Watching a marathon

Warning: No poker content.

The marathon is over. For reasons that I can't understand, this year they moved it from morning to evening, which was far more disruptive to the city's tourism business. I had no interest in fighting traffic getting to or from any of the Strip poker rooms. I figured I would just walk over to Binion's and play there. Incidentally, the race route this year went down the street behind my apartment building. This was near mile marker 20 for the marathoners and 7 for the halfers.

I talked to Cardgrrl for a while before heading out. This was around the time that the race was beginning for the half-marathon runners, which included several of the poker bloggers finishing up their annual winter Vegas get-together. Of the runners, the one I know best is Brad Willis, a.k.a. @_Otis_, a.k.a. the purveyor of Rapid Eye Reality. Though we're far from being what anybody would call close friends, we've chatted many times and had dinners a couple of times. He's smart, funny, interesting, and, if you ask me, the overall best writer the poker world has working in it these days. He has earned my respect and admiration.

Because of knowing that, Cardgrrl asked me if I was going to watch for him passing by in this, his first half-marathon. No, I said, and explained my reasons: It's cold, I don't know when he'll be in this vicinity, I don't have any Gatorade kind of stuff to offer him, he's not expecting to see me and won't care whether or not I'm there, etc. All of which she dismissed with barely disguised disapproval.

I was unmoved by her opinion at first. But it started eating at me after the conversation ended. Some small remnant of an actual human conscience still survives inside of me, despite my best efforts to bludgeon it to death, and it started talking to me, along approximately these lines: "Brad has been nothing but kind, decent, open, complimentary, and inviting to you. His father died a week ago, and he had to cut short a trip to China to go home for the funeral. After initially planning to cancel the Vegas trip, he listened to friends and family who encouraged him to go through with his plans for this race, for which he has been diligently training for the last several months. And you can't be bothered to walk THIRTY FUCKING YARDS past your door to give him a shout-out and a thumbs-up?"

So there was that.

There was another factor. One of the surprising things about being in a relationship with Cardgrrl is that something about her makes me willing to try new things. That may not sound remarkable, but I have long been the kind of guy who knows what I like and don't like, set in my ways, with neither need nor interest in stepping outside that comfort zone. She is the opposite. She craves new experiences. So my initial willingness to try new things was primarily an accommodation to her, an attempt to achieve compromise. But doing these things has turned out favorably a high enough percentage of the time that there has been some spillover into decisions I make even when she's not involved. I won't claim that there's been a sea change in what choices I make in foods and activities, but there is a definite degree to which I will now choose something different from my default simply because it's new, and that's an element that was completely absent from my personality as recently as three years ago.

On the long list of things I've never done are "watch a marathon" and "cheer for a friend who's running in a marathon." So despite my initial dismissal, I started thinking that maybe I should take the opportunity to add them to my life experiences.

The combination of those two factors caused me to change my mind, and instead of heading straight for Binion's, I instead went to the street to see if I could spot Brad as he dashed by. (I would have been happy to shout and wave at any of the other poker-blogger runners, too, but they are all people I have either never met or have met so briefly that, while I would recognize them across a poker table, my chance of picking them out in a race situation like this was virtually nill.)

My first problem was crossing the street, since most of the runners were on the far side. It took a while before there was just enough of a break that I could dash across without making anybody swerve around me. I felt like a squirrel running across a freeway, lucky not to have been squished under a tire.

The next problem was spotting the person I was looking for. This I had not anticipated. I know Brad's face, but not with the deep, subconscious recognition that we develop for our most intimate circles, where the brain recognizes the well-known face from any angle, with any light, under any circumstances, in a fraction of a second, from just the corner of one's eye. Here I was faced with a sea of faces, all bobbing up and down, moving rapidly towards me, in the dark. I would guess that an average of about ten people were passing by my vantage point every second. Brad had no idea that I would be out there, so the task of recognition and rapidly reacting was all on me. Due to the light conditions and density of bodies, there would be no way to spot somebody a long way off.

It was strangely fatiguing, mentally. It was also visually disorienting, like when you scroll a long document on the computer screen for 20 or 30 seconds straight, and when you stop it feels like your eyeballs keep moving. I found myself feeling true vertigo after a minute or so of scanning this wall of moving faces, and I would have to look away at something stationary for a few seconds.

I don't know how well this video clip conveys the problem, but it at least shows you how fast people are going by. Warning: this may be the most boring four minutes in YouTube history.

After a while, I started hearing race officials, embedded in the crowd on bicycles, shouting reminders to the runners that the half-marathon folks were to stay to the right. I, of course, was on the left. Damn. That meant I had to be like Moses and part the Red Sea again, because I could really only effectively scan the faces in the half of the street closest to me. But by now the race was even denser than before, as we were towards the mid-pack. I waited for five minutes for a break, without one appearing. I realized that was not going to work. I devised an alternate strategy: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So I stepped into the street and began running my first marathon, moving over a little at a time as spaces appeared to my right, as if trying to change lanes to catch a freeway exit. It worked, though the half-block of running was enough to fulfill my personal quota of exercise for about a year.

I hung out on the other side of the street under a lamppost for quite a while--longer than I thought, as it turned out. I estimated I had been out there for 45 minutes, but when I was finally too cold (it was about 45 degrees out, and my blood is a lot thinner than it used to be after five years without real winters) and dizzy to continue, and as the runners were starting to thin out, I came back in and learned that it had actually been almost 90 minutes.

I never spotted Brad. It's possible that I was already too late when I got outside if he was faster than I was guessing. I don't think I missed him by leaving too early, judging by when he sent a Tweet announcing that he had reached the finish line. But by far the most likely scenario is that he ran right past me without either of us realizing it. Oh well. I gave it my best effort.

As with the majority of newly-tried things, I ended up glad I had done it. It was an interesting view of a slice of American life that is completely foreign and unknown to me. I saw people in gorgeously tip-top physical condition, but also a few of obvious morbid obesity, who I have to assume were making an impressive attempt to make radical changes in their lives. Costumes abounded, from gorilla suits to Elvis to showgirls to Star Trek uniforms to cross-dressers. I saw a ton of t-shirts and banners proclaiming one cause or another that was motivating the run. My favorite of that genre was the palpable pride behind one that said, "Cheer for my amazing wife Mary doing her first marathon!"

I saw two gentlemen who were at least in their 70s and more likely in their 80s. Both were struggling and moving slowly, appearing to be in considerable pain, but determinedly moving forward. I saw two pairs of parents carrying small children, 1- or 2-year-olds. I saw people missing a limb.

I was intrigued when I began to notice how overwhelmingly white the field was. People of color were severely underrepresented in this race. I would guess that persons of African descent constituted less than two percent of the runners. I had been unaware how disproportionately running is not an activity of equal appeal to all races in this country.

Predictably, I saw a lot of people in obvious pain, having to force themselves onward. Others carried on elaborate conversations with friends, of which I got to hear a lot of very short snippets. They seemed to be feeling neither agony nor ecstasy. Some eyed me with what I interpreted as a hostile "What are you looking at?" attitude (though admittedly their faces were probably mostly objectively blank, with me just projecting onto them what I would be thinking if our roles were reversed). But what most surprised me was how many of these runners smiled, waved, and said hi to this random stranger leaning on a lamppost. They appeared to be basking in the glow of pleasure from the whole experience, and eager to share their ebullience with others. I don't feel that way towards strangers in my best and most relaxed moods; it's incomprehensible to me how one could feel it in the midst of such a grueling, torturous workout.

Around the corner from my building was this guy playing his saxophone. As far as I could tell, he was not officially part of the race experience, not paid to be the entertainment, not with anybody else, not selling anything. He just set up his amplifier and played along with it for the sheer joy of enhancing the experience of the runners. (As you can see, this was well after the main part of the race was over, with just the walking stragglers remaining.)

I still consider myself far on the left end of the misanthrope/social butterfly spectrum. Still, people are as endlessly fascinating as they are maddening and annoying. It was an interesting experience to study so many of them for such incredibly short periods of time, like opening 20,000 novels just long enough to read one word from each of them. I recommend trying it sometime.

I will remember WPBT 2011 as the year that several of the poker bloggers literally went runner-runner.

****

For comparison, here's the Review-Journal's report of the event: http://www.lvrj.com/hottopics/marathon/lvmarathon.html

Pokerati game #3

Hide your women and children, because it's World Poker Blogger Tournament time! This is the third year I have participated to some extent in the goings-on. The shenanigans started last night. I briefly met up with a bunch of the degens at the Excalibur. We then moved over to the Palms poker room. Several of us had agreed to try to get the Palms to spread a low-stakes HORSE game for us, but most of those who said they wanted to play never showed up, apparently getting lost between the two venues. I really have no idea what happened to them.

So as an alternative form of entertainment, I and several other blogger types joined the regular Thursday night Pokerati game. I have played this twice before, losing both times. (See here and here for the sad stories.) Apparently, though I am demonstrably a slow learner, I am capable of some improvement--or at least occasional luckboxing to success--because I managed to pull out a $242 win last night. Most of the profit came from making two big calls against two inveterate bluffers, both of them in situations in which I probably would not have called players with more solid table images. One of them was with just top pair in hold'em. The other was ever scarier, with just top and bottom pair in PLO when there were three possible straights on the final board. Fortunately, I was correct both times.

Just as importantly, I had a great time. The lineup was stellar entertainment, including @lasvegaspokers, @bricklv, @pokerati, @grange95 (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANGE!) @TheWookieWay, @TarpieFish, @onafolddraw, @alcanthang, @drizztdj, @caitycaity, and Dr. Chako (to whom I can't link, because he seems not to have a Twitter account anymore and his blog is locked). Stacey was the big winner of the night. Starting with $300, she had well over $1200 in front of her by the time I ran out of energy and left at about 2 a.m. (Included in her stacks were at least eight of the all-important and very lucky Palms lesbian chips.)

It's a challenging game, and the competition last night included a bunch of people who are more experienced at PLO and/or much more willing to gamble than I am, making for a tougher environment in which to make money than I usually encounter. But it turned out to be both fun and profitable. I don't know what more I could ask from a poker session than that.

Next up: Mixed-game hijinx tonight at Aria.

Playing a tournament with high-roller novices

A friend wrote me for advice on playing an unusual poker tournament. He has apparently managed to get himself invited to a game set for the casino's high rollers, who mostly play table games and slots, not poker. What's the best way to approach such a tournament, he wondered.

It's a good question. I've never been in a situation quite like that before, so I can't speak from experience, but I think I can guess what the general contours of the game plan should be. Here's what I told him:

If I were playing a tournament against a bunch of people who didn't know much about poker, my expectation would be that they will play way too many hands, stick with them way too long, and be way too passive. I would expect them to check-call over and over and over again. Playing too many hands, and calling when either folding or raising would be better, are the primary sins of novice players. I would also expect them to have no concept of how their stack size should dictate how tight/loose they play, when they should shove, etc. Finally, if they're all on a freeroll, being given tournament entry as a gift or reward from the casino, I would expect them to place no mental or emotional value in getting anything out of it monetarily. That is, they're not going to be trying to maximize value by playing aggressively to try to take the top prize, nor are they going to nurse a short stack hoping to just survive to the money. Put another way, I would expect them to play without regard for what stage of the tournament they're in.

So how to adjust for such players? Well, the obvious thing is to pretty much abandon bluffing. They are going to be playing based on what they perceive the strength of their own hand to be, not based on an assessment of what you have, because they have no idea how to figure out your range. They probably don't even have a mental concept of what an opponent's "range" means. As a result, they can't follow the story you're trying to tell with a cleverly executed bluff.

I wrote about the fun and dangers of playing against novices here:

http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2010/04/beware-newbie.html

I would not expect most bets to induce folds. I would assume folds were going to have very low fold equity. That means that you should not bother making a bet or raise if the situation is one in which the usual goal of a bet would be more to induce a fold than to build a pot that you expect to win. That means that you'll be making fewer bets and raises than usual, but that's OK. If you're playing tighter than your average opponent, then you will usually have the better hand. Since you're going to have to win at showdown a higher fraction of the time than usual (because you're not going to get them to fold), that is just what you want.

There are also implications for your short-stack game. Usually you'll shove with any semi-decent hand if action is folded to you and you have 10 or 12 big blinds or less. I would be much more cautious about that with this group. They look down at a pair of deuces or a J-10 offsuit or a suited 4-5 and figure it's pretty, I might as well call. Again, the idea is that you can't expect to have the same amount of fold equity that such a shove usually carries. When you have to shove, it should be with the expectation that you'll get called and have to win a showdown, not that you'll be happy to just fold the field and pick up the blinds and antes. That obviously means shoving with a narrower range than would be your usual approach. It may well mean letting your stack drift down lower than you would usually allow before you find a hand that's strong enough to expect to win a showdown against the loose range with which you'll likely get called.

I think I would also mentally prepare in advance for bad beats. Rehearse how you're going to be cheerful and friendly and join your opponents in applauding their wins when their stupid play gets rewarded with the perfect river card. Mike Caro always plays with the attitude that he's rooting for the opponent to win. If that doesn't happen, he gets the pot as a consolation prize. That way, he's never disappointed either way it turns out. It's a hard mindset to get into, but one that is a harmonious environment for avoiding tilt.

One final piece of advice: I can no longer remember who wrote it (I think Steve Zolotow, but I can't be sure), but there was a column a few years ago in Card Player magazine about playing in a juicy home game. He stressed the point that one's most important goal for the first game is NOT winning any money, but getting invited back for a second and third and fourth game. You do that by being a good sport, by being likeable, by giving lots of action, chipping in generously for the food and drinks, and being a good loser. I get the impression that this tournament is one to which you are being invited at the discretion of its organizers. If so, I would make it my first priority to catch their attention as somebody that should be invited back every time because you help make the experience more enjoyable for the high rollers they're trying to woo. Laugh, learn people's names, makes friends, be the guy that nobody much minds losing to. Imagine yourself as part of the casino hospitality staff, there to help the other players have a good time so that they want to keep patronizing the establishment. In other words, take the long view, not the short view. You're trying to set the stage for being able to sheer these sheep many times, not just kill them this once.

None of this is mathematically precise poker theory, but I hope it's a useful set of broad strokes on how to approach the game.

I missed the blog's big birthday

And I missed it by a long way. It was 30 days ago, and it was just today that I realized that I've been doing this bloggery thing for five years now.

Here's the very first post, from October 30, 2006: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2006/10/what-you-threw-away.html

I don't have anything profound to say about the passage of that interval of time. To use my girlfriend's favorite (hah!) expression, it is what it is. But I thought I'd point it out anyway.

Thanks for sticking around.

Caution: Pots may be larger than they appear

Yesterday I was planning to spend the afternoon playing at Imperial Palace, but they had no game going when I arrived, so I wandered down the street to the Flamingo, where I had not played since (hang on, checking records) December 16, 2010. I generally don't like it much there, but it will do in a pinch. Sometime recently they opened a new casino. Well, it's really just an extension of the main Flamingo casino, but it is set up in such a way that it looks and feels like it's separate. It's the "Margaritaville Casino." It's tropical-island-themed, with cocktail waitresses in bikinis, Jimmy Buffet music playing overhead, clusters of faux palm trees, etc. It's actually very pleasant, as casino floors go. To celebrate the opening, they issued new chips, as shown above, which, of course, I had to add to my collection.

I was one of the players starting up a new table, and quickly discovered that I had lucked my way into an assemblage of calling stations. Instead of my usual game, I switched to what I think of as my "Bill's strategy," named for Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon, which was the first place I found myself consistently facing a table full of people who would call anything, fold nothing, and be aggressive only with the nuts. The strategy is not exactly rocket science: Value bet the strong hands, check-fold everything else, omit the bluffing. Against such opponents, it does not matter that that strategy means that you are effectively playing with your cards face up. They don't bother looking at them; they see only their own cards, and play accordingly.

The Bill's strategy was paying off well, supplemented by stacking a guy when I had the good side of a flopped set-over-set (my queens to his treys). It was getting close to the time that I needed to leave to catch the start of the Sunday night IP mixed game, when there was a touchdown in the late football game, which meant it was $100 splash-pot promotion time.

They drew a card to determine which table would get it, and mine was the one. Next hand, the floor guy brought over 20 red chips and plunked them down in the middle of the table before the cards were dealt. I was in the big blind and got A-8 offsuit.

My expectations were low. My limited experience with splash pots like this is that people go crazy, like a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy. FREE MONEY! ME WANT! Players raise and reraise crazily, shoving stacks of hundreds of dollars into the pot in an effort to win the house-supplied overlay.

Not this time. It was a family pot limpfest. I was stunned as one by one they all dutifully set two blue chips out in front of them. There was no discussion, no collusion, no collective strategy being deployed. I thought surely somebody was going to put in a raise that I would consider prohibitively large, given that my hand was one that was very likely to be dominated by somebody with a better ace, leaving me with, at best, maybe a 25% chance of winning the hand. With my nice profit for the afternoon about to be locked up, I wasn't in a mood to monkey around with a big chunk of my stack trying to get lucky with odds like that.

As the number of limpers increased, it dawned on me that these people simply could not figure out how to adjust to the radically different situation that the splash-pot promotion was presenting them. There is a very good reason that in no-limit games bet-sizing has everything to do with the size of the pot: You need to figure out what the pot is worth in order to determine how much it's worth risking in order to win it. As extreme examples, it usually would made no sense to risk $100 to win $2, but it would almost always be worth risking $2 to win $100. When the pot starts at $103, as this one did, a player who thinks he likely has the best hand--or thinks that he can convince everyone else that he does--should make a stab at the pot that is many times more than what the standard opening raise would be when just the $3 in blinds is up for grabs.

But when the action got to me, it was still just the size of the big blind I had already posted, so heck yeah, I'll take a free flop.

It came ace-rag-rag. The small blind checked. I thought about what to do. This table was so passive that there was a real chance that all ten of them would check. A pot now at about $115 (after rake) was absolutely worth taking a shot at with top pair, even with--or maybe especially with--a flock of calling stations behind me.

But how much to bet? I did not have great confidence that I had the only ace, and with ten limpers, there could easily be some weird two-pair that had hit and that might remain undetectable until I had committed a lot of money. Especially with my bad position, I didn't want to spend a lot and then have to abandon my children in the middle of the table.

It seemed to me that all of the other players were not perceiving this as a $115 pot. Instead, they were seeing it as a $15 pot with a $100 bonus going to the winner. Of course, logically that is a distinction without a difference. But perception is a fair substitute for reality in such situations, and I decided that I would play along with the table's apparent conventional wisdom. I also had in mind the general axiom that one should not bet more than it takes to accomplish the goal, which in this case was, ideally, to win the pot uncontested, and, failing that, to determine where my hand stood in relation to the strength of the others.

If the other players are seeing this as a $15 pot, then it makes no sense to bet $60 or $70 at it. So I bet $10. Frankly, this seemed like an absurd thing to do. I can state categorically that I have never opened the betting at a $100+ pot for $10 before yesterday. But I was in Rome, and doing what I thought the Romans do.

Like a row of falling dominoes, the players tossed in their hole cards one after the other, and I won a $115 pot with my little $10 bet. I have no idea why this bunch of calling stations--who previously would call three streets of 1/2- to 3/4-pot bets with top pair/bad kicker or second pair/good kicker--all suddenly decided that less than 10% of the pot was too rich for their blood, but that's how it went down.

Sitting here describing it and watching the replay in my brain, I'm still dumbfounded. None of it makes any sense from the point of view of a rational poker player. It may be that I was the only one at the table that might be able to claim that label.

I can't remember ever reading advice on how to handle a situation where your opponents think the pot is different than what it really is, because this must surely be a situation that comes up only rarely. I won't claim that being able to figure out what your opponents think the pot size is will be a skill that you need very often, but apparently it's one that can come in handy at least once in a great while.

Steel wheel

Playing at Imperial Palace tonight, I had the above nice hand: runner-runner 5-high straight flush, starting with 2s-4s in my hand. I won the pot plus a $100 high-hand jackpot. The dealer was Alaska Gal of AllVegasPoker.com. It was sort of a spontaneous mini-AVP meetup, with TarpieFish and Karapet1 also at the table. I believe that I made a few converts to the Holy Order of the Deuce-Four with that hand.

I have decided that Alaska Gal is the world's greatest poker dealer. In addition to giving me this steel wheel, a few minutes earlier she had saved my sorry butt with a two-outer on the river. I managed to get myself all-in with an overpair (K-K) versus a flopped set of 7s. A third king on fifth street rescued me from the precarious situation. Hilarity ensued. (One reader recently complained that I never tell stories in which I do something stupid. It's just not true, and this is another example.)

I would tell more stories, but I promised Tarpie that I wouldn't tell certain stories. For example, the time he mucked his cards when first to act on the river, only to have his lone remaining opponent show him 5-3 offsuit, which was the worst possible hand for the board, meaning that whatever Tarpie threw away, it was the winner. That's one of the stories I said I wouldn't tell, so I won't. See how faithfully I keep my promises?

Thankful

It's not hard to identify what I am feeling most grateful for today: It's Cardgrrl.

Most of you know her only through my words. Which is a shame, because they can't adequately convey how wonderful she is. Some of you know her also through her own words. Which is better, but still woefully inadequate, since she does not tend to crow about how much there is to like and admire about her. You really should get to know her in person, if you ever get the chance.

She is smart, kind, patient, interesting, funny, tolerant, adaptable, adventurous, generous, affectionate, respectful, strong, supportive, independent, enthusiastic, curious, quirky, creative*, perceptive, adorably nerdy, articulate, dependable, gentle, honest, playful, pragmatic, imaginative, forgiving, and loyal. I'm not sure I've ever known anyone who could hit all of those notes at once. I'm not even sure how the universe managed to cram so many desirable qualities into one human being.

But however it happened, my life is immeasurably better for having her in it. I am continuously puzzled, yet humbled, that she seems to care so much about me, but it is a gift I receive, daily, with a thankful heart.

(The picture above is one of my favorites of her, because of how the warmth of her personality shows on her face. I wish I could take credit for it, but I wasn't even around when it was taken, which was while she was in New York City last year visiting family. It was shot by an anonymous older woman in a restaurant with whom she struck up a conversation.)

*As an aside, let me remind you again that she makes and sells beautiful silk scarves and collections of ready-to-frame prints of her best photographs, both of which make outstanding holiday gifts.

Josie and the dog

I just woke up from a strange dream. I was married to Very Josie. My little beagle named Maggie had a broken leg, and I was rushing to gather up some things so I could take her to the vet. Josie wanted to stop on the way at a hat shop to find a funny hat to complete a costume, because Halloween was only a few days away.

Oh, yeah, that's much more urgent than getting the DOG WITH A BROKEN LEG TO THE VET! What the hell is wrong with you, Josie?!

I've really got to start picking my wives more carefully. And stop taking hallucinogens before bed.

Change to Card Player online access

I was just trying to find the link to a recent article in Card Player magazine in answer to a reader's question, when I discovered that they have completely overhauled online access.

In the good ol' days, the entire archives of C.P. were available online for free--or at least as many years back as I ever cared to look. (It was at least five.) A few months ago, they made access much clunkier and harder to get at, but if you knew pretty specifically what you were looking for, you could still find it. Recent issues were browsable using Flash.

No more. They have changed to a entirely subscription model:

http://www.cardplayer.com/digital-subscriptions

The current issue has links to individual articles, but the links just take you to the subscription sign-up page. The "archives" section shows front covers of previous issues, but with no live links.

In what I assume is just a coincidence, Shamus wrote a blog post just a few days ago about other sources of poker information moving behind pay walls, with eGamingReview and Wicked Chops' "Insider" site being the key examples. Now C.P. has joined those ranks.

Hey, it's their content and they can do with it what they please. If they think they can monetize their assets better this way, good luck with that. But I'm skeptical that they'll find a large audience willing to pay good money to see stuff they published years ago. On a handful of occasions when writing a blog post I have remembered reading something relevant in an old C.P. issue and have gone to their archives in order to quote the source accurately and link to it. But the ability to do that is not something that is sufficiently valuable to me to pay the $30 a year that they're asking.

If in the future you catch me writing something like, "I remember Matt Matros wrote about this strategy last year in Card Player, but I can't quote it exactly," well, now you'll understand why.

Pity Phil Hellmuth

It's not easy to be assigned to write a feature about a well-known player for a poker publication. They've all been interviewed and profiled to death. Coming up with something new and interesting to say about them takes hard work and creativity. Getting the tone of such pieces right--neither sycophantic hero-worship nor gratuitous bashing--complicates the task.

My friend Dave Behr (of "Riding the F Train" blog) has, in my opinion, been absolutely nailing this difficult genre recently with a series of player profiles in Bluff magazine. These have included features on John Racener in May and Eugene Katchalov in July. But the one that has been sitting on my desk, with my thoughts about it percolating since I read it a couple of months ago, is the one about Phil Hellmuth in the September issue (not yet available online).

The article focuses, naturally, on his series of second-place finishes in this year's World Series of Poker. He was not only runner-up in three major bracelet events, but in the Player of the Year race, too, though at the time of this interview he still had a chance to take that title away from Ben Lamb if he did well enough at the WSOP-Europe.

I don't think this was the intent of either the interviewer or interviewee, but I was most struck by how pitiful a character Hellmuth is. Specifically, I find it terribly sad--and, frankly, baffling--that he has accomplished so much, yet is still so overtly desperate to win the world's approval.

Consider these excerpts from Dave's feature:

"I felt like 99 percent of the planet was rooting for me [to win the $50,000 Poker Player's Championship]," Hellmuth said a few weeks after the 2011 WSOP ended. "Even if you hated me, seeing me finish second twice and knowing the pain and the turmoil that it was causing me had to be enough to say, 'I hope you get this one.' Of course, maybe it was out of pity." ...

Hellmuth reiterated that all he really cares about is winning bracelets. He feels like he could win 24 before he stops playing poker, a benchmark by which his career might be measured. "Nobody is going to judge me by Player of the Year," he said....

But there are still critics out there who say that the 2011 WSOP proved once again that Hellmuth can't beat the great players, can't win the big buy-in tournaments, and can't win in non-Hold'em games. For all of his success this year and over the course of his career, Hellmuth is bothered by those people. He said he listens to his "haters" too much.

"Phil Jackson, what does he say during his parting interview?" Hellmuth asked. "The greatest coach of all time says, 'You won't have me to kick around anymore.' Nine percent of the world can't related to that.* Like, what's he talking about? This is the greatest coach of all time. But he listens to his critics. I listen to my critics."

Published at nearly the same time was another interview with Hellmuth for Poker Player newspaper (the September 26, 2011, issue, page 10) by Lou Krieger and Shari Geller. This one is nowhere near as original or insightful as Dave's. It reads like a generic bit of promotion for the iPhone poker app that Hellmuth recently put his name on--which is probably exactly what it was. Still, there was another quotation included that continues the same theme:

"Like it or not, I play for my fans and friends, but I hear all the critics. There have been a lot of critics saying 'Phil can't do this, he can't do that, he can't play in the modern era.' Well everything they said I couldn't do, I did this year."

You see the common theme, don't you? He is terribly obsessed with what everybody in the world of poker thinks about him. It doesn't matter how much money he has won. It doesn't matter how long his list of successes is. It doesn't matter how many people like and/or admire him. He can't get over the fact that there remain others who are not sufficiently convinced that he's a great player, and he is doggedly trying to win the approval of every last one of them.

Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying that he'll stay on the radio until everybody agrees with him. It's a fool's errand, of course, a Sisyphean task that can never be accomplished, as there is absolutely nothing on which all people everywhere will agree. Limbaugh obviously knows this; his tongue in firmly in cheek. But I'm not sure Hellmuth grasps it. My impression of him is that he will go to his grave bothered by the fact that there remain some people who refuse to acknowledge his poker talent.

I am reminded of my favorite Aesop's fable (though I just learned from Wikipedia, to my chagrin, that the common attribution is false, and it is not a genuine Aesop), "The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey." Here is one common recitation of the tale:

A man and his son were once going with their donkey to market. As they were walking along by his side a countryman passed them and said, "You fools, what is a donkey for but to ride upon?" So the man put the boy on the donkey, and they went on their way.

But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said, "See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides."

So the man ordered his boy to get off, and got on himself. But they hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the other, "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along."

Well, the man didn't know what to do, but at last he took his boy up before him on the donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and the passersby began to jeer and point at them. The man stopped and asked what they were scoffing at.

The men said, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey of yours -- you and your hulking son?"

The man and boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought and they thought, until at last they cut down a pole, tied the donkey's feet to it, and raised the pole and the donkey to their shoulders. They went along amid the laughter of all who met them until they came to a bridge, when the donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and caused the boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the donkey fell over the bridge, and his forefeet being tied together, he was drowned.

Try to please everyone, and you will please no one.

Source: Joseph Jacobs, The Fables of Æsop (London: Macmillan and Company, 1902), no. 63, pp. 149-51.

You can't go through life trying to win the admiration and approval of everybody you encounter. It can't be done, and you'll make yourself crazy trying.

I can't figure out why Hellmuth cares that there are people who won't give him the credit and respect he feels he deserves. A mentally healthy person would take his own measure and decide whether it is or isn't good enough, perhaps taking into account the assessments of family, close friends, and trusted advisers, but not waste time or emotional energy with what millions of strangers think.

For reasons that I can't wrap my head around, Phil Hellmuth seems unable to do that. Instead, he continually worries that there remain poker players who don't respect him, and wonders what he has to do to win them over. For that, he is, in my view, a man to be pitied.

(Image above is Hellmuth in a Speedo many years ago. He sent this out via Twitter a while back. I was torn between using it and the one of him piloting a giant hot dog boat. Did I choose wisely?)

*That "nine percent" struck me as peculiar. "Ninety percent" would seem more natural, even though, obviously, neither one would be meant to be taken with scientific precision. I emailed Dave to ask about it, and he told me that it was indeed "ninety," but was somehow changed to "nine" by an editing error at the magazine.

How to lose $400 in one hour

I feel some sense of obligation to share my vast poker knowledge and experience with my readers. I think that most of you would not know how to go about losing $400 in just one hour of playing $1-2 no-limit hold'em. I think I should lay out a plan for how you can accomplish this. Naturally, what follows is purely hypothetical.

Step 1: Go to Imperial Palace, to pick a random spot. Perhaps you'll make it there on a Sunday evening--one very much like last night, in fact--with the initial thought that you'll make your bread-and-butter money in NLHE, then indulge in some fun shenanigans at the $3-$6 10-game mixer afterwards.

Step 2: Buy in for $200 and take your seat.

Step 3: Quickly lose about $50 with a series of good starting hands that go nowhere and must be abandoned.

Step 4 (big hand #1): Pick up A-K in early position. Raise to $8. Get three callers. See a flop of A-7-3 with two diamonds. Bet $22 at it. Get one caller who is most likely on a flush draw. See a brick on the turn. Bet $55 at it. Hear big-stacked opponent declare himself all-in. Count chips, see that you have only about $65 left. Calculate that the pot is effectively about $245. Realize that you have to call, and do so. See opponent's pocket 3s. Realize that you are drawing dead.

Step 5: Rebuy, another $200.

Step 6 (big hand #2): Pick up suited K-Q in late position after a couple of limpers. Raise to $11. Get two callers. See flop of 4-7-8 rainbow. When they check to you, make continuation-bet of about 2/3 of the pot, $22. Get one caller. Put him on overpair (9s or 10s), top pair with good kicker (e.g., A-8), or straight draw. See turn card of a king. Be happy to have connected. When lone remaining opponent checks to you again, bet $50. When he smooth-calls again, realize that something suspicious is going on. See deuce on the river, an apparent blank. Cautiously let the action go check-check. As soon as you check, see opponent smack the table in frustration. Realize that this means he was desperately hoping to get in a river check-raise and take all of your chips. Confirm this when he turns over 5-6 offsuit for the flopped straight.

Step 7 (big hand #3): For the first time in this session, look down at the Mighty Deuce-Four in early position. Let feet do happy dance under table, as you have been blessed with the most powerful hand in poker. Limp, so as to conceal the strength of your holding. Hear the guy who previously stacked you with his set of treys announce a raise to $12. Call behind two others. See totally unsurprising flop of K-4-4. Repeat happy dance under table. Check. See big stack bet $45 and get one caller. Pull the trigger on your check-raise shove. Get insta-call from big stack and fold from other player. Reveal your trips. See opponent's pocket aces. See opponent grimace and knock the table in polite acknowledgement of your superior hand. Know that he has but two outs. See one of the two remaining aces hits the turn. Throw up a little bit in your mouth. Decide that poker may not be the game for you when you do not hit your one out (for quad 4s) on the river.

I realize that this is a rather complex game plan. It requires a lot of things to go wrong in highly improbable ways, all linked together in an exact sequence. It may look like a formidable challenge. But it is possible.

Trust me on that.

It's so nice when a plan comes together

It's nice to win by getting luckier than the other guy. It's even nicer to win by outplaying the other guy. But I think the nicest of all ways to win is when you pay enough attention to figure out an opponent's specific weaknesses, bide your time waiting for a spot in which to exploit them, pull the trigger when the time comes, and have it pay off. I got one of those tonight.

I was at Planet Hollywood. One player was particularly easy to start getting a read on, because he had the horrible habit of showing his cards after most hands were over. He also egged other players to show, clearly feeling that this was part of good poker sportsmanship. Within an hour, I had a crystal-clear picture of how this guy played. He had four notable characteristics:

1) He played almost every hand, for whatever price anybody made it.

2) He played as if top pair/any kicker was the nuts. He would always raise the pre-flop raiser when he caught top pair on the flop, either raising in position or check-raising if he was first to act. He had obviously learned--whether through books, TV, or perhaps his own experience--that most of the time the pre-flop raiser will not have a hand as good as top pair on the flop, so this tactic will, in fact, work more often than not. But it's also obviously (A) expensive when you're wrong, and (B) easily exploitable when it is carried out so predictably. And he was remarkably predictable about it. He seemed not to care one bit whether the texture of the flop was draw-heavy or dry, nor how many other people were still in the hand. If his flop raise got reraised, he'd go all in. Top pair? He's going with it! I never saw him with a shown two-pair or better hand, so it wasn't clear to me whether he would act the same way with even stronger hands. He apparently didn't try to take any heat with hands worse than top pair.

3) His bets and raises were prohibitively large, both pre-flop and on the flop. When he raised, he wanted the pot right then and there, no monkeying around. The concept of sizing his bets so as to tempt an opponent to draw with incorrect odds would have sounded to him like the ravings of a madman.

4) He was terribly uncomfortable making decisions later in the hand than the flop. This tendency was so pronounced that if there was still somebody in the hand with him after the flop betting (either because he called, or the opponent called, or it went check-check), he would routinely offer to just check it down the rest of the way. The natural inference from this is that he knew that he was not very good at the more complex decisions that are required on the later betting rounds. That, obviously, is where more costly mistakes can be made, and he wanted to steer clear of them as much as possible.

With this picture of his play in mind, I kept looking for opportunities to take advantage of it.

I was in the big blind with A-J offsuit. Young woman second to act raised to $12 after an under-the-gun limp. Early in my time at the table she had been playing tight, but lately had been raising more often than was plausible for genuinely big hands. Apparently before I arrived she had been on a heater of premium starting hands, and had convinced the table that they should respect her opening raises. It seems that finding out that she could get away with that was going to her head a little. I thought she was starting to push it beyond the point of credibility. Apparently others concurred in this judgment, because rather than triggering a cascade of folds, this time three of us called. I wasn't thrilled about playing A-J from out of position against multiple opponents, but I prepared myself to just toss it if I didn't connect solidly.

Flop was J-7-2 with two diamonds. I checked. UTG checked. Young woman bet $15--not very convincing of real strength when the pot sits at about $45. My target player quickly raised to $65. Raising the pre-flop raiser with an overbet? That's his "I have top pair" theme song playing loud and clear. And if he has top pair, it is much more likely to be with a worse kicker (especially a king, queen, or ten) than it is to be on equal footing with my ace kicker. Ding! We seem to have us a situation!

My usual reaction here would be either to fold or just call, the latter being a way to be sure that there wasn't going to be either a check-raise from UTG or an all-in reraise from the young woman before getting myself pot-committed. But this was not the usual situation. This was the kind of spot I had been deliberately trying to get to develop--one where this exact player was doing this exact thing, and I had a hand that could beat (or, at worst, tie) his top pair. If he stayed true to form, he would be willing to commit his stack here with what was likely to be far the worst of it. Because the young woman's flop bet was so small--not the way I had seen her play her big-pair hands--I was reasonably confident she had something like A-K or A-Q that was good enough to open with from early position pre-flop, but she had not improved and would likely not want to put a lot more money in. There was always some small chance that the UTG guy had flopped a set and was ready to spring his trap, but that was a risk I would just have to take in order to exploit the opportunity to win much more from my target than most players would be willing to lose in his situation.

I also had this consideration: If I just called and got heads-up with him, he might not be willing to put more chips into the pot on the turn and river, given how gun-shy he was about those later-street decisions. He might decide that I had slow-played a set or had caught a lucky second pair, and fold on that basis. Also, a call might suggest "flush draw" to him, and if a third diamond came, he would suddenly have an easy fold. In other words, the fish might manage to slip off the hook if he had to make decisions out of his comfort zone. Worse, he might actually catch his lucky second pair and I'd be stuck putting in a lot of money drawing nearly dead.

With those thoughts rattling in my head, I decided that I had to, as the old Schlitz Beer commercials put it, go for the gusto. I announced "all in." I had some relief of anxiety when both UTG and the original raiser quickly folded. I had even more relief when, action back on him, the target slumped his shoulders, looked unhappy, and asked for a count. It was about $110 more back to him. He took maybe ten seconds to think, but then he announced a call, with obvious reluctance and resignation in his voice. Since he had been eager in the past to get it all in with top pair, I was a little puzzled by his hesitation here. Perhaps he recognized that my play was generally solid, and he might be in more trouble against me than against other, looser players.

I showed my A-J, and he shook his head as if I had just confirmed his worst fear. Sure enough, he turned over K-J for top pair/second kicker, a hand that must have seemed to him like the stone-cold nuts just a minute earlier.

The turn and river changed nothing, and I scored my double-up. He was very sporting about it, despite clearly feeling dejected. He kept saying, "Nice hand." I thanked him, and assured him that I had just gotten lucky on him--it was a cold deck, and he couldn't have gotten away from his hand. That was a pretty flagrant lie, but I wanted him to keep playing exactly the same way, as far as it was in my power to convince him do so.

Back in May, 2008, I composed what might still be the best single piece I've ever written for this blog, here. (And, as Henry Kissinger might say, it has the added advantage of being true.) Long story short: I did something stupid, got lucky, thought about what table image the stupid move had given me, looked for a situation in which it would look like I was doing the same thing but wasn't, and it worked to perfection. I still like the concluding paragraph I put on that story, and it seems applicable here:

I think the one thing that more than any other makes me occasionally feel like a honest-to-goodness professional at this game is the rare occasion when I'm able to figure out what an opponent's thoughts and/or weaknesses are, to get inside his head, then either design or exploit a situation in a way that takes maximal advantage of what I have concluded about him. This was one of those moments. They don't happen every day--not by a long shot.

Checking with a chip

It's not often these days that I learn about what is to me an entirely new strategic tool to keep in the poker toolbox, but Dusty Schmidt's column in the latest issue of Card Player magazine (November 2, 2011, Vol. 24, #22, page 36) qualifies as such an occasion. He calls the move "checking with a chip":

In no-limit when the pot is medium or relatively big, you're out of position, and checking would normally be the play, sometimes it's advantageous to bet a small amount (usually the minimum bet) rather than the obvious check. As long as the pot is reasonably large relative to the size of the bet, the additional risk is minimal. Even still, you'll benefit in a few ways.

He goes on to list the good things that can happen. In brief:

• Both of you are on a busted draw. He might fold his better no-pair hand. This doesn't have to happen very often for it to be an incredibly profitable play.
• If your hand is likely the loser yet strong enough that you would have to call at least a medium-sized bet after checking to your opponent, one chip can act as the cheapest possible blocking bet. If he raises, you can have more confidence that he has you, and fold with minimal loss, but if he just calls, you get to showdown more cheaply than if it had gone check-bet-call.
• Many opponents can't resist the temptation to read such a small bet as weakness and bluff-raise. In situations where bluffs are a large part of his raising range, so that you have an easy call, checking with a chip may induce a bluff more reliably than a check would.

It is the last of these scenarios that he spends the most time discussing. I recommend reading the column (either in print now or in a couple of weeks when it is posted at www.cardplayer.com) for a fuller explanation of how to tell that you are in the right kind of situation for this to be applicable.

I'm going to be looking for opportunities to try this and see how it works.

Difficult decision, conclusion

This is the end of the story. If you haven't already read the set-up to the situation, and want to do that first, see here.

It's $102 more to call. Including my flop bet and his all-in, there's $216 in the pot. It will cost me $102 to win $216, which means that I break even on a call if I can win the hand about 47% of the time. [EDIT: Should be 32%. See comments.] More than that and it's profitable to call, less than that and it's not.

After the hand was over, I texted Donna that I had had A-Q. She responded, "What range did you put him on?" That, of course, is exactly the right question.

The problem was that he would likely consider his pre-flop playable range to be quite broad, since he had the button, the raise was not large, and there were several limpers, all of which means that he was getting attractive pot odds to play some oddball hands. I might ordinarily discount two-pair hands here (Q-8, Q-4, and 8-4), because people tend to fold those to early-position raises. But if he had them suited, he might well have deemed it worth seeing a flop, given the small raise, callers before him, and position. Of course he could have pocket 4s or 8s for a set and push rather than slow-play because he didn't want anybody hitting a flush. In my best-case scenario, he would have a queen with a worse kicker (Q-K or Q-J, especially), or a lower pocket pair (9-9 or 10-10, say), and just not believe that my continuation bet meant any real strength (especially if he had noticed and remembered that this was my third c-bet in a fairly short span of time). He might have A-Q for a likely chopped pot. He might have just a flush draw, and, if so, it could easily be the nut flush draw with suited ace-baby, in which case he would think (wrongly) that he also had ace outs in addition to club outs, even if he put me on a queen. Finally, he could have some combination--pair and a flush draw, or flush draw plus a gutshot straight draw. Big pairs (A-A, K-K, and Q-Q) seemed unlikely, as I think he would have reraised pre-flop in order to thin the field. Maybe he wouldn't have done so with Q-Q, but that was statistically very improbable since I had one in my hand and there was another on the flop.

In short, it was a vast array of possibilities. I felt confident that he wasn't on a pure bluff, but that was about all that I could definitely rule out.

As far as physical reads, my impression was that his hesitation was a fake, an attempt to look weaker and more indecisive than he really was. But I didn't put much confidence in that, since I had seen him play so few hands.

I thought about it for a minute or so. My sense was that the number of hands he could have in which he was already ahead, plus the decent equity he had with his drawing hands put my chances of winning below 50%. On that basis, I finally folded. But it was a close decision. If it would have cost me, say, just $60 or $70 more, instead of $102, I think I would have gone the other way on it and called him.

I had two other general considerations. First, I think it is usually wrong to play a big pot with just one pair, even if it is TPTK, especially when calling rather than being the aggressor.

Second, whenever I open-raise from early position, I am deliberately raising smaller than I would in late position because I don't want to play big pots from bad position. When doing so, I always remind myself of exactly that, and get it set in my mind that I will need to be more inclined to fold than I would be with the same cards in more favorable circumstances. (I discussed my pre-flop raising strategy and formula in some detail here.)

In fact, there's a decent argument to be made that A-Qo is not strong enough to play for a raise from such early position, and limping with it isn't great, either, so it's best to just throw it away and avoid the difficult decisions and costly blunders into which it can lead you. As Tommy Angelo memorably phrased it in Elements of Poker (page 179), "To me, the early positions look like a desert wasteland. It's a place where people die from overexposure. Which cards do I play from positional hell? The ones that can take the heat." A-Q can't take much heat.

After looking it over through the retrospectoscope, I think it's a very close decision, and it would not be too much of a mathematical mistake to go with either a call or a fold.

I'll confess to one other factor that made me lean towards a fold: It was getting late, I was tired, and I knew I'd be leaving soon. The night before, when entering results into my spreadsheet, I had happened to notice that I had scored six consecutive winning sessions, all of them between $100 and $300. If I folded my A-Q, I'd still leave with a profit of over $100 on the night, and that would extend the streak to seven, which would feel nice. If I called and lost, I might not be able to get back across that $100 threshold before leaving--or, worse, I might keep playing after my A-game had slipped away in a silly attempt to continue the streak, and really blow it. I fully acknowledge that that is an utterly absurd and irrational consideration, a factor that should never enter into the decision. But sometimes it just does, despite my efforts to whip into submission my remnants of irrationality.

I'm comfortable with my decision to let it go, but I'll never know whether it was correct in Sklansky bucks, because my opponent didn't show his cards before passing them back to the dealer. Sorry to disappoint you with no definitive ending to the story, but that's how poker usually is--it leaves you hanging, wondering whether you did the right thing.

Runner-up

Pius Heinz just won the 2011 WSOP. But I'm writing in commendation of Martin Staszko. I really liked how he played. He made a crucial mistake near the end calling an all-in with just a flush draw, which is probably what cost him the match in the end. But before that, he had been in the lead for most of the heads-up battle. He looked completely unflappable, whereas Heinz showed obvious signs of the stress and frustration. He said hardly a single word. He tamed the wild Heinz by using the call as his primary tool--just as Mike Caro advises for dealing with a maniac. He supplemented that with some impressively well-timed bluffs, deadly traps, and perfectly sized value bets. His style of play is not flashy or sexy, in the way that Heinz's daring high-wire act of unrelenting aggression is, but it is highly effective. It's the classic tortoise and hare story. I've always been partial to tortoises.

I think I was with most observers in seriously underestimating him coming into tonight. I mostly thought of him as having luckboxed his way to the final table, and then coasting on his chip lead to the final three. He always struck me as looking confused, like he didn't really know what was going on. But we learned from a Kara Scott interview late in the evening that, to everyone's surprise, most of Staszko's online play is heads-up, so he came to the end-game not nearly at the experience disadvantage that most of us assumed. And it showed--he never seemed the least bit intimidated by Heinz's aggression, and actually managed to force Heinz to dial it down, frustrating him by calling light, and usually correctly.

I'd like to think that I would have played about the way he did, in both decision-making and composure.

Good game, sir.

Difficult decision

We are here once again with one of our occasional "you decide" series. I'll describe the situation the best that I can, let you figure out what you'd do and submit a comment committing yourself to it if you'd like, then in about 24 hours I'll post the end of the story.

My friend Donna (@Cure_MTM on Twitter, Utah State Director for the Poker Players Alliance) was in town for today's induction of Linda Johnson into the Poker Hall of Fame and a Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza tournament tomorrow, and she was at the Venetian, so that's what I chose as the poker venue du jour in order to catch up with her.

Under-the-gun guy limped. I was next and raised to $8 with A-Q offsuit. I picked up a total of five callers, which was not unusual at this loose-passive table. Pot $45 after rake. Flop was Q-8-4 with two club, of which I had none. First guy checked. I had been prepared to give up on the hand if I missed the flop, because it's just not profitable to play into that many opponents from out of position without having connected. But with top pair/top kicker and not really any draws to worry about except for the clubs, I felt comfortable taking a solid whack at it. In fact, in two previous almost identical situations over the previous 30 minutes or so I had done the same with no opposition--once with an overpair, and once with A-K on a king-high flop, both from first or second position.

Of course, that history cuts both ways. On the one hand, it has proven that these people won't try to fight back very often. On the other hand, if they're paying attention, they might think that I'm continuation-betting every time whether I hit or not--which happens not to be true, but they can't know that, since I didn't show the other times that I took it down.

It is folded to the button. He's the oldest player at the table, relatively tight, but not a classic rock. He has been verbal about how card-dead he has been, and even changed seats once just to try to get dealt better hands. He hesitates a bit, then rather suddenly picks up all his chips and plops them down in the pot. The others fold back to me.

So the question is, simply, call or fold?

Addendum

Sorry, I left out the critical information of his stack sizes. His all-in would be another $102 to me on top of my $35 bet. I have $350 or so in front of me.

Addendum 2

Wow, I must be having a stroke or something--I left out my bet size, too. I bet $35 on the flop. Apologies, all. I'm usually better at describing things than this. (There is actually an explanation, though a lame one. I started this as an all-in-one story, and only later decided to make it a question-and-answer style. I moved the numbers stuff to the second part, forgetting that that data is crucial to readers making a cogent decision.)

Poker gems, #443

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, November 2, 2011 (vol. 24, #12), page 34.

The great thing about the turn is that nearly every drawing hand is an underdog to a decent made hand....

Therefore, whenever you bet the turn, you usually want draws to call. My guess is that statement strikes many of you as wrong. "I bet to get the draws out!" you exclaim. "I sure as heck don't want them calling and drawing out on me!"

Nope. You want them calling. Or at least you should. Because if you're betting so much on the turn that the draws fold, then you're also pricing out many of the weaker made hands. With no draws and no weaker made hands to call, you're getting action only from better hands. which means you're making losing bets. If trying to get draws out is how you think about the turn, then you have it all wrong.

Soft-playing is cheating

I once again feel compelled to write a post in response to something Very Josie has written. In describing a recent trip with Waffles to Foxwoods, she mentioned that she and Waffles had an agreement that if either of them had a big hand, they would bet big so that the other would know to get out. She was upset that Waffles violated this agreement by, among other things, bluffing her. She also said that having some sort of agreement like this was routine for her when she played in cash games with friends. It might take different forms (like agreeing not to get into big pots with each other), but there is usually something put in place in advance.

I wish I could quote directly from the post so that you don't have to take my word for it, but unfortunately Josie has redacted the post to remove that section. (I read it several hours ago, and assumed it would still be there intact when I got around to writing this response.) I'm guessing that this was in response to the criticism she received in the comments.

At the risk of piling on, I think it cannot be repeated too often or too emphatically that such conduct is, to be blunt, cheating. We have an obligation to the long-term good and integrity of the game to denounce it as such whenever we are made aware that it is going on.

Mike Caro writes about this frequently. Here are just two of the columns he has published specifically addressing the problem of friends soft-playing each other:

http://www.poker1.com/archives/7928/why-its-wrong-to-soft-play-friends-at-poker/

http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazine/My-Personal-Poker-Code-of-Ethics-Mike-Caro-2058.htm

Here's an extended excerpt from the latter piece:

When someone robs a convenience store, you know who the bad person is. He’s the guy with the gun. As wrong as that is, in my mind it’s not as sinister as a poker partnership. The robber and the convenience store haven’t exchanged solemn promises. With poker partnerships, the thieves usually go unnoticed and nobody knows anything was stolen. Lives can be ruined when unethical players break their promises and directly target the honesty of others who are being fair to them. What’s worse than that? That’s why I have long-ago stated that poker cheaters should be boiled and eaten. If you think I’m not serious, you boil; I’ll eat.

Soft-play friends.

Strangely, many players think they should give friends a break. But when you soft play friends at the table others get hurt in the crossfire.Aggressive opponents, who are playing honestly, especially suffer. That’s because they mistake what’s happening through secret alliances as tactical traits exhibited by the group of friends.This causes those honest players to make poor decisions for the wrong reasons on future hands.Much worse, soft playing often means that honest players get less value when they hold strong hands because some opponents have decided not to participate in order to make it easy on their buddies. Also, honest players may call trying to catch a bluff, not realizing that the opponent would never have bet a weak hand due to a secret understanding with a participating friend.Soft playing friends is cheating. If you want to be generous, win the money through honest play first.Then you can give it away to your friends later.

Best hand.

Some players consider that playing best-hand poker (where partners signal each other and only the strongest hand is played) is a gray area of ethics that isn’t quite cheating. They’re wrong. Playing best hands is a simple and serious form of cheating and the method will usually destroy ethical players. You should never consider joining such partnerships and if asked to participate I believe you should report the players immediately. Tattling may seem uncool, but you have an obligation to other players to keep the game honest. As uncomfortable as it may seem to do this, poker can’t be protected without your help.

Obligation of pros and other players.

Look, we’ve made great advances. Poker has crawled out of the dank corners of taverns and dimly lit two-table card rooms. We’ve survived the era when scammers roamed and ruled. Now poker is in the spotlight, but it won’t stay there unless professionals and other honest players protect our game. It’s no longer enough to look the other way and just refuse to participate.We need to let unethical players know, in blunt terms, that we don’t tolerate any form of cheating, including partnerships big or small. It’s our game and we will defend it. The consequences of tolerating unethical poker are too great; the stakes are too high. Tell them that exactly. If that doesn’t work, it’s time to start boiling the water.

I've written about this, too, though less eloquently. When I saw a published interview in which Chad Brown and Vanessa Rousso admitted to soft-playing each other, and apparently thought there was nothing wrong with it, I wrote a long post explaining exactly why it was a form of cheating and how it hurt the other players:

http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-professional-poker-cheaters.html

I stand by that.

Josie, when we play at the same table, whether cash game or tournament, I expect you to do everything in your power to take all of my chips, and I will be doing the same. Whatever happens happens, with no hard feelings. However the chips and cards fall, we leave the table just as much friends as when we sat down.

That is the only kind of agreement friends should have with each other before playing poker together.

Let's count the mistakes

I played at the Rio last night. When I was directed to a table, the only seat open was #2, so I took it. Good thing. It was so advantageous that in retrospect I'm astonished that nobody else there moved to it when it became available.

Its advantage was all about the guy in Seat 1. He was drunk out of his mind. A friend of his at the table said that he had had about 20 vodka/Red Bulls in the past five hours or so. At the rate he was downing them, I believed it.

He was the classic happy drunk--far more interested in socializing and commenting on everything else going on around him than the game. He always had to be pestered into taking his turn, always had to be told about five times to post his blinds, always had to be told what the action was, etc.

Of most importance to the story, he put zero effort into protecting his cards, despite multiple warnings from the dealer, me, and the other players. He never capped his cards with a chip or other object. This is an especially dangerous habit in the two seats next to the dealer, for two reasons. First, the dealer can sweep one's hole cards into the muck much faster and more easily than from other positions. Second, other players mucking their cards can accidentally run them into unprotected hole cards of Seats 1 and 9 (or 10), thus killing the hand. The other way he failed to protect his hand was that he just lifted his cards in front of his face with no attempt to conceal them. I could see them without even trying about half the time.

As it happened, he quickly developed a fear of playing a pot with me, so I made almost no money from him over the couple of hours we played together. In only one hand was my view of his hole cards potentially going to make a difference. He raised pre-flop with 7h-8h. I had A-Q offsuit and called. The flop missed both of us. He put in a continuation bet. Since I knew exactly what he had, it was an easy call. I didn't raise, because the only decent player at the table was still in it with us. He raised, which foiled my chance at playing the hand as a superuser. Drunk guy and I both folded.

OK, now we get to the crazy hand of the night.

Drunk guy was in the big blind, but, as usual, didn't know it, despite the dealer asking him to post a couple of times. I folded from under the gun. I saw one of drunk guy's cards, a jack. Seats 3 and 4 folded. Just about that time, drunk guy says, "All in." It wasn't his turn, obviously. He still hadn't even posted his blind. Seat 5 pushes his chip stacks forward. He must have heard the all-in announcement, because there's no way he would have just open-raised all-in for $135.

So the first mistake was drunk guy acting out of turn. Second mistake was the dealer not quickly stopping the action and clarifying that that declaration was out of turn and would be binding only if there was no raise in turn from any other player before action was properly back on Seat 1. Third mistake was Seat 5 not understanding all of this, and responding as if Seat 1's action had been in turn.

But wait, there's more!

The next player asked for a clarification of what the action was. The dealer told him that Seat 1 had gone all in out of turn, and Seat 5 was all in. He folded, as did everyone else. Then the dealer, apparently having forgotten what he had just said, looked down at Seat 1, saw unprotected cards and no chips out (he still hadn't posted his blind), and absent-mindedly swept Seat 1's cards into the muck. Let's call that mistake 4.

Drunk guy looks down, trying to figure out what happened, and says, "Hey, where's my cards?" Dealer immediately recognizes what he did. He calls for the floor. While he's looking away, trying to get the attention of the supervisor, drunk guy says loudly and repeatedly that he had had two jacks, and pulls two cards out of the muck that he thinks are his. He turns them face up: a jack and a deuce. He points to the deuce and says, "That one's wrong," and starts rummaging through the muck turning cards face up, trying to find his other jack. Finally the dealer notices what he's doing and puts a halt to it. Let's call this mistake 5.

Meanwhile, Seat 5 says, "Go ahead and find those jacks, see if you can beat this!" and triumphantly slams his pocket queens face up on the table. Mistake 6. Why invite your opponent to get a live hand that has a 20% chance of beating you if you might instead get his chips as a freeroll if he is deemed to be committed to the all-in with a dead hand? Of course, an opponent's approval of muck-fishing doesn't legalize it.

Floor comes over. The correct ruling, in my opinion, should be that Seat 1 is responsible only for the big blind. His out-of-turn declaration is no longer binding once Seat 5 puts in his raise. Since he never moved any chips into the pot, when the action is properly on him, he can call Seat 5's all in, or he can fold. With a dead hand, folding is the obvious thing that any sensible player would chose to do, given the option in that situation--lose the $3 big blind and hopefully learn a lesson from the close call. But instead, the floor rules that the out-of-turn all-in is, in fact, binding. Mistake 7.

Drunk guy accepts this ruling, but clearly does so thinking that he still get a chance to fight for the pot with his long-lost jacks. Mistake 8. Nope. Floor tells him it's a dead hand and instructs the dealer to take $135 from Seat 1 and give it to Seat 5.

Drunk guy is surprisingly sanguine about this. I expected an eruption, but it didn't happen. He quickly resigned himself to it, saying, "Whatever. I don't care. Fuck it."

Floor guy gave him a "final warning" about the f-bomb. (He had issued one previous warning, and the dealers had issued several.) Sadly, about 10 minutes later, one more effenheimer resulted in another call for the floor, and our friend being ejected from the room.

Strangely, this was an outcome that two other players had actively sought, complaining to the floor about how the drunk guy was slowing down the game. Which he was, obviously. But if you're there to make money, having a player like this booted from the game is absolutely the last thing you want to see happen.

When I cashed out later, I told the floor guy how I couldn't believe how short-sighted those other players had been in working to have Seat 1 kicked out. It was like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. He was sympathetic, and clearly knew exactly what was going on. He told me, "I know! I knew he was the action player in the game, so I tried to look the other way and let him keep playing for as long as I could."

Oh well. I made my money from the other players.

Miscellaneous links

In the last day or two, Twitter has pointed me to several interesting pokery things that I might have missed otherwise.

Annie Duke at The Moth, telling the story of how she grew up in a family of game players, learned to be competitive and not to lose, and how she discovered that poker was her true life calling (about 17 minutes).

http://cdn.themoth.prx.org/moth-podcast-197-annie-duke.mp3

"Grinders," an online pay-per-view ($4.00) documentary about playing poker for a living in underground cardrooms. I haven't watched it yet, but Kevin Mathers gave it "two thumbs up," which is endorsement enough for me. For more on the movie and how to see it, go here and here.

https://prescreen.com/movie/Grinders

Forbes magazine reports on the latest filing from federal prosecutors on the Black Friday case, including some of their legal arguments.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2011/11/04/federal-prosecutors-show-their-hand-in-online-poker-case/

Entertaining article by B.J. Nemeth about the creative things poker players dream up to bet on when playing "Lodden Thinks."

http://www.epicpoker.com/news/blog-pages/2011/11/epic-broadcast-lodden-thinks.aspx

Interesting, sensitive, and self-aware blog post by Terrence Chan about how odd millionaire poker players' conversations and actions must appear to much of the rest of the working world.

http://www.terrencechanpoker.com/2011/11/pokers-1-goes-to-bar.html

My old friend razz

Points and bragging rights--what more could a guy want?

Well, OK, money. But that's not available.

Out of court

Jury duty ended for me yesterday. Case submitted to jury at about 4:30 pm. I was designated as an alternate, and none of the regular jurors had been absent, so I was not to be included in deliberations unless one of them had some emergency and couldn't finish participation in the deliberations. They decided to go home and start fresh in the morning.

I just got a call from the court telling me that the case is over, I won't be called back in, and I'm released from admonition not to discuss it. To my great surprise, the jury was deadlocked, and it's a mistrial--after what couldn't have been more than about four hours of deliberation! I don't think I've ever heard of a jury being declared hopelessly deadlocked that quickly. Usually the judge lectures and pressures them to give it another try a time or two before throwing in the towel.

I'm even more surprised because by the conclusion of the case, I could see no way to acquit. I stood ready to be convinced by my fellow jurors that there was some plausible, innocent explanation for the mountain of incriminating evidence, but I thought it unlikely that that would happen. I would admit that there was some theoretical way that one might connect the dots other than in the straight line they seemed to make, but no reasonable or plausible way to do so, unless there was something I was overlooking. I really thought that when we did the initial poll, results would range only from "leaning guilty" to "throw away the key."

Now I will spend the rest of my life wondering how many and which of them thought the prosecution had not proven the case, and how they reached that conclusion, when it seemed to me to be about as close to open-and-shut as it could be. My hunch, after watching them for three days, is that a few of them just weren't paying close enough attention to the myriad details. It was a lot of dry presentation of documentary evidence, and I suspect that some of them tuned out, failing to grasp the truly damning implications of the numbers and signatures on the mountain of paperwork. (It was a case of defrauding the federal government, so naturally the case turned on what the papers contained.)

Once again I'm faced with plain evidence that I just don't see things the same way that the rest of the world does.

How did I not make this list?

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/189/thats-what-she-said/top-10-hottest-guys-poker-1121453/

It's inconceivable, really.

Four royal flushes in one hand

A story from TBC's blog, here.

an interesting thing in the eldorado [in Reno] the other morning, and a dealer ended up getting fired. i wasnt at the table but i could hear em on the other table. (i was in the NL game before it broke for the morning tourney, and this was at the STUD table.) seems while the players (all 4 of them) were taking a break, the dealer thought it would be funny to setup the deck to give all 4 the royal flush. essentially no one would be getting hurt, and all get back their money. now everything was going according to plan, and suddenly one old man was screaming how he had a royal flush and wanted his money. the other players told him they ALL had the royal, and i dont know if he was senile, or didnt believe them, but he insisted the floor call gaming, and it seems he eventually got paid and the dealer got fired. i know it seems hard to believe but if u come here u will find out its true. lots of witnesses even dealers at other casinos know about it.

On trial

I had to report for jury duty this morning. I thought that most likely I would be dismissed and life would go on, but I ended up being empaneled. So life kind of goes on hold for the next several days.

I'd tell you about the case, but then I'd have to kill you.

Poker gems, #442

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.

Verbal is binding. Or not.

Late last night I was playing at the Golden Nugget with two friends. Poker Lawyer was on my left, Jen across the table. (The ladies love me, ya know. P.L. even dropped trou for me before she left town. OK, it was via Twitter, but it still counts.)

I had 4d-5d on the button, and so joined a chorus of limpers. The flop was 9-4-5. P.L. checked, next guy bet. I think it was $11. I decided to just call. This was partly slow-playing, partly waiting to be sure P.L. wasn't going to put in a big check-raise after having flopped a set or bigger two pair. She folded, so I was heads-up.

Turn was another 4, filling me up. Guy checked. I bet $22. He called.

I don't remember the river card--a jack maybe? Anyway, it didn't seem to change anything. He checked. As I was reaching for chips, he said, "I call."

It's getting rare that I'm faced with a poker situation that is new to me and that I don't know what to do about. I was sufficiently confident of having the best hand that I would have been willing to get my whole stack into the pot if I thought I would get called. But would he actually call? I wasn't sure of that.

My first impulse was to ask the dealer to call the floor over and get a ruling on whether my opponent's call was binding. If it was, I'd move all-in. But in the roughly five seconds I took to think about my options, I decided it was most likely that the floor would decide his declaration was done out of turn and was therefore not binding, and the very process of trying to get him hooked for his whole stack on that basis would show him how badly I wanted a call, he'd fold, and I'd end up with nothing.

I decided instead to proceed as if he hadn't said anything. I made a standard-sized value bet, about 2/3 of the pot ($45), and he called. He flashed a 9 before mucking.

The questions raised are: (1) If I had stopped the action after he said, "I call" but before taking my turn, what should the floor decide? I.e., is he committed to calling whatever I bet up to the full amount of his stack? (2) Strategically, what is the best way for me to have handled that--as I did, or take a chance on the floor saying that he is committed to a call no matter what I bet, which wins me his stack, or some other approach that I haven't thought of?

I think if he had been deeper, I would have taken a shot at the floor ruling. But as it was, his river call was for about half of what he had left, which means that the potential gain wasn't a lot more than I stood to make from ignoring his words.

He was a very experienced player. He demonstrated thorough understanding of the rules of the game. He knew how the blinds changed when players moved in or out of the game, for instance. In fact, the way he talked early in the session had made me think he was likely an off-duty poker dealer, though I never got explicit confirmation of this. I feel about 99% confident that this was not an accidentally premature call on his part. I think it is much more likely that it was essentially a verbal version of the grabbing-a-stack move I discussed recently, here. He has probably either done this himself on previous occasions or seen it done, and has reason to believe that if it comes to a floor decision it will be ruled non-binding. If so, then I would label it as angle-shooting, a way of pretending to call without actually committing any chips.

I understand that before I got into poker, a common angle-shot was this: a player wanting to inhibit a bet or raise from somebody to his right would announce "raise" out of turn, but then check or call when action actually got to him. That was quashed by instituting the rule that out-of-turn action would be binding if the action to the player in question did not change between when he announced his action and when it became his turn.

If applied here, that would probably not commit my opponent, because, the argument would go, in between his verbal announcement and when he had to actually make his decision, the action had changed by virtue of my bet.

So I'm still not sure what the ruling would be if I pressed for one, nor how I should have handled the situation. I'd like to get it figured out before the next time I'm faced with it.

Addendum, October 31, 2011

I asked Matt Savage via Twitter how he would rule in this situation. He replied:

cash game rules vary, I can guarantee you I am charging him something to get him to stop this angle, probably size of turn bet.

in tournaments the @PokerTDA has added a rule for conditional statements so we have latitude to make him call your whole bet.

He is referring to this rule, added earlier this year:

47: Conditional Statements

Conditional statements regarding future action are strongly discouraged; they may be binding and/or subject to penalty. Example: “if – then” statements such as "If you bet, then I will raise”.

I knew of this change but hadn't thought of applying it here. But on consideration, it does seem pretty reasonable (if you ignore the cash game/tournament distinction). His statement was functionally equivalent to "If you bet, I will call."

Thanks to Matt for his quick response.