Skirmishes in the information war

This post is in the form of a letter to Tony (yes, the same Tony featured in the previous post's silly story), but because the problems I identify are common, I hope there is value to my readers in letting you all peek in on it.

Dear Tony:

Last night was the longest time I've spent in a cash game at a table with you, and it gave me my best chance yet to observe for myself something that many others have commented on in your blogs after playing with you for a while: You give away way too much information. It's not entirely clear to me if you understand the extent to which you are doing it, or the damage it does to your bankroll, so I'm going to try to lay out some concrete examples from last night and explain how they can hurt you. These are just a few of the things I saw; there were dozens more that I could chose from, if I wanted to try to make an exhaustive catalog.

My intention here is not to embarrass you or say that you're a bad player. You obviously do well enough to get by. But you could do so much better if you closed off some of your leaks, and many of your worst leaks relate to control of information.

It should also be noted that none of these are unique to you. In fact, they are things I see commonly in many players--which is exactly why I think it might be valuable to readers to list them here, because they may see the same problems in themselves. But I would expect somebody who aspires to be a professional at the game to have a better handle on these things than the average tourist. Moreover, an aspiring professional should want to improve where he can. Though I have to point out specific things I think you're doing wrong, in order to make my points, my goal is to be helpful, not just condemning.

These are in no particular order.

1.

You freely told people at the table about the current size of your bankroll. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with you writing about this on your blog, and once in a while you'll have somebody at the table who reads your blog and therefore has this information. But to give it out voluntarily is, I think, a terrible mistake.

The most obvious problem is that it invites potential crime. Somebody might think that you mean that you're carrying all that money with you. I know that you're not, but what I know doesn't matter. Just the idea that you're carrying a ton of cash could set you up for being assaulted and robbed. You worry about that possibility enough as it is. Why add to the potential?

The second problem is that nobody cares, unless they're (A) a friend, or (B) thinking of trying to steal your money. Talking about money is fraught with social problems. It makes people uncomfortable. In our society, we don't ask other people how much money they have or make, and we don't disclose that information to others unless there is some very specific reason. I'm pretty open about just about everything in this blog, but I have never and will never talk in concrete terms about how much I make at poker. It's nobody's business.

I know that you care what others think about you. Telling them how much money you have will pretty much have only negative consequences. Those who have a lot more money than you will look down on you for being nearly broke, as they see it. Those who have less might be jealous. Either way, you have sown negative feelings. Negative feelings about you from other players hurt you. You make more money from people who like you. (This is Mike Caro's most emphatic teaching.) Doing things that make people either resent or look down on you is self-destructive. Frankly, you sounded like you were bragging, and nobody likes a braggart.

Answer me this: What do you gain by sharing this information with strangers at the poker table? How does it benefit you in any concrete, identifiable way? I think the answer is that it doesn't, and the potential for several kinds of harm is real. The cost:benefit ratio here is infinite.

2.

You frequently discussed how a hand was played immediately after it was over. In one instance, you caught a pair (jacks, I think) on the river to beat a guy who had been ahead prior to that. You pointed out to him how his raise on the flop was so small that it made sense for you to call to try to catch a card. Then you told him that since you missed, if he had bet again on the turn you would have folded.

I'm not sure I can describe how awful this kind of talk is, in terms of long-term poker strategy. You were telling an opponent explicitly how to play better against you the next time! Why on earth would you do this? You should want him to continue playing as weakly as he did. That's how you won the hand, and that's how you would win the next one, too--except that you clued him in to precisely what he did wrong, and how to do it better the next time.

Frankly, I wanted to stand up and yell at you: WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???? The answer is that you weren't thinking at all. You were just reacting, with no filter between your brain and your mouth. Maybe the two dumbest things a poker player can do are criticize another player for his bad play and educate him as to how to play better. You did both at once. What did you get for it in return? A little bit of ego gratification. Was it worth it?

By the way, when you engage in such idiotic behavior as that, you cost ME money, too. If the guy smartens up and starts playing better, he will do so against everybody, not just against you. Your words are taking money out of my pocket, and I resent it.

There are plenty of resources that this guy and others can turn to if they want to learn to play better poker. It is not your job to educate him. Lots of recreational players aren't interested in investing time and work into getting better. They're just there to relax and have a good time, maybe win a little money if they get lucky. Imposing on them a poker lesson that they didn't ask for will tend to cause resentment. Sometimes they even leave the table, in search of a game where everybody is having fun and nobody will criticize how they play or make them feel stupid. Then we all lose out.

Tony, this kind of talk is self-defeating. It is precisely this kind of talk that is condemned with the common expression, "Don't tap on the aquarium--it scares the fish." There is absolutely no justification for it. It is a bigger leak in your game than things about which you have repeatedly expressed concern, such as how to play flush draws.

"The poker table is not a classroom. And you don't want recreational players to conclude that you're playing seriously. If you do that, they're likely to become self-conscious about their decisions and stop playing so liberally--which will cost you money." Mike Caro, Caro's Most Profitable Hold'Em Advice, page 242.

3.

You repeatedly told everybody at the table whether you were up or down from your original buy-in. Once you even said something like, "I have to get back another $62 and then I can leave."

First, again, nobody cares, in the sense of being sympathetic for you if you're down or rejoicing on your behalf if you're up.

Second, as others have told you countless times, you cannot play A-game poker if you're obsessed with always finishing up for the day. Chips are tools for gaining more chips, nothing more. In other words, you shouldn't even be thinking about being up or down for the day or for the session, let alone talking out loud about it.

Third, it opens you up to exploitation. Have you ever noticed the way that many players segregate their chip stacks into their original buy-in and their profit? As long as they're playing with their profit, they're fairly loose. After all, it's found money, free money. If they lose it, they're not really out anything, as they see it. But if the profit goes away, and they start cutting into the original buy-in stacks, they become much more serious. A player like that who is reaching into the original buy-in stacks to put in his raise is far, far less likely to be bluffing than if he is only having to play with his profit stacks.

You know that, right?

You don't keep your stacks segregated that way, but the effect is exactly the same. If sharp, observant players know the degree to which you are ahead or behind, and they know that it matters a great deal to you which side of zero you end up on (and the fact that you frequently call attention to your status makes it abundantly clear that it does matter a great deal to you), they will exploit that information. Now, I think that you're not as completely predictable as the chips-segregation guys, and sometimes you're more willing to bluff and gamble when down than when you're up. But that doesn't matter. All that matters is that it's information that smart players can use to gain extra insight into how you are thinking and playing, and thus play better against you.

I would ask again, How does it benefit you at all to tell the table how much you need to make to be back to even? In theory, you could do this to spread disinformation, knowing what people will think of you, then do the opposite of what they will anticipate. But I do not believe that you are doing this. I think you are just spewing the information because it occurs to you, because it's on your mind so constantly, and, again, you just don't stop to think about the consequences of opening your mouth.

4.

You show your hole cards unnecessarily. You do this a lot. You did it more than any other player at the table last night.

This is a complex area. There is no one clearly best strategy for deciding when to reveal your hole cards if you aren't required to do so. Some world-class players never do it. Daniel Negreanu, asked about this once for a World Poker Tour special feature, said that he does it occasionally, but always with a specific plan and purpose for what he wants his opponents to think and know. That's smart. Antonio Esfandiari recently noted in his live WSOP commentary that he never shows cards that reinforce an opponent's good decision. E.g., if they fold, he won't show them a winner--but he might show them if he was bluffing. He wants to spread disinformation and put opponents on tilt for having made a mistake, not give them a psychological reward for making the correct decision. Again, that's a perfectly justifiable strategy. It's a thoughtful way to decide what to show.

In Caro's Most Profitable Hold'Em Advice, the author spends several pages discussing how to selectively show cards in order to reinforce the erroneous tendencies of specific players. For example, show your strongest hands to players who are already inclined to fold too often when you bet. It will have the effect of making them think, "Yep, that guy always has the goods, just as I suspected." As a result, they will tighten up even more against you. Conversely, show your bluffs to players who are inclined to call you too often, in order to get them to call even more often. Again, this is a perfectly valid, well-reasoned approach to the question.

But I don't think you are following any well-thought-out strategy. I think you show when you feel like it, and there's not much more to it than that. That is unacceptable. That is unprofessional. That will cost you money.

By far the simplest approach is just never, ever show any cards unless the rules require you to show them. I think that should be your default plan. It may not be fully optimal, but it's never very much of mistake, whereas showing willy-nilly, the way you are doing now, is an egregious leak. If you asked me for advice on this point (and I realize that you didn't), I would say shut off that gushing pipe completely. Lock it down. Get in the habit of never, ever showing unnecessarily. After several months of getting used to that practice, then you can consider trying to find very selective, strategic spots in which showing your cards can increase your profits. But for now, just stop it completely.

You might also consider that the message you are sending is not the one you intended. I caught a very keen insight from Olivier Busquet the other day when he was doing live WSOP commentary. One very tight player raised, got everyone to fold, then showed some high pocket pair. Busquet was asked what it says about a player when he shows cards like that. He responded (paraphrasing here), "It tells me that he's weak and afraid. He is trying to tell the table, 'When I raise you shouldn't play back at me.' Why doesn't he want people to play back at him? Because he's afraid of tangling with them." I think Busquet is on to something there. It was a revelation to me. I had not thought of it that way before, but it's worth considering that when you intend to convey strength, it accidentally comes across as weakness.

5.

You freely discuss what you will do with certain hands in certain situations. For example, at one point last night you showed something like an A-8 that you had raised with, and said, "I'll raise with hands like that, but I won't call if somebody else has raised first."

That was another occasion on which I wanted to yell at you. What possible good is that doing? The smart, observant players will file away that information to use against you. The really bad players, who only consider hand strength and not situations, perhaps have never considered that there are hands with which one might sensibly raise, but fold if somebody else raises first. Why are you giving them an education? They didn't ask for it, and if they learn to play better, it makes it harder for you to win their money.

For about the umpteenth time I'll ask, what could you possibly hope to gain by sharing with others exactly how you play certain hands?

6.

I'm sure you'll remember the hand in which you had Q-Q and the other guy had 2-4, and hit a gutshot on the river to make a straight and win the large pot. I'll dispense with pointing out that 2-4 is the most powerful hand in poker and always wins. My point here is that you went on and on about this. You repeatedly said, "Goddammit," and other such things. Even half an hour later, long after that player had left the table, you were rehashing it, talking about how much money he had put into the pot when he was drawing nearly dead.

This is another example in the category of things you shouldn't even be thinking, let alone saying.

When I hear somebody droning on about a hand that was over half an hour ago, I know that he is not focusing on the present. I know that he is more likely to call than his baseline. (Never try to bluff a player who is obviously on tilt.) I know that he is going to be playing more hands than usual in an attempt to get back what he perceives as having unfairly lost, and will be more likely to bluff or overplay weak or mediocre hands. When you expose your feelings to the table like this, you unintentionally inform the better players what to expect from you and how to play more accurately against you. This will cost you money.

The best thing would be to get to where you don't care about the outcome, as long as you made the right decision. If you can't manage that, at least make it look to others as if that's where you are. Never let 'em see you sweat.

7.

You played a hand with, I think, A-Q, then immediately afterward asked me if I thought you played it right.

I will never discuss poker strategy or tactics at the table with you--or with anybody else, for that matter. (OK, "never" is too strong there. But it's almost never. And when there is a rare exception, it is sotto voce, when seated next to somebody I know and trust, not out loud for all to hear.) It's just plain bad for the game.

It is a bad mistake to clue in the recreational players that there are layers of depth to the game that they are not seeing. It is unwise to let them know who among their opponents are the most thoughtful and experienced and analytic. The fact that they can't figure that out from just watching hands is part of what makes them bad players. (You know the old saw about not being able to spot the fish at the table in the first 20 minutes.) It is self-defeating to let them listen in on discussions about how a hand could or should have been played.

I also don't want to be spotlighted at the table as a player whose advice you seek and value. That hangs a big sign around my neck telling the inattentive players that maybe they should watch out for me more than they had previously been inclined to do. That, in turn, may make them less willing to play hands against me, and therefore cost me money. It's bad form all around, and reduces both of our expected profits for the night.

Mike Caro again, page 261: "It's a very bad idea to discuss serious strategy with weak opponents--at the table or away from it. Doing so makes them self-conscious, and helps them recognize that there are levels of poker they don't understand. They are apt to play more cautiously as a result, and, worse, they may even learn to play well!"

8.

While sitting in Seat 1, at least one time you showed your cards to the dealer before mucking. The player in Seat 10 was still in the hand and saw them, though he didn't say anything about it. I know you didn't mean to show them to that other player, but you did. You might have influenced how the hand played out, because now that guy had information about what cards were out, information that was not available to his opponent(s).

It is generally really difficult to control exactly who can and cannot see your cards when trying to expose them selectively. It's just a bad idea.

Yet again, I have to ask: What possible gain is there from showing your cards to the dealer? He doesn't care what you had. If he is good at his job, he is not going to react and reward you with sympathy (which I assume is what you are seeking). He is going to act like he saw nothing. The best dealers, in fact, will turn their eyes away and refuse to look when a player is trying to share his cards that way, and explain that he doesn't want to take the chance of influencing the action by giving away anything with a reaction to what he is seeing.

This kind of action not only gives away to another player what you were willing to fold to his bet, but directly and adversely affects the integrity of the game. This was a serious breach of protocol. To be blunt, there is no excuse for it. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost.

Some general thoughts:

I like what John Vorhaus wrote in one of his columns: "They say that information is power; in poker, it's cash, just cash." Information is money. You should not give it away when you don't have to.

Even better is Tommy Angelo's extended discussion of poker as an "information war" (Elements of Poker, pages 86-92:

I play poker on a need to know basis. I need to know the thoughts my opponents are thinking. I need to know the feelings they are feeling. And I need to know the cards they are playing. Meanwhile, I need them to know as little as possible about me. I call this relationship the information war.

The information war is fought on two fronts--sending and receiving. To win it, send less information than they send, while receiving more information than they receive. By controlling those differences, you control information flow....

The information war at poker has an arms race, and if one were to take it to its natural extreme--which I have--one would play a style of poker I call "mum poker"--which I do.

On the outside, mum poker is the classic poker face, extended to the entire body, and maintained through sixth street. [Angelo coined the term "sixth street" to refer to everything that happens after one hand ends and before the next begins, most especially the players' discussion about what just happened.] On the inside, mum poker is no complaining, no blaming, no regretting. Mum poker is stillness. Mum poker is readiness....

Or you could just think of it as sit up and shut up.

Today, when I am playing primarily for profit, I play mum poker.... I do not speak unless spoken to, and even then, I do not react to questions or comments about poker.

I have found that the less information I send, the more I focus on the game. And when I am focused on the game, I send less information. When I employ mum poker, I fight on both fronts of the information war simultaneously....

Mum poker is not about not talking. It's about not talking about certain things, namely, poker things. Mum poker means not talking about poker plays, poker thoughts, and poker feelings, especially the recent ones. And it means not talking about poker players, especially the present ones.

Mum poker means not saying certain words and phrases when you play. Words like ace, king, queen, spade, heart, pair, straight, gutshot, river, etc. Mum poker also means not being a dickhead. If someone asks you if you like your food, answer. If someone asks you if you like your cards, don't answer. That's mum poker....

There's a big difference between ignoring the people and events in a poker game and not reacting to them. Ignoring is when you react on the inside, but not on the outside. Not reacting is when nothing happens, inside or out. Not reacting looks the same as ignoring, but it feels better....

Everything everyone does is a tell. What they wear is a tell. How they sit is a tell. What they say is a tell. What they don't say is a tell.... It's all a seamless trail of tells. And what do all these tells tell you? It depends. Tells might tell you about your opponent's thoughts. Tells might tell you about your opponent's feelings. Tells might tell you about your opponent's intentions. Tells might tell you what your opponent's hole cards are. It all depends on what you are doing. Are you listening? Or are you telling?

To the extent that there is identifiable motivation for why you do these things, I think it is chiefly that you very much want others at the table to respect you, to think that you're a good player. To that end, you try to show them that you understand the game more deeply than they do. But sooner or later you have to ask yourself what is really more important to you--controlling what nine strangers think of how you play poker, or maximizing your profit? Those two goals are mutually exclusive. You cannot give away information without giving away money. As it stands, you are giving away information on a nearly constant basis. That means that you are giving away money. I don't think you can afford it.

I have a serious suggestion for you, and for any of my readers who recognize similar problems in their own information wars. When you first read this, you'll think I'm just exaggerating to make a point, but I'm not. I'm deadly serious and completely literal in this suggestion: If you really want to plug these information leaks, you have to make your brain equate information and money in a very explicit and automatic way. I suggest that every time you catch yourself leaking information--showing a card that you didn't have to show, talking about strategy, criticizing how an opponent played, cursing about a bad beat, rehashing a hand that is long over, discussing your bankroll, telling people whether you're up or down for the day--punish yourself by giving the dealer a $5 chip as a tip. Giving away information is giving away money, and you've got to learn that association down to the deepest fibers of your being. The way to ingrain that lesson, I submit, is to make it hurt, and make the information=money connection explicit to yourself along with the pain.

I don't know whether any one piece of information that you give away is worth more or less than $5, and it really doesn't matter. What matters is that you come to grips with the fact that when you leak information, you are giving away your chips. It is literally true, whether you acknowledge it or not, so make it literally true and concrete for yourself. I predict that if you do that, it will not take long before you learn to keep your information to yourself--and all those red chips, too.

If your reaction is that you can't help yourself, that these things just happen, I will have to disagree. Suppose I offered to pay you $100,000 if you played poker for one hour without a single unnecessary information leak. Could you pull it off? Of course you could. These leaks are things you choose to do--every single one of them, every single time--and you could choose not to do them if you wanted to, if you had sufficient motivation. The question that remains is whether you will decide that making more money is sufficient motivation.

I hope you find these observations and suggestions helpful. I wish you success, my friend.

Seeing things at the Mirage

Friday evening I was at the Mirage, playing another poker session sitting next to Grange95, whom I get to like more each time I spend time with him. It was one of those poker sessions that generated a bunch of little observations and stories, none of which is worthy of a separate post in itself, but which I can string together as a hodge-podge post.

Actually, the stories begin while I was on my way to the Mirage.


Traffic

When driving to the mid-Strip from my downtown apartment, it's always hard to know whether it will be faster to take I-15 or Las Vegas Boulevard. It was close to rush hour, which tends to clog the interstate, so this time I decided to take the Strip directly.

At two consecutive intersections, the traffic lights were out. I don't know why they didn't go to their default mode of flashing red in all directions--maybe a power failure. The first intersection was the weird one near the Stratosphere, where both Main and St. Louis run into LVB. There, everybody was behaving civilly, stopping and taking turns as if there were stop signs all around. This is obviously both the safest and fairest way of handling the situation, but it requires everybody to cooperate.

At Sahara, the situation was completely different. The drivers going east and west had figured out that if they just kept going, they wouldn't run into any interference. There was a constant stream of cars heading east and west, and long backups north and south were forming. Northbound and southbound cars had to kind of wait for a little gap, then make a dash for it, often only creeping through one lane at a time and being left stranded in the middle. (For those who haven't been there, this is a very large, fast, and, when it's uncontrolled, scary intersection, with three lanes in all directions.)

I apparently got there quite early in the process of degeneration into lawlessness, because the backups weren't too bad yet. But I imagine that after a short while things got really hairy there. Of course, the retaliatory tendency will be strong; once there is any sort of break in the east-west traffic, the north-south people who were forced to sit for a long time will decide that it's their turn, and damn those east-west scumbags, I'm going to keep going. They set up their own stream that the east-westers will challenge at their peril.

The whole situation was terribly dangerous. Just in the couple of minutes it took me to get through, I witnessed several near misses, and when it came time for me to venture through the oncoming traffic, it felt about as unsafe as anything I've ever done in a car.

I have never seen such a thing happen before, and I found it kind of interesting from a sociological perspective. It's a real-world manifestation of a tit-for-tat strategy. If you come upon the St. Louis intersection, and all your fellow citizens are behaving rationally and politely, you're naturally inclined to cooperate and take your turn. But if you come upon the Sahara intersection, where it's every man for himself, you don't have much choice but to fight your way through it any way you can. If you try to stop and wait for your turn, when nobody is willing to let you have it, you'll sit there forever.

Life is all about game theory, I guess.


OK, on to the actual poker.


A bad-beat story

No, not one of my own--one I heard from somebody else. I heard it a couple of weeks ago at the Venetian, but forgot to write about it. I was reminded of it Friday night because of other bad-beat stories being told at the table, with Grange and me grousing about how irritating they are.

I'm told this happened many years ago at the Nevada Palace, which has since been renovated and is now the Eastside Cannery. The guy telling me this story said that he was playing straight seven-card stud. By fifth street he had a diamond royal flush. An opponent got a spade royal flush in the same hand. Naturally they capped the betting on every street. But when the hands were revealed, the guy discovered that the house rule was not that the hands were considered a tie for a chopped pot, but that the tie was broken by suits, in the same way as when cards are dealt for the dealer button or for the extra chip when coloring up in a tournament. Under that system, spades trump diamonds. In other words, he lost the hand while holding a royal flush.

Now, I don't have any actual confirmation that this really happened. But his manner of relating it I found to be reasonably convincing--and I'm a skeptical hard sell. I don't know whether it's true or false, but I felt inclined to believe him, even though the situation is astronomically unlikely. If I had to put my money one way or the other, I'd go with true.

And if it is indeed true, I have to admit that it pretty much puts all other bad-beat stories to shame.


Professor

So I'm in the small blind with the Qc-5c. Not a great hand, but nobody raised, so I decided to toss in the extra buck and see what developed. Flop was ace-high with two crubs (including the ace). Well, naturally I'm going to bet at that, since I know that the crubs are going to get there. I bet $7, which was about 2/3 or 3/4 of the pot size. A woman across the table, whom I had pegged as the weakest player there, raised to $15, just barely more than a minimum raise. It folded back around to me. With the second-nut flush draw, it was not difficult to decide to call.

Turn was a blank. I checked. She bet $10. Well, if she intended that to dissuade me, she didn't pick her bet size very thoughtfully. I called. River was the jack of crubs. I bet $35, which she paid off before showing her second-best A-K.

As you can see, she played her hand about as badly as could be--not raising before the flop, min-raising the flop, making a tiny bet on the turn, then paying off the river when she might have recognized that my line that looked an awful lot like a flush draw was, in fact, a flush draw.

Nothing too strange so far. But then one of the more experienced players at the table, sitting to this woman's left, launched into a little lesson for her about bet sizing, protecting her hand against draws, etc. He was right on the merits, of course, but completely wrong as to the meta-game. What does he gain from teaching the bad players how to play better? I suppose he gets some sense of self-satisfaction. He gets to feel superior. He also gets to feel magnanimous, that he is helping his fellow human being. But he is costing himself money. More to the point, he is costing me money. I want this woman to play A-K against me exactly the same way every time she gets it.

If she finds herself losing money at poker and wants to improve, there are countless resources she can turn to from which to learn. The poker table is not the place for tutorials. It's rude to presume that somebody wants to hear your opinion about optimal play when they haven't asked for it, and it's rude to educate the fish at the expense of everybody else. It's also self-defeating, which is why it's so hard for me to understand it.

It wasn't the only time. Once while Grange was off on a break, our self-appointed professor analyzed the hand just played by a couple of other people, explaining what each of them did wrong, thus giving her pointers on how to avoid those errors.

Geez, dude--smarten up, will ya? If you're not getting paid to teach somebody else at the table how to play, then, as Archie Bunker was fond of saying, "Stifle!" And if you are in a formal student-teacher relationship (which I'm sure was not the case here), I think it would be courteous to inform everybody else in the game of that status.


That's how to straddle

Our professor had a nice bit of luck come his way. He straddled for double the big blind, was dealt pocket sixes, flopped a set, rivered quads, and got raised all-in by somebody who had made a full house. I'm pretty sure I have never before seen a straddle turn into a high-hand jackpot. It was only $75, but still....


Half-bet rule

In a hand I wasn't in, there was an early-position raise to $15, followed by an all-in for $26, which got called in a couple of spots before action returned to the original raiser. He tried to move all in. Both Grange and I had already done the arithmetic mentally and realized that the all-in bet was too small to re-open the betting, so the original raiser would only have the options of calling or folding. I immediately pointed this out to the dealer.

The dealer, though, got confused. When the player asked why he couldn't reraise, the dealer said, "The all-in would have to be at least half the size of your raise." Well, it was! But that's not the rule. The so-called "half-bet rule" is applicable only in limit games. In no-limit games, an all-in bet is not considered a true raise unless it is at least the size of the bet or raise that preceded it. In this case, the original raise was an interval of $13 over the $2 big blind, so the betting would be re-opened only if the all-in amount were an additional $13 over that, or $28 total. It wasn't. The dealer ended up having to call the floor over to get it clarified.

I continue to be flabbergasted at how many professional dealers don't grasp this simple concept. It's not that complicated. But trying to enforce and/or explain the half-bet rule when such a situation arises in a no-limit game is astonishingly common. I haven't kept careful track, but I'd estimate that at least a third of dealers get it wrong. I'm dumbfounded by this, because it's a situation that must come up every day. How can they keep getting confused by the same question over and over and over again?


Ouch!

Somehow Grange and I ended up talking about cringeworthy things. I told him about having seen a video clip from a kickboxing match in which one guy's leg breaks in the middle of his shin in a truly horrific manner. I found the clip on YouTube. I'm not going to embed it; I want you to have to click through to see it. Warning: I'm not kidding, this is seriously painful to watch. It will make you squirm and cringe, and you will never forget it; it will be seared into your retinas forever, even though it's only a few seconds long. If, given that notice, you still want to watch it, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kzhFfLtp5U&NR=1. While looking for that, I came across another clip that is virtually identical in what happens, though it's a much more recent fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGJFOOncRMs. Same warnings apply.

Release the Grange!

This week on Poker After Dark the ads between segments have frequently been a shortened version of the trailer for the movie "Clash of the Titans," so I've seen it a couple dozen times now. (You can see the full-length version here.) At one point, a bearded man with a deathly serious tone commands, "Release the Kraken!" (If you don't know about kraken--pronounced cracken--see here.)

Grange's blog is titled CrAAKKer, because, as you can see from the stories he tells, a major part of his successful strategy is to identify nits who he knows will overplay their big pairs, call their raises with junky, sneaky little hands, and hit something with which to crack those aces and kings. This is not only profitable in and of itself, but often leads to the nits thereafter playing on Super Monkey Tilt. As he likes to say, hilarity ensues.

Anyway, his presence in town this week has done weird things to my mind. (That isn't too hard. It's pretty weird to begin with.) Every time I've heard, "Release the kraken!" I imagine the line actually being, "Release the CrAAKKer!" I envision a multi-armed and fearsomely toothed Grange being turned free from captivity to wreak havoc on the poker tables.

This amuses me far more than could be considered reasonable.


A non-poker blog

Before bidding Grange a fond farewell for this trip, I got to briefly meet his spousal unit, Chad, as well as Brian, a long-time friend of Chad's, and Brian's girlfriend. Grange mentioned my blog, which caused Brian to whip out a very cool business card with his blog name and information on it. I was instantly jealous. I want a Poker Grump business card! (I'm not sure what I would do if I had one, but that's not the point, is it?)

But for now the best I can do is provide a pointer to Brian's blog. It's a potpourri of whatever is on his mind, so tough to assign it to any particular subject or pigeonhole. But take a peek--maybe you'll like the way he thinks and writes: http://blosblahblahblog.blogspot.com/.


Those are some beads!

As I was leaving the Mirage, I saw this guy with the largest bead necklace I've ever seen. He graciously--even eagerly--consented to letting me take a picture of him.




Photo problem

By the way, this is as good a time as any to apologize for my pictures getting crappier over time. I have increasingly noticed that shots taken with my cell phone camera have been coming out pretty awful--light sources streaky, and objects appearing blurred no matter what I do. It has finally dawned on me that the problem is that the glass plate covering the camera lens has become hopelessly scratched up from being carried around unprotected in my fanny pack for a year and a half or so. I suppose this development is sufficiently foreseeable that a smarter guy would have done something to prevent it, but it didn't occur to me until the last few days, when it was obviously too late. So now I'm stuck with it, at least until I break down and get a new phone. Deals come along often enough that I suppose I will do so before terribly long. But until that happens, you and I both will have to put up with the photos looking terrible. Most of the "Guess the casino" pictures were taken in early 2009, when the phone was new, and are not so afflicted, but once in a while one of them is a more recent shot, as are, of course, most of the ones that I use to accompany some story from the tables.

Sorry about that.

Fish can learn

One occasionally hears people making a claim such as that fish are incapable of remembering anything for more than a few seconds. (This was put to good comic effect in the movie "Finding Nemo.") It's pretty implausible on its face--there would be such a strong survival advantage to having at least a rudimentary memory that it's hard to believe none would evolve. "Mythbusters" did a great segment in which they proved pretty conclusively that goldfish could learn to swim through an obstacle course more quickly over time in order to get to the food reward. So it's clear: fish can learn.

It's true at the poker table, too. Even the dumbest players can figure some things out, learn, and adjust to what you're doing--especially if you're stupid enough to give them the information they need to do so. Glenn at the Missing Flops blog witnessed such a learning moment during his New Year's weekend in Vegas, and has just put up an excellent cautionary tale about the experience here. Go listen.

Self-defeating behavior

I was just browsing through some recent posts on http://www.allvegaspoker.com/ when I found this comment from somebody who is looking forward to trying Harrah's new daily deep-stack tournament:

I love playing poker tourneys. I'm ok at them too, having even won a couple
and cashing at at least 1 every trip to Vegas.For me they are a way to make my
gambling budget spread longer. I am not a good cash games player, but I still
play....and I LOVE the slot machines too....though they always seem to rob me
blind! .... LOL.

As much as I would love to play the big Venetian or Wynn tourneys, to be
honest I am VERY intimidated to go into these rooms. I have played at both those
rooms before in the cash games and been berrated for cards I choose to play and
had people comment and laugh at the way I play and question my reasoning for
playing certain hands. It's very upsetting, my money, my cards, my
choices....BUT....I always end up leaving places like that wishing I never even
went in for some fun and relaxation.

I am looking forward to playing in this tourney when I stay at Harrahs on
my up and coming solo trip from the 26th September. Harrahs has always been a
welcoming place with staff that are second to none, the atmosphere is casual and
fun and not the least bit intimidating.....

(Ellipses in original.)

It is hard to express how pissed off this kind of thing makes me. I realize that complaining about the morons in poker who ridicule and scare away the recreational, inexperienced players is really old. I've done it myself a few times already (in fact, I have a label just for such posts when I remember to use it--which isn't always--here), and you can find such rants in plenty of other places.

But this crap still goes on. I feel a kind of moral obligation to denounce it at every opportunity, and invite and remind other serious poker players that we have to police ourselves against it. If you see or hear a weak player being shamed, scolded, or criticized for bad play, you owe it to yourself and to the entire poker community to do what you can to stop it. Don't contribute to the negative tone by responded harshly at the table, but do something. Get the dealer or floor to enforce the poker room's policy against treating other players with disrespect, or pull the offender aside and remind him or her that the less experienced players are the source of money in the poker economy, and they are to be gently, lovingly nurtured, rather than stomped on and chased away.

Also, talk to the offended player. Tell him or her something like, "Don't pay any attention to him. He's just mad because he lost. You did just fine."

As I quoted Mike Caro recently,

Chastising opponents for playing bad is stupid. In fact, in every case ever
recorded in the history of poker, it's a whole lot more stupid than the play
being chastised.

A few pages earlier in Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice, Caro tells us how he handles bad players (pp. 261-2):

When you boast about the pots won by weak players with horrible hands, you
feed their ego. They may try to live up to their "legend" statures, especially
since you have praised them, rather than criticized them, for their weak play.

For example, "I wish I could play like Harvey! That guy can take 10-9 and
win the biggest pots! He knows exactly when to do it. It's not what you play,
it's how you play." Then look Harvey directly in the eyes, and say sincerely, "I
really mean it. I've seen you do it so many times. It's a joy to watch."

Say stuff like that and learn to mean it and your rewards will be much
greater than if you make Harvey uncomfortable about occasionally winning with
weak hands. You want to encourage his poor play, not discourage it.

Similarly, on pp. 146-147 he advises,

Instead of criticizing a hand that beats me, which is a mistake some pros
make, I often say, "Wow! I didn't think you had that. Believe it or not, I won
twice with that same hand yesterday. I don't always play it, but I'm surprised
it's winning so often. Maybe it's the hand of the month!" Laugh and have fun.
Think about how different this attitude is from one that makes your opponents
uncomfortable about playing poorly. When you ridicule opponents for poor play,
they play better in the future, because they don't want to suffer that same
ridicule again. So, what have you accomplished?

Also, think about how many extra weak calls you might win from this
opponent in the future, just because you've shown you won't be critical of bad
play and simply because he likes you!

That's right! Opponents will give you extra calls with borderline hands
simpy because they like you! But this will only happen if they also think that
you are not painful to lose to and that you gamble, too.

It seems ridiculous to have to point this stuff out, it's so obvious. But this criticism of bad players goes on all the freakin' time, and it takes money out of my pocket every time it happens. It takes money out of the pockets of those doing the ridiculing, too, but apparently they're too stupid to see that, or the sick pleasure they get out of verbally beating up on another player is worth more to them than the money they're losing.

I'll admit that I haven't reached a Caro-like ability to rejoice in being beaten by a combination of bad play and bad luck. I can't sound genuine congratulating somebody on pulling off a horrible suckout against me. But (1) I do manage to maintain a diplomatic silence, and (2) when I'm not the victim, I can throw in a supportive and sincere-sounding "Nice hand" or "Well played" to the lucky fish, thus trying to do my part to keep him or her in the game and playing exactly the same way in the future.

If I ran a poker room, berating another player for playing badly would be grounds for immediate expulsion from the room--no warnings, no second chances, no excuses. People are trainable; they can conform their behavior to what is required of them. If it becomes known that this penalty is swifly and uniformly enforced, players will behave themselves. As I wrote last year, even Phil Hellmuth proved that he can contain his venom when it has been made clear to him that the consequences of failure to do so will be real.

It falls on all of us who care about keeping the poker economy healthy and full of fish and new money coming in to be vigilant at stomping out the sort of behavior described in the AVP post. Yes, it's uncomfortable, but it's necessary. The few bad actors who scare away the weakest players seriously hurt us all, and we have to be diligent at making such detrimental conduct not tolerated for one second, anywhere, anytime, for any reason.

Paradox

It's not arrogance that causes me to think that I'm usually the best player at the table; it's just that it really doesn't take much to be the best at a typical Vegas casino $1-2 NLHE game. Commonly I find that there is one other player that is of comparable skill level. I spend very little time and mental energy trying to make the fine distinction as to whether it is he (or she) who is slightly the better player, or I. It simply doesn't matter much. If somebody is in my general range of experience, I pretty much know what to expect, and that's all that matters.

Maybe once every couple of weeks I run into somebody that is good enough that it makes me feel pretty sure that I'm outgunned. These are the players that have moves that are not in my repertoire. These are the ones that have an uncanny sense of timing, of where they are in every hand, and a degree of cagey fearlessness that I can envy but not yet emulate. Frankly, there aren't too many of them, because most that are substantially beyond my ability will have moved up to bigger games than $1-2.

Last night at the MGM Grand I had one of this class at my table, two seats to my left (I was in 1, he was in 3). I had him spotted within the first two hands. He was always deliberate, taking an almost unnerving amount of time to make the big decisions. He was contemplative. He was the very model of selective aggression, a nearly perfect raise-or-fold player except when he was deliberately trapping. He responded to feeble attempts to play back at him with crushing return pressure that nearly always caused the opponent to cower off. He gave off no tells. He never spoke during a hand, letting his chips do the talking instead. He never showed his cards unless required. I never once saw him get his money in with the worst of it. He was seriously good in every way.

Except one.

After every hand in which he was a participant, he would launch into a verbal post-mortem with the few players near him. This was quiet enough that those at the far end probably couldn't hear, but clear enough that it couldn't be missed by anybody within a couple of seats of him. He would explain in detail what he thought the opponent(s) had and why, how his assessment of their possible range started and how it changed with the additional information each new board card and betting round provided, etc. It was, every time, a sharp, canny, accurate, insightful analysis.

It was also incredibly moronic.

Except for the two of us, the skill level at this table was quite low. It was, I think, overall the weakest table I've played in at the MGM, and it was, frankly, quite easy pickings. So what possible effects could the Professor's lessons have?

-- Alert the brain-dead players that there are whole levels of analytic skill to which they have not had their eyes opened before.

-- Signal these same players that Seat 3 is occupied by a person who has access to some of these higher levels of thinking.

-- Make these players conclude, "Gee, I'd better be more careful and try not to make any stupid mistakes, or I'll get eaten alive at this table."

-- Clue these players in to things like what bet sizes suggested about opponents' holdings, or what factors to consider when deciding whether to value-bet versus check behind on the river--things that they may not have considered before.

Possibly the worst possible outcome is one that I think actually occurred: chasing away a bad player. After I had been there not very long, the fishiest of fish sat down in Seat 2. He was terribad, stupibad. He barely knew how to tell when it was his turn. He was completely transparent when he was not being indecipherably stupid. He burned through his first buy-in within just a few hands, and rebought, to my great delight.

On the hand that I think was the last straw for him, the fish bet weakly the whole way. Smart player called him down, making the nut flush on the river. However, that card also paired the trey from the flop. Professor then delved into the lecture, explaining to the guy on his left (but perfectly audible to the idiot in 2) why he couldn't raise there, because he didn't think Seat 2 would have been betting a lower flush draw that way, so the only hand that would call a raise would be a set that had filled up on the river. In fact, Seat 2 had shown just two pair--pocket 9s plus the paired treys on the board--and there had been an ace and a king on the flop. His plan had apparently been to just hope that a series of small bets would win it for him, with likely no thought about what his opponent might have.

Anyway, the post-hoc analysis implied pretty clearly (without being overtly insulting or name-calling) that Seat 2 had badly misplayed the hand. This was true enough, but what on God's green earth is accomplished by making this even more obvious than it already was? I tried not to look to my left to add to the guy's social discomfort, but in my peripheral vision I got the sense that he was squirming from deep embarrassment, probably induced by a combination of knowing that he was in a game that was over his head and having that fact pointed out to everybody within easy earshot.

I got up for a restroom break, and when I returned, the fish was gone. I have no idea what, if anything, he said when he left, whether he lost the rest of his chips on a hand that I missed or just cashed out what he had remaining. Either way, it was a serious blow to the profitability of the table. The most likely conclusion, it seems to me, is that his desire to play had been completely crushed by his mortification at being tagged as a bad player and an unworthy opponent.

Maybe he went to play limit instead of no-limit. Maybe he went to the craps tables instead. Maybe he went back to his hotel room, and will now spend the rest of his long-planned weekend in Vegas, and the rest of his bankroll, on strip clubs and hookers instead of on the poker that he had been looking forward to. If so, it is a loss to the poker economy.

So now it's 18 hours later, and I'm left still utterly baffled by the seat 3 Professor. How is it possible simultaneously to be so damn smart at the game, and so damn dumb at the metagame?

Poker gems, #50

Nick Brancato, in "Don't Tap the Tank," Bluff magazine, November, 2007, p. 116.

Don't tap the tank and scare away the fish. Take care of them, feed them, and change their water. Remember: Good players stack bad players, but great players get bad players to reload.

"You called a raise with that?"

An ever-amazing number of people who play poker just have no concept of the game beyond what some introductory book told them about how to play, yet think they have it all mastered.

Venetian today. I'm on the button with 4-6 of diamonds. The guy on my right raises to $10. I call, as do two other people who had limped in ahead of the raiser.

The flop is 9-6-4, giving me bottom two pair. A young bald guy (YBG) in early position checks, the original raiser bets $10, and I pop it up to $30. YBG calls, everyone else is out.

The turn card is another beautiful 6, giving me a full house. YBG checks. I check behind him, trying to act weak, and hoping that he will catch a card on the river that will give him a flush, a straight, two pair, or something else with which he will be willing to put a lot of money into the pot--especially if this check on the turn convinces him that I was just bluff-raising with position on the flop.

River card is a queen. I didn't know it at the time, but YBG just made top two pair, with his Q-9. He checks, and I have to assume he was planning to check-raise me. I decided to put in a large bet, because a large bet on the river after checking the turn is a very common pattern for somebody who is weak (e.g., made just one pair on the flop, or was on a draw that missed) and is trying to steal the pot at the end, which is what I wanted him to think. I suspect that the size of the bet changed his mind about the check-raise, because he thought for a while, then just called. When he saw my hand, and the dealer said, "Sixes full," he flung his cards in face up, turned to the guy next to him, and gave him a look that said, basically, "Can you believe that idiot?"

I stacked up the chips, but as I was doing so, I was keenly aware that YBG was staring at me from the other end of the table. Finally he said, "You called $10 with 4-6, huh?" I just smiled sheepishly and nodded. He shook his head. A couple of hands later he left the table and didn't come back.

This is much the same attitude that I discussed recently after winning a big pot with a 4-5, with which I raised before the flop: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/something-that-is-not-against-rules-for.html.

Let me try to explain it another way. There are two kinds of players who will call a raise in a no-limit hold'em hand with a 4-6: Beginners, to whom any two cards look like they have good potential, and moderately advanced (or truly advanced) players who recognize that there really is potential for big payback with such hands. I'm not comparing myself to the pros who play for tens of thousands of dollars per pot, but you'll see the best players in the world put themselves in situations like this all the time on shows such as GSN's "High Stakes Poker."

I could even quote the godfather of poker, Doyle Brunson. In fact, I think I will (Super System 2, p. 617):

I always make exceptions when I'm in position, even with the trash hands. For
example, if I were on the button with a hand like A-8 offsuit, I might call a
raise before the flop if enough people, say four, were in the pot in front of me
and I didn't think there'd be any more raises. I might call a small raise and
take a flop with a trash hand because it's a good percentage play. I'd be trying
to make a full [house], trips, or two pair. But if I don't get a real good flop
to the hand, I'll throw it away. I won't get involved and burn up a bunch of
money with one of those trash hands. I'm not going to call any bets on the flop.
I'll be raising or I'll be gone.

And therein lie the differences between the novice and the expert (or, in my case, at least the reasonably well informed intermediate player) calling a raise with something like a 4-6: (1) recognizing the combination of circumstances (especially position) in which there is enough potential for occasional big profit to be worth taking a shot with a low-percentage hand, and (2) being smart enough to get away from it if it doesn't produce a very strong hand.

In this case, as with my previous story, I had been playing tight and showing down mostly premium hands, so I knew that if this 4-6 connected with the flop in a significant way, opponents would assume I was playing big cards and had missed. I suspect that that's exactly what happened here.

But I don't really need to justify my play here. Maybe I'm overrating myself, and it was objectively a complete donkey move that no expert would make, and I just got ridiculously lucky. Suppose that's the case, and YBG is a much better player than me and sees that I'm a bonehead that caught a miracle. What does he accomplish by the snide little comment? It seems to me that he should want to be at a table where there are idiots playing any two random cards, who are relying on luck to save their sorry butts from ruin. Those are just the kind of opponents that make poker profitable for the better players.

The only things that he can accomplish with that little shot of nastiness are all bad--or should be, from his point of view: (1) He makes a fishy player feel bad and leave the game, taking the money with him, probably to be replaced by somebody from whom it will be harder to win chips. (2) He makes the stupid player start thinking more critically about his play, and maybe get better and harder to beat. (3) He sours the mood at the previously light, enjoyable table. (4) He shows himself to be a bad loser. (5) As I think is the case here, if he's really not as advanced a poker theoretician as he fancies himself to be, he risks revealing to more skilled players that he's pretty limited in how he thinks about the game.

And incidentally, YGB, in case you're reading this, Q-9 isn't exactly a premium hand either, ya know, especially to be trying to play against a pre-flop raiser from out of position. Unless, of course, you're so skilled that you can outplay opponents even after spotting them both the likely better hand and position. Which I kinda doubt, in your case.

Annie Duke isn't one of my favorite professionals (I think she's generally overrated, has a track record of unethical behavior at the table, and from what I gather of her personal life, well, I'm not certain I'd want her as a friend). But she does tend to write effective columns in Bluff magazine, and recently she addressed this very subject in a piece I'd highly recommend reading, if you've been in the habit--even occasionally--of openly critiquing other people's play the way YBG did today. I especially like the revealing story of her own unpleasant history in this regard, in the last three paragraphs: http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazine/2007/03/2007_03_72.asp

Lee Jones made the same point perhaps even more forcefully in a column in Card Player magazine: http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/41/9511

YBG, I sincerely hope to see you at the table again, now that you've shown me that you have blinders on as to what constitutes smart play--and especially now that I'll have you scared that as a stupid, fishy, luckbox, I might be playing any two cards against you in any situation. Heh heh heh!

Something that is NOT against the rules, for a change

If you've played poker more than once or twice at the Las Vegas Hilton, you've probably run into Annie, a 59-year-old (which I know because it was her birthday last week, and she was telling everybody) Asian woman who practically lives there. She's too much of a character to fit into one blog post, so for now I'll limit my observations to this: If you beat her for a large pot because you played a superior hand well, she's a pretty good sport about losing. If you suck out on her with a worse hand, there will be hell to pay. And if you beat her by being tricky and non-straightforward, she will take it personally, and decide that you're scum unworthy of the game of poker. Aces and kings and queens deserve to win; if you win with junk hands, you're a disgrace, as Annie sees it.

I should note that Annie has actually been kind to me the vast majority of the time. She has some sort of clothing business, and once gave me a nice silk shirt and a silk sofa pillow, for no apparent reason. She engages in friendly chat, asks about my life, tells me about things going on in hers, etc. When there's an especially bad player at the table, sometimes we engage in quiet conspiratorial whisperings about that fact. As far as I can tell, Annie is a genuinely decent person--she just has this prominent flaw of being incredibly judgmental and rigid about how poker should be played.

I'm mostly a classic tight-aggressive player. Probably nine out of ten times that I put in a pre-flop raise, I have the predictable range of hole cards: big or medium pairs, big but unpaired cards, suited connectors. But about one time in ten I try to throw in an oddball, to keep people guessing about me: 4-2, 6-9, K-3, or whatever. When those hands hit, they are not only extremely difficult for opponents to guess that I have, but everybody watching me make such a play will remember the unorthodoxy of it, and as a result have less confidence in future situations that they can put me on a narrow, predictable range of hands.

For example, a few weeks ago I raised with an unsuited 8-9 and had one caller (Cy--a very nice guy, and better-than-average player). The flop was 5-6-7, giving me the nuts. I bet. Cy, who knows my style of play pretty well, raised. I never saw his hole cards, but he didn't need to have anything to raise me here. All he needs to know is that usually this kind of flop won't have helped my most likely holdings (such as A-K or A-J), and that therefore my bet is really a bluff and I'll have to fold to a raise. It was a smart play on his part, even if he had nothing at all. It would usually have worked. But in this instance, I had something he couldn't reasonably suspect. I re-raised and took the pot without further contest. (I think he knows me well enough to understand that I'm very unlikely to put in that re-raise without having the goods to back it up.)

Anyway, after playing for a while this afternoon, I thought too many of my raises had been with the expected hands, and it was time to throw a curve ball, so I put in a pre-flop raise with a 4-5 offsuit, from middle position. Annie was the only caller, in the big blind. As it turned out, she had a suited A-8.

The flop was 8-6-3, giving Annie top pair/top kicker, and giving me an open-ended straight draw. She checked, then called my bet. The turn card was a 2, completing my nut straight. Now I was confident that I had her, so my thoughts turned to how to get all of her chips. (I thought she probably had an overpair--9s or 10s or jacks--which was wrong, but wrong in a way that didn't matter.) She checked again, and I bet about half of her stack, figuring that if she called that bet, she'd be pot-committed and put in the rest on the river no matter what came. She called.

The river was probably the worst possible card for her: a third 8. She clearly thought this was Yahtzee for her, and moved all-in. I called and won.

It took her a few seconds to put the pieces together retrospectively and figure out what I had done, but then the torrent was unleashed: "You raised before the flop with 4-5???" That's where the tirade started. I won't try to quote the whole speech, but among other things she invoked a curse on my immortal soul. Let's just say that Annie most definitely does not approve of non-standard plays of that nature--especially when they end up with her losing her entire stack of chips.

Well, Annie, you sweet, crazy lady, I know there's not a chance in hell you'll read this, but I'll say it anyway: It's neither against the rules nor unethical to put in a pre-flop raise with a crappy little 4-5 offsuit. Yes, it's unorthodox, but that's the whole reason for it. Poker is a game of deception. Since I know you'll think I most likely have something like A-K or A-Q when I raise, doing it when actually holding 4-5 is deceptive. It's allowed. In fact, practicing occasional deception of exactly that sort is encouraged by every poker strategist I've ever read. And the reason, obviously, is precisely because of the kind of two-fold effect I achieved today. First, you were completely blindsided by the straight. Second, from this day forward, any time the board makes something like 4-5 a very strong potential holding, you'll have to wonder whether that's what I have again, when I actually have A-K and got no help from the community cards. It will make it easier to bluff successfully in such a spot, and/or you'll play your hand less aggressively than you should because you're afraid that I'm pulling another stunt like today's. That's exactly what I hoped to accomplish, on both counts.

So spare me your self-righteous moralizing about correct play, as if you are the Moses of poker, entrusted with stone tablets engraved by the finger of God, declaring which starting hands are worthy of a raise and which ones aren't. Nothing in poker is that cut and dried. (What a boring game it would be if it were!) It appeared to me--and I'm really not vain about this sort of thing so as to imagine it--that everybody at the table, except for you, admired my play and the outcome, and was laughing at you during your rant, because you weren't able to just say, "Nice hand," let it go, and move on. With your "there's only one right way to play" speech, you were the loser today, in ways more fundamental than who was stacking up the chips, and who had to re-buy.

Are you SURE you've got the nuts?

I was at Fitzgerald's casino downtown (a really pathetic place for poker, by the way), playing a little $3-6 limit hold'em at about 3:00 a.m. a few days back. It's four-handed, because this last game running is close to shutting down.

At the other end of the table is a mediocre player who thinks he's got it all figured out. Next to him is somebody who is clearly very, very new to the game (can't keep straight when the bet is $3 and when it's $6, etc.). So the first guy is just reveling in the joy of being able to instruct the newbie. In the process, though, he reveals how little he himself understands of the game.

At one point, our Professor has A-x of clubs. The flop is all clubs (with no straight flush possible), followed on the turn and river by the two red 7s. I'm out of the hand early, but the newbie calls him down all the way with basically nothing. Professor proudly slams down his hole cards, and says, "I've got the nuts!"

Usually I just roll my eyes and let this sort of thing go. But tonight was different. Maybe he got under my skin with his constant attempts to show the newbie how much he knew. (I'm not opposed to helping somebody new if they need and want the advice. But this was sort of like a third-grader helping a first-grader--not exactly world-class instruction.) Maybe it was because there was only one other player there, so not a lot of potential for a big, table-wide, multi-way argument to ensue. Maybe it was just way too late at night. But for whatever reason, I decided to speak up.

"How is that the nuts?" I asked.

He looked at the board again, apparently having not considered the implications of the paired turn and river cards.

"OK, well, it's the nuts unless somebody hit quads," he conceded.

I pressed on. "What about a full house?"

He shot back, "There's no full house possible there!"

I then proceded to rattle off the 6 different combinations of hole cards that would give somebody a full house, and concluded, "So there are 7 different hands that have you beat, and you think you have the nuts?"

He still defended himself: "Well, I had the nuts on the flop!"

Well, yes, you did. I'll grant you that. But you didn't have the nuts at the point that you declared yourself to have the nuts, you ignoramus.

If I were a better person, I wouldn't take pleasure in what happened next. But I'm me, so I did. On the very next hand, I had pocket 10s, and the other two 10s came on the turn and river. The new player called my bets all the way. Before I showed my hand, I asked the Professor, "So what would be the nuts here?" He quickly replied, "Quad 10s." I said, "I'm glad you're learning," and turned them over.

Folks, if you're not 100% sure what the best possible hand is, with a given set of cards on the board, don't declare yourself to have "the nuts." It's just a set-up for embarrassment. Personally, when I do have the nuts, I find it much more satisfying, generally, not to announce that fact. I just flip over the cards, and inevitably another player will say something like, "That's the nuts--nice hand." And I try to return that favor when I see that another player has it. It's uncommon enough to have the best possible hand that I think it's nice to give/receive compliments to/from other players than to pat onesself on the back. After all, it's not like you actually accomplished something difficult--you just got lucky.

"The Annoying Bastard"

An article in the November issue of "Bluff" (which I think is the most entertaining poker magazine out there; for hard-core strategy, nothing beats "Card Player," but for lighter fare, "Bluff" is my favorite) is about the varieties of players who chat at the table. For today's grump, I can do no better than to quote verbatim their description of "The Annoying Bastard" (p. 77):

This guy (or girl) talks because he must, the same way sharks have to keep
swimming to live. The patter is generally an unending stream of mundane
nonsense--the equivalent of someone asking "Hot enough for ya?" seven hundred
times in a row.

Of course, babbling about the buffet or the dry heat is one thing; heaven
forbid he starts trying to school you at poker. After he busts your set with a
miracle straight on the river, he'll take pains to educate you on how to
calculate outs, odds, and pot equity until you're ready to stuff a copy of
Brunson's Super System down his gullet and put him on a plane back to
Des Moines.

Recommendation: You can't win with an Annoying Bastard, and you
can't go over the top on him. He's why god made iPods. Screen him out, then bust
him out.

Abso-freakin-lutely.

However, another alternative for the inveterate table-teacher is one I've come to use more frequently of late. I ask, "Are the lessons free, or do we have to pay extra for them?" (This has a bit more bite if it's addressed to the dealer, while pointing in the general direction of the self-appointed professor, than if addressed directly to the offender. It sounds a bit more like a sincere question.*) The jerk usually can't resist the bait, and will say something like, "No, they're free." This set-up is such a softball that I should be ashamed to swing at it, but I like to follow that up with, "Oh, good--because they're worth what we're paying for them."

It really does seem to stem the flow of "lessons."


*My apologies to any dealers who have been put into an awkward position by involving them in this way, but in general I think they share my combination of amusement and annoyance at the "expert," and haven't minded the rhetorical question.