Lying about your hand

"Did you know that it's OK to lie about your hand, but you're not allowed to tell the truth about it?"

I heard that from a woman at the table yesterday at the Flamingo. It's not the first time that I've heard somebody make such an assertion. Most famously, Annie Duke said essentially the same thing during one of the 2006 World Series of Poker episodes. I suspect that the 700 million re-broadcasts of the series are ultimately the source by which most players "know" this rule.

But it's not true. The fact that so many people hear this and instantly believe it is just one tiny manifestation of the general societal problem that most people have precious little training or experience in critical thinking.* Even if I weren't pretty well attuned to the subject of poker rules, just an overall skepticism about accepting as fact things that people say would have caused me to raise a quizzical eyebrow at Ms. Duke's claim. I would immediately think, "Can that really be true? If so, it doesn't make any sense at all."

Let me address this under three headings: (1) Why the "rule" as stated would be stupid and pointless, (2) What the rule actually is, and (3) What I think the rule should be.

The alleged rule would be stupid and pointless

Suppose for a moment that there really were a rule that said that you could say any lie you wanted to about your hand, but couldn't tell the truth about what you were holding. Two prominent poker columnists have recently addressed this in detail, apparently both believing that there actually is just such a rule. They both do a nice job of explaining why it's ridiculous.

First is Steve Zolotow, writing for Card Player magazine (http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/57/10074):

Someone in the main event told the truth about his hand, saying, "I have a king." His opponent folded, but he received a one-round penalty for telling the truth. Obviously, he should have said, "I don't have a king," then paused and added, "but there is a penalty for telling the truth." Thus, he could have conveyed the same information by lying about his hand. As long as we know that our opponent must be lying, we can assume the opposite is the truth. Unless players are allowed to use some mix of truth and lies, they effectively are telling the truth.

Next up is Mike Caro, who calls this "the idiot rule," because it prevents people from disclosing whatever they want about their cards only if both players are idiots (http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/viewarticle.php?id=2351):

But the worst rule in poker states that you can't tell the truth about your hand. For instance, you can't say, "I have three aces," if you actually do. That sucks. It sucks because, by rule, anything I say must be a lie to be legal. So, if I say I have a full house, opponents are given information. They know I can't have a full house or I'd be in violation of the idiot rule. So, I guess, if I wanted to tell someone I had aces full, I'd have to say something like, "One thing I can say positively is that I don't have aces full." If I said that and didn't have aces full, I'd be telling the truth and in clear violation of the idiot rule. For that reason, astute opponents would know that I'm lying--which is legal--and that I absolutely do have aces-full.

Exactly so. A rule requiring that everything you say about your hand must be a lie would be (1) unenforceable (because not every hand gets opened to check to see if the player was telling the truth or not) and, (2) completely ineffective. In fact, paradoxically, the more rigorously it was enforced, the less effective it would become at the presumed goal of preventing collusion.

That ain't really the rule

Fortunately, nobody has yet, to the best of my knowledge, actually been stupid enough to implement the "rule" that Zolotow and Caro rail against. I'm really quite surprised that both of these columnists took the trouble to publish a critique of a rule that doesn't exist.

So where does this poker urban legend come from? As far as I can tell, the source is this language in the World Series of Poker rules (http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/pdfs/wsop.tournament-rules.07.pdf):

52. Players are obligated to protect the other players in the tournament at all times. Therefore, whether in a hand or not, players may not a.) disclose contents of live or folded hands....

Notice that it doesn't say anything at all about "truth" or "lies." It forbids one to "disclose" the contents of one's hand. The number of ways that one can "disclose" one's holdings are limited only by the imagination. You could show your cards. You could just say what you have. You could tap it out with your feet in morse code. You could send smoke signals (well, except that they've banned smoking at the table now). You could let an opponent keep guessing, shaking your head "no" when he's wrong and nodding "yes" when he's right until he's got it, thus never speaking a word. Maybe if you have a touch of Marcel Marceau's spirit in you, you could pantomime it. It doesn't matter--they're all equally prohibited.

The implication is that you also can't "disclose" your hand by invoking a logical game such as Zolotow and Caro propose: "I do not have XYZ, but you know that I have to be lying about that." As they note, that is the functional equivalent of straightforwardly stating exactly what you have. Both are prohibited under the actual wording of the rule in question, because both are just two of the myriad methods by which one might "disclose" one's hand.

Let me repeat: There is no currently published rule anywhere that says or implies that you can lie about your hand but not tell the truth about it.

Let's look at some other common sources for poker rules, for the sake of completeness.

The Tournament Directors Association rule 12 is nearly identical to, and the probable source of, the WSOP rule:

Players are obligated to protect the other players in the tournament at
all times. Therefore, players, whether in the hand or not, may not: 1. Disclose contents of live or folded hands....

Next is Bob Ciaffone's "Robert's Rules of Poker" (http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/poker/chapter1.php):

The following actions are improper, and grounds for warning, suspending, or barring a violator:

...Revealing the contents of a live hand in a multihanded pot before the betting is complete. Do not divulge the contents of a hand during a deal even to someone not in the pot, so you do not leave any possibility of the information being transmitted to an active player.

Cooke's Rules of Real Poker--for my money the best single rulebook yet--says this (p. 71, rule 10.20):

A player shall not intentionally expose a card or reveal it verbally in order to induce or inhibit action. However, in head's up matches (where only two players are dealt in) revealing a card shall be permitted.

I'm not sure if this is intended to cover literally only games where there are only two people playing the whole time, or if it is intended to extend to full ring games, when only two players are contesting the pot.

Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky, in their book The Rules of Poker: Essentials for Every Game, go even further, and would disallow such disclosures even when heads-up (p. 79, rule 3.9):

Intentionally exposing a card to induce or inhibit action is a serious breach of poker ethics, and in certain instances can be considered a form of collusion. It is never permitted.

Notice that not even one of these sources says even a single word about lying versus telling the truth. So the next time you hear somebody make such a claim, ask him or her to point you to the actual source where the alleged rule is written. It's a safe bet that the speaker will be unable to do so.

What should the rule be?

Let's talk about cash games first.

The overarching reason for any no-disclosure rule is to protect other players. For example, perhaps a player has moved all-in ahead of me before the flop and I have pocket kings. I move all-in, too, and show my cards before other people have had a chance to act, because I would really prefer to have to beat only the guy who is already all-in; large pocket pairs don't play well against, say, five or six opponents, so my action is intended to scare off opponents. But the person who first moved all-in may have something like suited 9-10, which plays much better, in terms of risk:reward ratio, when there are several players in the hand (because the payoff for hitting a straight or flush is potentially enormous). Obviously, the same reasoning applies to saying "I have two kings, so the rest of you should fold," even though the verbal disclosure leaves more doubt about the speaker's truthfulness than does showing the cards.

What about less specific disclosures, such as "I have a really big hand here"? I would outlaw them, too, on the slippery-slope argument. If you write the rule so that it only prohibits stating exactly what your cards are, then presumably it would be acceptable to say something like "I have a pocket pair bigger than queens." That comes so close to what is prohibited that the rule ceases to be useful. So I would move the dividing line all the way down to zero: you can't say anything that suggests--truthfully or not--the strength of your hand. I would also prohibit statements that come in the form of "I might have...," which is a common ploy of some players.

When there are only two players contesting the pot, however, a player disclosing his hand cannot do any harm to anybody except himself, and since I don't believe in protecting people from their own mistakes and/or stupidity, I'd allow it. There are times when revealing one or more cards can work to one's advantage in confusing or deceiving an opponent. Consider this absolutely brilliant ploy by Daniel Negreanu, where he combines showing one card, a statement about what the other one might be, and a scary-looking minimum raise, to get Sam Farha to fold a better hand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d33K96MGzVA. It's an ingenius trick, one of the slyest bits of deception I've ever seen deployed at a poker table.

I was on the bad end of another skillful bit of deceptive revealing by an opponent a couple of months ago. I started with a strong hand (can't remember exactly what it was), but hated seeing three hearts on the flop, when I had none. The turn brought a fourth heart to the board. I bet, my tricky opponent took a long time to decide what to do. While thinking, he turned over the 7 of hearts. He finally called. The river was a blank. I decided that with just a 7-high flush, he must be worried that I had a higher flush, so I moved all-in. He insta-called with the look on his face of the cat that caught the canary (as, indeed, he had). His other card was the king of hearts. He had flopped the king-high flush, and his showing the lower card tricked me into thinking exactly what he wanted me to think: that he just had a low flush and was in a difficult spot, when really he had the second nuts. Well played, sir--you lured me in perfectly.

That kind of clever psychological gambit should absolutely be part of the game, as long as only two players are involved. So showing one or both hole cards, or announcing or hinting at your hand--honestly or dishonestly--is fine by me.

What about in tournaments? The same considerations hold for multi-way pots, but there's an added wrinkle in tournaments that makes the picture less clear for heads-up situations. That relates to the concept of "tournament equity." This isn't the place for detailed analysis, but basically, depending on the payout schedule, late in a tournament, how one player acts in a hand can dramatically affect the amount of money that other players--even those not involved in the current hand--can expect to win. This is at the heart of an interesting debate between Lee Jones and Daniel Negreanu, at http://www.biggerdeal.com/2007/10/05/daniel%e2%80%99s-wrong-i%e2%80%99m-10000-sure/. Be sure to read the comments, too. (One of the commenters is me. I'll let people guess which one.)

I don't know the optimal way to balance the advantages of allowing the kind of Negreanu-esque ploy, which has traditionally been an integral part of the game, against preventing injury to uninvolved players' tournament equity. Perhaps starting the ban on disclosing one's hand, even when only two people are in the pot, when the money is reached, or a few places before the money, or at the final table, would strike the best balance. Of course, even if it works that way, when it gets down to the final two contestants, the rule serves no purpose and could be taken out of effect again.

Back to the start

But all of that is mostly irrelevant to where I started this discussion. I began with griping about how so many players just hear somebody say what a poker rule is, and accept that as the gospel truth, without looking it up anywhere, without thinking very hard about whether the alleged rule makes any sense or not, etc. To compound the problem, these people then repeat it to others, spreading the disinformation. It makes me crazy. It's not that hard to find out what the rules really are.

So when you hear somebody claim that there's a poker rule that says ________, and you've never heard it before, ask for evidence. Hold the thought in suspension until you can verify it. Don't pass it on as it it's the revealed word of God.

And for Pete's sake, don't talk about your hand!


*I risk going off on a full-tilt tangent here, because this is one of my biggest all-time sources of frustration and dismay about the world. In fact, if I had the magical power to cure just one ill of humankind, I think it would be the lack of critical thinking. I would make every person on the planet instantly inclined to critical thinking, and skilled at it. This would immediately solve countless woes, from the relatively trivial (people wasting their money on pills that the sellers promise will cause miraculous weight loss, enlarge male genitalia, or make the user irresitible to the opposite sex) to the truly world-changing (people being led to believe that if they fly a commercial jet into a skyscraper they will be rewarded with a bevy of virgins in heaven). So don't get me started.


Addendum, December 7, 2007

I emailed Mr. Caro to tell him of my disagreement with the premise of his column (Mr. Zolotow doesn't have a published email address). He responded quickly, for which I am grateful. With his consent, I'll share his comment:

About the issue on “can’t tell the truth.” I know that rule is in existence. It only applies to tournaments, though. Many directors have since modified it. Hopefully, my urging had something to do with it. I was, I think, instrumental in arguing against it on several televised events I participated in. They even waived the “can’t show cards” heads-up rule in both the National Heads-up Championship (NBC) and Superstars, when I participated. That wasn’t my influence alone. Many others felt it made for good TV to adopt these changes.

I even had the honor of roasting the person who first put the rule into place at the WSOP.

This is useful information. I can't find any such rule in current, published sources, but it's certainly possible that, as suggested in Mr. Caro's reply, there are tournament directors who use such an unpublished rule specific to their facility, and/or that if I looked at older versions of tournament rules I would find it. I freely admit that I didn't investigate older materials, so if a must-lie rule previouly existed, I wouldn't know about it (having been in the poker world for only a couple of years now).

Not talking about the hand in progress includes dealers, too

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's reprehensible.

"I'm not a cheater"

A few weeks ago there was another online poker cheating scandal. Chris Vaughn, who writes for Bluff magazine, got down to the final 20 or so players in one of the big Sunday tournaments. At that point, he sold his position to a well-known online tournament player, Sorel Mizzi ("Imper1um"), who logged on as if he were Vaughn and finished first in the tournament. But an investigation by the site, Full Tilt Poker, uncovered the irregularity. The win was voided, the prize money reclaimed, and everybody else retroactively moved up a spot in the final standings.

OK, nothing too surprising there. It's no secret that this stuff goes on. There have been at least four or five so far this year that I recall reading about, and it's anybody's guess how many go undetected.

What's surprising about this one is that the culprits have gone public with what happened, in an interview with Poker News: http://www.pokernews.com/news/2007/12/online-poker-sorel-mizzi-chris-vaughn-speak-one.htm. [Note added December 6: The second half of the interview has now been posted at http://www.pokernews.com/news/2007/12/online-poker-sorel-mizzi-chris-vaughn-speak-part-2.htm.] To their credit, they both admit it was wrong and say that they regret it. Vaughn also says that he regrets frankly lying about what happened when confronted about it on this online poker radio show: http://www.pokerroad.com/_/big_poker_sundays/11-18-07/. (I'm listening to the interview even as I type this. He says the accusation is "ridiculous.")

The eye-popping bit of the interview, for me, is this:

PN [Poker News]: Right, so you logged off the account, and Sorel logged in. Sorel, is this something you do a lot and is it part of the gameplan? Is this the first time you've done this?

Sorel Mizzi: No, I'm not a – I'm not a cheater; I'm not a multi-accounter. I acted fast without malice and didn't intend to hurt Chris and myself, opponents, or the entire poker community. This is something that was a one-time – it was a one-time thing and I clearly didn't give it much thought, which is exactly why I got caught, because… because of actually logging into his account which would be traced. But, I want to make it clear that this is something that was an isolated incident and it's, it's not something that I've done in the past.

JC [John Caldwell, interviewer for Poker News]: So this is the first time you've ever done this – you've never bought an account before online, late in a tournament?

SM: Never.

That's what got me: "I'm not a cheater."

Uh, yes, you are.

You can't admit to cheating, then claim not to be a cheater.

I understand, I think, what he means. He means that he's not a regular cheater, a habitual cheater. But that's not the question.

Mr. Mizzi, since you are apparently unclear on this, allow me to address you directly:

The line between cheaters and non-cheaters does not fall between those who cheat whenever they can and those who cheat just once in a while. It falls between those who have cheated and those who have not cheated.

You cheated, by your own admission. Therefore, you are a cheater. You may not like that conclusion, but those are the simple facts. You, Sorel Mizzi, are a cheater, and that is so no matter how many times you repeat the words "I am not a cheater."

But the analysis should go deeper than mere semantics. You got a phone call from Vaughn, and you offered to buy his place in the tournament. Now, surely you knew that others have engaged in this practice. It's not like the idea of buying an account sudden leaped unbidden into the mind of a person who had never heard of it before.

Those who have read of this practice can really have only one of two reactions: There's,"Ugh. That's despicable. I would never do such a thing." And then there's, "Hey, that's not a bad idea--if you get bumped out of a tournament before making the money, you buy the right to finish using the account of somebody else who has made it deep. I hope I get the chance to do that some day."

Your claim that this was a spur-of-the-moment decision is completely implausible. Somewhere inside of you, you must have already decided to take the opportunity if it ever presented itself. Your action that day was simply the fulfilment of what you had decided long ago, when you first learned that others were doing this. When the call came, you were already prepared to figure out how much you could earn by winning, what your chances of winning would be, and, therefore, what would be a fair price to offer Vaughn for his account password and the right to take over his seat. You could not possibly have worked that out in the very short time available without having decided in advance that you would do it when you got the chance, and what the general parameters of such a deal would be.

That, too, makes you a cheater, because before the opportunity arose concretely, you had decided that you would do it. A less demonstrable, but still valid, way of separating cheaters from non-cheaters is to draw the line between those who would cheat, given the opportunity, and those who would not cheat, given the opportunity. By that line of demarcation, you were already a cheater before you logged onto Full Tilt using Vaughn's account. Your action that Sunday merely moved you from the "would cheat if able" category to "does cheat" category. Ethically, that's not much of a shift.

And one more thought: As far as I can tell from the chronology that has been made public, you took no steps to right the wrong yourself. Nothing happened until Full Tilt took its action. If you actually regretted what you did (as one might if it had genuinely been a spur-of-the-moment impulse decision), you presumably would have quickly admitted your transgression and turned yourself in to Full Tilt. It looks, instead, like you didn't regret anything about it until the controversy became public and you lost the money. In short, you acted like a cheater would, holding onto the money and hoping you wouldn't get caught--so that you could do it again later.

Mr. Mizzi, I encourage you to contact Poker News and request that they let you publish a correction to what you said in the interview. Try something along these lines: "I am, in fact, a cheater. I regret having been caught, because of what it has done to my reputation. I wish now that I had decided, long in advance of the situation arising, that I would never cheat under any circumstances. I am resolved to never cheat again, no matter how juicy the opportunity."

There--now doesn't that feel better than the ongoing denial?

(My thanks to an anonymous reader who sent the above doctored photo of Mr.Mizzi. It's a much better rendition than my poor digital manipulation skills could pull off with my own original version.)

Respect or money

I'm in the middle of watching "House of Games," a 1987 David Mamet film that revolves around poker and con men (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093223/). In one early scene, Joe Mantegna is in a hand of draw poker with Ricky Jay*, who has been bullying the table. Mantegna, with three aces, check-raises Jay. But to his surprise, Jay, who drew just one card, re-raises him all-in. Mantegna stands up from the table, furious. He says, "You son of a bitch, you've been steamrolling over me all night! What are you trying to tell me? One card? You caught a flush? A boat? What? I think you're bluffing, pal. I think you're trying to buy it."

Jay just sits there, calmly but menacingly, then quietly replies, "Then you're going to have to give me some respect, or give me some money."

Oh, SNAP!

I'm not much of one for using talk to try to manipulate opponents into doing what I want them to do, but if I were, that is definitely a line I would add to my arsenal.

The dialogue in this movie, as would be expected from any Mamet work, is first-rate. It's so good that the Poker Grump is willing to overlook the game's use of non-standard rules. After all, they're in the back room of a bar, and laxity of rules is probably realistic in that scenario.

Here's another little nugget from Montegna's character, just before he folds to a large bet: "If a guy's got a full house and you've got two pair, that puts you in a philosophically indefensible position."

Indeed.



*For those who don't know, Ricky Jay was demonstrating world-class talent for high-velocity, high-accuracy card throwing many years before Chris Ferguson ever thought of taking up the challenge. See, e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI_vaCADD4c; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFAzKv8_XF4.) He even wrote a book about the technique in 1977 ("Cards as Weapons"), which is considered the bible on the subject, and was for a long time in the Guinness Book of World Records for throwing a playing card 190 feet at 90 miles per hour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Jay).

Define "emergency" for me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eliminating a recurring problem: A new proposed rule

In the December 10, 2007, issue of Poker Player newspaper, the always thought-provoking Mike Caro tells us that he was asked to help prepare a poker rulebook for the Bicycle Casino when it first opened in 1984. A variation from the standard rule that he tried--without success--to implement was that verbal declarations of action would not be binding. That is, a player could announce "call," but then actually raise or fold.

Yes, this obviously opens up an avenue for angle-shooters, but Mr. Caro's arguments for why the net effect would be less confusion, ambiguity, misunderstanding, and even less angle-shooting are not easily dismissed. The skeptical reader should think about his points before dismissing them as daffy. (The column isn't available online yet, but I'll try to remember to add a link to it in an addendum to this post when it has been put up at the publication's site.) Consider also stories such as those told in this post: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/09/youve-got-to-be-careful-what-you-say.html. Consider the headaches that come from interpreting/enforcing conditional declarations (see, e.g., this discussion: http://www.allvegaspoker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3471). Consider the recurrent problem of players making verbal declarations out of turn.

Under Mr. Caro's proposal, actions with cards (folding) and chips (calling or raising) would be all that counted; anything verbal would be just table talk, which players would quickly learn to disregard. I think Mr. Caro is probably right that this would overall be a preferable rule. In fact, Mr. Caro fails to mention other potential benefits of his proposal: Players who are deaf (or just have their iPods turned up too loud to hear what is being said) would no longer be at a disadvantage. We would never have to poll the table to find out if other players could confirm what somebody said.

I wish the game had evolved as Mr. Caro proposed. I'm afraid, though, that this particular horse is well and thoroughly out of the barn, and the door closed, locked, and welded shut behind it. We're stuck with verbal declarations being binding, despite the problems that that convention brings with it.

But I think there's one way to reduce, at least by a small amount, the magnitude of the problems attendant to binding verbal declarations, and that pertains to raise amounts in no-limit and pot-limit games. One of the most common game-stopping situations is a player who is facing a bet and wants to raise, but states an amount in a way that is ambiguous as to his intention. That is, nobody can tell if he is raising by 100, or to 100 (to pick an arbitrary example). The game stops while the dealer and players sort it out. This annoys me no end (as do so many things--hence the very existence of this blog as a place to rant about all my irritants).

I think it's crazy to have such a common problem not governed by a rule. Consider other situations in which we have eliminated ambiguity and angle-shooting, and largely reduced delays, by a clear, simple interpretive rule. First there is the oversized-chip rule. If you're facing a bet and you throw into the pot a single chip of a value more than the current bet without first announcing a raise, it is deemed to be a call, even if you intended to raise. This keeps us from having to stop to ask the player what his intention was, and prevents angle-shooters from getting a read on an opponent's reaction to the bet before making up his mind whether to say that he intended to call or raise.

The string-bet rule is similar. It converts a situation rife with potential for confusion, ambiguity, aruments, and angle-shooting to a clear, simple rule.

In both cases, of course, inexperienced players not knowing the rules can be hurt by them, but they catch on quickly (after just one error, unless they're particularly dense). Furthermore, the degree to which they can be hurt by their lack of knowledge is usually much less than how they could otherwise be hurt by a predacious, unethical opponent in the absence of a clear rule.

I propose that we take a similar affirmative step for verbal announcements of raise sizes. Here is how I would state the new rule, if I were writing a poker rulebook:

In pot-limit and no-limit games, a verbal declaration as to the size of a raise may be made by announcing either (A) the increment by which the previous bet is being raised, or (B) the total amount of the player’s bet (i.e., the sum of the previous bet and the increment of the raise). A player verbally announcing a raise amount in a manner that is ambiguous shall be construed to have raised the lesser of the two possible interpretations, i.e., as if he had made an unambiguous declaration under option (B). If that interpretation of an ambiguous declaration would constitute less than a legal raise, the declaration will be deemed to have been one of a minimum legal raise, and the player will be required to put into the pot the corresponding amount of chips.

1. Examples of unambiguous declarations of the amount of the raise, which conform to option (A); other unambiguous variations are equally acceptable:
“Raise by 100.”
“100 on top.”
“Plus 100.”
“Make it 100 more.”
“Add another 100.”

2. Examples of unambiguous declarations of the new total amount of the bet (i.e., the sum of the previous bet and the raise increment), which conform to option (B); other unambiguous variations are equally acceptable:
“Raise to 100.”
“Make it 100.”
“100 total.”
“Total of 100.”
“The bet is 100.”

3. Examples of ambiguous declarations, which will be construed as being in conformity with option (B), provided that the amount stated would constitute a full, legal raise:
“100.”
“Raise, 100.”

Examples of the application of the rule when the declaration is ambiguous:

1. The opening bet is 50. The next player says “Raise, 100.” Because a raise to 100 constitutes a legal raise, this declaration is so construed. It is not construed to be a raise by an increment of 100, to a total bet of 150, even if the player claims after the fact that such was his intention.

2. The opening bet is 60. The next player says “Raise, 100.” Because a raise to 100 would not constitute a legal raise, the declaration is construed as announcing a minimum raise, to 120. It is not construed to be a raise by an increment of 100 to a total bet of 160, even if the player claims after the fact that such was his intention.

Unfortunately, I discovered that it took a whole lot of words to lay out what is actually a pretty simple concept. (I begin to understand why legal statute books are so thick.) But I think that once you read through it carefully, the proposal is really quite easy to understand and apply.

Never again would a dealer have to stop the flow of the game to ask a raiser whether he meant to raise by X or to X. Never again would a player get to change his mind about that point after he realizes that there is ambiguity or confusion about what he wanted to do.

Now, if only I had some actual influence in how such things are implemented....

Addendum, December 22, 2007:

The Caro column discussed above is now available at http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/viewarticle.php?id=2366&sort=author.

A word from Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.

I was just looking up something completely unrelated when I came across this lovely tidbit of wisdom from one of the greatest Supreme Court justices our nation has known. I post it here because I am reminded again of the idiocy of the federal government trying to make it difficult or impossible to play online poker through banking regulations, and some state government trying abolish it by outright criminalization.

"State interference is an evil, where it cannot be shown to be a good."

Casino bingo is RIGGED! (non-poker content)

I have virtually no interest in any form of gambling other than poker. But once in a while I am curious about something and have to try it.

Recently when I was at Palace Station for the L.A. Comedy Club show, I noticed that they had a bingo hall. I commented to the friend that I was with that it might be fun to try that sometime. She has played several times before and quickly offered to go with me whenever I wanted. So last night we did it.

My family had a board-game version of bingo when I was growing up. There was a large stack of cards, and you'd place little plastic disks on the cards you were playing to mark the numbers that had been called, so that you could use them over and over without messing them up permanently. That was basically my whole framework for visualizing bingo, other than occasional scenes in movies and TV shows that take place in nursing homes or Catholic church basements on bingo nights.

Well, that's not exactly how things work at a modern casino, as I was to learn.

We went back to Palace Station. There was a bewildering variety of ways to buy into the session. The nice lady behind the counter tried to explain the options, but the lingo meant nothing to me. The signs and brochures didn't help much, either. With people waiting in line behind us, we finally bought what appeared to be the most basic package: $9 each for a ten-game card. It took just under an hour to play the ten games. It got even more complicated, in that some games used the free space in the middle, while others didn't; some games required just one completed row, while others required two or three, and the final game required every number on the card to have been called. I sure don't remember those variations from the old home game.

I was suprised--though perhaps I shouldn't have been--at how computerized the whole process has become. Maybe half of the people there were actually using automated devices, so that they didn't even have to bother finding the numbers on the cards and marking them. Talk about lazy! But even those of us going old-school had serial numbers on the pages, so that verifying a winner didn't involve rechecking what balls had been drawn, as I've always pictured the process. Rather, an employee just reads off the serial number of the player's page of cards, and another enters it into a computer, which instantly checks whether it's a winner or not. There is maybe 30 seconds total down time between when somebody yells "Bingo" and when the next game is going. Very efficient.

But not nearly as efficient as it could be. Assuming they keep track, by serial numbers, of which cards were sold for a given game, and link the sale to one's player's club card, an entire game could be played in less than one second. They hit a button, the computer randomly picks numbers until it detects that one of the cards sold for that session has hit a bingo, and it announces that the winner is Thelma Stanberg. Done. On to Game 2. Employee hits a button, and beep-boop-bop, a tenth of a second later we have the next winner announced. Repeat ten times, and we're all out of there in maybe two minutes tops, ready for dinner.

Of course, that takes away all of the suspense of being close to a bingo and feeling nervous about whether you'll hit the last number you need before that old witch across the aisle hits hers. The outcome would be the same, however. (Well, maybe not quite. It would eliminate the possibility of somebody failing to win because they overlooked marking a spot. But that's already being taken care of by those who use the computer-terminal thingies.)

From my perspective, it wouldn't be any different at all, because I never came even remotely close to winning. I never had fewer than two open spots left to fill in a regular game, and never less than four spots to fill on a double or triple game, before somebody obnoxiously yelled out "Bingo!" There was no adrenaline rush, except from the mild frustration of wondering why every number set everybody in the room madly daubing at numbers on their cards, while I looked in vain for any matches on mine. I ended up quite confident that they sold me the packet with the lowest number of matches to what was being drawn. I think they were mocking me for being pretty much clueless as to what was going on.

There is only one logical conclusion: Casino bingo is totally rigged! You probably have to bribe either the clerk who sells the cards, or the guy drawing the numbers, or both, in order to win.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go write my letter of complaint to the Nevada Gaming Commission, to have them look into this obvious malfeasance.

Is turnabout fair play?

This image is part of an ad in the current issue of the Poker Player newspaper for one of the lesser lights of online poker, http://www.pokerhost.com/.

After a series of recent posts here on religiously themed poker crap (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/11/anything-for-buck.html and http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/11/weve-got-to-go-all-in-on-jesus.html and http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/11/poker-vs-church.html), I was made to wonder: Will those who see nothing wrong with using poker to promote Jesus also see nothing wrong with using Jesus to promote poker? Or will they deem this blasphemous and disrespectful, while they continue distributing Jesus poker chips and using poker metaphors in their sermons?

No two poker hands are the same (non-grumpy content)

For some odd reason, I have lately been wondering whether any two poker hands will ever be exactly the same (assuming a random shuffle; i.e., barring the use of a deck set up deliberately in some way). Once you do the math, it turns out that it isn't even a close question.

Let's just focus on Texas hold'em poker, and assume a ten-handed game. Because we don't care about the order in which the two down cards are dealt, the number of possible starting hands for the first player is given by C(52,2), which is 1326. (For an explanation of this notation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinations.) Then there are 50 cards left, so for each of those 1326 possibilities we have C(50,2) starting hands for the second player, which is 1225. Continuing in that fashion, we find that there are 2.99 x 10^29 ways of dealing two cards to each of ten players.

Then we have a flop of three cards out of the remaining 32, and C(32,3)=4960. Finally we multiply by 29 for the number of different turn cards and by another 28 for the number of different river cards, for a grand total of 1.21 x 10^36. (For you math geeks, that's 1.21 undecillion.)

Suppose that we set all six billion people on earth to doing nothing but playing poker. That would be 600,000,000 games going. (We'll let the players deal their own cards, so nobody is left out having to be the full-time dealer.) Suppose we can knock out one hand a minute, because we're all extremely quick. We could get through 3.15 x 10^14 hands per year. In 200 years (approximately the amount of time that poker has existed), we could play 6.31 x 10^16 hands. In 20,000 years (about the amount of time since the last Ice Age), we could have done 6.31 x 10^18 hands. That's a pretty good approximation of the number of grains of sand on the world's beaches (see http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/jsand.html). But it's only a miniscule fraction of the number of possible hold'em hands. In fact, it would amount to way less than one one-millionth of one one-billionth of the number of possible hands.

And we haven't even considered all of the other forms of poker (Omaha, in which every player is given four cards to begin with, obviously has vastly more potential), or all the extra variations that come by playing with fewer than ten players at a time. And, of course, no two players use identical strategies, so if you combine all of the possible choices that each player has at each point in the hand with the number of hands, I think we might get up to a number comparable to the number of atoms in the universe (which is on the order of 10^80).

In short, it is virtually certain that there have never been two identical hands of poker played in the entire history of the game.

The chess nerds will boast that their game is vastly more complex, because the estimated number of possible chess games is something like 10^120 or maybe 10^123 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number). But if they're so smart, why aren't any of them getting rich from their game, huh?

The winds of Las Vegas (non-grumpy, non-poker content)

I was amused by the afternoon television news here, in which the news team was all in a lather about the fact that it had rained today. It wasn't a flash-flood kind of rain, just a slow drizzle, totalling--brace yourself for this--about one-third of an inch. Wow! But they had their full crew out on alert, doing live updates from various places about this incredible breaking weather story. (Yawn.) They even featured a segment reminding people how to drive on wet roads. Coming from Minnesota, I just had to laugh. It would be great fun (a destructive, sadistic sort of fun, that is) to dump about a foot of snow on this city and watch the mayhem that resulted.

Anyway, this reminded me of a little blurb I wrote roughly a year ago for a newspaper back home, about a weather phenomenon that is moderately common here but almost never seen there. Enjoy.

**************
Las Vegas is a dirty city—in a literal sense. To start with, it’s in a desert, and there’s just dust everywhere. The day after you wash your car, it’s covered in a thin but easily visible layer of dirt again. But additionally, there’s more trash left around than anyplace else I’ve lived. I suppose part of that is the dependence on drunk tourists. But there’s also the fact that vendors shove all sorts of handouts and other crap at passersby on the Strip, much of which just gets dropped and left. Finally, the city appears to spend precious little on such niceties as street sweeping, and nobody seems to care much about open dumping of stuff in vacant lots.

Last week we had a windstorm. I had not previously seen the Strip in this condition, and it was eerily spectacular. There were straight-line winds blowing a constant cloud of dust from the west, and it was like the shiny mega-resorts had been submerged in murky, sandy water. The wind was strong enough to loosen a large sign on the Venetian hotel, causing authorities to shut down the Strip for a while, lest the thing come off completely and do serious damage.

But there were also wonderful dust devils everywhere, filled with more man-made debris than any I’ve seen before. I was immediately and strongly reminded of that strangely beautiful scene in “American Beauty,” in which a young photographer marvels at the elegant randomness of a plastic bag being tossed about by the winds.

Watching plastic bags and papers and other trash being lifted, swirled, buffeted back and forth, then dropped again in a new location, seemed perfectly emblematic of the city. People come here to dance drunkenly, to let themselves be tossed to and fro by the whims of chance, only to collapse in a heap when the winds of fortune and fun inevitably die down. The city has a shockingly high rate of suicide.

If you come here for a visit—and I hope you do—be sure that you remain tethered financially and by friends and family. The winds can be both delightful and destructive.

Poker vs. church

I'm not trying to get a whole trend of church-bashing posts going here, but I was trying to think of a snappy punchline for the previous entry, and the following sort of evolved in my brain:

The top ten reasons why putting money into the pot at a poker table is better than putting it into the collection plate at church:

10. You don't have to waste an hour listening to a sermon before getting your money in the pot.
9. You don't have to wait a week before doing it again.
8. No risk of the checks in the pot bouncing.
7. In a good poker room, food service is more than a sip of wine and a tasteless little wafer.
6. Even if you lose the pot, you can be pretty sure the money won't be going to pay the salary of an authority-abusing pedophile.
5. Noisily shuffling your change before dropping it in the collection plate is frowned upon.
4. You don't earn comp dollars for every hour you're sitting in a pew.
3. No valet parking at your average church.
2. After they collect all the money, ain't no preacher gonna be pushing you that collection plate back to keep.

And the number one reason that putting money into the pot at a poker table is better than putting it into the collection plate at church:

1. Nobody suggests that you're going to hell if you decide not to put money in this time around.

"We've got to go 'all-in' on Jesus"

In case the previous post didn't sufficiently leave you shaking your head, here's a little more gagitude I just found, accompanying the photo above (from http://blog.keepbelieving.com/?p=898):

Last year when I preached on doubt, I used the illustration of poker players going “all in” in order to win the game. That’s what we have to do with our faith. At some point we’ve got to go “all in” on Jesus. A few months later Pastor Greg Kuehn decided to use that phrase as a call for commitment after a sermon on Romans 12:1-2. A man in the church who does embossing offered to make these “All In for Jesus” poker chips. At the end of the service, hundreds of people came forward to receive their chip. Church members carry the chips around to remind themselves of their commitment.

Right. And I carry around a little Jesus figurine to remind me to play poker.

Addendum, November 30, 2007

See the comment below from "Short-Stacked Shamus" (and read his always insightful and well-written blog at http://hardboiledpoker.blogspot.com/). The last minute that he refers to is somebody (I can't tell who) singing a stupid song about "I'm all-in with Jesus." I was curious whether this was a real song that I could locate, so did a Google search. I didn't find anything about the song, but in the process, I came across this bit of drivel, eerily similar to the paragraph quoted above, from http://www.kofc971.org/bulletin/2004/2004-09September.pdf:

Chaplain’s Message

Perhaps you have seen recently on television the World
Series of Poker. I was at my brother’s house watching it one night and I noticed that whenever a player felt that he had a particularly strong hand, he would attempt to weaken the other players or player, or even get them out of the game outright, by, and this is the phrase they used, “going all in.” It was a risk, because if the other player had a better hand then the one going all in would be severely weakened himself or even out of the game.

Reflecting on this in light of the Gospel, I am reminded that we are asked to “go all in” with Jesus. He does not ask for half of our heart or part of our life. He wants it all! He even goes so far as to say that if we do not put him ahead of our own families, then we cannot enter the kingdom of God. Either we “go all in” with Jesus or nothing. After all, God has “gone all in” for us in Jesus; if we do not respond in kind, then God cannot respond in us....

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go throw up.

Anything for a buck

Last night I was reading an article about how atheists have a dearth of stuff they can buy with their stamp of non-faith on it (http://www.reason.com/news/show/123017.html). The author, Greg Beato, points out that you can't buy a Madalyn Murray O’Hair action figure, or atheist yo-yos or perfume.

This sentence caught my attention in particular: "In fact, the Lord has called so many believers to spread the Good News via faith-based salt scrubs and godly poker chips during the last few decades that the annual U.S. market for Christian-themed products, often dismissed as “Jesus junk,” is now $4.6 billion." (Emphasis added.)

"Godly poker chips"? Surely that was just a cute rhetorical flourish, right? But the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed to me that, yeah, somebody, somewhere probably really did make such a thing. And, as you can see above, somebody actually did. You can order them at http://tinyurl.com/2gh2s4, though I'm not sure why you would want to.

I also quickly came across the other half of what you'd need for a full-blown, full-gospel home poker game: the scripture cards (http://tinyurl.com/2btqr6), which, conveniently, you can get in either King James Version or New International Version.

Some things just don't go together. Like ketchup-filled doughnuts. Like "Remember: No Premarital Sex" brand beer for sale at spring break destinations. Like "Never Squeak" grease to put on your car's brakes. A friend back in Minnesota liked to collect bizarre patents, and his favorite was a combination sunscreen and lock de-icer. (You may have to think about that one for a second.)

There's just something fundamentally incongruous about mixing poker with a proselytizing message. It's as strange as, say, seeing an ad for First Church of the Brethren in the back of an issue of Hustler magazine, or "Praise the Lord" vodka in the corner liquor store, or a Christians-only brothel in Pahrump.

I don't ask to play poker in the back row of your church, so please don't inject your attempts to save my soul into a poker game.

Should one speak up when not involved?

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

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

Story #1.

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

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

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

Story #2.

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

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

My general thoughts.

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

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

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

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

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

Comments?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The return of Mr. Obnoxious

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a story from about a year ago about having to call the clock on a chronically foot-dragging player (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/11/tick-tock-tick-tock.html). Here's an email I wrote not too long after that one:

***********
So you’ll remember the story about the personality-disorder guy arguing about the “clock” rule from a week or two ago? I hadn’t been back to the Golden Nugget since then, until tonight. And just my luck, I got seated on his left.

One of the fundamental rules of poker is that nobody can help any player make a decision. A corollary of this is that you can’t talk about the hand while it’s in progress, because anything you say might influence another player’s decision. Soon after I sat down, the first four community cards on one hand made a possible straight flush. One player said, “Ooo, somebody might have a straight flush.” After the hand, I gently pointed out that he shouldn’t say things like that, because it’s always possible that somebody in the hand hasn’t recognized that possibility, and pointing it out helps him, or changes what decision he would have made. The player was very polite, acknowledged that he shouldn’t have said it, and that was the end of it.

Maybe an hour later, a different player folded to a raise on the river, and while folding said to the person who had raised, “I’m folding because I think you hit your straight.” There were still two other people left to act. Again, after the hand was over I pointed out that that comment could affect how the hand plays out, and the dealer chimed in reminding the table not to talk about the hand while it’s in progress. Again, the offender said, “You’re right, I forgot that others were still in the hand. I’m sorry.”

A short time later I raise with AJ. There is one caller. The flop is Q-8-2. The Obnoxious Guy says (ostensibly to the player on his right, who is not in the hand, but loud enough that I could hear it), “Goddammit, I threw away my hand. I had queen-eight.”

Now, I want to bet at this hand even though the flop missed me. I want to represent that either the flop helped me, or my hand is strong enough that I didn’t need help (i.e., AA or KK). Fortunately for me, the opponent is an 80-ish guy who I’m pretty sure didn’t hear the comment. But you can see how it would influence his decision about calling. If he knows that two of the cards I might be holding that would have been helped by this flop were folded by another player, it makes it much easier to call with a mediocre hand, when I really want him to fold. That is, it makes it harder for me to successfully bluff at the pot.

Fortunately, however, he did fold. As I was stacking the chips, I asked the dealer to call the floor person (supervisor) over. I told the floor guy that since I had been sitting there, the table had been cautioned twice about discussing a hand in progress, and in spite of that, Obnoxious Guy announced that he had folded Q8 when there was a Q8 on the flop. Obnoxious Guy says, “So I said it a little too loud. So what?”

Floor guy says, “OK, rack up your chips. You’re done for the day.”

OG: “I didn’t do anything!”

Floor: “Pack it up. You’re done.”

OG: “Just give me a warning.”

Floor: “No. We warn you about the same thing every day, and you keep doing it every day. No more warnings.”

Aha! So I’m obviously not the first one to complain about this. He's a serial blabber, and there's no doubt that he knows it's against the rules. The first two offenders just weren't thinking, either not knowing the rule or temporarily forgetting it. I'm quick to forgive such infractions. But when somebody does it in full knowledge of the rule, after many previous warnings, my compassion and tolerance is exactly zero.

So OG is racking his chips, and snarls at me, “Thanks a lot, pal.” I say, “Hey, it’s a simple rule. Just follow the rules and there wouldn’t be any problem.”

After he leaves, two other players and the dealer all thank me for speaking up about him. Once again, apparently he annoys everybody. I don’t understand why the other players and dealers aren’t more assertive about enforcing the rule, if he’s violating it that often.

Why does the world have to be filled with jerks?

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

Just a note added in retrospect: My thanks to the floor guy (whose name, I'm sorry to say, I don't recall) for acting so definitively that night. I haven't run into OG since then. I wonder if being booted out finally got his attention.

Poker gems, #54

Gabe Kaplan, on GSN's "High Stakes Poker," commenting on Patrick Antonius's open shirt: "Well, when you play good poker, you gotta show a little cleavage."

World record house of cards

The only possible thing to say is "Wow."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/11/14/card.stacking/index.html#cnnSTCOther1

Poker gems, #53

Doyle Brunson, in GSN's "High Stakes Poker," November 19, 2007. For context, it should be noted that the game is extremely loose and wild, and in the hand being played when Doyle speaks up, there has been an unprecedented check, bet, check-raise and re-raise in the dark on the flop before the dealer even puts out the three cards:

If my daddy knew I was losing in this poker game, he'd come out of the grave and beat the heck out of me.

Poker gems, #52

Gabe Kaplan, on GSN's "High Stakes Poker," November 19, 2007:

There is no crying in baseball, and there is no mercy in poker.

"Gaming" and "gambling"

Over the weekend, I spent some time reading about last week's congressional hearings about online gambling. Among the predictable gripes from the enemies of anybody having any fun is always the accusation that the word “gaming” is an industry euphemism, devised to avoid the unseemly overtones of the word “gambling.” It is dishonest, they say, to call it "gaming."

That canard came up again in the context of this hearing. Annie Duke, after testifying at the hearing, engaged in an online chat sponsored by the Washington Post. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/11/13/DI2007111301841.html. The very first question submitted was this:

Gaming? GAMING? Where I come from, playing for money -- on the Internet or elsewhere -- is called GAMBLING. And that's okay by me, but why do you insist on calling it "gaming"? How can you have an honest debate when you don't use honest language?

This person is either deliberately misrepresenting the facts or, more likely, is just ignorantly repeating something he or she has heard, without bothering to investigate it.

In fact, “gaming” is a much older term. I learned this from “The Gambler’s Guide to Taxes,” by Walter L. Lewis. An appendix in that book reproduces a short essay by Basil Nestor, in which he traces the history of both words. (I'm not sure why the essay is in a book on taxes, since it has no real bearing on that subject, but I'm glad I found it anyway.) Here's the Reader's Digest condensed version:

“Gambling” was not even a word in English when Shakespeare wrote "Hamlet," in which the title character, who plans to kill his uncle, says that perhaps he should do it when his uncle was “at gaming, swearing, or about some act that has no relish of salvation in’t,” rather than when the man was praying (Act 3, Scene 3).

“Gambling” still hadn’t been coined when the Statute of Anne (1710) declared legally unenforceable any debts arising from “gaming or playing at cards, dice… or by betting….”

George Washington in 1778 noted that “gaming is again creeping into the Army” and therefore prohibited cards and dice, whether played for money or not.

When the term “gambling” finally arose in the early eighteenth century, reports Nestor, it clearly had the connotation of cheating—a game that was covertly fixed against the player—as opposed to “gaming,” which signified honest wagering.

So now you know.

Comedy club (non-poker-related content)

When I get show tickets for free (sign up at http://www.showtickets4locals.com/, if you live in the Vegas area), I think it's a nice gesture to give a little plug here when it turns out to be a good one. This week I caught a guy named Brad Upton at the "L.A. Comedy Club" at Palace Station (http://www.palacestation.com/entertainment/trax/). I thought he was very, very funny--had me laughing almost all of the way through his set. Frankly, the emcee and the warm-up acts were lame, and they got me thinking that the whole thing had been a colossal waste of an evening. But then Upton came out and hooked me right away. He's well worth going to see, if you get the chance.

I can't really tell you anything more about it, because how do you describe a comedian--other than repeating some of his material, which would ruin the show for you--beyond saying that he's really funny? So I'm stuck just saying, "He's really funny." I hope that's enough. Oh, wait--I do know another point to make about him. When I recall several of his lines and bits, I don't just smile or think how clever he was, but I actually start laughing out loud again just from the memory of it. That doesn't happen for me very often with comedians. There. That's the best endorsement I can think of.

Now go get your tickets.

What's done is done

As I've mentioned previously (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/07/hopelatrons-and-seeing-future-non.html), I think Phil Laak is one of the most interesting professional players to watch and read about. But though he's smart and, for the most part, highly rational, he occasionally reveals bits of unexpected irrationality.*

On an episode of "Cash Poker," (from which the above screenshot is taken), Phil initially limps in, along with several others. Then a player behind him puts in a large raise. Phil folds, as does the player on his left. Phil then says to the other guy who folded, "This is where you pray the flop doesn’t connect you, now that you’ve folded. This is the time for a small prayer."

I've heard this sort of comment many times before. For example, players are raising and re-raising each other before the flop, and a third player drops out of the action after the bets get too high for him. The two remaining players both get it all in, and the last one who folded announces that he mucked pocket 7s, and says, "Dealer, don't you dare put another 7 out there on the flop." Sometimes, when there is betting yet to come after the flop, a player who folds to a raise will not declare what he had, but will still give a generic warning to the dealer: "You had better not put out the cards that would make my hand."

This is insane! After you've folded, it can't possibly make any difference to you what community cards get revealed. A decision to call or fold before the flop isn't made retroactively correct or incorrect based on what three cards the dealer puts out. It was correct or incorrect based on the strength of the starting hand, your position, the number of opponents, your table image, your read on opponents' strength, the size of the pot, the size of the raise, and a myriad of other factors. But what happens after the point at which you have to make the decision is utterly irrelevant to any rational assessment of whether the decision to fold was correct.

I assume that Phil's implication is that if cards come on the flop that would have made him a powerful hand, had he stayed in, he will regret his decision to fold. That's ludicrous. Why would you chide yourself for not taking into account information that is unavailable at the time you had to decide what to do? Would you pride yourself on being a great player if you called a big raise with 7-2 and the flop was 2-2-7? I should hope not. So then how can it make sense to kick yourself for folding the 2-7 when that flop hits?

It's perfectly natural to see a flop that would have turned a garbage hand into a stealth monster and think something like, "I wish I could have my cards back." But you know that isn't how the game is played, so you shrug your shoulders and let it go.

(You might also take the opportunity to look back at your decision to fold and re-evaluate whether it was the smartest move, given the information you had at the time--not given what the flop was. The reason this is smart is that, if you conclude again that it was the right play, you can give yourself a little mental pat on the back to counteract what might otherwise be the insidious tendency to remember the 2-2-7 flop the next time you look down at 7-2, and play it in the futile hope of history repeating itself. I find that reassuring myself that my fold was correct helps neutralize any temporary sting of regret that I feel when the would-have-been miracle flop comes.)

However natural it is to feel a momentary twinge of regret for the mathematically and strategically correct fold that, in retrospect, would have been a lucky spot for an unorthodox pre-flop call, it strikes me as completely ridiculous to think--let alone say out loud--that you hope the flop isn't one that would have helped you. What, you can't handle that twinge of remorse, so you have to pray, beg, and threaten the dealer that circumstances don't come up that will cause you to feel it? That's just childish. Grow up already.

When I was in fifth grade, our class learned and performed a highly abbreviated (like, 30 minutes, I think) version of Shakespeare's "MacBeth." It was a great experience for me, especially since I landed the title role. I've never forgotten many of the lines I had to memorize back then, even though it has now been about 35 years.

After MacBeth has murdered King Duncan, in order to assume the throne himself, he is tormented by guilt. His wife, Lady MacBeth, says to him (Act 3, Scene 2),

How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is done.

Even more famously, later Lady MacBeth herself becomes unhinged, and starts sleepwalking, reliving in her dreams the night that she pressed MacBeth to kill the king in his sleep (Act 5, Scene 1):

To bed, to bed! there's knocking at the gate:
come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's
done cannot be undone.—To bed, to bed, to bed!

You can't go back and unfold your hand. You can't make your decision whether to play based on what the unknowable flop is going to be. Therefore, it's silly to anguish over having made a correct decision. It's even sillier, in anticipation of such regret, to make threats or propitiations in an attempt to prevent seeing a flop that will trigger such anguish. It is a "thing without all remedy," and "should be without regard."

Regular readers know by now that I'm not particularly keen on the idea that prayers at the poker table are of any efficacy. (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/07/mr-destiny.html and http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-on-religion-at-poker-table.html.) As irrational and embarrassing as I think it is to offer up prayers to try to affect the outcome of a hand that one is in, it is ten times more foolish to offer them up to try to affect the outcome of a hand that one has already exited.


*I'm obviously aware that he's eccentric and does strange things. Some of that, I'm sure, is for show, and some is just his oddball personality. But peculiarity does not equal irrationality, and here I'm only talking about the latter trait.

Don't talk about the bloody mole

This is as low as I go, folks. But I just can't help myself.

This week on NBC's "Poker After Dark" Phil Hellmuth and Chris Ferguson are sitting next to each other, and every time they catch one of them in a close-up I think the same thing: All the money you guys have made, and you can't afford to have those big, ugly moles removed from your face? A little plastic surgery can do wonders these days, you know.

Yeah, it's petty and juvenile of me, but for sure I am not the only one who has seen the Austin Powers movies, and, as a result, gets flashbacks to this rant when the camera zooms in on Hellmuth or Ferguson:

"Mole! Bloody mole! We're not supposed to talk about the bloody mole, but there's the bloody mole winking me in the face. I'm gonna chop it off and cut it up and make some guacaMOLE! … Mole! Mole! Mole! Bloody mole! Bloody mole, you bloody moley bastard! Don't talk about the bloody mole, but the mole's so big it probably VOTES! Looks like a bloody bubble on a pizza, you bloody mole-faced mole bugger! Moley, moley, moley, the brothers MacMolen. You'd be in Spain you'd be a bull and you'd say 'MOLLAAAY!!!' Even the bloody mole's got a mole it's such a bloody big mole. It's the moley grail of moles! Your molier-than-thou attitude! Stick your bloody mole up your bum bum, you moley bastard! Moley MOLE!!!"

There. Now I've got that out of my system.

Scroll down, please

Time to ask a small favor of my readers: Please scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on an ad. They've been sitting there for a couple of months, but I haven't heard anything from Google Ads yet. It's possible that nobody has clicked on any of them even once, which would explain that. I'm not trying to rake in a ton of money--I assume it's just going to be a few cents. At this point, I'm mostly just curious about the process, and the contract forbids me to click on them myself (for obvious reasons). Why aren't they located in the side margins nearer to the top of the page, where they'd be readily accessible? I have no idea. I'm new to all of this. Maybe I need to embed a different code in my template or something. I'll deal with that later. For now, I just would like to make sure the whole process actually does something.

Thanks!

Poker gems, #51

From Graham Sharpe, Poker's Strangest Hands, p. 20-21, a story from 1860 Denver, reminding us of the possible consequences of deliberating miscalling one's hand:

[Jack] O'Neil and [John] Rooker went toe to toe with each other on the green baize table and eventually they were contesting the biggest pot of the night when O'Neil called Rooker's final bet and the ruffian declared, "Two pairs of pictures."

"Three jacks," called O'Neil, and made to take the money.

"Hold it," demanded Rooker. "Both my pairs are kings."

O'Neil made a lunge for Rooker's arm. "You did not call right. The money is mine."

The money was forgotten as the two traded insults and threats....

O'Neil had gone home to bed after the row, and rose at 10 a.m. He strolled up the town's main thoroughfare and, as he reached the entrance to the Western Saloon, he was blasted with both barrels of a shotgun, fired from a safe distance by the cowardly Rooker, who immediately fled town.

O'Neil was buried the next day in a small graveyard which became known as "O'Neil's Ranch," a term that would become used to identify graveyards in other towns.

Poker players and dealers should support Ron Paul (shameless political plug)

Ron Paul is one of only two candidates (the other being Bill Richardson) who have stated clearly that they would repeal the UIGEA (the 2006 law that put such a huge dent in online poker). (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/10/poker-players-are-political-wimps.html.) If that isn't enough reason for lovers of the game to throw their support behind him, I just learned of another one.

With the Nevada caucuses approaching early next year, today I heard a radio ad for the candidate in which he announces his support for a measure that would exempt tips from the income tax. (See http://dailypaul.com/node/2513.) This is a pretty smart move to set onesself apart from the field, in a state where so many people rely on tips for a living. I have done no research on what kind of support this proposal has received from others in Congress, but it's easy to imagine that it will become popular. Republicans who claim to be for cutting taxes get a chance to prove it, and Democrats who claim to champion the working stiffs can do the same. Not many millionaires are dependent on tips for their sustenance.

One of the obstacles to becoming a poker dealer is that one typically starts off in smaller rooms on the shifts with the least action (because the more senior dealers know when the tip income is most available and take those shifts when they can). You can end up "on break" for the majority of a shift. But the government still collects tax at a rate of presumed tip income that they have negotiated with each casino, whether or not you earned that much--or anything at all--on a given day. In other words, it's not too difficult to finish a pay period owing more in taxes than you actually earned. That's just insane, but it's going on all the time. It makes it hard to break into the business to spend the first few months in a negative-income situation.

So if you're a poker dealer, or a poker player who would rather see the dealer be able to keep the tips you offer rather than forwarding them straight to the IRS, Ron Paul should be your guy in 2008.

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.