More on how to play Deuce-Four

I played another $15 tournament on Bodog this afternoon. I had the Mighty Deuce-Four four times. I thought I would give you all yet another little tutorial on how to play it.

The first option is to flop two pair, like this:




Or like this:




But if you have enough skill to pull it off, I would really recommend using it to hit a gutshot straight draw on the turn, when your opponent slow-plays his flopped two pair. That's the kind of play that is more likely to maximize your winnings:




***
An aside:

I realize that these Bodog hand histories are terribly difficult to read. Their format is maddeningly bizarre, compared to those of more mainstream sites. I apologize. If I could put the hands into a replayer for you, I would. If I could just run them through a program that rendered them into a more straightforward, chronological order with the extraneous bits cut out, I would. But I don't know of any easy way to do either, and trying to type out who bet what and which cards came is too much work.

Heck, it's hard enough just getting the hand histories in this lousy format. They are not stored on one's hard drive. In order to look at the last hand played during a tournament, you can't just click on "last hand" as at Full Tilt and Stars. No, you have to go back to the main lobby, click on "account," then click on "hand history," then specify tournaments or cash games and the date, click "search," then scroll down the list of hands to the last one, and click on that hand number. It's a horrible, horrible system. Also, it took me a while to figure out how to use a screen capture utility I have to get the entire history at once into a JPEG, as it has to be able to auto-scroll the window in order to acquire the whole thing. It's just a nasty mess. But it's the best I've been able to figure out so far.

***


What about the last 2-4 I had, you ask? Well, you wouldn't believe it even if I posted the hand history, so I won't bother. Final table, 7 players left. I was the short stack. I had 2c-4c. I shoved, just trying to steal the blinds. Of course, I was delighted when the small blind called me and had K-K. I was about a 99:1 favorite. But he got lucky and sucked out on me, and I was done. Picked up $85 for the fairly deep finish, but wish I could have done better. Just goes to show you that nothing in poker is certain, not even the 2c-4c. Especially on sites that are so obviously rigged.

Guess the casino, #599

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Answer: Boulder Station

Guess the casino, #598

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Answer: Aria

Poker gems, #384

Phil Laak, on how to win the WSOP Main Event (on ESPN broadcast earlier this week).


Everyone is bleeding in this thing. The trick is to bleed the slowest.


[I will avoid the obvious jokes about Laak bleeding the slowest, when he's looking like this.]

Guess the casino, #597

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Answer: Tuscany

Who's the real devil?

If you read much from the bunch of poker bloggers that cover the World Series of Poker, you've probably heard about the guy that several of them refer to as "The Devil." He pops up in the blogs after doing something new to freak out the writers--especially Otis and Pauly. For prominent examples, see here and here. He confirmed his demonic status with the believers this summer by getting Table 66, Seat 6, in a WSOP event. The date was 6/6. You have probably seen the guy (briefly) on television: He has discovered that ESPN will put him in the beginning of the first Main Event show if he bangs a pair of cymbals to start off the event. And you thought the devil only played the violin.

James Akenhead, though, is conceding the title to nobody. On Monday night's "Poker After Dark," a flop of 6-6-6 got him talking about some of the stranger points of his life. First, he was born at 6:00 on 6/6. But wait, there's more!

I came second last year in Event #2, and that took all my prize money, my
total prize money, to 666,000. Two days later, on my birthday, I cashed in the
2K at Bellagio, and that took me to 666th in all-time money winners.

He goes on to report that the day before the taping he had played a sit-and-go at the Venetian, and was assigned to Table 66, Seat 6. In London, at the World Series-Europe, he says, he was in Seat 6 and won 66,600 pounds.

So bang away at your cymbals, fake Poker Satan. The real Prince of Poker Darkness sits in London, ready to claim your soul for having the impunity to impersonate him.

Guess the casino, #596

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Answer: Plaza

I'd flip the coin

A new week of the PokerStars Big Game has finally begun. I'm watching the first episode now (available here).

David "Viffer" Peat is sitting to the left of this week's "loose cannon," Troy Howard, and makes him an interesting offer: When they are in the blinds, if the action folds around to just them, he would match Howard's all-in, assuming that neither of them looked at his cards.*

Would you take him up on that offer if you were the loose cannon? I would.

Here's how I'd see it. I'm probably -EV overall playing against this bunch, which includes Barry Greenstein, Antonio Esfandiari, and Chau Giang. It is surely less than 50% that I will come out winner by playing straight. Doubling my money in the prescribed 150 hands is highly unlikely. For either goal--ending up in the black, or ending up at or close to double my starting stake--I am more likely to achieve it by a 50/50 shot than I am by playing the game as intended.

Furthermore, I would know that I was likely to have to take worse odds than that later on. That is because the staked player gets to keep only what he wins above the initial $100,000 that they give him to play with. That means any player who is even a little below his starting stack when the last few hands come up is going to have to force the action with huge bets, no matter how lousy his cards are. A 50/50 shot is better than trying to win in that situation.

There is also the overlay to consider. Specifically, whichever loose cannon at the end of the season has the highest total win gets an additional $50,000 in tournament entries from PokerStars. The benchmark so far is a $63,000 win. Being at or close to a $100,000 win would be very difficult for anybody else to beat. If I won the flip, I would just fold every single hand for the rest of the week, making for extremely boring television, but maximizing my chance to hold on to the profit. The blinds are $200/$400 with a $100 ante (six-handed), so 150 hands would cost about $30,000, still leaving me with a $70,000 profit--enough to be in the lead for the $50K bonus, and likely a difficult mark for any subsequent loose cannon to beat.

The show's producers would probably hate me, but too bad. I would be in it for the money, and I would judge this gambit to be my best shot at having any profit, as well as my best shot for having the season's highest profit, so I would take it in a heartbeat, and let them curse and moan over my fold-every-hand-thereafter strategy.

So did Howard do it? Nope. On the second orbit, the opportunity arose--folded around to Howard and Peat in the blinds. Howard chickened out. He had J-7 and would have been up against Viffer's K-Q. They played to the flop, and Howard hit a 7 (A-9-7), but folded to a bet anyway. He most likely would have won his crapshoot if he had had the nerve to go for it.

Too bad.

It would be interesting to ask him to explain why he turned down the offer. Just afraid to gamble? Or does he seriously think his chance of profiting 175 big blinds or more in 150 hands is better than 50/50? My guess is he just didn't think through the math of his situation--which, if I'm right, all by itself shows that he is probably not a player of a caliber that is going to fare well. (I'm only halfway through the first episode, so haven't seen him play many hands, but my radar says that he is not very good at all--something akin to the first week's contestant, but much less skilled than the second and third weeks' players.)


*Technically, they couldn't quite do it all-in in the dark, because the game is structured to be pot-limit before the flop and no-limit after the flop. But assuming both players are honorable and will stick to their word, they could just limp in, then go all-in on the flop without looking at their hole cards. Same outcome.

Stupidest arguments yet...

...for not legalizing online gaming:

http://www.rdmag.com/News/Feeds/2010/08/general-sciences-online-betting-a-house-of-cards-for-world-economy-/

(Thanks to @GamingCounsel for the pointer.)

Hint to Professor Kindt: In addition to the other idiotic arguments you make, as soon as you say the words "crack cocaine of gambling," everybody knows not to take you seriously.

Guess the casino, #595

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Answer: Mirage

Little white lies

Yesterday I scored another final table and another cash in a Bodog tournament, finishing 7th out of 400+ players. The buy-in was only $10, so one had to go very deep to win much of anything. I got $110 out of it for four hours of playing, which is OK, though hardly spectacular.

Anyway, because of this recent string of success in Bodog tournaments, I had asked to cash out some of my winnings. I got the check in the mail today. I was amused to see that my Bodog account number was listed as "Employee ID," and both the check and the stub have printed on them, "Payment for Marketing Services Rendered."

I didn't even know that I had done any marketing for them! I thought I had just won some tournaments.

When hula hoops are outlawed, only outlaws will have hula hoops

See: http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/las-vegas-gets-wound-up-as-it-considers-hula-hoop-ban/19584057

Guess the casino, #594

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Answer: Harrah's

Blindsided by the Might

I dunno. Maybe I shoulda seen it coming.

Guess the casino, #593

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Answer: Excalibur

Guess the casino, #592

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Answer: Aria

Puzzle clue

I was just doing a crossword puzzle (this one, to be exact) with Cardgrrl via video chat, as we do a couple of times a week. It is, of course, cheating to enlist another person in the completion of a puzzle, but it's fun, and nobody has sent the Puzzle Police to our doors yet.

Today we came upon this clue: "_______ Brunson (nickname for a starting hold'em hand of 10-2)." Five letters long.

I don't want to spoil the fun by giving away the answer, but I have included a tiny, subtle clue somewhere in this post, if you look carefully enough.


(Incidentally, another clue was "Bridge combinations." We eventually figured out that the answer had to be "TEN ACES," though what, exactly, that means was a mystery to us both. Hoping that Memphis Mojo will enlighten here.)

Best read of the week (no poker content)

Reason magazine's "Hit and Run" blog today points to an astonishing blog post about an episode of history I had never heard about before--the meeting of some of the victims of the Hiroshima bomb with the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, on live network TV, in 1955. The post telling that story in exquisite detail is here. I'll second Reason blogger Jesse Walker's advice:

I recommend reading the whole thing, though not all in one sitting; you
might occasionally want to get up to scream "holy fuck" or "what the fuck?" or
"fuck on a fuckity fucking stick" while beating your head against the
wall.

How to play Deuce-Four

I admit that the post title is a bit misleading. After all, there is no one right way to play the Mighty Deuce-Four. It all depends on circumstances. But let me show you one of the many winning ways to play it.

First, here's the full hand history, in case you want to scrutinize it:



Now for the play-by-play.

I'm two off the button with 2d-4d, blinds at T15/T30. There is a limper ahead of me. I decide not to blow everybody out of the water with a raise, as it would tip the strength of my hand too soon and I'd be likely to lose my customers, thus winning only a small pot. So I sneakily limp along. The guy after me joins in. The small blind raises to 105. Big blind calls. First limper folds. I could easily reraise here, but I think if I just call, the guy in the cutoff will come along, too, fattening the pot for my later takedown. Besides, the limp-reraise fairly screams that I have one of the ultra-premium hands, and I don't want everybody to know that just yet.

To nobody's surprise, the flop comes 5-4-2, giving me two pair and almost surely the best hand. (LDO!) The original raiser checks. The big blind makes a pathetic little bet of 100 into the 450 pot. That will not do, I thinks to myself, so I raise to 350. We'll see if he really likes his hand as he is advertising. He calls, after the others fold.

The turn brings another 5. Now, this card is the main reason I'm posting this tutorial, because this is the point at which many amateurs would make a crucial mistake. They would see this as a "bad card." The so-called logic goes something like this: "Two of the types of hands my early-position opponent could have called my flop raise with are A-5, for top pair/top kicker (with a straight draw on the side), and a medium overpair, something like pocket 7s or 8s. Either of those now has me beat, with a trips or a better two pair, respectively." These players have the accursed word "counterfeited!" flash through their pea-brains.

This is a common beginner's error. What these people overlook is that my hand has now improved to three pair--and not just any ol' three pair, but top three pair! It should take no thought at all to realize that three pair beats any two pair, and that three pair is also vastly superior to three of a kind. Basically, I could only be beat by a six-card straight or a six-card flush, and a glance at the board will reveal that my opponent could not have either of those hands yet, though he could be on a draw to the former. (I'm discounting him having quads as just too statistically unlikely.)

Well, if he is on a draw, let's make him pay to get there, and if he has what he will foolishly think is the winner with trips or two pair, let's suck every last chip out of his stack! When he checks, I shove. Sadly, though, he must have read my line for exactly what it was: the virtual nuts. Perhaps I didn't disguise it well enough. I maybe should have waited one more street to spring my trap, but I thought his call on the flop suggested that he liked his hand enough to make the bad call on the turn, too.

Oh well. I made a 695 profit on the hand, or about 23 big blinds, which is pretty good.

I realize that it may be -EV to reveal this kind of top-pro secret for free like this, but I'm very fond of my readers and try to educate them as much as I can. That's just the kind of guy I am.

Class dismissed.

Glitch in Bodog software?

I was just playing another tournament on Bodog when something inexplicable happened--at least I can't explain it, other than that there is a fault in the system's software.

Here's the hand that caught my attention:





It doesn't look too remarkable, I know. What's strange, though, is that on the previous hand I had been under the gun. I somehow managed to skip the big blind.

Lest anybody think I'm making this up or hallucinating or maybe blacked out for a few seconds and missed something, look at the upper left corner of that screen shot. You see that this is hand #1975597018, and that the previous hand was #1975596585.

I got those two hand histories, and grabbed screen shots of them. Here's the first of the two. You can see that the hand number matches that of the "last hand" in the first screen shot posted above. I raised from under the gun with A-J, got a caller, flopped top pair/top kicker, bet, and won the pot. It correctly shows me as being in Seat 1, with the blinds in Seat 8 and Seat 9, as one would expect.



But now here's the very next hand--the one where I noticed that suddenly I had skipped from UTG to the small blind. The hand number matches the "this hand" of the first screen shot, confirming that I didn't blink and miss a hand or something. You can also see that my cards match those of the first screen shot, and it shows me paying the small blind.



As further confirmation that no other hand transpired between these two, look at the stack sizes. The first section of the hand histories shows the stacks at the beginning and end of the hand, separated by a virgule. At the end of my A-J UTG hand, I had T6849.69. (Bodog stupidly allows people to bet cents amounts in tournaments, and some players seem to take great pleasure in specifying their bets that way, which is why I ended up with such a strange stack size, after playing at a table with one such joker.) At the beginning of the second hand, that exact same amount is shown for what I'm starting the hand with. Had I paid a big blind in between, it would have decreased by 200.

Also, notice that the time at which the first hand ended is recorded as 13:56:41, and the time at which the second hand started is recorded as 13:56:44, a three-second difference. That is not enough time that another hand could have played out in between.

In between the two hands, the player to my immediate right, "johnlil3" in Seat 9, is whisked away. He had paid the big blind on the first hand (in which I was UTG), then folded to my raise, and was presumably moved to another table. So what should have happened was that I would become the big blind for the second hand, with no small blind. Actually, what should have happened was that I be the one to be moved; the usual practice when balancing tables is to take the player who will be the big blind on the next hand. But even if Bodog doesn't follow that convention, and instead randomly selects a player to move, it should have made me the big blind for the next hand, rather than have me skip the big blind.

I have spent a fair amount of time pondering this (obviously), and I cannot figure out any set of circumstances under which this should have been allowed to happen. As always, those with more experience in the obscure technicalities of blinds and button rules are encouraged to leave a comment explaining how this could be right, if indeed there is such an explanation that I have overlooked.

I am going to email Bodog's help department asking them to look into this. If I get an answer, I'll post it here as an addendum.