Shuffling

Robbie Strazynski (@cardplayerlife) pointed me to this YouTube video about the mathematics of shuffling a deck of cards into true randomness:




You might watch that and think, "OMG! The way poker dealers shuffle doesn't come anywhere close to meeting that standard!" And you'd be right. But you wouldn't be right to worry about that fact.

When the professor is talking about a deck that is not fully randomized, so that one could guess the next card more often than chance alone would dictate, he's talking about having started from a deck that is as it comes from the factory--or, to use the casino term, a deck that has been "spaded"--with the cards in rank order within each suit.

But if you don't know what order the cards are in before the shuffling begins, it makes no difference how much shuffling you do. Your ability to guess the position of any specified card is 1 out of 52 before the shuffling procedure begins (by definition of what it means not to know what order the cards are in), and it is the same after one riffle shuffle, or two, or ten.

For purposes of a poker game, it makes no difference whether the order of the cards in the deck after the shuffling process can pass a statistical test for random distribution compared to the order they were in before the shuffling process. All that matters is whether any player can know or guess the identity of any card. For example, suppose that I see that the first card I'm dealt is the queen of clubs. Can I guess the identity of the next card--which will be dealt to the player on my left--with any accuracy better than a 1 in 51 guess based on that one piece of information? No. And that's all that matters.

Of course, if one is paying attention, one can know at least roughly the position of some of the cards before the shuffle, because you can watch the dealer turn face-down the board cards and any players' hands that were exposed, and watch where those cards end up in the deck. Suppose you notice that the river card on the previous hand was the ace of diamonds, and the way the dealer gathers up the cards causes that ace to now be on the bottom of the deck before the shuffle.

You could, if you really wanted to, watch what the dealer does, and get a general sense of where that ace ends up. The dealer will typically do two riffle shuffles, which will leave the ace within the bottom few cards. Next he will do a "boxing" shuffle, which is an on-the-table equivalent to the second type of shuffling shown in the video. It moves a few cards at a time as a packet from the top of the deck to the bottom. So now you know that the ace is somewhere near the top of the deck--probably within the top ten cards. Now the dealer does another riffle, which will leave the ace near the top. Finally, the deck is cut, which will put that ace somewhere in the middle.

If you're playing ten-handed hold'em, 20 cards will be dealt to the players. Is that enough that one of the last ones dealt will be that ace of diamonds? Maybe, maybe not--it depends on how large the packets of cards were during the boxing shuffle, and on where the cut was made. If the ace doesn't get to one of the players, will it end up on the board? Maybe, maybe not. The dealer will go through 8 more cards (5 on the board and 3 burn cards), so the river will be what had been the 28th card in the deck at the start of the hand. But the ace might be above or below that point. You can't be sure.

This shuffled deck would not pass every test for randomness, because you could, for example, profitably bet that the ace of diamonds will be found in the middle one-third of the deck, which will prove to be true more than it being in the top or bottom thirds--a condition that would not obtain for a truly randomized deck of cards. But in real-world practice, your ability to track the position of a card is so diluted, and the poker edge you could gain by a general sense of where in the deck that one card will be found is so weak that they might as well be zero.

And all of that is for just one card, and only for a person who is really watching closely. If the dealer does a wash of the cards before the shuffling (some casinos' procedures require that, some leave it up to the dealer, or it may be done at a player's request), it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to follow the position of even that one card you were trying to track.

Furthermore, if the casino uses a Shufflemaster machine with alternating decks, you have no chance at all, because the machine truly randomizes the deck. It has a random number generator, and moves each card to a randomly selected spot (1 through 52) in the newly ordered deck.

All of which is a very long way of saying this: The standard poker room shuffling procedure, if done correctly, is plenty good enough. It may not pass rigorous statistical tests of randomness, but it effectively leaves every player thoroughly ignorant of where any card is going to show up, which is all that matters.

PokerNews article #57

In which I bring Alan Turing, Monty Python, Lewis Carroll's White Queen, and Cinderella to testify on the importance of believing impossible things in poker.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/for-poker-success-you-have-to-be-able-to-believe-impossible-21043.htm

Watch your language

A funny and instructive story:

http://cardplayerlifestyle.com/watch-your-language-at-the-poker-table/

PokerNews article #56

This one is about the ways in which cash differs from chips on the poker table.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-playing-with-cash-on-the-tab-20964.htm

Keeping abreast of tavern poker

A couple of weeks ago, I started seeing ads in the local weekly newspaper for "poker night" at Asheville's one and only "gentlemen's club." You can see the ad on the club's web site here. The games are part of a larger organization called World Tavern Poker. I thought I had never heard of it before, but on reflection, I vaguely remember them having a big to-do in Vegas the last year I was there.

As it turns out, I know the guy who is the local organizer. He's a regular in one of the home games I've gotten hooked up with. But I didn't know that until I got there.

Strange as it may seem, I, a heterosexual, unmarried male, lived in Las Vegas for 6 1/2 years without ever setting foot inside any of its many strip clubs. In fact, I've never been to one in my life. So I had some hesitation about such a place as a poker venue.

But the poker pickings are slim around here, and it was free, and I've seen the Treasure Club when driving by and kind of wondered how sleazy it was inside. So I decided to give it a shot. Last night was my time.

I was pleasantly surprised. The poker tournaments were reasonably well organized. No dealer--getting the dealer button meant that you were literally the dealer for that hand--but we managed with not too many gross errors. Everybody was super friendly and relaxed, having fun. No wannabe pros in hoodies, sunglasses, and Beats headphones. One of the players was a dancer at the club, off duty.

We did two single-table tournaments, each taking about two hours, with a very fast structure. Since it's unlikely that any of them will read this, I think it's probably OK to say that the other players were not very experienced (with the exception of the organizer, who also played). We're talking the level where keeping track of whose turn it is and what the bet is constitutes a serious, ongoing challenge to their poker knowledge. I don't mean that as an insult; everybody is a beginner at some point, and there is no shame in that. You have to master basics like the mechanics of the game before you can move on to understanding proper bet sizing, hand reading, probabilities, etc. I'm just telling you where they were on the learning curve.

I did pretty well. I came in second in the first tourney, first in the next one, and never had a genuinly difficult decision to make. In that second one, I personally busted every single player on my way to the win--and had the best of it when the chips went in every time except for one suckout. I.e., it was not difficult to know where I stood most of the time. I went into heads-up with more than a 10:1 chip lead. It would have been hard to lose at that point.

And the venue? It was surprisingly clean and non-nasty. It was smoke-free, which amazed me. I didn't come home reeking of cigarette smoke, booze, or anything else. They had bright lights over the poker tables. The dance stage was at the far end of the room, dimly lit. The distance and the glare from the poker lights combined to make it so that you wouldn't be aware that there was a topless young woman dancing over there unless you made an effort to scope it out. Put another way, it was easy to ignore--though one guy at the table probably needed to see a chiropractor today to work out the kink in his neck he must have gotten from constantly trying to watch.

It was less easy to ignore the young women serving drinks, or the ones walking back and forth past us on their way to or from their turns on the stage, in outfits that would have been considered outrageously revealing in any other context. Rob likes to describe how scantily clad the women are lining up to get into one of the clubs at the casino where he plays most of his poker, but I assure you that those dresses are like Taliban burkas compared to what these dancers were wearing. If there was a combined one square yard of fabric in all of the clothes worn by all of the dancers last night, I'd be shocked. I did see--and admire--some very shapely buttocks last night, among other things.

The DJ played several poker-themed songs just for our little group, which was a nice touch. He even came out of the booth to check and be sure the music wasn't too loud to interfere with our game, and when several people said that it was a bit much, he promptly dialed it down. Drinks were offered frequently, but there was not a bit of pressure to buy anything. It really was entirely free. The venue seemed genuinely accommodating, and happy to have us there (on what was obviously a very slow night otherwise).

Will I go back for more? I haven't decided. I need to check out the WTP web site and figure out how much of a time investment it would require before I would be eligible for the kind of prizes that would be worth winning--like WSOP seats. If it looks reasonable, I well might. If it looks like a huge commitment with little chance for any meaningful reward, probably not.

PokerNews article #55

Introduction to the blocking bet:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/when-betting-less-can-benefit-more-the-blocking-bet-20865.htm

PokerNews article #54

I go on a little riff off of one of the stories in the Colson Whitehead book I'm reading:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/are-your-fancy-poker-moves-costing-you-money-20805.htm

The Noble Hustle

I've just started reading The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death, by Colson Whitehead. It's another in the growing genre of poker books chronicling the authors' first experiences at the World Series of Poker. A magazine offered to pay Whitehead's entry fee for the WSOP Main Event in exchange for his writing up the experience, but it turned into a book.

I'm not finding myself a big fan of his style generally, but I admired his opening sentence: "I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside."

I also liked this early paragraph. ("Anhedonia" is a medical term for the inability to feel pleasure.)

I was gonna play in the Big Game and give it my best shot. It was not the National Series of Poker, it was the World Series of Poker, and I would represent my country, the Republic of Anhedonia. We have no borders, but the population teems. No one has deigned to write down our history, but we are an ancient land, founded during the original disappointments, when the first person met another person. I would do it for my countrymen, the shut-ins, the doom-struck, the morbid of temperament, for all those who walk through life with poker faces 24/ 7 because they never learned any other way. For the gamblers of every socioeconomic station, working class, middle class, upper class, broke-ass; for the sundry gamers twelve stories below, tossing chips into the darkness; for the internet wraiths maniacally clicking before their LCDs in ill-lit warrens in Akron, Boise, and Bhopal, who should really get out more; for all the amateurs who need this game as a sacred haven once a month, who seek the sanctuary of Draw and Stud, where there are never any wild cards and you can count on a good hand every once in a while. For Big Mitch and Methy Mike, Robotron and the Lady with the Crimson Hair, the ones who would kill to go to Vegas and will never make it there, my people all of them. Did I sound disdainful of them before? It was recognition you heard. I contain multitudes, most of them flawed. 

PokerNews article #53

This one is about not playing like a scaredy cat.

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/worst-first-thinking-in-poker-how-much-is-it-costing-you-20732.htm

What's wrong with poker

Take a look at this blog post from Rob. It's an interview with Dominick Muzio, a poker dealer at TI in Vegas. He has a lot of thoughts about what's wrong with poker--specifically the lower stakes games--both in terms of players and in terms of how casinos are running poker rooms. I agree with most of his points.

http://robvegaspoker.blogspot.com/2015/02/dominick-muzio-and-state-of-poker-today.html

PokerNews article #52

Why having, knowing, and using names for things in poker matters:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/why-the-words-we-use-matter-in-poker-20659.htm

When NOT to be polite: A traffic warning

Yesterday I witnessed a traffic accident. I saw it coming, but could do nothing to warn the drivers involved. Strangely, it was caused by a misplaced act of politeness. It's a situation I've seen many times, and it's always clear that those involved haven't really thought through how their politeness is creating a serious danger. So now that I've seen my fears realized, I think it's time that I put this out into the world, because I've never seen it discussed anywhere before.

Here's the set-up. It's rush hour on a four-lane city street. (This was Asheville's Charlotte Street just north of the I-240 overpass, though it could have been just about anywhere.) There's a long line of southbound cars at a red light. There's a northbound car wanting to make a left turn across the southbound lanes onto a small side street. Let's call her Driver A. She's a middle-aged woman in a Toyota Prius in this specific instance, though that's all irrelevant.

Driver B is in a small truck, in the left-hand southbound lane. He or she (I couldn't see the driver) sees that Driver A is going to have to wait forever to get an opening to turn left. So when it's his turn to start moving forward under the green light, he instead waits, and waves to Driver A to go.

Unfortunately, Driver A does not have a clear view of the southbound RIGHT-hand lane. There's not a car immediately adjacent to Driver B, or even a little way back, so Driver A goes. But what she doesn't see is the car that's coming.

I was four or five cars behind Driver B, so I saw Driver A starting to make her turn at the same time as I saw another car--Driver C--zipping along in the relatively clear right-hand lane next to me. I could see both of them, but neither of them could see the other. So they collided--right front corner of A to left front corner of C. (Because this is Asheville, Driver C was also a woman in a Toyota Prius. Yes, really.)

Neither driver was apparently injured, but A's car had a wheel bent badly enough that it couldn't even be driven far enough to clear the road. I saw her turning the steering wheel, trying to move her car, and the right front wheel was not turning with it. Broken axle or tie rod, maybe?

Driver A will clearly get ticketed for making a left turn when it wasn't clear to do so. And well she should. She was indisputably at fault. But if there were such a thing as an "assist" in the sphere of moving violations, we'd have to award it to Driver B. It was her yielding her right of way to Driver A that caused the problem. It lured her into an unsafe situation.

If you stop to think about it, you can imagine other ways that this scenario can go wrong besides the most obvious one that was played out yesterday:

• Driver A recognizes the danger and hesitates making the turn. Finally she works up her nerve, but at just the same moment, Driver B has given up, having decided that A isn't ever going to go, and she can't keep on holding up the line forever, because cars behind her are starting to honk their horns. So A and B collide. 
• Driver A goes halfway, turning in front of B but waiting to go the rest of the way until she gets a better view of the right-hand lane. But just when she concludes that it's clear, the car immediately behind A gets tired of waiting, and whips into the right lane to go around. Crash.

I've been Driver A countless times, faced with a polite but not clear-thinking Driver B, who can't understand why I'm not taking advantage of his or her generosity. Well, it's because I can't be sure that the OTHER lane is safe to cross. There's no way to communicate this by hand gestures, so I've seen many of them finally get an annoyed look on their face and accelerate rapidly past me. 

There's a Pedestrian Corollary to this scenario that frightens me even more. I'm pretty diligent about stopping for pedestrians trying to cross the street, but most drivers around me are not. Several times I've had a car behind me see me stop, and just move into the other lane to go around me without even slowing down. If I'm in the left lane and the pedestrian is coming from the left, or if I'm in the right lane with the pedestrian coming from the right, this is fraught with the danger of the pedestrian crossing safely in front of my stopped car, only to get plastered by the jerk zooming around me. And, again, there's not a damn thing I can do about it, except maybe hit the horn. Fortunately, so far all of the pedestrians involved have been sufficiently wary to wait until it's clear. 

The scenarios are less problematic when Driver B is in the right lane, because Driver A can easily see the left lane for herself. But they're still not problem-free, because of an impatient driver zipping around B at just the wrong time and smashing into A just as she starts the turn. 

Note that these scenarios are NOT problematic when there's only one lane. In that case, when you stop to let somebody turn in front of you, there's no danger of unseen traffic in an adjacent lane. 

Asheville drivers are, on average, more polite to each other than those of any other city I've lived in. (I wish they were just as polite to pedestrians, but that's still kind of foreign to the driving culture here.) However, there are situations where being polite creates a needless hazard that may not be perceived until it's too late. 

Politeness between drivers must be tempered by keen situational awareness, and a healthy respect for the worst-case scenario. Sometimes it's best not to yield your right of way, and just go when it's your turn. 

ADDENDUM: I found the accident report online, in case you want to look at it. I was curious to see if Driver A had, in fact, been cited, but the "citations" section is blank. Awaiting further investigation, perhaps?

PokerNews article #51

Are you using your most aggressive moves for the first time when you actually have your strongest hands? Yer doin' it wrong!

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/picking-profitable-spots-learn-how-to-set-up-your-aggressive-20584.htm

The importance of bright-line rules

I had not previously heard of or seen the phenomenon that Lee Jones discusses in this excellent blog post--calling an all-in bet by just tossing out a single chip instead of a stack. But he effectively shows why this new fad should be definitively disallowed, and in the process has some good words about the function of rules in keeping the game fun and fair.

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/en/blog/lee_jones_journal/2015/rules-keep-the-game-fun-154041.shtml

Training a cat

As most cats with a regular feeding schedule will do, Lucy is prone to an hour or two of yowling when she thinks it should be dinnertime. Because, you know, on any given day I might FORGET TO FEED HER or something if she doesn't insistently remind me.

Fairly soon after adopting her, I resolved to extinguish this behavior, lest it drive me mad. So I instituted a simple rule: even if it's her dinnertime, she doesn't get fed until she has been quiet for five straight minutes. This has been remarkably effective, and it's rare these days (maybe once a month or so) that I have to actually enforce it. She just knows that meowing to remind me to get her food backfires.

I was feeling pretty darn clever at having trained her this way. Instead of putting up a fuss, she instead developed a habit of crawling into my lap, if I'm at my desk, or onto my legs if I'm on the sofa and just waiting quietly for dinnertime.

Lately, however, she has developed an alternative way to communicate the fact that she's hungry--one that doesn't run afoul of the vocalization rule: She jumps up on the couch, where I'm relaxing in front of the TV, sits on my chest, and stares at me, eyeball to eyeball.

It looks a little something like this:

Here's the reverse angle on the staredown:

I bought a tablet computer a while ago, and some nights recently I've been playing games on it instead of watching TV. When that happens, she carefully steps over the tablet, planting herself between me and it. I haven't been able to get a selfie of that, because it makes me laugh so hard.

If I still have not gotten her food after what she deems to be an adequate time, she just lies down to continue giving me the message:

The only thing that breaks her concentration--other than me actually fetching her dinner, of course--is taking pictures of her posturing. Then she's all like, "Hey, why u take pikchur uv me? I did not giv u mah permishun."

The whole thing is just completely hilarious, and if my neighbors are listening through the walls, they must wonder what has me laughing like a maniac every night lately.

It's also completely ineffective, because her food time is set in stone at 9:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m., and will not be moved earlier on the basis of any cat entreaties, no matter how intrusive, pathetic, funny, or insistent.

It does make it rather difficult to either play computer games or watch TV, though. So I gently move her down to my legs, which is where she has usually settled for our snuggle time. Every few minutes, though, she crawls back up to my face, just to be sure that there is no chance I have forgotten to FEED THE CAT.

It would be impossible for me to forget to take care of such a delightful, endearing creature.

PokerNews article #50

On reciprocality in poker, and how it either costs or makes you money:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/reciprocality-in-poker-the-one-way-to-make-more-money-than-20513.htm

Rust

One of Nina's favorite photographic subjects is rust. (See here if you don't believe me: http://www.somebeaut.com/tag/rust/) Her enthusiasm for it has been a little bit contagious. In appreciation, I hereby present the Ode To Rust, developed from objects that my father, brother, and I passed in our walks this week during a family get-together in my sister's semi-rural town in northern Utah.

Click on the first picture, and then on the right/left arrows to move forward or backward in the series.

Ode To Rust 

PokerNews article #49

This was published Monday, but I was out of town so didn't put up a notice here. It's about handling disputes at the poker table:

http://www.pokernews.com/strategy/how-to-handle-disputes-when-playing-poker-in-a-casino-20435.htm

Cepheus and the skill-luck debate

Head on over to the Craakker blog for a very interesting two-part reflection on what the news of heads-up limit poker being "solved" says about skill versus luck in poker:

http://craakker.blogspot.com/2015/01/pokers-deus-ex-machina-part-i-how.html

and

http://craakker.blogspot.com/2015/01/pokers-deus-ex-machina-part-ii-how.html

Deuce-Four wins a WSOP bracelet

I don't think I saw this back in 2010 when it happened, but take a close look at the cards in the winning hand in the photo accompanying this story.

Too bad such a good thing happened to a poker cheat, which is the lowest form of life.

Hat tip: Grange95.