A poker brainteaser
Date: Wed, Aug 27, 2008
Playing at the Rio tonight, I saw a final board of Qh-Qd-Qs-9s-Ks. It occurred to me that almost every rank of poker hand was available with this unusual set of community cards. That made me wonder whether it is the maximum possible for a hold'em board.
What no player could have with this board are the lowest hand rankings: high card (i.e., no pair), one pair, or two pairs. Because of the trip queens, everybody will have a minimum of three of a kind. But every possible type of hand three of a kind or better is possible here. A 10-J in the hole yields a straight. Two spades makes a flush. There are a whole bunch of possible full houses (13, if I counted right, but don't quote me on that). A queen in the hole gives four of a kind. And 10-J in spades produces a straight flush. A royal flush is not possible here, but I don't consider that actually to be a different hand ranking; it is merely one type of straight flush.
So that makes six different ranks of hands possible with this board. The question is whether that is the most that any hold'em board could generate.
Here's another candidate board: Ah-Ad-Kh-Kd-10h. Here the worst hand any player could achieve would be two pairs, so at first glance I thought this might beat the previous board and yield seven different hand rankings. But as I scrutinized it more closely, I realized that three of a kind is not available here; any player who ends up with three cards of the same rank actually has a full house. So as with the previous board, six hand rankings are possible, though this time not all consecutive ones (because of skipping over trips).
After thinking about it for a little while, I came up with a board that surpasses both of these. If you enjoy puzzles, take some time and work it out for yourself, before you scroll down for my solution.
["Jeopardy" theme music plays here.]
There are many similar possibilities, but the one I wrote down was Ah-Ad-Kd-Qd-Jd. If you held, say, 2-3 of clubs, you would have one pair. If you held J-2 of clubs, you would have two pairs. If you held A-2 of clubs, you would have three of a kind. If you held 10-2 of clubs, you would have a straight. If you held any diamond other than the 10, you would have a flush. There are six full houses possible. The other two aces in the hole gives you quads. And the 10d in your hand gives you a straight flush (the royal, in this case, though that's an unimportant distinction for this little game). That's every possible hand ranking except the lowest, a high card (no pair). This has to be the maximum, because in order to make a bare high card possible, you would have to have an unpaired board, but then you lose both the full house and quad possibilities, for a net loss of one ranking.
So eight is the maximum number of different hand ranks that might be available from one hold'em board.
If somebody wants to tackle the question of whether the answer is any different for Omaha, be my guest in the comments. Just thinking of that this late at night makes my head hurt.
Bless me, for I have sinned--or have I?
Date: Tue, Aug 26, 2008
I. Nelson Rose is one of the most consistently interesting and informative columnists on the Poker Player Newspaper roster. In the current (September 1, 2008) issue, he takes a break from his usual subject matter of legal questions, and turns instead to the question of how to measure problem gambling in a person who makes a living playing poker, or is at least a serious amateur. The standard Gamblers Anonymous questionnaire doesn't work well for such people. So Mr. Rose concocted his own set of 15 questions, acknowledging that they are not scientifically validated.
I thought it might amuse my readers to peek in on my answers as I bare my sole to Mr. Rose, who is now my confesssor. (Confessor is a strange word, in that it can refer to either the person confessing or the person hearing the confession, and context is not always sufficient to tell which is intended. I meant the latter.) I trust that PPN will not seriously object to my reprinting the questions, since Mr. Rose's columns show up online for free a couple of weeks after publication. (See here for his archives.)
1. Do you play for stakes that you know are too high?
Never. The closest I've come is experimenting with the next step up, to see if it's profitable to play higher. But that's not stakes that I know are too high--it's trying to ascertain whether they are too high. I think that's a major, substantive difference, and not just quibbling over words.
2. Do you sometimes feel you can't quit because you are behind?
Strangely, no. I realize that this is an extremely common problem, but it's not one that I share. I hate leaving the casino when I'm behind as much as anybody, but I'm pretty realistic about recognizing that I'm not playing well, or the table doesn't have enough soft spots to make earning easy, or the poker gods are just determined to beat me every which way on a given day. If I ever lose more than what I had intended as my limit, it's because I stop and take stock of whether this is actually a game I can beat and have so far just been unusually unlucky. If I can honestly assess that that is so, I'll keep playing for one or two additional buy-ins, but if the bad streak continues, I don't feel any of the compulsion to stay until I have broken even again, which so many others have described as their downfall. Yeah, I hate leaving, but at such a moment I realize that the only alternatives are leaving down X dollars, or leaving later down X + X dollars, because the trend is not reversing itself.
3. Do you sometimes feel you can't quit because you are ahead?
No. On the contrary, I may leave money on the table more than I should because I so enjoy the feeling of walking away winner.
4. When you lose, is it often because of bad beats?
Yes. But I'm not sure what Mr. Rose is getting at with this question. It may be that it's an honesty question, probing to see whether one will confess to bad play. I'll certainly confess to bad play. In fact, when I have a losing session, after I get home I try to make a rough quantitative assessment of how much of the losing was because of getting unlucky and how much was because I played below my capability. That then allows me to start thinking about what I'm going to do differently the next day, so that I don't end up with two consecutive bad days. It feels like turning a negative into a positive that way.
Sometimes the assessment goes one way, sometimes the other. When I lose it is certainly not always because of bad beats, but it is indeed often. But it is universally recognized that that is the lot of the better players. The more consistently you get your money in as a favorite (presumably because of having more skill and experience than one's opponents), the greater the percentage of losses that will be because of bad beats. Somebody playing perfectly, as if he knew his opponents' hole cards, would lose only because of bad beats. So I really don't understand how this question and one's answer to it fit into Mr. Rose's apparent goal of measuring problematic behavior in a serious poker player.
5. Do you often get angry at other players at the table for such things as slowing down the game?
No. Never, actually. Annoyed? Definitely. Angry? Never. I'm a pretty cool-headed guy. I honestly can't remember the last time I was genuinely in a rage about something. Oh wait--yes I can. It was when I was out of town and learned that my ex-wife (we were going through a divorce at the time, but it had been quite amicable up until that bit of nastiness) had taken the opportunity to change the locks on the house, so that when I got back home I would have to start living out of a motel while that all got straightened out. Yeah, I was pretty ticked off about that. That was early 2006. That's the last time I was genuinely angry about anything, I think.
6. Have you gone on tilt more than once?
Well, yeah. But I can't imagine that there is anybody who has played several thousand hours of poker who could honestly answer this "no." In fact, I wonder if this is just meant as an honesty test--if you answer "no," then you're probably not being realistic about any of your other answers, either.
7. When you are losing, do you increase your bets to try to get even?
No.
8. Do you often stay in too many hands?
I suppose it sort of depends on how you define "often." But under most parameters that I would consider reasonable, the answer would be no. I think if I did, I couldn't be a long-term winner.
9. Do you drink a lot, sometimes going on binges?
None at all. I think the last time I had even a taste of an alcoholic beverage was about five years ago, at my best friend's 50th birthday party, when I tasted whiskey for the first time. One sip was plenty to confirm my suspicion that I would hate it. I am so boring.
10. Do you sometimes forget important social obligations, because you are playing?
No. I have so few social obligations that they're very easy to remember. I also tend to keep track of time reasonably well while I'm playing, because if I note that a couple of hours have passed without significantly increasing my chip stack, I consider that reason to leave, or at least change tables, because stagnation doesn't pay the bills. So I essentially never experience the phenomenon of being shocked to discover how late it has become. I do sometimes turn down last-minute social offers because I feel a need to keep playing, but that's because I treat it as I would any job, and work comes before play.
11. Have you misled or lied to your family, friends or at work about how much poker you play?
No. I really have no need or incentive to do so.
12. Are you increasingly using the ATM?
LOL. Good thing I didn't come upon this questionnaire in the first half of the month, in the middle of my horrible losing streak! Fortunately, the answer is no--at least as far as withdrawals go. I do use it for deposits, but I'm guessing that's not what the question is getting at.
13. Have you lied to get money to play poker?
Nope.
14. Do you feel bad about things you have done because of poker?
On a few occasions, I have had a bad day of poker and, as a result, felt crummy and unsocial, and cancelled a date or other planned activity with somebody, because I just wanted to sit home and mope and feel sorry for myself. But again, I don't think that's really the sort of thing the question is getting at. I've never been so upset because of losing that I get drunk, or get into a car accident, or hit somebody, or blow a wad of cash trying to win back my losses playing craps, or anything even remotely like that, and I assume that it's that sort of thing that Mr. Rose is intending to ask about.
15. Are you more interested in poker than sex?
I guess I'd have to say yes. But is that really a bad thing for somebody in my situation? Consider the alternative. If I spent six to eight hours a day engaging in, thinking about, reading about, and writing about sex, well, that might get me out of answering "yes" to this question, but then I'd have to turn to the Sexaholics Anonymous questionnaire and answer "yes" to all of their questions! And since that wouldn't generate any income for me, and would inevitably cause all sorts of other life problems, surely that would be a far worse situation to be in. Therefore, if a "yes" answer is a problem here, it's one I'm willing to live with.
So my score is 3 yes, 12 no, and all of the yes answers are, I think, not truly indicative of a problem. Mr. Rose doesn't provide any sort of scoring mechanism or interpretive answers, so I'm just having to guess at what he's thinking.
Poker gems, #159
Date: Mon, Aug 25, 2008
Several days late, I'm finally getting around to listening to #7 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show. The opening lines, an excerpt from an episode of "Fibber McGee and Molly," made me laugh out loud:
Molly: Now, if a man wants to go out once in a while and play cards with his men friends, why doesn't he just say so?
Fibber: You mean that, Molly?
Molly: Of course I do. That doesn't apply to you, though, Dearie.
What the hail?
Date: Mon, Aug 25, 2008
I was driving down the Strip at about 2:30 this afternoon when I started hearing clunk-clunk-clunk on my car's hood and roof and trunk. There were white chunks pelting the pavement, cars, and pedestrians.
I grew up in Illinois, then lived in Minnesota for 17 years, so I am fully qualified and certified to recognize ice falling from the sky when it occurs.
But this is Las Vegas. In the desert. In the summer. In the afternoon. When it was 102 degrees. And I'm telling you, there was ice falling out of the sky!
If this isn't literally hell freezing over, it's the next closest thing.
"Principal actor"
Date: Mon, Aug 25, 2008
I'm reading the July issue of Poker Pro magazine. There is a short piece by Sam O'Connor about how to think about bad beats. The article is OK, but I was most struck by something in his biographical blurb at the end: "Sam O'Connor is the author of the book How to Dominate $1 and $2 No-limit Hold 'Em and a principal actor in Lucky You."
Really? I don't remember seeing him in it, even though I watched that klunker twice. So I headed to www.imdb.com, font of all movie knowledge. I did indeed find Mr. O'Connor listed in the cast. The character he plays is "Old Man." He's the 48th one listed, right after "Bellagio Dealer #7" and right before "Man in Cowboy Hat" and "Woman with Straight."
Yeah, that's pretty "principal" all right. They really couldn't have made the movie without him, y'know? He basically had to carry the whole picture. [Snicker.]
Private note to Mr. O'Connor:
A popular online dictionary (see here) gives this definition of principal as an adjective: "first or highest in rank, importance, value, etc.; chief; foremost." You might want to give some thought to what that means before submitting your next article for publication.
I'm childish, apparently
Date: Sun, Aug 24, 2008
I was playing at the Excalibur again tonight. A woman in her mid-50s sat down on my left when the seat opened up.
I need to tell you, before continuing with the story, about how the PokerPro machines work with respect to the blinds. If the action is folded around so that only the two blinds are left in the hand before the flop, they can agree to "chop"--that is, each gets his money back, the hand is aborted, the button moves, and we're on to the next hand. There are two ways that a player can signal to the computer his willingness to chop. First, at any time you can go to the "options" menu and select "auto-chop blinds." This is what you do if you will want your answer to the chop question always to be "yes." Alternatively, you can wait until the situation arises. The computer will then ask both players if they want to chop (or ask just one, if the other has auto-chop already selected). Only if both agree (either by clicking "yes" at this point or by having pre-selected the auto-chop option) will this occur. There is something like a three-second window to answer affirmatively, if you do not already have it set to "yes" as your default. Failing to answer the question is taken as a "no," and the hand plays out. Once either player clicks "no" or fails to respond in the allotted time, there is no way to go back and do a chop; the hand must play out. Several of us discovered this fact last night.
I had auto-chop turned on. The woman to my left did not. Furthermore, she was watching the Olympics on TV when the hand in question arose. She only noticed the chop question being presented to her just as the screen was about to disappear, and she wasn't quick enough to click on either answer, so the computer took that as a "no."
She and I had not discussed what to do if the situation came up. I didn't realize that she was distracted, because I was just kind of looking straight ahead, waiting for her to decide one way or the other. Personally, I don't care much about whether the blinds get chopped or not, as long as it's either yes or no every time. I would have a slight preference for playing every hand, because I think I'm probably on average a little bit better than my opponents, and should be able to show a profit from playing heads up. However, so many players dislike playing when it's down to just the blinds that as a social concession I'll do whatever the other player prefers.
When her time expired, my screen indicated that the action was on me, and gave me the usual choices. I assumed from this that she had chosen not to chop. I had Kh-3h. I know that this is statistically likely to be the best hand here, so I raised to $7. I was actually a little worried that she had peeked at her cards, found a monster, and would be reraising me, because I wasn't sure at that moment whether she had wanted not to chop or had simply missed her window of opportunity.
It is just as I'm putting in the raise that she is getting flustered about having missed the chop opportunity. She doesn't understand that when the screen asking her the question vanished, that was the end of the matter. She still wants to chop, and is trying to figure out how to bring that option back. I already know that it is not coming back, so I finish registering my raise.
Now the action is on her. She sees that I have raised, and correctly concludes that chopping is no longer an option. However, she mistakenly thinks that this is because of me--that I refused to chop so that I could raise and steal her blind.
She said in a huff, "That is so childish! Go ahead--take it!"
I got a bit defensive here, and told her, "Whether we chopped was entirely up to you. I had pre-selected yes. You decided not to chop, which is OK with me. I'm just playing the hand because you chose to."
She folds, spits out an excuse about not having been given enough time to respond, and repeats that I--I--was being childish about it. She then logs out, stands up, and leaves, never to return.
So let's review. My actions: I had taken the responsible approach and pre-registered my approval of chopping if the other player wanted to do so. I was paying attention to the action and acted quickly when the computer signalled that it was my turn. When it became inevitable that we would play the hand out, I put in a modest raise that was by any standard the correct poker move, based on my cards. Her actions: She did not bother to pre-register her preference. She was watching TV and missed her chance to chop if that had been her desire. By her action or inaction, she forced us to play the hand. Once that die was cast, she objected to how I played it. She responded to the loss of her $2 not by apologizing for having missed the boat, but by getting angry enough at me that she decided to leave the game entirely.
But I'm the one who was being childish.
Ri-i-i-i-ght.
Sitting and waiting--part 2
Date: Sat, Aug 23, 2008
A few months back I posted a note on my observation that there are lots of Asian women who sit for hours doing nothing but waiting while their male partners play poker. Why this practice is so heavily skewed demographically towards Asians remains a mystery to me.
Anyway, I was amused by seeing the above-pictured two men, who did not appear to know each other, sitting in adjacent seats at the Excalibur last night, each accompanied by a bored-looking female partner, sitting slightly behind, doing nothing--not reading, not interacting meaningfully with their menfolk, not watching TV, not paying attention to the poker game. Just sitting.
I want to ask these women, "Why are you here? Are you actually enjoying this? Don't you have anything else you'd rather be doing?" But I don't, of course. I just wonder.
Excalibur's electronic tables--first impressions
Date: Sat, Aug 23, 2008
Let me jump to the conclusion first: I ended up liking these tables quite a bit more than I thought I would. I expected to feel essentially neutral about them, with the pros and cons basically balancing each other out. In fact, a couple of acquaintances who talked to me there fairly early in the evening asked me what I thought, and that's basically what I told them--I didn't mind the newfangled tables, but didn't love them, either. As the hours went on, however, my impression became more favorable. By the end of my first session, my assessment was this: If I walked into a poker room in which there was an open seat at each of two tables of the same game and same stakes, one a traditional dealer-run game with cards and chips, and the other a PokerPro table, I'd have them put me into the latter.
May all my dealer friends forgive me.
And, no, I'm not being paid anything by anybody for this opinion. (I tried to score a free PokerPro hat, and was told that they were all out. That's as close as I came to any sort of bribe or compensation.)
The official announcement had put the opening at 6:00 p.m. I arrived at about 5:45, and there were already two full tables going, so obviously they got underway early. I had to wait in a line for about ten minutes before I could even enter the room. I found the sign-up process needlessly cumbersome and time-consuming. First I had to give them my MGM card and driver's license, select a PIN, pick a nickname that the system would display for me, and thus get entered into the system. Then I had to go wait in another line in order to put money in the account just created. As it turned out, for some reason the account creation process hadn't worked right, so they made me go through the whole MGM card/driver's license/PIN selection/nickname rigamarole AGAIN, which seriously annoyed me. Then it was back to the cashier with $200 cash. I had to sign a stupid receipt of some sort for that to work. Then I had to get in yet ANOTHER line to swipe my card at an automated kiosk and sign up for the games I wanted.
Cashing out was a pain, too, involving signing another receipt.
Probably due to opening-day glitches, they seemed to have no idea where there were open seats. Presumably, a person at the central desk can see this instantly on a monitor, but they sure weren't acting as if they could. Instead, a woman was constantly running between tables to see where there were open seats. When I signed up for a $1-2 NLHE game, I was about 8th on the list. But since I hadn't been hearing names called out, it wasn't clear to me how I was to be notified when it was my turn. So I asked somebody, and was told they had a seat open. I pointed out that there were a bunch of people ahead of me on the list, and they said to never mind that. I still have no clue what that whole mess was about.
I was one of ten people to start up a new game (so perhaps all of the other people ahead of me on the list were also among those seated). It was slow going at first, as everybody struggled a bit to figure out how to take the actions they wanted. But after maybe ten hands, it felt pretty comfortable.
After half an hour, we were clicking along pretty fast. In fact, speed is one of the main advantages of the tables. It offers on-the-fly session statistics, so I don't have to guess at it. Neglecting the first hour, when everybody was learning the system, we consistently got 45-50 hands per hour. Standard for traditional games is something like 36 hands per hour. It's not a night-and-day difference, but it's not insignificant; one-third more hands per hour should translate proportionately to that much more profit per hour for the better players.
My impression was that the chief time savings were not in the actual play of the hands, but the clearance time between hands. It may be that most of the time advantage comes from not having to stop for dealer changes, tray fills, making change, correcting dealer errors, etc.
The press release had said that there would be a number of big-name poker pros at the grand opening. The only recognizable person I saw was David Sklansky, who did not appear to have any underage and/or developmentally disabled young women with him. Perhaps I just overlooked them. You can see him in the second photo above, standing next to my table, chatting with Michael Hamai, "LasVegasMichael," site administrator for allvegaspoker.com, who happened to be seated at the same table I was.
We were also graced by a visit from the 33rd-best razz player in the world. F-Train is correct that I failed to recognize him at first, for which I was mightily embarrassed. I knew the face was familiar, but couldn't place where I knew him from. Then again, we had met only once before, and that for maybe 30 seconds a few months back, although we exchanged about a million IMs over the course of the WSOP. By the way, while I'm talking about him, see his interesting take on the newly opened Hard Rock poker room, for an opinion dramatically different from my own.
The PokerPro interface is pretty straightforward. You touch buttons for "call $_______," fold, or all in (see fourth photo above). To prevent errors, you then have to hit a "confirm" button. You can clear it before that, if you have made a mistake. If you want to raise, you click on a row of buttons with chip amounts. This is, I think, the most clumsy part of the interface. A numeric keypad would be much better, IMHO. For example, one time the pot was $36. I decided to bet 2/3 of that, which was $24. That required hitting the $5 button four times and the $1 four times--ridiculously inefficient to require eight button presses to enter the amount of a bet.
Some people apparently had difficulty getting the screen to respond to touches with their fingers, and instead used the corner of their MGM card. I had no such problem.
Looking at one's cards requires touching the screen on the icon/image of the face-down cards (see photos above). Your cards will be readily visible to players on either side of you if you don't cup your hand around that spot. One guy next to me was just tapping the image with his MGM card, and I could see his hole cards as plain as day. I advised him to change his technique, and he did. There's nothing about this that is much different from what happens with real cards. There's almost always at the table at least one person who just lifts his cards off the table to look at them, without the slightest thought or worry about who else might be able to see them. (Some of these people do so, I think, because they are used to home games with paper-based cards, which don't take well to bending, and they just can't convince themselves that good-quality plastic casino cards really aren't harmed when you just lift a corner for a peek.)
There is an "options" menu (first photo above). Here you can view session stats, move more money from your account onto the table, quit, sit out temporarily for a break, agree to always chop the blinds, have the straddle option turned on or off, and a bunch of other stuff.
They had a few technical glitches last night. First, the system was taking a rake even if a pre-flop raise went uncalled. Players objected to this, being used to the "no flop, no drop" practice. The PokerTek guys apologized profusely, said this was a set-up error on their part, and they would be correcting it as soon as they could shut the system down for tweaking. Apparently that's not something they could adjust while it was running. (No rake was taken if the blinds just chopped.) At one of the tables, one card reader couldn't accept any cards, so that seat had to remain unoccupied. At my table, we kept having the game suddenly paused for no apparent reason. After the third or fourth time, they traced the problem to the player on my right. The system has a built-in anti-tampering lock, much like the "tilt" mechanism on a pinball machine. The console on this guy's seat was a bit loose in its fit to the table, and when he bumped it with his knee (he was a tall dude), it would lock the game down. Again, this sort of thing is probably inevitable on opening day, and I'm sure they'll get it all fixed.
There is a rabbit-hunting option. I'm guessing it doesn't get used much, because the system charges you $0.50 every time you use it. I asked one of the technical crew on hand, and he confirmed that the computer shuffles the entire virtual deck before the hand begins, rather than randomly selecting a card from the available ones when it is needed, as some online sites do--so at least it's a "real" rabbit-hunt, in the sense that the cards it shows really are the ones that would have been dealt, had the hand played out to the end. (See this post and the Hard-Boiled Poker posts linked to therein for more details on this point.)
Here's an advantage of the electronic tables that I hadn't thought of before last night. Late in my session, a young man in an electric wheelchair joined our game. He was quadriplegic, with limited use of his upper extremities. It appeared to me that he had gross motor control of his hands, but not much fine motor control. Nevertheless, he didn't seem to have any significant trouble tapping the appropriate areas of his screen. I imagine that manipulating real chips and cards would have been a huge hurdle for him, however.
The system can, I'm told, be set up to take out money for house jackpots (high hands, bad beats, etc.), though Excalibur is not doing so currently.
For the first night, they had no time limit on players' actions, though I hear that eventually they'll set it up with a one-minute limitation. I don't know if there is some way to override that for those instances where an exceptionally difficult decision requires additional thinking time.
The most common reason for delay of game was, as at traditional tables, players not paying attention. The screen changes, bringing up the action options, and a yellow bar at the top of the screen flashes, but if a player is chatting with his neighbor or watching sports on TV, he's not going to see those indicators. Really the most effective thing would be to have some sort of a buzzer or shaker built into the seats, to get your attention like the rumble strips on highway shoulders, but I suppose that's impractical. Remember that early episode of the Simpsons in which the family went into therapy, and they could all deliver to each other an electrical shock? I found myself wanting such a thing for the one or two players at the table who were chronically too busy yapping away to notice that it was their turn.
At one point it looked like our game was breaking up, so I logged off. But then we were told a couple of new players were coming, so I swiped myself in again. Interestingly, the system would not let me buy in for less than what I had just removed from the table. This is a good thing, because otherwise players could easily remove virtual chips from the table immediately after winning them, yet keep playing with less money on the table. I understand that it is set up to only let you buy in from scratch, for less than what you removed from the table, after an hour, which matches the typical house rule. Because the tables are linked centrally, you have the same restriction if you change to a different table of the same game, again matching the rule in most casinos that you can't squirrel away chips just by changing tables.
I did not like the sitting-out process. It only takes three button presses to register sitting out (e.g., for a restroom break): call up the options menu, click "sit out," then confirm it. But coming back in requires swiping the MGM card and entering one's PIN again. Maybe that's necessary for security reasons, but it's a pain in the butt.
My game did eventually break, and I went instead to a $0.50/$1 NLHE game, with a $50 max buy-in, which is something that has probably never been spread in any Vegas casino before. Very fishy indeed.
What I still haven't figured out is the degree to which physical tells will be useful. So far, it's not clear to me when an opponent's appearance of doubt and hesitation is because of the poker situation or because he's having some trouble with the computer interface. Maybe that will become clearer with time. I am pretty sure, however, that players new to casino poker stand out less at electronic tables than at tables with chips and cards. It is in things like handling chips and cards, knowing whose turn it is to act, tipping, string bets/raises, etc., that newbies most quickly and obviously reveal themselves as such. I think that a few buttons will prove easier for them to master quickly than all of the various things one has to do with chips and cards to be (and look) proficient.
What did other players think of the tables? I heard almost all positive comments, including, surprisingly, from a trio of obviously local friends, who were--how can I say this diplomatically?--of an age that I'd be willing to guess that their home VCRs still flash 12:00, 12:00, 12:00 incessantly.
I saw exactly three unhapppy people. First, while I was waiting in line just to enter the room, somebody came up to the security guard who was controlling access (letting in one person every time a spot opened up at one of the registration stations), and asked, "Where is the poker room?" The guard said, "This is the poker room." The questioner asked, "No, I mean the room where they play real poker." The guard politely informed him that this was all they had. The guy said, "Well then I guess I'll have to go somewhere else to find real poker." There was little doubt in my mind that this was a pre-rehearsed little bit of theatrical protest this guy was engaging in. I think he knew perfectly well what was going on.
The other two dissatisfied customers that I saw, though, were genuinely caught unawares by the electronic tables. One dude stormed off quite loudly after discovering what was happening in the room, yelling, "I don't want to play on no damn machine!" The other one was a guy who joined our table, was clearly baffled by the whole process, and didn't like it one little bit. I missed the crucial hand because I was talking with a very bright and interesting guy seated on my right, but apparently this player mis-clicked something. He didn't know how to clear the error (although the "clear chips" button is prominent enough that this shouldn't be a problem), and somehow accidentally moved all in when he didn't really want to, and lost all his money. His reaction struck me as completely sincere, that the whole thing had been a huge mistake, and he left seriously miffed.
Speaking of accidentally going all in, one player cleverly figured out an angle-shooting technique. We had just had a hyper-aggressive guy sit down and immediately try to bully the table with constant big raises. On the hand in question, he raised from under the gun to, I think, $20. The player in the small blind pressed some buttons. The screens showed him all-in. He immediately got a shocked look on his face and said, "Oh no! That's not what I meant to do!" It fooled me--it looked perfectly genuine. But when UTG made the all-in call with his pocket queens, Mr. Oops was revealed to be sitting on K-K, and broke out in a big grin. He won. Nicely done, sir. I've occasionally seen people pull a similar stunt with large-denomination chips (particularly in tournaments) "accidentally" being tossed in, but it was a novel variation on the theme to have hit the "wrong" button on an electronic table.
Some of the objections raised to electronic tables are just, well, looney. For example, a contributor to the allvegaspoker.com forums with the alias of "Railbird" wrote, "I guess I fear change in this regard. I do not see any positive side. The reality that I see is a game that is not poker because it is not played with a real 52 card deck, shuffled and put in the air. Instead the "deck" is a computer program. What's not to say that the program will be written not to simulate a random shuffle, but rather to stimulate action. I just do not want to play that game." (See here.) To that kind of idiotic paranoia, I can only suggest having one's medication regimen carefully reviewed by one's psychiatrist. And watch out for the black helicopters following you home.
One of the most frequent comments I read in advance of the room's opening was some version of this: "If I wanted to play on a computer, I could stay home and do it." Most, though not all, such objections, I think, come from people who haven't tried it. My subjective sensation was that the experience is far, far, closer to traditional casino poker than it is to Internet poker--something like a 90/10 blend. Being able to chat with other people and watch them make their moves is worlds removed from sitting solo at my desk at home. Yeah, you press buttons instead of lifting cards and pushing chips, but I think that's pretty minor. I felt that the great majority of the experience I'm used to remained intact.
As regular readers must know by now, I generally dislike handling chips and cards, because, well, they're disgustingly filthy. (See here for my full rant on this.) PokerPro pleases my aesthetic sense on this point.
There are two main things I liked about the electronic tables that will keep me coming back for more. First is the relative paucity of unnecessary delays and errors. The game just moves along better when there aren't dealer changes, fills, exposed cards to figure out, misdeals, time-consuming split pots, making change, manual shuffles, out-of-turn action to sort out, etc. I played for about 7 1/2 hours, much longer than my usual sessions, but it felt like time passed much more quickly without those kinds of delays.
The second big advantage is simply profit. To explain this, let's talk about my actual results last night. I dug myself into a $100 hole early, when my J-J lost an all-in race to A-K with a rivered king. (PokerPro is TOTALLY rigged! That would NEVER happen with a real dealer and real cards!) I rebought, then just couldn't make any headway, sitting for more than three hours at about the same amount. Finally I had a couple of big hands (especially this one: Q-4 in the big blind, unraised pot, flop of Q-4-4, and a guy with A-4 in the small blind; I think he, too, may have concluded that PokerPro is RIGGED!) and got ahead. I was up by about $150 on the night before the final hand. I lost virtually my entire profit in one of those horrible flopped set-over-set situations: my 9-9 against somebody else's A-A on a flop of A-9-4. (See? RIGGED, I tell you!) It was nearly 2:00 a.m. at that point, so I decided to call it quits, and left with exactly $13 profit for my efforts. Bleah.
Anyway, let's consider the situation if I had left one hand before I did. As I said, it had been a pretty unimpressive session, with about $150 profit. The session stats screen informed me that I had won 45 hands. That means I would have tipped the dealers $45. Furthermore, the maximum rake was only $3 instead of the $4 plus $1 jackpot that the Excalibur previously took. You might argue against counting the jackpot money, because on average you get back what you put in, theoretically, so I'll disregard that. I can't say exactly how much rake was saved, because I don't know how many pots were of what size. But I think it's fair to estimate that the average saving was $0.50. So even if flesh-and-blood dealers had put out the same number of hands per hour as PokerPro did, I would have been up by about $67 less than I actually was ($45 in tips and $22 or so in additional rake). Furthermore, as I noted earlier, human dealers on average get out about 1/3 fewer hands per hour. Put all of this together, and it constitutes a huge fraction of my profit that would not have been realized playing the same cards a week before the electronic tables were installed.
As one more small part of this equation, the tables are set up to automatically reduce the rake (I'm not sure exactly how far) when the games get short-handed, as opposed to having to remember to ask for a rake reduction at traditional games.
Those are the main two reasons I plan to keep going back to the Excalibur: I can play with less annoyance and less fatigue, while simultaneously making a greater profit. I had not anticipated that the differences would be so dramatic, but they were.
Don't mistake me for saying that I hope all poker dealers get replaced by computers. My view isn't that extreme. I'm only saying that these tables have real, tangible advantages that, for me, definitely outweigh their disadvantages. I have no desire to see them take over every poker room in the city, but I'm quite happy to have them available in the mix of rooms I visit.
I don't have a keen sense of whether this experiment will succeed or fail, in financial terms, for Excalibur. It may be that people will take to them as I did. Or they may stay away in droves, as the saying has it. I don't know. But I hope they carve themselves out a nice little niche.
Addendum
Immediately after posting the above, I went to http://www.allvegaspoker.com/ to see what other contributors to the site might have been at the Excalibur opening yesterday and what their impressions were. Perhaps the best overall observation I've seen on the controversy was just posted a couple of hours ago by a person calling himself "lesvegas." I liked it enough to quote it in its entirety here (see here for the whole discussion):
I suggest to any of you focusing on the negative aspects of the change to
an electronic poker room through emails to MGM/Mirage, boycots of the Excalibur,
posts on this site etc., that you give equal time to focus on the positives of
the developing Las Vegas poker landscape by doing the same for the companies
that have invested heavily in their poker rooms.
Railbird, have you also emailed the execs at Hard Rock thanking them for
providing poker players with a beautiful new room to play and promising to visit
their property frequently? Did you write to the owners of the new East Side
Cannery and thank them for including a state of the art live poker room when
they designed and built their new casino?
I love Las Vegas. There is something for everyone here. Locals have places
that cater to them, rich people can stay at some of the most luxurious hotels in
the world. Fremont Street offers everything the budget traveller could hope for.
And now, poker players have more options than they ever had before. We have
the class of the Venetian, the swankiness of the Hard Rock, the coziness of TI,
the nitiness of the Stations, and the low stakes, drunken, swear at the
tableness of Excal. This is great. I want to try all of them.
As with most things, people will find their favorite room to play. For me,
its the Golden Nugget. I like the vibe, the atmosphere, the comps and the way
the room is run by managemant and dealers. Nobody talks about the Nugget on this
site, and thats ok by me. Its only one of many rooms. And that is the best part.
Many rooms, and choices for everyone.
Now, with new rooms and new ideas, we as poker players have even more
choices, and I cannot see this as a bad thing. All the doom and gloomers
predicting the death of live poker really need to see the big picture here.
There is a great deal of focus and investment in poker in Las Vegas and I, for
one, am very excited and cannot wait until next week when I come to town to try
out both the Excal and Hard Rock rooms.
About Aliante Station's poker room
Date: Sat, Aug 23, 2008
Last night at the premiere of the Excalibur's new electronic poker tables (about which more shortly), I ran into an acquaintance who, I had heard, had been named as the poker room manager for Aliante Station, the new Stations property set to open in North Las Vegas November 11. He confirmed that indeed that is his new position. He told me that the place is gorgeous enough to make Red Rock look like a dump--and he is not a man who is prone to either idle exaggeration or vain shilling on behalf of his employer.
Of more immediate interest to me, though, was the persistent rumor that Aliante's poker room was going to use electronic tables from the get-go. Another version of the rumor has it that it will be half and half, both traditional tables and electronic. That version, I am now told, is definitely not true. It will be either one or the other. The odd thing, though, is that this has not yet been decided. One would think that this would have been settled long ago, with the opening a mere 80 days away, but apparently not. A final decision is expected next week.
If they go electronic, it will not be with the PokerPro tables that Excalibur has, but the very similar competition product from Lightning Gaming. (Well, at least the tables look very similar to me. Maybe there's something profoundly different about them that isn't apparent from the web site.)
Strange sights on the streets
Date: Fri, Aug 22, 2008
Just when I think I've every crazy thing that might happen in this crazy city, I come across something new and different. Like, oh, say, a guy out walking his lizard. (If there is a herpetologist among my readers, feel free to speak up in the comments and tell us exactly what that thing is.)
And in case you were going to ask, yeah, it was definitely real. Let there be no doubt about that.
Hard Rock may have a winner on its hands
Date: Fri, Aug 22, 2008
The Hard Rock casino has been boasting for a few months now that its coming poker room would be the greatest things since sliced bread. Yeah, well, I've heard that before. I'll believe it when I see it.
For now, I'm sticking with sliced bread, but I have to admit, they did a really, really nice job on this thing. Nice enough that if the place stays busy, it could easily jump to being one of my three or four most common stops. (Right now, in case you're curious, it's Venetian, Palms, Rio, and Planet Hollywood, in no particular order.)
It was surprisingly busy tonight, with nine tables in use when I arrived (out of a total of 12, I think). But it was opening day, which obviously brought in a lot of curiosity visits. The test will be whether it stays this popular over several months.
Let me take you on a little tour. The room is located where there used to be a gift shop, on the left side of the hall (assuming you're coming from the parking ramp), just before you get to the main casino floor. There's a bar/lounge area to the left and the check-in desk to the right:
Then projecting deeper into the room is a wide sort of corridor, along which are three poker tables. This photo shows the tables, but not the corridor part, which is about as wide as the tables are long (i.e., the tables only take up roughly half the width, so there's plenty of walking room):
This corridor opens up into the main part of the room, which includes several tables and the cashier's cage:
Along the back wall of this main part of the room are three or four small alcoves, each with a single table and a nice little seating area for people watching the players:
Finally, there is one table in a separate room off of the main room, which appears to be for private games. Tonight there was what appeared to be a single-table tournament as part of somebody's bachelor party. I stuck my head in anyway. I tell you, there's nothing I won't do for you people!
The Hard Rock ordered nice Kem cards with a special design on the back, just for the poker room, which is an elegant touch few of their competitors bother with.
It was a rare tactile pleasure to have the feel of all brand-new cards in play, before they accumulate the layers of dirt and grime and lint and skin oil and grease from sloppy people's meals, etc.
The dealers were a mixed bag. This young lady was showing more cleavage than I've ever seen on any poker dealer, though I couldn't capture it anywhere near fully in the few attempts I made, this being my best effort. (It was getting to be a little too obvious, after about four clicks of the shutter in her direction.) Trust me--you're not getting even a decent hint of it here:
Other female dealers were more professionally dressed--much less boobelage--so I don't know why this one was so much more, um, exposed.
Anyway, skill level was good overall. One was superb, a guy named Stephen that I've always liked at the Golden Nugget. One was obviously on her very first day as a dealer. She made a few mistakes, but nothing terrible, and really above average for being green. The rest were entirely competent, but not outstanding in any way that I could notice.
I loved the tables and chairs. Lovely gray felt, against which the chips stood out boldly. (This is one of those little touches that too few poker room managers think of. If the chips disappear into the background color of the felt, it repeatedly slows the game down, because both the players and the dealer miss the fact that there has been action.) Great texture, with cards and chips sliding across it just right. They may have the most nicely padded rails of any room in town. Built-in cupholders. Foot-rest rail. My only quibble is that they spread games nine-handed and have 10 cupholders, which means the guy in the middle seat (5) gets two, and/or it will be forever unclear exactly which one goes with which seat. But that's better than nine cupholders for ten players, which I've seen elsewhere.
The tables are nicely sized--dealers able to reach everything, without the players being too crowded together. The tables have the built-in player-management system, so you swipe in at the table. This is far better than doing it at the front desk, for a bunch of reasons that I won't bother to explain (because you either already understand them or don't have any reason to care about them). Lighting was great--easy to see everything without eyestrain or glare. There's plenty of room to move around all of the tables. (I know this stuff sounds horribly picky. But when you spend 100-200 hours a month at these tables, small irritants can really start to get on your nerves.)
Chairs are among the best I've had the pleasure of using. They roll easily, swivel, go up and down, and even recline!
I played at one of the "corridor" tables, and from my seat could easily watch any of three big-screen TVs, though the people at the other end of the table would have had none in view, I think.
Noise was surprisingly subdued. I say "surprisingly" because the Hard Rock is notoriously loud throughout. When they had that new "Royal Hold'em" game for its official trial period, I often left with a headache because of the relentless barrage on my ears from the cranked-up music. Nothing like that in the new poker room.
It's a non-smoking room. The only potential problem will be those first couple of tables, near the main casino hallway and the bar/lounge area, in which smoking is allowed. I was at the second one in, so about as bad it's going to be there, and it was not bad at all. For a while somebody had a stinky cigar (which may be redundant--are there any non-stinky cigars?), which was unpleasant, but nowhere near intolerable. I think the inner tables will be about as good in that respect as anyplace in the city. I'm adding it to "category 2" on my ranking of how "non-smoking" poker rooms compare.
They have a built-in set of restrooms, so that one doesn't have to go out into the hall or the main casino area. This is exceptional, and worthy of heaps of praise. I think the only other poker room with a set of restrooms that is not used by anybody except poker room patrons is Red Rock.
There were masseuses wandering around, charging the standard $2/minute. I don't know if they will be there every day, or just at peak times, or what.
There is the typical capped progressive high-hand jackpot, no bad beat jackpot.
The only rule oddity I've learned of so far is that the Hard Rock becomes the second place in town to employ a button straddle. But unlike at the Rio, where pre-flop action starts with the small blind when the button player straddles, at the Hard Rock they start, as usual, with the UTG player, move around the table, skip the button, let the blinds act, then come back to the button for the option of last action. It's tricky, but probably less confusing than the way the Rio does it. It also doesn't put the blinds at as much of a disadvantage as I think the Rio's approach does. I'd still prefer that they dispensed with the button straddle completely, though.
When I checked in, the games going were $1-2 NLHE (five tables), $2-5 NLHE (two tables), $5-10 NLHE (one table), and a very surprising $5-5 mixed NLHE/PLO game. By the time I left, they also had running a table of No River Hold'em, which I still have never played. I had no idea they would be spreading this. I thought only Treasure Island had licensed it. Goes to show you what I know, eh?
The Hard Rock player's club card doesn't have a hold pre-punched in it, so I had to gouge one out myself when I got home, in order to squeeze the thing onto my ring of cards. I hate this. See how hard my life is? Boo hoo for me!
There were a few opening-day glitches, which isn't surprising. One dealer couldn't figure out what sequence of buttons to press on the player management system to register a player moving from one seat to another. One dealer didn't know the tournament schedule (though you can find it on the Hard Rock web site here). There were some chairs along the wall in the corridor, and when somebody lit up a cigarette there, nobody that I asked seemed to be sure whether those chairs were part of the poker room, and hence nonsmoking, or part of the bar/lounge, and hence smoking permitted. They were having communication problems between the dealers and the front desk, with the latter for some reason not knowing when seats had opened up (though they should be able to just look at a computer monitor and see that, without the obnoxious and error-prone "Seat open!" shouting system most places use). They somehow dropped my name from the waiting list before I got seated, and I had to start all over again. Floor people were so busy that there was an uncomfortably long wait for even minor decisions and problems.
But such problems are to be expected when an operation like this first gets off the ground. I'm willing to assume they'll work out the bugs fairly quickly.
The playing competition was a little better than I typically see at $1-2 tables, probably, again, because opening day will draw a disproportionate number of people who are true devotees of the game, and fewer casual tourists. Still, I certainly didn't feel intimidated or outclassed, and made $170 in 2 1/2 hours. Not great, but perfectly acceptable (especially given this month's history so far).
Nearly all of my profit came in two hands. In the first, I had A-Q on the button, and was one of six players to call a preflop raise to $12, so there was already a decent pot. The flop was queen high. Small blind bet $15, got called in three or four spots, and I decided to shove with TP/TK. Nobody called.
The other hand was a lot more fun. I cracked somebody's aces with my favorite junk hand, the ol' 2-4. (For the history of why I'm so fond of that hand, see here and here.) The flop was 2-3-4. Mr. Aces bet $25, I raised to $75, he shoved, I called. I hit another 4 on the river for a full house, just to rub it in a little bit deeper. My opponent was--um, how shall we say this?--displeased. He had a few unflattering things to say about my poker skills, before he stormed off, never to return. Hee hee hee! Clearly, the man does not grasp the raw power of the mighty 2-4 offsuit!
Well, that's about all I can think of to say about Las Vegas's newest poker room. It appears to be one of the best yet, and hits on nearly every aspect and feature that I care about. (Hmm. I just realized that I forgot to inquire about their comp policy. Dang. Oh, and I might as well point out that they have the absolute worst parking garage in town. The designer should be forced to drive around and around in it until he goes insane--though on second thought he may have already been insane when he drew up the blueprints.) Among other great things is the fact that I don't have to go anywhere near the Strip to get to it. If they can keep the tables full, I predict that you'll be hearing a lot more Hard Rock stories from me in the future.
You can see much nicer photos than mine over at Pokerati, here and here. My guess is that by Friday, when most people will be reading this, you'll also be able to find photos and/or reviews at Prof's poker blog and http://www.allvegaspoker.com/.
HBPRS, #7
Date: Thu, Aug 21, 2008
New episode of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show is up here. I'm not in this one (will be back in the next installment), but you should be listening to it anyway.
Excalibur's electronic tables to debut Friday
Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008
So says a news article at Card Player's web site. It also explains a bit of how the money transactions will work. I plan to be there, and shall report on the experience here, naturally.
Not again?!
Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008
I've been reading every installment of James McManus's articles on the history of poker that Card Player magazine has been running for a year or so now. Great stuff, always interesting. The August 13, 2008, issue has the third part on the history of the World Series of Poker.
So I'm innocently reading along, when he gets to the famous Johnny Chan/Erik Seidel heads-up confrontation of 1988, and says, "In the final hand, already down 300,000 to 1.4 million in chips, he [Seidel] flopped the top pair; his problem was that Chan had flopped the nut straight. The crafty champion was able to trap the New Yorker into going all in on the turn with his pair of queens."
My heart sank. Not yet another author getting this hand wrong?!
It was especially painful because I have so admired McManus's writing. His brilliant Positively Fifth Street was literally the first book about poker I ever read.* I bought it at the airport book/gift shop on my way to Vegas in either 2003 or 2004 (can't remember for sure offhand), the trip on which I tried playing poker at a casino for the very first time. (It was a cheapo daily tournament at the Luxor. You'd be shocked to know how completely clueless I was. I lasted about 20 minutes.) That trip is what hooked me on the game, and McManus's book was a large part of the allure. I've read it three times, and think it's the best non-strategy poker book I've read. (This isn't to say that strategy books are better than non-strategy books; they're just so different that it's not easy to compare across categories.) So when reading his poker history articles, I had been thinking that McManus was careful about his facts, a source I could count on to get things right. [Insert disillusioned sigh here.]
Let's set the record straight: The action on the turn was check-check. It was only after the river card was out that Seidel pushed all in and Chan called.
I first wrote about this in January, when I noticed an article by David Apostolico getting the action all wrong, and attempting to draw lessons from the hand that were completely bogus, because it didn't happen the way it would have had to for those so-called lessons to be valid.
I wrote about it again in May, when I discovered two more books that got the basic facts of the action wrong.
I might as well take this opportunity also to call out Gary Wise for getting things wrong in a historical note that Shamus pointed out to me in a comment on my January post. I contacted Mr. Wise via email in January and he said he would be correcting the error soon, but he still has not done so--hence the chastisement here. Wise writes, "When the turn brought the brick both players were looking for, Chan checked knowing Eric [Grump notes: he even spells Seidel's name wrong!] would follow his strong move on the flop with another bet. Seidel, knowing John had some kind of hand and that he hadn’t been helped by the turn, bet all-in, hoping to take down the pot right there. Chan called, and after another brick on the river, was crowned the champion." Wise also erred in stating that Chan had a "slight chip lead" going into this hand, when actually it was a greater than 4:1 lead.
So here's a list of the authors that I know of so far who have misstated one or more basic facts about how the hand went down:
Ten poker authors, all writing about what is perhaps the most famous and most viewed hand in poker history--one which can be viewed in full at one's leisure on YouTube (the video clip is included in an addendum to my original post back in January)--have all gotten it wrong.
I remained completely unable to explain this baffling, annoying, and disturbing phenomenon. If an author gets facts wrong when they are this easy to check, one cannot help wondering what else they are screwing up.
*It's not really relevant to this post, but it's time I got a confession off of my chest. I always thought that McManus's title was kind of odd. I mean, sure, I got the "Fifth Street" part, but why "Positively"? Don't laugh at me, but it was not until last year that I somehow stumbled across a reference to a 1965 Bob Dylan song called "Positively 4th Street," and it finally dawned on me where McManus's title had come from. I can be incredibly dense and oblivious sometimes.
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