The Kid and The Man

Date: Mon, May 12, 2008

I wasn't watching the DVD, so didn't have access to the commentary tracks. Shamus says that the director objected to the studio's insistence on a final shot that seems to show The Kid's repair of his relationship with Christian, the girlfriend who had left him earlier. I can see why he would object. It makes no dramatic sense, especially after having given us that enormous visual cue that The Kid is destined to be on his own. We do get a final glimmer of hope for him, when he shoots nickels once again with the shoeshine boy, but the message there seems to be that the only way back for him will be what he has already known: grinding it out as a small-stakes gambler. The return of Christian, in almost a deus ex machina appearance, is jarringly out of step with that implication, as Eric has already let it be known that poker is more important to him than she is.

Another interesting aspect of the film I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere is the use of the cockfight as ominous foreshadowing of the poker showdown. Very deft filmmaking, that. I think it serves to highlight the differences between what the match means to its participants versus what it means to the onlookers. Most of them care about the outcome of the game only because of which way they have placed their bets; they care no more about the players personally than the bettors at the cockfight feel for the birds. But for the Kid and the Man, it's life or death--not quite as literally as for the roosters, obviously, but it is about existence, as only one of them can leave that room with the identity of The Man.

It must also be noted that there is a lot of poker in the film, which isn't true of many other so-called poker movies.

Finally, there are the great lines (for the transcription of which I am relying on the "memorable quotes" section of the imdb.com page:

Lancey Howard: Gets down to what it's all about, doesn't it? Making the wrong
move at the right time.

Lancey Howard: Like life, I guess. You're good, kid, but as long as I'm
around you're second best. You might as well learn to live with it.

Slade: How the hell did you know I didn't have the king or the ace?

Lancey Howard: I recollect a young man putting the same question to Eddie the
Dude. "Son," Eddie told him, "all you paid was the looking price. Lessons are
extra."

I cast my lot with those who have dubbed "The Cincinnati Kid" the best poker movie ever.

Poker gems, #112

Date: Mon, May 12, 2008

Mike Caro, in Poker Player Newspaper column, May 12, 2008, p. 3.


Your profit is a direct result of the penalties opponents pay for their mistakes minus the penalty you pay for your mistakes.

Poker words, #1

Date: Sun, May 11, 2008

I have occasionally thought about adding a series of posts about new poker vocabulary words--new in the sense that I'd write a post when I came across term I hadn't heard before. I haven't undertaken it because, in spite of doing a lot of poker reading, it just isn't very often these days that I find an unfamiliar word. The last new one I heard was in January: superstack, which refers to a player in a tournament who has more chips than the rest of the players at his table combined. I've been consciously trying to pay attention for other new terms to help jump-start this as a new feature in the blog, but had no luck.

Well, that just changed, so I'm introducing the feature, though I'm uncertain how often there will be posts in the series. I was reading in Card Player magazine today one of James McManus's delightful installments on poker history. In it he is talking about home poker games of the mid-20th century. He mentions that "tigers" and "skipper straights" were commonly recognized.

Easily the best online poker dictionary is this one, hosted at Mike Caro's web site. It readily provided me the answers. So here ya go, along with a few associated ones that it also became necessary to learn along the way:


skipper
(n) skip straight.

skip straight
(n phrase) In draw poker, a nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, cards in a series separated each from the other by one rank, as 2-4-6-8-10, or 5-7-9-J-K. Some play that an ace ranks only high in a skip straight, that is, that A-3-5-7-9 is not considered a skip straight. A skip straight is also called an alternate straight, Dutch straight, or sometimes a kilter. The hand generally ranks between three of a kind and an "ordinary" straight.


tiger
(n) little cat. Sometimes the term refers to any of the hands big cat, big tiger, little cat, or little tiger.


big tiger
(n phrase) A nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, five cards 8 to king with no pair, which ranks above a tiger and just below a flush. Also called big cat.


little cat
(n phrase) A nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, five cards 3 to 9 with no pair (in some circles, 3 to 8 with no pair), ranks above a big dog, and below a big tiger. Also called little tiger.


big dog
(n phrase) A nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, five cards 9 to ace with no pair, which ranks below a little tiger and above a little dog.


little dog
(n phrase) A nonstandard hand sometimes given value in a private or home game, five cards 2 to 7 with no pair, ranks below a big dog and above a straight.


I guess I just haven't played in enough crazy home games!

I don't get how these dog/cat hands work. That is, I don't see why they would be ranked higher than a straight. All other poker hands are ranked by their statistical frequency. But surely it is harder (more improbable) to get five unpaired cards between, say, 3 and 7 (a regular straight) than it is to get five unpaired cards between 2 and 7 (the little dog), because there is only one combination that will result in the former (3, 4, 5, 6, 7), while there are six ways of making the little dog (i.e., you can be missing any one of the ranks from 2 to 7). So why is a hand that's easier to hit being ranked higher than the one that's harder to make?

Furthermore, if I have 3-4-5-6-7 for a straight, couldn't I call it a little dog, since it's five unpaired cards between 2 and 7?

Or perhaps the dog/cat hands must contain both ends of the range, in which case there are only four ways to make each one rather than six (e.g., 2-3-4-5-7, 2-3-4-6-7, 2-3-5-6-7, and 2-4-5-6-7 for the little dog). Even then, though, they should rank below straights, I would think. Look at it this way: Putting all four categories of the cat/dog hands together, and ignoring suits, there are 16 card combinations that will make one of them (four different ways of making each of the four types of hand), but only ten ways of making a straight--again arguing that a straight must be rarer and should therefore be ranked higher.

But what do I know about it? Nothing, that's what. I'm just thinking out loud here.

Gunning for the Grump

Date: Sat, May 10, 2008

First a bit about the photograph above. I stole it from the "Literature and Poker" blog kept by Tim Peters--specifically the December 27, 2007, post. Tim is the book reviewer for Card Player magazine (his older stuff is here, but unfortunately it appears that his newer contributions there, the book reviews, don't get put up on the CP web site), and contributes to the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show (as do I). He doesn't post often in his blog, but when he does, it's always worth reading. He also has a knack for finding wonderful old poker photographs, postcards, etc., with which to illustrate his posts. I came across the one above just as I was mentally composing this very post, and instantly knew that it was what must accompany a post with the word "gunning" in the title.

The incident I want to tell you about actually happened several weeks ago. There is no particular reason for the delay in writing it up, other than the fact that every time I felt like blogging, there always seemed to be something else more immediate to talk about.

Anyway, I was at Planet Hollywood, and within my first few hands was dealt the A-J of diamonds. I made a standard raise, got a couple of callers. The flop brought me a royal flush draw, with the Q and 10 of diamonds, plus a blank. I made a continuation bet. A highly aggressive player at the other end of the table made a substantial raise. I had no idea what he had, but there's no way I'm folding with so many cards that will make me the nuts.

An additional incentive is this: It's not likely that I'll get the one card in the deck I need for the royal, but if I do, there's a $600 bonus the casino will pay me. I have about a 4% chance of it coming, the effect of which is the mathematical equivalent of the poker room having just dropped an extra $24 into the pot.

I'm perfectly content to get all my money in at this point, and do so. He calls. He has K-Q for top pair. The turn brings a baby diamond to complete my flush, and I double up.

None of this would be particularly unusual, except that Mr. Hothead takes the loss of the hand very, very personally. He makes a snide comment, something like, "So you like going all-in on draws, eh? Nice suckout." I ignore him and stack up the chips. (There's something about stacking an asshole's chips that makes ignoring his nastiness a whole lot easier....)

I didn't think much more about it, until the next time I put in a raise he called, and called me down all the way to the river. They were all insta-calls, glaring right at me, barely paying any attention to the cards on the board. I got the distinct impression that he was gunning for me, determined to take back what he felt were rightfully his chips.

Sure enough, for the remainder of that session, every time I limped into a pot--100%, with zero exceptions--and he had not yet acted, he would put in a large raise, and every time I was the initial raiser--100%, with zero exceptions--he would call or reraise. Furthermore, he never gave up to a bet on the flop; he would always at least see the turn card. Sometimes he would raise, sometimes just call me down.

I have never had an opponent so obviously and doggedly trying to take me down. It was actually quite amusing in how predictable he became.

Now, think about how easy this made my session. Suppose we set up an unusual set of poker rules, in which you are required to play every hand you're dealt, but I get to pick and choose whether to put my money in. Short of being allowed to see an opponent's cards, it's hard to think of a set of rules that would make my life as a player easier. Yet that's precisely the disadvantage that this moron put himself at, committing himself to playing any two cards when I was in the hand, while I could sit back and wait for premiums.

Furthermore, after the first couple of times that he raised after I limped in, it became clear that he would do this as a matter of course, so I started to limp with the biggest hands, and let him do the raising for me, disguising my strength, then nail him with a big reraise either before the flop or when the flop looked good for me.

Naturally, I didn't win every hand against him. If the flop missed me, I didn't bother with bluffing or continuation bets, because there was no getting rid of him, so I could concede them with little loss. He probably hit a few monsters along the way, but I wouldn't pay him off. In other words, I won the big pots, and he won the small ones. Seems like a good deal for me; for him, not so much. But he was the one setting the strange terms under which we played, and I wasn't inclined to renegotiate them with him, since I kept coming out ahead.

Two or three days later, I was playing at PH again when he arrived and sat down two seats to my right. He immediately asked the floor for the first available table change, and was moved within ten minutes or so. I can't be certain that he had decided he didn't want to play with me anymore, but I have my suspicions.

One of the most foolish things you can do at a poker table is target another specific player. Now, I have to qualify that assertion. Certainly one is always on the lookout for the weakest opponents, and hopes to tangle with them. But the rational way to go about this is to identify what kind of errors they tend to make, then look for or set up situations to exploit those tendencies (e.g., value-bet the calling stations, bluff the tight-weak players when scare cards come, etc.). Moreover, you don't do that for just one opponent, but for every person at the table simultaneously, so that you can make money from anybody and from a wide variety of favorable situations.

Making a mental decision that you're not going to rest until you have won the chips from a particular player is just asking for trouble, because the only way to do that is to repeatedly come after them at a disadvantage. In addition, you will waste your ammunition (chips) in these failed attempts, so that you have less available to use in what would be more advantageous situations against other opponents. It's insanity. It's ego run amok.

Mr. Hothead decided, whether consciously or not, that it was more important to win chips from me specifically than to maximize his win rate for that session, letting the chips come from where they may. Getting even with me was a higher priority than actually turning a profit for the day. I had no such inversion of goals. I was looking to make money whenever and wherever I could. As it happened, a disproportionate share of it came from Mr. Hothead, because he, more than any other player that day, repeatedly and willingly took the worst of it against me.

I'm happy to play under such conditions anytime they are offered to me. I just can't begin to grasp why he wanted to offer them.

HORSE and donkey

Date: Sat, May 10, 2008

Yeah, I know, I know--nobody is interested in my personal poker accomplishments. Tough. It's my blog, and I reserve the right to use it to mark my significant milestones when they occur from time to time. As always, though, I promise that it will never devolve into a blog that is primarily about what or when or how or how much I've won or lost. There are ten million poker blogs out there that do that, and nobody reads any of them.

I just won a limit HORSE single-table tournament on Poker Stars. This is only the third time I've even entered one. Both of the other two times I was first or second out, so taking it down was a big step up.

Without question, the hand that made all the difference was in razz, where four of us stuck it out to the end, with one complete moron who kept pushing it up at every opportunity, despite never having a decent made hand--he even started as the bring-in, with a queen showing! I started with an 8-7-6, which is really, really marginal, but caught good enough (there's one of those odd pokerisms that I'm still having to get used to: to catch "good" or "bad" versus "well" or "badly") to hang in passively, and my 8-low was good enough for the 33-big-bet pot at the end. That gave me a massive chip lead, and allowed me to pretty much duck my head under the waves and fold-fold-fold through the Omaha and stud portions, where I am still basically clueless about sound strategy. A few killer hands in the next round of hold'em got me to heads-up, which I won in Omaha-8 with, first, a big scooper making the wheel, then flopping top two pair. In other words, after the big razz hand, I (1) coasted and (2) got very lucky. But a W is a W, right?

A $20 cash isn't exactly going to bump me up into a different tax bracket or anything, but it's quite satisfying to be making these baby steps of broadening my horizons from playing nothing but hold'em, which is where I was just a couple of months ago.

Now I just have to round up $50,000 so I can enter the Chip Reese Memorial HORSE tournament at the WSOP next month. I feel ready! Those guys can't be that much better than me, can they?

A household physics mystery (not even remotely related to poker)

Date: Fri, May 9, 2008

Sorry, folks, nothing whatsoever to do with poker, but I'm so intrigued by this that I have to write about it here, in hopes that somebody will be able to explain the mystery that I found.

I was cleaning some old stuff out of my stereotypically bachelor-neglected refrigerator. Several months ago I put a pitcher of water in the back, but then never used it. Now that the weather is getting warmer, I thought some really cold water would be nice, so pulled it out in order to fill it with fresher stock. I was shocked by what I found inside. This photo is taken looking straight down into the pitcher. You can click it to see it greatly magnified.

Nothing else in the fridge shows signs of freezing, so I hadn't had reason to think the coldness setting was too low, but about 95% of what was left in the pitcher was ice--maybe 6 inches at the bottom. I went to dump it in the sink, but when I did, only a little bit of water came out--the big chunk of ice wouldn't budge. When I looked down on it, I was startled to see many horizontal holes in the otherwise solid ice. You can see them in the photo below. Each one stretches from roughly the center of the ice block to the edge. I have to stress that at no time has this pitcher been in any position in the refrigerator other than bolt upright. That's what makes all of those horizontal bubble/tubes so mysterious to me.



That little dark crescent on the left is a small gap between the ice and the plastic of the pitcher, which had water in it until I poured it off.

Just as surprising, to me, was looking inside the lid:



The ice here isn't a solid block, as in the pitcher, but clearly an aggregation of crystals. This is a little easier for me to explain, at least in broad terms: During cooling/warming cycles in the refrigerator, some water is vaporizing, then refreezing when it rises and hits the lid, forming sort of a hodge-podge of icy mini-stalagtites.

But I remain completely baffled at the horizontal air passages in the solid ice inside the pitcher. Actually, calling them "horizontal" is a bit misleading. You can't tell this from the photo, but looking at the pitcher from the side I can see that they angle up from the edge to the center at about 30 degrees, slightly curvilinear, with the angle steeper toward the center of the block. I've never seen anything like this before. I don't think there's any way I could get this to show up adequately in a photograph, unfortunately. I can only see that much by holding it up to a light.

So I'm putting out a call to the amateur and/or professional physicists among my readers. Can you explain what happened to the water in the pitcher to cause a couple dozen air tracts to form from edge to center, in parallel, curving lines? (Of course, calling them "air tracts" isn't quite accurate, either. They were filled with water, I assume, until I poured the water out and discovered the little buggers.)

Addendum

As the block melted a bit, I was able to slide it out of the pitcher and take a couple more shots of it that should make the orientation of the bubbles clearer. The first pic below is from the side that was at the bottom of the first picture posted above. The second pic below is from the side that was on the left of the first picture posted above, which below you can see is slanted.

And, BTW, the first wiseacre that tells me that I have way too much time on my hands is banned for life from the site!

I kind of liked this hand

Date: Fri, May 9, 2008

A 36-big-bet pot, having made the you-know-whats on 6th street.

*******************************
PokerStars Game #17318685215: Razz Limit ($0.50/$1.00) - 2008/05/09 - 20:37:35 (ET)
Table 'Velleda III' 8-max
Seat 1: perro85 ($18.15 in chips)
Seat 2: genteel_1 ($9.35 in chips)
Seat 3: Kern89 ($16.35 in chips)
Seat 4: WBSandbagger ($24.10 in chips)
Seat 5: JorgeG17 ($28.05 in chips)
Seat 6: DanteMonte ($19.70 in chips)
Seat 7: dangeraw ($13.45 in chips)
Seat 8: Rakewell1 ($11 in chips)
perro85: posts the ante $0.05
genteel_1: posts the ante $0.05
Kern89: posts the ante $0.05
WBSandbagger: posts the ante $0.05
JorgeG17: posts the ante $0.05
DanteMonte: posts the ante $0.05
dangeraw: posts the ante $0.05
Rakewell1: posts the ante $0.05
*** 3rd STREET ***
Dealt to perro85 [7d]
Dealt to genteel_1 [6s]
Dealt to Kern89 [7s]
Dealt to WBSandbagger [Qh]
Dealt to JorgeG17 [Qd]
Dealt to DanteMonte [7c]
Dealt to dangeraw [4d]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ah 2d 4h]
WBSandbagger: brings in for $0.25
JorgeG17: folds
DanteMonte: raises $0.25 to $0.50
dangeraw: calls $0.50
Rakewell1: raises $0.50 to $1
perro85: folds
genteel_1: calls $1
Kern89: calls $1
WBSandbagger: folds
DanteMonte: calls $0.50
dangeraw: calls $0.50
*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to genteel_1 [6s] [8s]
Dealt to Kern89 [7s] [6d]
Dealt to DanteMonte [7c] [Th]
Dealt to dangeraw [4d] [2s]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ah 2d 4h] [5h]
dangeraw: bets $0.50
Rakewell1: raises $0.50 to $1
genteel_1: calls $1
Kern89: calls $1
DanteMonte: calls $1
dangeraw: calls $0.50
*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to genteel_1 [6s 8s] [As]
Dealt to Kern89 [7s 6d] [9d]
Dealt to DanteMonte [7c Th] [Ac]
Dealt to dangeraw [4d 2s] [Jd]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ah 2d 4h 5h] [Kd]
genteel_1: bets $1
Kern89: calls $1
DanteMonte: raises $1 to $2
dangeraw: folds
Rakewell1: raises $1 to $3
genteel_1: calls $2
Kern89: calls $2
DanteMonte: calls $1
*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to genteel_1 [6s 8s As] [Qs]
Dealt to Kern89 [7s 6d 9d] [Ad]
Dealt to DanteMonte [7c Th Ac] [4c]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ah 2d 4h 5h Kd] [3d]
Kern89: checks
DanteMonte: bets $1
Rakewell1: raises $1 to $2
genteel_1: calls $2
Kern89: folds
DanteMonte: raises $1 to $3
Rakewell1: raises $1 to $4
Betting is capped
genteel_1: calls $2
DanteMonte: calls $1
*** RIVER ***
Dealt to Rakewell1 [Ah 2d 4h 5h Kd 3d] [Kh]
DanteMonte: checks
perro85 said, "nice pot"
Rakewell1: bets $1
genteel_1: calls $0.30 and is all-in
DanteMonte: calls $1
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Rakewell1: shows [Ah 2d 4h 5h Kd 3d Kh] (Lo: 5,4,3,2,A)
dangeraw said, "wow huge pot"
DanteMonte: mucks hand
DanteMonte said, "vnh"
Rakewell1 collected $1.40 from side pot
genteel_1: mucks hand
perro85 said, "youre right"
Rakewell1 collected $35.05 from main pot
genteel_1 said, "vn"
Rakewell1 said, "ty"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $36.95 Main pot $35.05. Side pot $1.40. Rake $0.50
Seat 1: perro85 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 2: genteel_1 mucked [3h 5s 6s 8s As Qs Jh]
Seat 3: Kern89 folded on the 6th Street
Seat 4: WBSandbagger folded on the 3rd Street
Seat 5: JorgeG17 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 6: DanteMonte mucked [2c 5d 7c Th Ac 4c 9s]
Seat 7: dangeraw folded on the 5th Street
Seat 8: Rakewell1 showed [Ah 2d 4h 5h Kd 3d Kh] and won ($36.45) with Lo: 5,4,3,2,A
****************************

I have crept from being break-even at the lowest-stakes razz cash games offered by Poker Stars (I'm still boycotting razz on Full Tilt, because I object to not being able to review how the hands played out--and I think my boycott has nearly brought that site to its knees, financially) to a small but reasonably consistent winner. The key seems to be patience (one of my stronger traits), waiting for a few premium hands like this one, then pressing them hard. I might even be ready to move up a notch.

Incidentally, I've also been experimenting with the lowest-stakes single-table turbo sit-and-go razz tournaments, in addition to the cash games. (Oooo, just had an interesting Freudian slip--I initially typed "sin-and-go"!) I play ultra-tight in the razz cash games, because there is no hurry, and I wondered if I could adjust to the very different constraints of a turbo SNG. Apparently I can, as I have played four of them, walking away with a first, two seconds, and a fourth. (That thumping sound you hear is me patting myself on the back just a little bit too hard.)