang out at Mandalay Bay for Sunday poker. I had an impulse to do something different today. I have long wanted to try a cute little retro place inside the Stratosphere called Roxy's Diner, and today seemed like a fine time, with poker to follow after lunch.

I presented my player's card at the poker room desk and asked them to check how much food comp credit I had accumulated, at the usual rate of $1/hour of play. The answer? He couldn't find me in the system--at all. He asked me whether I had ever played there before, meaning, obviously, that he didn't recognize me. (This is one of the hazards of trying to remain inconspicuous and not call attention to myself--I tend to succeed.)

In addition to the 17 times I had played there prior to that March, 2009, blog post, I have played there seven more times subsequently, for a total of 21.8 hours. Comp credits expire if not used within a year, but five of those sessions, adding up to 16.4 hours, have been within the past year. Four of those sessions and 13.3 of those hours were just in the month of October (2010), when I was finally starting to warm up to the place again.

I have diligently checked in and out every single time. But as far as the Stratosphere poker room is concerned, I've never been there. Somehow they have managed to utterly lose all evidence of my 24 sessions playing in their room, and, at the same time, don't recognize my face or name.

The shift manager behind the desk admitted as how their computer system for this stuff is "totally messed up." Yes, I know that. I have known it for nearly two years. I just had this crazy idea that you MIGHT HAVE BOTHERED FIXING IT BY NOW! (That's my San Kinison impression.)

The only redeeming point in this was that the guy apparently found me credible in my claim that I had played there several times, and gave me a $15 comp ticket on faith alone. I do appreciate that gesture, but I would appreciate it a hell of a lot more if they would straighten up what might be the most miserably useless, screwed-up, unreliable poker-room comp system in the city.


Comp ticket in hand, I mosied the very short distance to Roxy's and was quickly seated. I indulged my urge for a chili cheese dog. It was excellent--and HUGE.

But just as delightful, I found, was the entertainment. Predictably, and in keeping with the diner's theme, they have an Elvis-heavy rotation of oldies playing overhead. That, though, is punctuated, two or three times an hour, by one of several of their waitresses grabbing a microphone and singing live as she wanders through the restaurant, wearing a poodle skirt. One of them even keeps a hula hoop going while she sings, which I would think isn't easy.








None of them is going to win American Idol, but they all had perfectly decent voices, and offered what seemed to me to be genuine enthusiasm for the project. I appreciated their effort and charm.


Sufficiently sated, I went back to the poker room. They had one no-limit table going. I was first on the waiting list. I sat down with my magazine and read. And read. And read. I waited about 45 minutes. It's really, really unusual to have no seat in a game open up in that much time. (My rule of thumb is that a typical game will rotate one player about every 15 minutes, so if there are three tables going, wait time will probably average only about five minutes.) I looked over the players, and got no sense that any of them was getting ready to leave anytime soon, so I gave up.

As it turns out, I maybe should have stuck with the usual Mandalay plan. Sahara had no game. Imperial Palace had no game. O'Shea's had no game. I got a seat at the Flamingo, but it was a table of non-gambling rocks, at which I managed to squeeze out a big $5 profit in an hour and 15 minutes before deciding that there was no prospect for improvement. I ended up at Harrah's, where I played badly and took a small loss before I decided that my heart really wasn't in playing today, and headed for home.

We have us a winner

Last night I once again chose the Stratosphere as the convenient locale for the evening fun and games. Unfortunately, play was tight as a drum, and after 2 1/2 hours I was up just $27, with no sign of things getting better.

I had noticed the people taking their seats for the 10 pm tournament. Forgive me for saying this, but I got a strong impression that they were mostly rubes. They looked neither generally intelligent nor poker-experienced. So on a last-second, spur-of-the-moment whim, I cashed out my chips and signed up. I was the last of 20 in. I had done no research, had no idea what the blind structure was, etc. Not exactly the most professional way of going about my game selection. But nevertheless, as it turned out, it was a good move: I winz it.

I took a big early chip lead. First, I took the add-on right up front, which most others did not. You can start with 2000 chips for $40 or 4000 chips for $60, which seemed like an easy decision to me. Then my second hand at the table I was dealt 8-8 and pressed it pretty hard, getting four callers pre-flop, and one on the flop and turn. I think he was chasing a flush draw. When it didn't come on the river and I was facing three overcards, I just checked behind and showed, and he mucked. On the very next hand I had J-J, again got four callers to my raise. Flop Q-J-6 rainbow. Bet, couple of callers, then a large raise. He looked to me as though he were very confident in his hand, so I put him on two pair or a set. Since I thought he would call, I just shoved, even though that was several times the size of his raise. I was right--I was on the good side of set-over-set to his pocket 6s, and finished the hand with nearly 11,000 chips when most people were still at their starting 2000.

It's a good thing I had that lead, because that marked the end of any good hands or situations for the next couple of hours. My stack just slowly dwindled away. By the time we consolidated to one table of ten, I was about 7th in chips. From there I just had to play Short Stack Ninja, shoving to steal the blinds when it was folded to me, which worked enough to keep me afloat. Four places were to get paid, and I was the shortest stack when we were down to six and then five. I kept having the dreaded feeling that I was going to be the honorary bubble boy.

But I hit a few big hands and got comfortable again, knocking out the bubble boy instead of being him. (He tried an all-in steal from the small blind with Q-8 offsuit, and I called with K-Q suited.) Then I knocked out the guy in 4th place when I tried stealing the blinds with Q-6 off, he called from the small blind with suited A-J, and I flopped a 6 on him. (This earned me a stern scolding from the big blind--"Don't ever do that again!"--though I never could figure out why he disapproved.) That put me into second in chips with three left.

I almost became the big stack heads-up when I raised with A-A, and drew a shove from the short stack with 3-3. But, alas, a 3 on the flop skewered me, and we remained at three.

I didn't have to fret about the loss for very long, though, because about one orbit later I called a raise in the big blind with 4-4, flopped a set, hit quads on the turn, and doubled up through the chip leader, making him severely short in the process. He went out a few hands later.

My sole remaining opponent and I were very close in chips. I suggested that we each take second-place money and then chop the remainder proportionate to our stack sizes. He instantly agreed. It turned out that I had a little more: 54,500 to his 47,400, which allows me to tell myself that I actually won the tournament. :-) After tipping the dealers, I ended up with $434 on my $60 buy-in. For three hours of play, that's not half-bad.

The only mildly interesting hand was right before I took out the 4th-place finisher. I was third in chips, in one of the blinds with 7-7, and called a raise from the chip leader, who was easily the most skilled and aggressive player I faced the whole tournament. Flop: A-K-7. Ding-dong, Avon calling! I would most often lead out betting in this situation, hoping for an all-in raise. But I thought he likely had an ace and would therefore bet this flop for me, and even if he had missed he had a high percentage of continuation-betting. So I checked, and to my surprise he checked behind. The turn was some blank. Surely he won't pass a second opportunity to bet, so I checked a second time, planning a check-raise. But he did check again! Argh! Who suddenly hit him with the cautious stick??? River yet another blank, so I finally fired about 3/4 of the pot. He called. I showed. He looked stunned, then said, "You're slow-playing me? Dude, I was slow-playing you!" He had A-K for top two pair. Dammit! I could have had a full double-up there. He said, "I was waiting for you to bet so I could raise, but at the last second I got a bad feeling about it." In retrospect, I should have gone with my usual default plan of taking the lead. But, of course, if I had done that and he had folded, I would have kicked myself for not enticing him to bet.

Even with that misstep, I judge myself to have played about my A-minus game throughout, which turned out to be good enough. There are very few things that I wish I had done differently. Of course, flopping sets in several key situations doesn't hurt one's chances.

When asked about tournaments versus cash games generally, my stock answer is that I neither much like nor do well in casino tournaments, and stick almost exclusively to cash games. But when I look at my records, it turns out that I cash more than 20% of the time that I play, and finish deep more often than would be expected by chance alone, so maybe I don't suck as badly as I tend to think. Leaving empty-handed 80% of the time feels lousy, but the numbers say that I make money playing tournaments in the long run, so perhaps I shouldn't bad-mouth them to the extent that I do.

Stratosphere stories

I played at the Stratosphere last night. There's lots of things not to like about this room, but the games tend to be much softer than average and it's one of the closest casinos to my apartment, so I go through periods of holding my nose and giving them some of my business. I'm in one of those cycles now, having played there three times this month so far.


Bluff, lose; big hand, lose

Soon after sitting down, it became obvious where the money was going to come from. Our table had a perpetual bluffer. He was burning through C-notes, repeatedly trying all-in bluffs and getting picked off.

I got lucky and twice made strong hands against him and had easy calls to make. Then, for what turned out to be his last hand of the evening, I called his pre-flop raise with suited K-J. Flop K-K-5. Ding! He bet, I called along with one other. Turn: 5. Although this gave me a full house, I didn't like it, because I thought it might kill the action. Fortunately, it didn't. He bet again, I called again. Third guy dropped out. River a blank. Fish bet yet again. I raised all-in, he called immediately. I showed the top full house. He flipped over A-A with a look of disgust.

You can just imagine this guy's level of frustration. He bluffs and bluffs and bluffs, desperately trying to win a pot with nothing, then finally, finally!, picks up aces, figuring that he'll get paid handsomely because of the table image he has developed, and CRACK!

He gave up and left the game. Sometimes it's just not your day.


Weird non-chop

I had an inexperienced player on my immediate right, as betrayed by his not knowing some basic mechanics of casino play. When the first opportunity to chop the blinds came up, I didn't wait for him to make the offer (which I think it slightly better protocol), because I thought he might not know about that option. I asked, "Do you want to chop?" He said, "I can't--I've got a pretty big hand here." And with that, he raised to $8. I showed him my 10-3 offsuit and folded.

He obliged my curiosity by tabling As-6s as he raked in his $2 profit, and said, "See? That's why I had to play it." There was not a hint of humor or irony in his voice or face or demeanor. He absolutely meant what he said.

Wow, dude--a suited A-6. Yeah, I can sure see how you couldn't possibly pass up a chance to play that.

I didn't say anything, but if a possible chop situation had come up again, I was prepared to explain to him that we were now committed to playing them all out, based on his precedential decision. As I've explained before, I'll either chop or not consistently with somebody, but I'm not stupid enough to agree to let the other player selectively choose whether to chop based on the strength of his starting cards.

I didn't get the chance to educate him on this point, however, because a few hands later I took the last of his chips with A-K on a king-high flop, and he left the table without another word.


Superman

Towards the end of my session, our game was joined by this gentleman:




He was in a wheelchair, obviously the subject of some sort of neuromuscular disorder. He had very limited strength and dexterity. But from some hiding spot on his wheelchair he pulled out the wedge-shaped wooden block you can see in the photo, and asked the brush for some Scotch tape to anchor it to the table and to prevent cards from jamming against its leading edge.

I was pleased with how nearly everybody reacted to his presence. The dealers made the small accommodation of carefully pitching his hole cards to the base of his ramp (which, by the way, had the words "Rock On" carefully engraved in script on its face), sweeping them away when he verbally declared a fold, and helping him with getting chips into the pot as required. Players, for their part, were patient about giving him the time he needed to slide his cards up the ramp to where he could peek at them before acting. Well, with one exception--there was an extremely surly Eastern European dude (when chatting with a friend who was standing behind him, the language sounded Slavic) two seats to his left who showed undisguised irritation at the delay, and routinely mucked out of turn rather than wait. Jerk.

I loved what I assume was the deliberate irony of this guy wearing a Superman shirt.

Fed up

I'm about as even-tempered, take-it-in-stride a person as you're likely to meet. Still, I've always known that I have a breaking point, but I was never sure what it would take to get there.

Well, now I know.

Last night I finished up at the Stratosphere by being dealt the only big pocket pair I had seen all night: K-K. When I tell you that all the money went in pre-flop, you'll be able to guess that I was up against the only hand I did not want to see, and that it did not turn out well.

Tonight I played at Imperial Palace. I got into a hole early on, but then got moved to a new table where everything seemed to click just right, and within about ten minutes I was out of the hole and up about $50 on my $300 buy-in. I felt ready to carry the momentum on and score a nice, big, fat W for the record books.

The poker gods apparently had other plans. A series of three hands did me in. In the first, I flopped top two pair and lost to a flopped set. $100 down the drain. In the second, I was ahead all the way until he caught his gutshot straight draw on the river. Another $100 went bye-bye.

The third was the most brutal. I was in the cutoff and joined a bunch of limpers with my Ad-5d. The small blind raised to $12. I called along with a few others. This woman had been at my first table before it broke and we both moved to this second one, so I had been playing with her for roughly three hours and thought I had a good feel for her game.

The flop was a near-perfect one for me: 2c-3d-4d. I had a straight, the nut flush draw, and even a gutshot straight-flush draw.

The raiser bet $50. I thought she most likely had a big pair and was making this pot-sized bet to discourage others from drawing at the flush or somebody with a mediocre ace hitting a 5 for the wheel. It folded around to me. I thought that if she had a big pair other than aces, she might find a fold if I moved all in, since she had seen me show a string of pretty solid hands through the night. So I pulled out one of my rarely-used tools: the min-raise. I made it $100, hoping that she would find that irresistible. I guess she did, because she moved all in. I called, obviously. Our stacks were nearly equal, but it turned out that I had her covered by $12.

I showed my cards immediately. She did not. I don't remember what the turn was, but the river was a fairly harmless-looking black 4. But harmless it was not. At that point, she revealed her hole cards: 3-4. She had flopped two pair and rivered the boat.

I took my last $12 and left.

Two consecutive sessions ending up this way would be enough to annoy me for a little while, but I would ordinarily take a day off from playing, and by the next day be rarin' to go again. This is different. These are coming as just the latest in a series of such sessions, combining coolers and suckouts in a seemingly endless succession. March was my second-worst month ever, and April so far is ahead of even that pace. I've had four weeks in a row of net losses, and five of the last seven, and the two exceptions were both trivial positive amounts. It is, by far, my longest and deepest losing streak ever.

As far as I can tell, no more than about 20% of it is due to bad play on my part. Of course, it may be that I'm completely deluded about that, I completely suck at poker, and it is finally being made manifest. I don't think that's the case, but it's awfully hard to be objective about it. I can't tell that I'm playing any different than I did before.

But whatever the cause, it has finally gotten to me. I can't do it any more. I can't take it either financially or emotionally. I have tried playing tight, playing loose, playing passively, and playing aggressively, and it seems not to matter one little bit--the results are the same no matter what. The only way I can think of to stop the losing at this point is to stop playing. I don't know for how long. I'm not throwing in the towel forever, but I need a serious break to see if I can get my head clear and regain some modicum of desire to play again, which at the moment is utterly depleted.

I feel like Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke," in the boxing scene with George Kennedy. I've taken the punches, fallen down, and stood back up as many times as I'm capable of, and now all I can do is give in and collapse in a heap.

As a result, it's likely that I won't post much for a while, either. This has sapped my interest in writing about poker as much as my interest in playing it.

I'll keep playing at least a little bit online. For me, playing online is a completely different experience from my bread-and-butter live games. Also, I just received notice that I'm invited to participate in the "invitational" portion of the Full Tilt Poker "Battle of the Blogger Tournaments," an honor and opportunity too great to pass up. But as for live play, don't expect to see me at the tables anytime soon.

I can anticipate that many of you good people will be feeling an urge to click the "comment" button and send some encouraging words my way, or share your own tales of poker woe. I appreciate the good intentions, but please don't. This has fully brought out my anti-social, misanthropic inner self, and such messages would just tend to annoy me further. I really just want to be left alone.

Beware the newbie

Remember the old Mr. Magoo cartoons? Virtually blind, he would stumble (or even drive) into all sorts of incredibly dangerous situations, completely oblivious to what was going on around him, and yet miraculously emerge unscathed, with no clue as to what a narrow escape he had just had. Others around him, though, weren't so lucky. They tended to get hit by all the things that missed Mr. Magoo.

New poker players can be a lot like that. I was reminded of that fact last night while playing at the Stratosphere. After I had been there just a short time, two guys wearing matching company shirts sat down in the seats on my left. They were in town for the big National Association of Broadcasters convention. I chatted them up a bit, and learned that their company makes equipment for institutional video instruction. The guy two spots to my left was a pretty typical poker tourist, having played enough to know what's going on. But he brought along a co-worker who was absolutely clueless. He did not know what beat what, how to tell when it was his turn, what the blinds were, or anything else--as green as green can be.

This is not meant to be demeaning. Everybody has to be new and clueless when starting out at just about any undertaking, and poker is no different. He was just there to have fun, which is fine with me. I went out of my way to help him have a good time, congratulating him when he won, saying, "See how easy this game is?", giving him little pointers about protocol and rules, etc.

An aside: Before I forget, I have to add a stern word of condemnation for one of the other players who tried to take advantage of how this guy never knew what his options were. He tried to tell him what he had to do ("Bet two red chips!") while in a hand with him, to manipulate him to his own advantage. He did it smilingly, but it seemed clear to me he was trying to use the new guy's inexperience to get him to make mistakes. This not only flagrantly violated the one-player-to-a-hand rule, but was just plain despicable angle-shooting. I was shocked that the dealer didn't intervene. I did what I could, quietly telling the new guy, "You should ignore advice from him. Just always ask the dealer what your options are and make your own decision." But a pox on him and his house. Fortunately, and fittingly, it backfired, and the newbie had the best of it every time, even when he just did what the jerk suggested.

Back to the story. He bought in for $60, and won the first hand he played, quite by accident, and had about $70 in front of him when the most hilarious hand of the night transpired. Newbie limped in, as he almost always did, then called a small raise from the player to my right. The flop was K-7-2. Newbie bet $5 and got a call. Turn was a 4. Newbie bet $5 again. This time, the player on my right raised to $25. Newbie hemmed and hawed, but finally called.

The river was another 4. Newbie didn't realize he was first to act (he never knew). Finally the dealer told him the action was on him: "Check or bet?" Newbie looked horrified at the thought of betting. He waved his hand in front of him the way one traditionally does to indicate "hold" to a blackjack dealer, and said, "No, it's too much." He wasn't facing a bet, so I took this to mean that he felt he had enough of his chips in the pot already and didn't want to be risking more. His opponent moved all-in. The dealer then had to explain to Newbie that he could either put all of the rest of his chips in or fold. He thought a while, then resignedly said, "Oh, all right," and called.

The other guy turned over Ac-4c, for rivered trips. He had obviously just been trying to bully the weak-appearing Newbie on the turn, and got incredibly lucky on the river.

Newbie's face dropped. He said, "Oh, wow, that's good." He had his cards in his hand, looking unsure what to do with them. Another player across the table said, "Turn your cards up." (This was completely improper, but we'll let it slide for now.) He did: pocket 7s, for a full house. It was the most perfect, though completely unintentional, slow-roll I've ever seen.

The table erupted in laughter. Newbie had no idea he had won, but he was delighted with the news and the pot.

None of us ever knew what to expect when he revealed his cards. His betting patterns were as inscrutible as his body language; he would bet $25 into a $10 pot on the flop, then $5 on the turn, with no rhyme or reason to it.

But in spite of that--or maybe because of it--he went on a tear. He won virtually every hand he contested, though he clearly had no idea whether he had the winner until the dealer announced it. He played for only about an hour, but racked up close to $300 in chips when he left. If ever there were beginner's luck, this guy had it.

About a month ago, I wrote about a player that acted like he was new to poker, but in whom I noticed some charteristics that were sufficiently inconsistent with that role to make me suspicious that I was witnessing an elaborate ruse. So trust me when I say that last night's Newbie was either genuinely what he appeared to be, or the most masterful actor since Sir Alec Guinness died. I would stake my net worth on the former.

A while later, the corporate twins had left, as had the guy who had unwisely tried to bully Newbie. Replacing him on my right was Newbie #2. He wasn't quite as raw as Newbie #1 had been, but still was pretty lost.

One hand I played against him perfectly illustrates the Mr. Magoo-like danger of such players. He was under the gun, I was second. I had a suited A-J, and just limped with it. (Yeah, I know, but spare me the lecture for now, please.) Then I called a raise to $15 from the button (yeah, I know again), as did Newbie #2 and one other, making the pot about $60. The flop was jack-high with no draws. I was tentatively planning on a check-raise, but the action checked all the way around. That made me think that the button probably had either an A-K or A-Q type hand or a pocket pair lower than jacks. Turn was a blank, and when Newbie #2 checked to me, I bet $40. The other two players folded. Newbie #2 debated with himself for a while, but finally called. The river was another apparent miss. Newbie #2 checked to me again. I bet $50. He again took at least a full minute before reluctantly making the call. I showed my top pair/top kicker. He let out a sigh of relief, said, "Whew!", and showed me his pocket queens.

That caught me completely off-guard. I would have been less surprised to see some junky low two pairs than that. I don't normally go crazy with TPTK. I'm well aware that it does not rank high in the pantheon of hands. But Newbie #2's entire being radiated weakness and fear. Given that unmistakable body language and the betting pattern, I had a high degree of confidence that my hand was best.

And that right there is the problem that newbies pose to more experienced players. They have no sense of where they are in a hand, no feel for how strong a hand should be to be the likely winner in any given situation. As a result, their betting and their tells give off false information--not because they're trying to be deceptive, but because they tend to grossly either underestimate or overestimate the strength of their holdings.

In this case, it worked to his advantage. If he had played his pocket queens in a more traditional, aggressive manner, it would have been much easier for me to fold at some point along the way, and he wouldn't have ended up with $105 of my money.

Of course, what makes newbies profitable is that they are just as inclined, on average, to overvalue hands as to undervalue them. They will call you down with third pair or ace-high, they will run bluffs in situations that have zero chance of success, etc. In the hand I lost, for example, that combination of appearance and betting sequence will far more often turn out to have been signifying that he held a jack with a lower kicker (J-K, J-Q, etc.), or something like pocket 10s, than the dominating queens.

You will frequently hear people say that they hate playing with novices because of how unreadable and unpredictable they can be, and prefer playing against better opponents. I understand the point: It is uncomfortable to play against people who give you no idea--or a false idea--of where you are in a hand. Still, people who say that are just crazy, or don't like money, because inexperienced players will tend to make far, far more mistakes (and more expensive mistakes) than experienced ones. They tend to be very profitable opponents, but you have to be prepared for all sorts of surprises at the showdown.

It can be a lot of fun to play with Mr. Magoo. Just watch out for the piano falling from the window above, because when it misses him, it's likely to hit you.

New ride at the Stratosphere

The omnipresent Vegas Rex caught some trial jumps of the new ride at the Stratosphere. Looks scary as hell to me. See video and read more details here.

Grumpy letter to the Stratosphere

Eric Buksa
Executive Hotel Manager
Stratosphere Hotel
2000 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89104

Dear Mr. Buksa:

I am not sure that you are the right person for addressing this concern, but it was your card that was given to me by the people at the information desk when I asked. I trust that you will pass it on to whomever else in your organization might best be suited to handle it, if need be.

Earlier this week I was in the Stratosphere poker room. Before playing, I wanted to get something to eat at one of the restaurants in the facility. I had never used any of the comp dollars that had accumulated on my player’s card (my Ultimate Rewards card number is 300999976), despite having played in the poker room 17 previous times. I assumed, therefore, that there would be no problem in getting a comp ticket.

To my surprise, when the person at the desk checked the records, it showed me having played only one session within the previous year (apparently the credits expire after a year)—specifically, 2.25 hours on January 17, 2009.

Because I play poker for a living, I have to keep meticulous records for tax purposes. Never mind the 13 previous visits prior to a year ago; my actual time in your poker room during the last year is as follows:

March 8, 2008 6:00 pm to 7:40 pm, 1.7 hours
May 23, 2008 8:55 pm to 10:35 pm, 1.7 hours
October 14, 2008 6:45 pm to 11:35 pm, 4.8 hours
January 17, 2009 4:40 pm to 6:50 pm, 2.2 hours

Total: 10.4 hours.

Naturally, I am aware that it is the player’s responsibility to clock in and out using the card. You may or may not tend to believe me on this point, but I do this with great consistency. To the best of my knowledge, I have only failed to notify a poker room desk of my departure on three or four occasions in the last year, despite playing five to six days per week, at essentially every card room in town, often at more than one casino on a given day. It is inconceivable that I failed to check out three out of four sessions at the Stratosphere.

I have a pretty good idea of what most likely happened. As I cash out my chips, I ask the person at the counter to clock me out. He or she asks my name, and when I give it, promises that it will be taken care of. But there is somebody else behind me in line or just approaching the desk, and the promise quickly gets forgotten, with no record made.

Even so, the sign in the poker room says that the policy is that neglecting to clock out will result in only one hour of credit being assigned. Were that followed, I would have at least received credit for one hour on each of the three visits beside the January one, for a total of 5.5 hours on record now. In other words, the staff is not even following the room’s own stated policy.

I am not overly concerned about the loss of something like $7 or $8 in comp credits; the fact that I had dozens of hours’ worth of credit that I let expire unused (from more than a year ago) demonstrates that. I write because of the irritation. Poker players are already at the bottom of the ladder in terms of what casinos give back in comps. I resent that, though I understand the reasons for it from the businesses’ point of view. So when you further erode the effect of even this paltry token of appreciation by not bothering to keep track of it correctly, it’s frankly insulting. It is another sign of the generally lackadaisical approach to customer service that I have found to pervade the employees’ attitudes in the poker room of the Stratosphere. I would prefer that you not bother even having such a comp program than to claim to offer one, but then implement it with such carelessness that it can’t be relied upon. When I ask, for the first time in 17 trips to the poker room, for a lousy meal comp, and am effectively told that I haven’t earned it, that I’m not a sufficiently valued customer for you (that’s the corporate “you”) to have bothered taking note of my presence, I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive to find that an affront.

There are many things I don’t like about the Stratosphere poker room (the noise and infiltrating cigarette smoke, mediocre dealers, lax enforcement of rules, etc.), which is why it’s one of the least frequent stops on the Strip for me, despite being the most convenient to where I live. Your poker room staff today gave me yet another reason to stay away. And, in case this matters to you, I will be posting a copy of this letter on my poker blog (pokergrump.blogspot.com), which is read by 1000 or more people daily, so that they, too, will know that if they choose to patronize the Stratosphere poker room, they should not count on receiving even the minimal token of appreciation that the promised $1/hour food comp represents.

Sincerely,

Poker fashion mistake

Saturday at the Stratosphere poker room I spotted the guy in the white shirt at the next table. There wasn't much opportunity to sneak a good picture, but I did the best I could under the circumstances. In case it isn't clear, those sunglasses frames of his are entirely covered in rhinestones or sequins or some other similar shiny/shimmery stuff.

I'm no fashion maven; you could call my basic clothing choices "frumpy" and I couldn't rightfully argue. Nevertheless, I can state this with confidence: If you are male, and your sunglasses are covered in sequins or rhinestones, and your name is not "Elton John," you have committed a serious error in your accessorizing.

Stratosphere adds a bad rule

I played at the Stratosphere the other day for the first time in several months. They had just recently added a button straddle, a rule I dislike. As far as I know, they thereby become the third joint in town with this option available (after Rio and Hard Rock, though Hard Rock's works somewhat differently from the others).

"You don't look like a horrible player"

I went slumming tonight--hit the Stratosphere and the Sahara. I really dislike playing in both places, but they're such consistent money-makers that I keep them in the rotation to visit once in a while, especially after a losing streak, to get things back on a positive track.

At the Stratosphere, my second hand after sitting down with $100 I was dealt A-Q of diamonds. I raised to $12 after a couple of limpers. I was called by the big blind and the guy on my right. The flop was J-8-2 rainbow. Nothing great for me, but nothing too scary, either--good chance it missed both of them as much as it missed me. Both opponents checked, so I put out $25. Big blind folded, guy on my right called.

This didn't look to me like a check-call of great strength, as if he had flopped a set or something--more like maybe he hit the 8, and decided to stick around to see if he could make two pair or three of a kind. So I'm not worried yet, because an ace or a queen should give me the winner, and even failing that, I think he's not feeling married to his hand, and is probably susceptible to being pushed off of it. I'm an unknown entity to him, and he's out of position, so if I'm right that he doesn't have a monster, and he misses the turn, he likely isn't going to be willing to put in a lot more money.

The turn card is an offsuit 10. I didn't think he limp-called before the flop with an 8-10. I also didn't think that he called on the flop with a gutshot straight draw, so in all likelihood that card didn't help him. He checked, adding support to my theory. I have $63 left in front of me, and there is about $85 in the pot, so I shove. Even if he calls, I should have outs with an ace, queen, and now a king would give me the nuts, a Broadway straight.

He thinks for a while. Finally he shows me a K-J offsuit, smiles, and says, "You don't look like a horrible player, so this must be no good." And he throws it away.

I smile back and say, "I'd like to think I'm not horrible."

He says, "Yeah, you had me beat."

****
We now commence the strategic advice portion of this blog entry. This hand perfectly illustrates what's wrong with limp-calling with a hand like K-J. Of course, you might hit a miracle flop with two pair or three of a kind, but that's less than 2% of the time. If you're calling a pre-flop raise on a 2% hope, you're throwing your money away.

If you are the pre-flop raiser with K-J, a flop like J-8-2 rainbow is just about ideal. You have top pair, strong kicker, little to fear from draws, and nothing that looks like a two-pair hit with which an opponent might have called your pre-flop raise. It looks like smooth sailing.

Conversely, if you limp with the same K-J, then call a pre-flop raise, now how does that J-8-2 flop look? You have to worry that the raiser has A-J, J-J, Q-Q, K-K, or A-A, against any of which you are a huge underdog. You have no draw to save your bacon if you venture further. And being out of position, you have to either check--thus showing weakness, inviting an aggressive opponent to bet even if the flop missed him, after which you have to basically guess where you are in the hand--or bet, worried that you'll have to abandon those chips if you get raised.

That's why people call K-J and similar holdings "trouble hands," because they are frequently dominated and make it very difficult to deduce whether you're ahead or behind, so that it's easy to make large mistakes--especially when playing from out of position.

If my opponent had thought this through ahead of time, he could have saved himself $37. He could have thought, "What would be a pretty good flop for me that isn't relying on a 2% or less probability? Maybe something like J-8-2. But even if I get that, how sure can I be that my hand is good? Not very. Might be better just to wait for a better spot." He could then have let go of the $2 he had invested, or, if he ran through that mental exercise first, just folded without even putting up the $2. Another approach would have been to raise with the K-J before the flop, thus making a lead-out continuation bet after the good flop a very natural move.

Alternatively, he could have done one of two things on the flop, once he realized that the flop was about as well-suited to his hand as he could ask for. First, he could lead out betting at it, stealing the initiative from me. If I'm holding A-K, A-Q, A-10, pocket 10s, etc., it's going to be hard for me to call. If I come over the top of his bet, he can still choose to fold. An affirmative $25 bet does him a hell of a lot more good than check-calling my $25 bet, not only in terms of giving him a chance to win the pot outright if I've missed, but in terms of getting a lot more information about whether he's ahead or behind. If you're willing to invest $25 on this hand with a call, take the aggressive route and stick it in up front, forcing me to make the decision.

Second, if he wanted to be even more daring, he could check-raise me all-in after I bet the $25. There's a pretty decent chance that his hand is good here. Even if it's not, he invests $63 to potentially win the $60 or so that is already in the pot, plus my last $63 if I call, so he's getting 2:1 on his money if I call, and it's pure profit to him if I fold. Given our stack sizes (he's sitting on about $300), this is an extremely reasonable move.

For the record, if he had check-raised me, I certainly would have folded. If he had led out with a $25 bet on the flop, I would have either folded or moved all-in over the top, depending on my sense of his strength; I'm really not sure which way I would have gone. At the very least, he would have given me a hard decision, and anytime you make an opponent face a difficult decision, you open the door for him to make a costly mistake, which is basically your whole object.

Instead, though, he played it passively, like a coward, and gave away $37 when he had the best hand. Of all the ways he could have played his hand, the limp-call/check-call/check-fold was absolutely the worst option. (It is because people often do things like this that the Stratosphere and the Sahara are consistently profitable for me.)

I'm glad you don't think I'm a horrible player, sir. I don't think you're horrible, either--but you do need a lot of work on the basics of the game: use of position, aggression, and hand selection. Employing any of those three things correctly probably would have won you the pot, or at least caused you to lose a lot less.

Stratosphere upgrades by making things, uh, worse

The Stratosphere was on my mind yesterday, for a pretty strange reason. As I woke up in the morning, my radio was tuned to public radio, and they had a story about fire safety. The Stratosphere was mentioned as an example of a new breed of tall buildings that rely on elevators to evacuate occupants in case of fire, rather than the instructions we've all gotten used to, telling us to use the stairs, not the elevators, in an emergency. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18212200.

So when I couldn't get anything going at Harrah's and was headed home, it occurred to me that it was probably a good day to check out the brand-new poker room that the Strat has been advertising lately.

I liked the old poker room there. It was small and homey, maybe six tables. It had consistently among the softest competition in town. The main thing that kept me from visiting more frequently was the inconsistency with which they had any action going. I hadn't been there since April.

The first thing I inevitably noticed about the new room is that it's a long hike from the parking garage. The old one was right at the base of the escalator, as convenient as it could be. Now you have to walk to the far end of the casino. A small point, but an annoyance. At least, though, they did change the signs, so it's easy to navigate your way there.

The new room is much larger, probably twice as many tables. I was stunned to see how many were in action--at least eight, including both the midnight tournament and several live games. This was more than the old room could have handled at full capacity. So in that sense, the move was both smart and necessary.

Fortunately, the competition appeared not to have gotten any better. There was a nice mix of frightened players that I could bluff and push around, calling stations who would pay off my big hands, and a couple of completely predictable rocks, who basically played with their cards face up. There was only one smart, tricky player who could pose a serious threat of taking my stack if I weren't careful, but I was lucky enough to tangle with him only twice, both of which times I had the second nuts, and was pretty sure he didn't have the joint. My kind of table, for sure. Uptick $348 in 2.7 hours.

One mildly interesting hand: I ended up on the bad end of another set-over-set situation (unusual in that it's the second time in a week this has happened; see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/news-flash-grump-hits-one-outer-on.html), and made money from it, even without sucking out. I had J-J and put in a raise. Two previous limpers called. Limper A was the smart, tricky player. Limper B was new to the table, bought in for the minimum, and didn't have much left. I had no read on his play. Flop was A-J-x, rainbow. It was checked to me, so I put in a bet of about 2/3 of the pot. Limper A called, Limper B went all-in for maybe $4 more than I had bet. With no straight possibilities, I had the second nuts and was not worried. The turn put a second spade on the board, but still no possible straight. I bet $50 when it was checked to me. Limper A reluctantly called. Same on the river, which was another blank--I bet another $75 and got called. I showed my set of jacks. My opponent nodded grimly and quietly mucked. (I'm guessing he had A-K or A-Q.) I was stunned as all get-out when Limper B flipped over the only hand that could beat me: pocket aces. But the $125 I got from the other guy on the turn and river far outweighed the $40 or so that I lost to the higher set. If he had started with more money, I would have lost it all to him, never suspecting in a million years that he was sitting on aces.

The other good news from the Stratosphere is that they have dropped the rake. This doesn't really matter much to me, though. My tight-aggressive style means that most of my profit (or loss) come in a handful of big pots in a session. If the house takes a max of $3 (Stratosphere, Palms, and I think a couple of other places) versus $4 (standard) versus $5 (Harrah's properties), it's an undetectable change to my hourly earning rate. Still, all else being equal, I'm happy to have an extra buck or two left in the pot.

They also have a dizzying array of promotions. Aces cracked gets you $25, 24 hours a day (most such promotions are only on slow days or during slow times of the day). There is a freeroll tournament for frequent players. There are high-hand and bad-beat jackpots. One that I've never seen before is that for all daily tournaments on the first Monday of the month the winner gets double the payout, because the house matches his share of the prize pool (if I read the sign correctly).

Unfortunately, the new poker room is open to the casino. The old one had walls on three sides, and was only open to the sports book on the fourth side. That made it one of the better rooms in the city for keeping down the noise and smoke. The new room just has a half-wall around three sides, and inconsiderate jerks in the casino lean right over the wall with their cigarettes, blowing their smoke in. There is also a lounge right next door, and the salsa music was loud enough that it was difficult for players at the table to hear each other, or hear the dealer. Dealers had tremendous difficulty getting attention from the floor (for fills, decisions, bonus payouts, or whatever), because they couldn't shout loudly enough to be heard over the racket. I had a headache within an hour.

I hate smoke and noise in a poker room. They are the two biggest deterrants for me (after a place being impracticably far from my apartment and being so slow that there is no game going).

Overall, the new Stratosphere poker room now reminds me of the Sahara in nearly every respect. It's a place I'll visit when I want an easy score and I'm willing to put up with the repulsive level of noise and smoke to get it. I preferred the peace and quiet of the old room, even if it meant I could only find a game at peak hours.