Guess the casino, #676

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Answer: Texas Station

Guess the casino, #675

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Answer: Paris

Guess the casino, #674

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Answer: Mandalay Bay

Inconsistency

You may remember this little controversy from the 2008 World Series of Poker. Nikolay Losev moves forward an entire stack of chips as if to bet. But before releasing them, he apparently has a change of heart. He pulls them back, then instead puts out a smaller amount. Brandon Cantu--along with other experienced players at the table--basically says WTF, man? He can't do that! Floor is called, says it's fine because he didn't release the chips. Tournament director Jack Effel is called over, gets what appears to me to be a clear description of what happened, and then confirms that that's the rule: as long as the chips weren't released, it's not a binding bet. (When Michael Carroll acts out for him a hypothetical of moving his stacks forward, pulling them back, then betting a single chip, Effel says that that would not be allowed. But he never explains how Carroll's hypothetical is any different from Losev's actual action.)

See for yourself:




Now we fast forward to the 2010 WSOP, with the installment broadcast this week. Filippo Candio moves forward a bunch of chips as if to bet, but at the last second has a change of heart. Instead of releasing them, he pulls them back to his stack and checks. Dealer calls floor. Floor says forward motion is binding, the chips must stay in. Once again, see for yourself:




As far as I can tell, there are only three differences between the situations. (1) Chips being slid forward versus moved forward in the player's hand, off of the table. (2) Retracted movement being followed by a smaller bet versus being followed by a fold. (3) The betting action in question being a bet versus a call. None of these seems to me to have any bearing on how the decision should be made. That is, I can't imagine any rational set of rules that would make any of these factors the determining criterion in whether the action/retraction should be allowed.

Has there been an intervening rule change? Not that I can make out. I scanned through the WSOP rules for 2008 and for 2010, and noticed nothing in either one that talks about forward motion constituting a bet, with or without release of the chips.

How does a move that is perfectly legal in 2008--with the explicit endorsement of the tournament director--become illegal in 2010, when there has been no change in the published rules? Why didn't the WSOP adopt an explicit rule to govern this situation in either 2009 or 2010, after having received tons of criticism in the online forums for the 2008 ruling? Has Effel or anybody else ever publicly acknowledged that the 2008 ruling was in error and should not be taken as reflecting the WSOP rules and practices?

More generally, as I have asked many times before, why is the officiating at what claims to be the premier event in poker so bad? And why doesn't Harrah's do anything to improve it? The answer to those, I expect is actually pretty straightforward: Because Harrah's wouldn't make any more money by bothering with such apparently unimportant things.

What's in a screen name? #14

I think what I like most about this one is the subtlety.

Guess the casino, #673

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Answer: Green Valley Ranch

What's in a screen name? #13

Cinderella story. Outta nowhere.

In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, "Au revoir, donkey."

License to kill donkeys by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill donkeys at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote.

Maybe the best part of having this avatar would be that even if you don't win money, you would receive total consciousness. Which is nice.

Leave the button alone

There are some posts that I think about writing, oh, 16,000,000 times or so before I actually get around to it. This is one of them. Nothing in particular prompted the timing, except that I'm sitting at home in front of the computer and it occurred to me. My basic message is in the title of the post: Leave the dealer button alone.

The first and most obvious annoyance that results from not abiding by this sage advice is that sometimes a player who is not in the hand gets bored and decides that the button is his personal plaything. He twirls it around, shuffles it from one hand to the other, or whatever. The result is that when others glance around to see where the button is, in order to figure out where action is starting and ending, they can't find it. The button does not become your toy simply because it happens to be sitting in front of you. Leave the damn thing alone.

But now for a subtler problem. Many, many players think they are being helpful by moving the button for the dealer at the end of a hand. I contend that they are mostly wrong. Here's why.

Naturally, the most common thing is that the button moves one seat clockwise when a hand concludes. But once in a while something different needs to happen--it needs to move two spots (e.g., to skip a player who just sat down), or none (e.g., if somebody is buying the button after missing a big blind). Most players who think they are being helpful don't anticipate these exceptions and mess it up.

However, even when things are normal, it's easy to create a problem moving the button. The most common way this happens is that a player moves it without saying anything, when the dealer isn't watching. Then the player who moved it gets distracted by something else (sports on TV, cocktail waitress arriving, or whatever), so the dealer--or sometimes a second player--moves it again, and PRESTO, we have a problem.

On average, it must take a dealer two seconds or less to move the button. So that's the maximum time you're saving the game if you do everything right. (It's probably a bit less, because there's a little time for the dealer to recognize that you have moved the button and process that he or she can skip that step. But let's ignore that factor for now.) If, though, you cause a problem, it's likely to take 30 seconds or so to straighten it out. "I thought he was the button." "No, I was just the small blind." "No you weren't, I was the small blind that hand." "You couldn't have been the big blind, because I put in a straddle." Etc. It's tedious, annoying, and so completely unnecessary, had the meddlers not created the problem to begin with.

In my experience, these situations--either the exceptional case where the button should be moved or not moved differently than usual, or the common case where it gets moved twice accidentally, or at least it is initially unclear whether it got moved twice--happen sufficiently often that the time wasted in solving the resulting messes outweighs the total of the time saved in two-second increments by players "helpfully" moving the button. I submit that the poker world would be better off if no players ever touched the button than we are with the current situation in which so many players think they know how to do it right, but actually don't.

The one obvious exception I would make to the above observation is the situation in which the dealer has difficult reaching the button, usually at the end seats, because the tables are too large, or the dealers are too small (or, sometimes, too fat). In such cases, there should be no problem if a player, seeing the dealer starting to reach for the button, takes the initiative and moves it. (Sometimes a dealer will verbally ask for such help, too.) That way it is done at the right time and with the dealer's knowledge.

If you insist on taking the initiative in situations other than that, here's what I think you should know about the seemingly simple process of pushing the button forward one seat: It is supposed to come at a specific point in the process of concluding a hand. If dealers are following the standard training, the sequence of events is (1) kill the losing hands, (2) push the pot to the winner, (3) move the button, (4) drop the rake, (5) muck the winning hand and begin the scramble/shuffle for the next hand.

So if you're going to move the button, you should anticipate that the dealer will be looking to do so himself or herself immediately after the pot has been pushed. Pushing the pot usually requires the dealer to have his or her eyes on it, and he or she will not be attending to what is happening to the button until that task is completed. If you move it while the pot is being pushed (the most common problem-creating scenario) and do nothing else, the dealer will often miss that fact.

You need to either be ready to move it right at the moment that the dealer's attention is coming to that task, or be ready right then to indicate that you have already moved it. If I'm doing it, I either make sure the dealer sees me do it, or, if he or she isn't watching at the expected moment (some dealers do tasks out of the standard order), I tap the button deliberately when the dealer's attention is finally my way, or announce out loud that I have moved it.

But the point is this: If you take on the responsibility of moving the button, you also thereby accept a sacred duty to (1) not screw it up (e.g., moving it when it shouldn't be moved, etc.), and (2) make absolutely sure that the dealer knows that it's done. If you fail in either of these respects, then you have cost everybody at the table time, rather than having saved time, as you like to flatter yourself that you are doing.

That, of course, is an unforgivable sin.

Guess the casino, #672

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Answer: Bellagio

Guess the casino, #671

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Answer: Aria

Um, not quite right

There seems to be a slight problem with the graphics at this stage of the hand. Everybody see what it is?

P.S. This is the first post from my new computer.

Guess the casino, #670

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Answer: Sam's Town

Poker gems, #394

Joe Stapleton, on the PokerStars Big Game, on Daniel Negreanu's lack of aggression:


Daniel's been calling more than a clingy girlfriend.

Poker on NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130774148

It's not much of a story, but we don't get much poker on National Public Radio at all, so we might as well appreciate what there is.

Guess the casino, #669

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Answer: Palms

We have us a winner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess the casino, #668

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Answer: M Resort

Car story from long ago

I like cars, so part of my daily reading is the Jalopnik RSS feed. I just saw this post about a man who maneuvered his car in front of that belonging to a driver who had passed out behind the wheel (due to a heart attack), and successfully brought both cars to a safe stop.

This reminded me of a very similar incident from my past. It was 1992, I believe. I was driving on one of the highways through Minneapolis, when I saw a Oldsmobile Cutlass ahead of me drift out of its lane and bump into a car in the next lane. It then bounced the other direction, knocking over several construction barrels in the closed-off left-hand lane. My first impression was that it was one or more teenage hooligans out for a careless joy ride. But I pulled up closer to take a look and saw that the driver was a middle-aged woman slumped over the wheel. Maybe she had her cruise control on, because her velocity was steady, neither accelerating nor slowing.

This was obviously most likely going to end in disaster for her and/or others. It's lucky the construction workers were all off that day, or on break or something, so that she didn't hit any of them. But sooner or later she would hit something--or someone--for sure. I decided that the only thing to be done was exactly what the hero in today's story did: pull in front of her, then gradually slow down until she ran into the back of my car, and try to bring both cars to a stop with my brakes.

But just as I was starting to accelerate to get around her, she veered off to the left again just enough to clip another line of those orange construction barrels, and, luckily for her and everybody else, one of them rather miraculously fell so as to get lodged under the nose of her car, and caused enough drag that it brought her car to a halt over the course of a couple hundred yards, without hitting anything else. It was pretty amazing. I stopped my car just ahead of hers, backed up so that the cars were almost touching (in case she started moving again), killed the engine, put the manual transmission in reverse, and put on the parking brake. Then I went to her car, found that the door was unlocked (again, lucky for her), got her transmission into park, and turned off her ignition. She was still breathing and had a pulse. She looked classically post-ictal, i.e., as if she had suffered a grand mal seizure.

This was in the days before I had my first cell phone, but apparently somebody had already called 911, because police and paramedics showed up within a couple of minutes.

I never heard any ending to this story. I assume that she was OK, but I didn't learn her name or see anything about it in the media in the following couple of days, and the police, despite having taken my name and phone number, never contacted me to give them any more details, so I really don't know what had happened to cause her to pass out, or what became of her afterwards.

It's pretty rare that I have any occasion to be reminded of this rather memorable incident, but when I am, I'm proud of myself for being willing to act selflessly, but also glad that I didn't have to.

3000+

Oops, I did it again. I missed one of my own blog's milestones. Apparently this was my 3000th blog post, two days ago, and I didn't notice. That makes this post #3010. So I'm a little late. So sue me. And it seems like it was just, oh, about six months ago that I passed #2500. Maybe that's because it was.

The photo above is lifted from here, and shows an Austin-Healey 3000, a car I would very much enjoy owning and driving, were somebody to give one to me.

My continued thanks for spending your time with me when I rant.

I voted today

Whew! Even though I ignored the plethora of judicial races (I have no idea why Nevada has such a bewildering tangle of different courts), it took me about two hours sitting at my computer to look up and read about all the other candidates in the wide assortment of elections on this ballot. I always vote absentee, whether or not I technically qualify, because I prefer being able to do it all at once, rather than mark some sort of sample ballot at home then have to copy the results onto an official ballot at a polling place. The Review-Journal has a handy and reasonably neutral voter's guide here, which helped streamline the research process.

Because I didn't trek out to a poll, I didn't get one of those "Kiss Me, I Voted" stickers. But I feel that somebody should kiss me anyway. Volunteers?