Sam the bellhop

Date: Tue, Sep 23, 2008

For an amusing card trick, see http://www.noob.us/entertainment/awesome-card-trick-sam-the-bellhop/.

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Playing slowly in a tournament--a sound tactic?

Date: Tue, Sep 23, 2008

In the current issue of Poker Player newspaper (September 29, 2008) is a column by "Oklahoma Sarah" Hale (p. 26). Her columns are usually boring but otherwise unobjectionable.

This week, however, in a column on poker etiquette, I think she gave out some bad advice. After explaining the reasons why it is bad form to take longer than one really needs to make decisions, she adds:

The only exception to this rule is in a tournament when you are down to the
final few tables. In this situation if you are seated at the short handed [sic] table
the blinds will hit you faster then [sic again] is fair. This is the only
time I recommend playing slower than average.

I think this advice stinks. I say it is still rude to waste all of the other players' time.

But more than being rude, I think it is stupid, self-destructive strategy to stall. It is true that the blinds are coming around faster at a short-handed table than they are at a full table. But so what? If you're a better player than average for the tournament (and if you're not, why are you in it???), then you should be winning more chips per hand, on average, than the other players. You should see yourself as having a positive EV for every hand before the cards are dealt.

In that situation, you want more hands per hour, not fewer. Every hand is an opportunity to build up your chip stack, so you should want as many such opportunities as you can squeeze in. Sure, you're paying the blinds more often than your buddy at the next table, but that's completely irrelevant if an average hand at your table has you building your stack, while those of your opponents at your table are shrinking (or at least not building as fast).

Another way to look at this is that you are not paying the blinds more than players at the other tables are, you're winning the blinds more often than players at the other tables are--if you're the best player.

Good players should see every hand as another chance to take more chips from their weaker opponents. The more such chances you get, the better.

The weakest opponents just hunker down and fold, fold, fold, hoping to stay alive as long as possible. That's no way to win a tournament. For them, stalling may prolong their tournament life. But that possibility shouldn't serve as encouragement for better players to mimic such misguided tactics.

To see stalling as a smart strategy is to admit that one is such a weak player that one is just ducking one's head under the waves, rather than playing to win. So I guess we now know what Ms. Hale really thinks of her own play.

Incidentally, she fails to mention another situation in which taking time that is not really needed for a decision is justifiable: When you need to suggest to an opponent that you have a decision more difficult than it really is. Of course, even there one shouldn't overdo it. But a bit of hemming and hawing before making a call or raise is perfectly acceptable, in order to sell a false image of weakness.

I do not, however, think it is kosher to stall on what one immediately knows will be a fold. I know that Mike Sexton often says, with seeming approval, that a player who is bluffing and gets raised will often take some time before folding so that opponents will think he had a real hand. I think this is bogus. I notice that Barry Greenstein never does this--if it's going to be a clear muck, he does it instantly. I assume that this is because Greenstein has confidence that he is virtually unreadable in his actions and mannerisms, so even if he were to announce that he had been bluffing, there is nothing for an opponent to pick up on him that would be useful in a later hand.

Besides, a rapid fold does not necessarily indicate that one had been bluffing. One might have been simply putting out a probe bet with a hand of medium strength, and once the answer came in as a raise, that was all one needed to know in order to make folding the obvious decision. So if opponents erroneously assume that every quick fold after a bet-raise means that one had been bluffing, fine, let them make that mental mistake.

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Crazy times at Bill's

Date: Mon, Sep 22, 2008

Bill's Gamblin' Hall and Saloon is neither one of my favorite nor most frequent poker hangouts, but it's a reliable money-maker, so I try to hit it once or twice a month. This weekend I did something different and put in three sessions there, racking up $508 in 10.8 hours, for about $47/hour. Doing so produced a boatload of stories and observations, which I'll lump together here.


Ugly clothes

First I have to note the guy pictured above, who was standing there watching the pigs race. I don't know if you can see it well enough in the photo I snapped of him, but the sequins fastened onto the tail of his sports jacket spell out "Big Money." That's subtlety for you.


Pig props

Speaking of the pig races, I extended my perfect track record. Three of us at the table did a pig-race prop bet, and I won. Uptick $2. Thank you very much. I left shortly after that. Still at 100%, never having had to pay off a losing pig.


Fondling

Saturday evening there were two women at the table in seats 6 and 7, on vacation together from the midwest. I was in seat 9, next to the dealer. At seemingly random intervals, these two would grope/fondle/massage each other's breasts. One time, when one did this to the other, the gropee responded, "Hey, don't start what you can't finish!" It added a whole new dimension to the game. I seriously thought about breaking out my pre-planned line about bringing good luck, but didn't have the nerve.

They were openly flirting with two young men at the table. They pretty much ignored me. *Sigh*. I'm afraid that my age and looks are such that I can't even remember the last time that a stranger tried to flirt with me.


Wildness

That session was by far the most out-of-control I've ever witnessed at Bill's, and among the top five or so of my entire Vegas experience. The amount of drunkenness, inexperience, noise, conversation, and laughter at the table was such that the game slowed to a crawl. The dealers had to work to get nearly every player's attention nearly every time in order to get anybody to actually take a turn. We were down to about half the normal rate of hands per hour. This really tests the limits of my equanimity and patience. (And that of the dealers, too. They were perpetually on the verge of seriously losing it.) I hate that kind of crap, wasting time for no good reason, because my income is all about the hands per hour. But, as usual, the game was just unbelievably soft, so I tried to grin and bear it. I'm well aware, when setting out for Bill's, that it ain't the Venetian, that I will likely be the only one at the table who actually cares about making money, that for the rest it's all about the fun. So I do my what little it is within my nature to be able to do in order to contribute to a light, fun atmosphere.


There's a reason for the rule

Another thing I have to steel myself for in preparation for playing at Bill's is the looseness of rules enforcement. They are intentionally catering to first-time players, the ultra-casual players, people who have never tried real casino poker before. People buy in for $20 or $30 or $40, and get a taste of the NLHE game they've seen on TV, and it's a little thrill for them. They don't know the rules and etiquette. So I do my best to try to ignore a lot of it, put in a gentle word or two of education where I can, and not be too much of a nit.

After the gropers had left Saturday night, they were replaced by two young women who were part of a group that had lived together during college, and came out to Vegas every year for a kind of reunion. They had played poker in home games, but never in a casino, and were trying it for the first time. Another first-time guy was to their right.

They kept talking about the hand in progress, despite repeated admonitions from both me and the dealers not to. It was bad enough that at one point I even pointedly said to the guy, who was being pretty obnoxious about openly giving advice to players facing decisions, "You're kind of a slow learner, aren't you?" That seemed to finally stop his nasty little habit.

And then it finally mattered:

I was one of three people in a hand. I had 9-8 offsuit, and had called a small pre-flop raise. But everybody apparently missed the flop, turn, and river, so it just got checked down the whole way. The final board included four spades. I didn't have one, but the last card had been an 8, giving me a measly pair. I was in early position, so when the last player checked on the river, I was first to show. I was expecting one of the other players to show a higher pair or a flush, but both of them just pushed their cards forward, face down.

Before the dealer could gather them in, one of the college-reunion women said, "I can't believe none of you had a spade!" This prompted the guy on my right to pick up his cards again, at which point he got a startled look on his face, then turned over the ace of spades. He said, "I would have sworn that was the ace of clubs!"

He had not even noticed the spades on the board until the woman said that.

He got the pot that would otherwise have been mine.

I was seriously annoyed at this. I mean, sure, it was a small pot, and the person with the best hand took it, which is as it should be. But conversely, I firmly believe that players have the right to muck the best hand and thereby forfeit the pot if they are so inclined, and nobody else should interfere with them doing so.

At least this young woman had the good sense to be absolutely mortified at what she had done. She must have apologized a hundred times, and kept doing so long after I had both forgiven her and had stopped being annoyed about it having happened.

The good news is that seeing how one little stray comment can totally change the outcome of a hand (well, that, plus the floor guy coming over and giving a stern warning to everybody), the table finally seemed to catch on to the fact that you really must not say anything about the hand in progress. And, by the way, the hand is still in progress until the pot has been awarded and the next hand has begun with the beginning of the shuffle (or by the dealer removing the new deck from the shuffler).


Overheard

As I've mentioned before, Bill's attracts the most unbelievably novice players in the universe. I have overheard the following comments in the past few days there:

• Man plausibly claiming to have had 7-7 bets $6 from under the gun, folds to an opponent's bet on an ace-high flop, says, "I just wanted to take those blinds!" Remember that Bill's plays with a single $1 blind. In other words, he was claiming to have bet $6 not to start building a pot that he could later win, but simply in order to win the single $1 chip that was on the table when he made that raise. Good thinking, sir.
• Guy who limped in, then had to decide whether to call a pre-flop raise, looked long and hard at his hole cards, then at the raiser, and said, in all earnestness, "I think I might be drawing dead here," and folded. (Note to the non-poker-players among my readers, to whom this might not be obvious: There are no two cards that are drawing dead to any other two cards before the flop. Any starting hand can beat any other, given the right community cards. One cannot play the game for very long before realizing this, which is why the guy's words reveal that he has likely watched the game on TV and heard this kind of comment in a different context, but has never actually played.)
• On a paired flop, one player asked the dealer, "Do you have to use five cards to make a hand?"
• One player, who repeatedly warned us that he had never played before and had no idea what to do, was there with a friend who was trying to teach him the game. The more experienced friend took a restroom break. When he returned, the newbie excitedly told him, "While you were gone, if I had played one hand, I would have made five in a row, 6-7-8-9-10. That's something, isn't it?"
• Last night, a player with about $30 left was facing a $71 all-in bet. He asked the dealer, "Can I just play for, like, $5, or do I have to put it all in to play?"
• One player asked the dealer whether an ace could play as part of a low straight as well as a high straight.
• Last night, I saw this betting sequence on the flop: Player A checks. Player B bets $20. Player C calls. Player A decides to go all-in for $40. Player B also goes all-in, for less, a total of $36. Player C...FOLDS! There were three of us reasonably experienced players all clustered together at one end of the table, and all three of us had our eyes bug out at the fold. We quietly exchanged a few words, all of which were around this observation: There is no hand that C could have for which it makes sense to call $20 into a small pot, but then not call an additional $20 into what is now a much larger pot, on the same street. He was getting much better pot odds on the second $20 than he was on the first $20. He must (or at least should) have known when calling B's initial $20 bet that B was going to put his last $16 in on this hand, no matter what. In other words, C must (or, again, at least should) have either decided he was willing to put in $36 or not called the $20 to begin with. In fact, it would have been smarter, probably, to look at his two opponents' stack sizes, and just shoved there, trying to keep A from calling the $20 and getting pot-committed.

I hasten to add that I'm really not trying to make fun of these people for their ignorance. They're not stupid, just new. Everybody has to learn the basic rules and strategies of the game at some point, and there's no shame in not knowing something, or in asking a question in order to clear up what you don't know.

It's just that it's really rare to encounter this much absolutely bare-bones level of inexperience in no-limit casino poker. It's much more common that people learn these basics in home games, playing micro-limits online, or playing the cheapest limit hold'em in a casino. It's the incredibly low buy-in and blind structure at Bill's that prompts people to sit down and play a no-limit game, when they really would be better off in one of those other situations.


Oops, I broke up the game!

In two hands I busted four players last night. First one was with my top pair/top kicker against her top pair/medium kicker. On the very next hand I caught quad 7s (with a pair in the hand, which got me a $50 high-hand jackpot in addition to the pot) on a double-paired board, and busted three opponents at once. One had a full house, one had hit a flush on the river (I didn't pull the trigger until then, though I flopped a set and turned the quads), and one had an ace in the hole, and thought maybe two pairs with an ace was good enough to call off all of his chips with.

On the previous night (Saturday), when I arrived at about 5:00, as the floor guy was selling me chips, he said, only half-jokingly, "Don't bust the whole table too fast--I've got to keep the game going until 7:00, when my shift ends!" I guess he should have saved his warning for the next night!

(N.B.: This is a serious faux pas on his part, if you ask me. Yeah, it's nice that he has paid attention to my play, remembers my face, and recognizes that I'm probably going to be the shark in his little fish pool, but the last thing I need is for him to be saying such a thing three feet away from the table. It not only unnecessarily warns the more unsuspecting players, but it insults them, if they're alert enough to catch his meaning. Furthermore, does he seriously think I'm not going to try to maximize my profit, just so that his job is made easier? Please.)


The Internet blog guy

When I sat down for a late-night session last night, one player at the table looked at me and said, "You're that Internet blog guy, right?" He had spent some time with me during the evening described here, so had heard others mention my blog.

Anyway, for any readers who happen to run into me across the green felt, I found this guy's question so amusing in its phrasing that it is now the preferred official way to introduce yourself to the Grump: "You're that Internet blog guy, right?"


One difficult decision

Last night I was in late position with the two black 7s, so I raised to $5, and got two callers. The flop was 7-8-9, with two diamonds. It was checked to me. I deliberately overbet the pot ($25, I think) in order not to give proper pot odds to an opponent with a flush draw or straight draw. Both of them called. Ugh.

The turn was an offsuit jack. The first guy quickly moved all-in for $71. This is the same hand I mentioned above, in which the second guy then asked whether he could just play for, say, $5 more, instead of the rest of his stack. When told it was all or nothing, he folded.

I was sitting on about $400 at the time, so it wasn't like a call here would break me. But I couldn't make sense of the first guy's move. I didn't think he had flopped a straight, because with two opponents who might be on a flush draw, surely he would have either bet out on the flop or check-raised me. But it also didn't really make sense for him to have had a 10 for a now-completed straight draw, because he shouldn't have been willing to call such a large bet on the flop. He would have had to think that if another diamond came he couldn't count on a straight being good, which means that he should have reasoned that he only had six outs rather than the usual eight. Therefore, calling a bet that is substantially larger than the pot doesn't make sense. If he had miraculously gotten me in a set-over-set situation, again, surely he would go for the check-raise on the flop, rather than slow-play on such a highly coordinated board.

I thought long and hard about this, and finally decided that it was most likely that he had either two pairs or one pair plus a flush draw. Even if I was wrong and he had hit his straight, I would have ten outs to a full house. So I called.

I had indeed been wrong. He had had 9-10, for top pair and a straight draw on the flop, but with no flush draw. Now, if I had been in his spot, I would have either folded or gone for the all-in check-raise on the flop with that holding. The second guy has so little left in front of him that he's not really a factor. The guy with 9-10 should have figured that a check-raise would drive me out if I were continuation-betting a hand like ace-king that completely whiffed on the flop, and that it would price me out if I were betting a flush draw or straight draw, and he would still have outs to win against almost anything I could have, in case I called with something like an overpair.

But I forgot where I was. Players at Bill's do not think about the game the same way that I do, so when I went through the hand as if I were in my opponent's seat, figuring out what cards I would have to have in order to play the way he had done, I was simply wrong. That entire approach, which is both sound and necessary when facing opponents of comparable skill and experience, falls flat when tried against considerably weaker players, because they simply don't think the same way I do.

What I should have asked myself was this: "Would a tight/weak/timid player just call that flop bet with top pair and a straight draw, hoping that he would simultaneously make his straight without the possible flush card hitting?" And the answer to that would have been a resounding "yes."

But the poker gods were merciful to me last night, and let me slide on my lapse in clear thinking. They sent an 8 on the river, pairing the board, and giving me the winning full house.

I don't usually rely on luck to win at Bill's (or anywhere else, for that matter), but it's nice to get it once in a while.


Never bluff at Bill's--well, almost never

As I have emphasized in a couple of previous posts about Bill's, it is not a place to bluff, because one is surrounded by calling stations. But there are exceptions. This weekend I ran into a few players smart enough to lay down a hand like top pair in the face of an opponent showing unusual strength.

An opportunity arose Saturday night. One of the good players put in a straddle, then, after he got called in several spots, raised to $15. I had the distinct impression that he was full of shit, that he was just trying to take the $10 or $12 on the table and be done with it. I had suited K-Q. I had limped in with it instead of raising because I was in middle position, and didn't feel like playing a big pot with what is, after all, still a pretty mediocre hand, with three or four players acting after me. But when everybody between the straddler and me folded to his raise, I was certainly willing to take him on, since I would have position on him, and I likely was starting with a better hand. Everybody folded behind me, too, so it was to be one on one. Excellent.

The flop was J-x-x. It gave me no pair and no draw. But I also knew that most of the time it will have missed him, too. Nevertheless, he did what a strong, aggressive player should usually do, and continuation-bet at it, $20. I thought that he was still full of it, so I thought a bit, then pushed out $65. He was a smart enough player to see a pre-flop limp-call, combined with a strong flop raise, as signaling danger, such as somebody with a small pocket pair having flopped a set. Sure enough, he thought for maybe 30 seconds, then folded while flashing me a jack, to show that he had hit top pair. But he simultaneously admitted, "The other one isn't too good."

So I had been right that he was just trying to buy it with junk before the flop. I had, in one sense, been wrong in guessing that the flop missed him. But in a more important sense I had been right. That is, my bet on the flop was not a bet that he had missed it completely, because obviously I couldn't know that. Rather, I was betting that he did not have a hand strong enough to call a scary-looking raise from a solid, tight player who had not shown down a single weak hand all night. On that mark, I was exactly correct.

When he folded, I gave him a wink and a smile, and exposed my K-Q. I rarely show bluffs, but here it was entirely purposeful. I had managed to get into a situation in which I could put in a bluff with a high probability of success against one of only two players at the table whom I judged capable of folding a superior hand. To get maximal value, I wanted to be sure that all of the calling stations at the table saw what I had done, in the hope that it would reinforce their already erroneous tendency to look me up too often with medium-strength hands when I had the goods.

So to the gentleman whom I used as my advertising, my apologies. I honestly wasn't trying to rub your nose in it. I was trying to help coax additional future calls from the weaker players, whom I would not normally try to bluff. Please take it as a compliment that I recognized you to be a good enough player to fold--it genuinely is one.


A mistake that worked out nicely

Early in the session, I had flopped top two pairs with a 9-7 in my hand, and picked up a full house on the turn. I showed it, despite my bet not being called. I won another hand a short time later when the same cards caught two pairs again. It then became a running joke and/or point of commentary at the table about how often that night the board was coming in such a form that holding 9-7 would be a great hand. With freakish frequency, if you could have played 9-7 every hand, you would have been hitting two pairs, trips, straights, and full houses all evening long. One guy complained that he hadn't been dealt the 9-7 all night. Kind of odd, when you usually hear that gripe leveled about not getting aces or kings!

Anyway, after this had been going on for a couple of hours, I found myself looking at the 9-7 of hearts. I raised. The flop was A-6-4, with two hearts. I almost never bluff at Bill's, but I do mix in some semi-bluffs. This is because many of the players there are not used to seeing betting on the come, so when a third card of a suit appears, they assume that the person who had bet at the flop must not have the flush. This is, I assume, because beginning players tend to check a flush draw, figuring it's not worth throwing money at it if you don't have to, when you can just wait to see if you make your hand first. So mixing in some semi-bluffs can pay off. I decided to do it here, and got two callers.

The turn was an offsuit 3. Dang. I thought about checking, but decided to bet again, hoping that they'd read me for having a big ace and fold. But, of course, this is Bill's, and nobody's folding.

The river was an offsuit 5. Rats! No flush and no pair! The first player checked to me, and, well, my old habits took over. I'm a third-bullet shooter. In this case, my instant self-justification was that maybe both of them had been on flush draws and would fold. If I had thought for about two more seconds, I would have realized how unlikely that was. Furthermore, I had shown the bluff described above specifically so that I would get more callers! What in the hell was I thinking, trying to pull off a three-shell bluff? I wasn't thinking--that was the problem. It was completely foolish.

I bet $25 on the river, praying to see two players throw their cards in the muck, even as the more rational part of my brain was saying, "Don't throw good money after bad." They both called. Yikes!

So, fully embarrassed, I turned over my hand and quietly said, "I guess I'll have to lose with the 9-7 for once tonight."

To my utter shock, the dealer announced, "Straight." I had been so focused on the flush that I had not even noticed that I had backed into a 3-4-5-6-7 straight. I can't remember the last time I so completely misread the board. (It might have been the third story related in this post.)

Both opponents mucked without showing their cards. Nobody said anything about what they must have thought was my weird comment about losing. I was too ashamed to admit that I had not seen the straight. I hoped that if anybody had heard what I said, they would take it as having been somehow ironic. I have no idea what they thought, if anything.

The poker gods were truly covering my backside for me that night.

Best I can figure is that they were there to bet on the pig races.



Addendum

I really wanted that pig-racing bit to be the punchline, and leave the post there. But upon re-reading it, I feel obligated to add a caveat here. I fear that the number of times in this post that I make reference to being so much better at poker than my opponents will sound far more arrogant than would be a true reflection of how I view myself as a player.

So I'd like to set that record straight. I've said this before, and probably will need to again at some point. I think I have a pretty brutallly realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses as a player. I honestly believe that I am probably just about as low on the continuum of poker skill as one can possibly be and still have a shot at making a living at the game.

But it's a simple fact that even that extremely modest level of talent (modest, that is, in comparison to the world-class pros whose ability has me in awe) puts one ahead of at least 90% of the tourists that sit down in $1-2 no-limit hold'em games. At a place like Bill's, it does not require any haughtiness or self-worship to say that my knowledge and understanding of the game is far deeper than that of the great majority of the other players. It's a simple, objective, unmistakable fact, and anybody who sat and watched for a while would, I think, inevitably come to the same conclusion.

So please don't read into my stories and comments an inference that I fancy myself as one of the greats. I do not--not by a long shot. I realize and fully acknowledge that I'm simply choosing to swim in really small ponds, in which it is just not very hard to be at the top of the food chain.

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Poker gems, #166

Date: Sun, Sep 21, 2008

Mike Caro, in Poker Player newspaper column, September 29, 2008.


In many ways, poker is a more complex and skillful game than chess. It's just that the intermediate luck factor makes correct decisions and deep probing seem less vital. In the long run, the right choices matter just as much.

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A great poker scene in a non-poker movie

Date: Sat, Sep 20, 2008

I love Ricky Jay's work. If he is in a movie or show, that alone makes it worth watching.

About a month ago I learned about a CD he had compiled, which had previously escaped my attention. While poking around the net to read more about it, I also happened upon a reference to a movie Jay had been in that I had never heard of before. It's the 1995 made-for-TV film, "The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky." I ordered it from Netflix and watched it a couple of days ago.

It's a pretty dumb and forgettable movie overall, barely worth the time it takes to watch it. It's based on a Norman McLean ("Mac," played in the movie by Jerry O'Connell) book reminiscing about the summer of 1919, which he spent working in the Bitterroot mountains for the U.S. Forest Service. But as expected, Ricky Jay provides the movie's one great highlight.

He plays Mr. Hawkes, the surly and mysterious cook for the forest service men. Mac repeatedly tries to goad Hawkes into card games. The cook always declines, with increasing irritation each time, by saying, "I don't play cards against the men I work with."

The confrontation finally reaches a boiling point with yet one more challenge from Mac, who fancies himself quite a poker player. Hawkes again sternly refuses: "How many times do I have to tell you? I don't play cards against the men I work with!"



This time, though, the head ranger, played by Sam Elliott, quietly says to Hawkes, "Why don't you show him why you don't play cards with the men you work with?"



The cook apparently sees the wisdom of this, and walks over to the table. He picks up the deck of cards, inspecting the faces.



He then shuffles the deck without even sitting down.



As he does so, at seemingly random moments, he flicks out the four aces in succession.



He then sits and thoroughly shuffles the deck again.



He has Mac cut the deck.



He then deals out five five-card hands with machine-gun rapidity.



He tells Mac to look at the hands. Mac was dealt four tens. The other men, who have gathered around, help expose the other hands, which include four jacks, four queens, and four kings.



Hawkes leans in close to Mac, and sneers, "I bet I win." Mac turns over the hand that Hawkes has dealt to himself: four aces.



Now, up to this point the scene has been shot without a single cut. The director clearly wants us to understand that this has all been Ricky Jay's artistry with cards on display, without any camera or editing tricks. It is indeed a bravura performance. But now we have our first cut, to the stunned face of Mac, who can only be thinking, "Holy #$%@&! This is the guy I challenged to a poker game!?"



We cut back to the cook. He gathers up the cards and starts shuffling some more. He gives Mac a little lecture about how he plays poker for a living, but takes summers off for his health, signing on as a cook and dishwasher to keep his hands soft. As he's chatting and shuffling, he again casually flicks out of the deck the aces, one at a time.



He concludes with his emphatic final words, which I think it's safe to say is the last time he will have to decline one of Mac's invitations: "I don't play cards against the men I work with!"

It's one of the greatest poker scenes in any movie, ever, even though not a single hand of actual poker is played.

Jay comes back one more time later in the movie for a poker game against the cheating sharks in a nearby town. This is supposed to be the climax of the movie, for which the scene in the ranger station was just the set-up. I won't tell you what happens, in case you want to watch it yourself. But I will say that it's disappointing, both because they show so little actual poker, and because they don't let Ricky Jay do any more of his dazzling handiwork.

The scene I described is one of the greatest possible warnings and reminders of what a truly skilled card mechanic can do with a deck, what complete control can be exerted over the cards. You do not want to be in a home game with such a person at the table. Commercial casinos with Shufflemasters and professional dealers make me feel much more at ease.

Anyway, if you have Netflix, I'd recommend putting this movie in your queue. Even with the detailed description and screen shots above, the scene is still worth watching a few times, in order to appreciate Ricky Jay's mastery. You can skip the rest of the movie without missing much.

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"Oh yeah"

Date: Sat, Sep 20, 2008

OK, one last Rio story from tonight's session.

I told you in the last post about the guy who was sitting on my right. This story is about the guy on my left. He was nice enough, and perfectly polite, but, well, not too bright. He revealed this at many times, in many ways. For example, after burning through about $400 in an hour, mostly with bad calls, he said, twice, "I'm forced to play bad cards now. I don't have any choice. It's the only way I can get my money back. I have to do it."

This, of course, is the kind of player I want to find every time I sit down. Unfortunately, I didn't get my fair share of his chips before he went completely broke. I won only one sizable pot, and that was by picking off an unconvincing river bluff. I did it with no pair, just ace-high. (I'm still patting myself on the back for that, as you might have guessed.)

Anyway, there was a woman at the table having one of those unbelievable streaks of luck. She was not a good player, though the guy my story is about was in awe of her. (Much later, when a new player tangled with her, my village idiot even whispered to me, "He has no idea how good she is." I had to stifle a laugh.) Her basic strategy was to play any two suited cards, for any price, muck if she didn't flop a flush or flush draw, and call any bet until she made her flush--which she did an astonishing percentage of the time. Even when she missed, she did things like back into a straight or two pair with what were, of course, completely unreadable hands, so that it looked like she was bluffing with a missed flush draw. Her bet sizing had no discernible rationale to it; she would bet $50 into an $8 pot, or $8 into a $50 pot. But she hit her hands with such unreal frequency that she cleaned up. She made at least $700 in the three hours or so I was watching her. It's not a strategy that can win over the long haul, but it was truly her lucky night.

Anyway, in one hand the flop was Q-Q-4. She bet, and all five or six opponents folded. She smiled and showed her pocket fours, for a flopped full house.

I grinned at her and said, with what I thought was obvious understatement, "I think you might have had the best hand there."

The Idiot speaks up: "No, Q-4 would have been the best hand."

I look at him. He is not joking. He is incapable of irony; it's about seven levels of thinking beyond his capacity.

He's clearly expecting me to respond. I'm stymied at first, not knowing quite what to say. Not only has he mistaken my comment about who at the table had the best hand for a remark about what the nuts theoretically would have been, but he has even that wrong.

Then, apparently because I wasn't giving him his dues for figuring it out, he repeated his observation: "Q-4 would have been the best hand." (He was saying this quietly, just to me--the room was noisy enough that nobody else heard our conversation.)

So I feel obligated to say something. I can't agree with him, and he's not going to let me get away without responding. So I point out, "Well, pocket queens would actually have been the best hand."

There is silence. He cocks his head back, looks up toward the ceiling with a furrowed brow, apparently deep in thought. I swear I'm not making this up: he holds this pose for about five seconds, before looking at me again. "Oh yeah. That would be better."

There's another bit of awkward silence. I break it and let him off the hook by saying, "But I just meant that I think she must have had the best hand at the table, not the absolutely best possible hand." This is calculated to give us something to agree on, and pull the discussion away from his error, so that the exchange ends pleasantly and sociably. He quickly echoes his agreement that she probably did have the best hand there, and by now we both have the cards for our next hand, and can move past the awkwardness.

Of course, maybe he didn't sense any awkwardness. I can't tell.

You know that old saying, "Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt"? Whoever coined that (and it's not at all clear who actually did) had, I suspect, met this player, and had him specifically in mind.


(In re-reading this, I see that my storytelling has once again fallen into a bit of grammatical ugliness--specifically, I have woven back and forth between past tense and present tense. I'm aware that I do this sometimes. It's never intentional, because, well, it's just plain bad writing to do that, and I wouldn't deliberately employ bad writing, except as a sort of special effect, which this isn't. But once something is written that way, it's a lot of work to go back and fix it, and, well, sometimes it's too late at night or I'm just too lazy or uncaring. So I apologize for this lapse in the writing craft. I apologize for this post, for all the previous posts that I have written and left in a similar sorry state, and for all future ones in which it may happen again. For the most part, this is first-draft writing, folks. I try to fix the obvious goofs, but a lot slide by, since I have no editor but myself. This note is just to let you all know that I'm embarrassed by the mistakes, including the confusing indecisiveness in verb tenses. I'm just not quite embarrassed enough to do anything about it, beyond acknowledging it with this half-assed explanation.)

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"You deserved to lose!"

Date: Sat, Sep 20, 2008

I was playing at the Rio tonight. The guy on my immediate right was a jerk to everyone.

The height of it came in one crucial hand. I don't remember the exact betting sequence, nor the exact board cards. Trust me, the details aren't too important. But I had J-10 offsuit, and the flop had been 10-9-x, rainbow. He had raised before the flop, but he was doing this with maybe a third of his hands, so it didn't mean much. I had called from the button.

On the flop, he checked, I bet, he called. The turn was a 5, I think. He checked, I bet again. He thought a bit, then moved all in for $71 more.

This gave me pause. I had him covered, but this was an overbet of the pot. I don't like committing a lot of chips with just top pair. But it was hard to give him credit for a bigger hand. I rolled through the hands that would have me beat, and there just wasn't anything that really fit what the betting had been. I couldn't completely rule out a flopped set, but I didn't get any sort of vibe from him of that kind of strength. I had been playing with him for a couple of hours, and had seen him when he had the nuts, and, though I couldn't list specifics, his whole gestalt radiance was just completely different than what he was showing me now. Furthermore, the only other time I had seen him aggressively move all in had been a bluff; when he was really strong, he tended to make small value bets.

I didn't rush this. I took at least a full minute thinking it through, and finally concluded that I probably had the best hand. If I was wrong, OK, but I thought the chances of being ahead were high enough to be worth the call. I counted out the chips and pushed them in.

The river was another 9. I wasn't going to show my cards until he either showed or mucked, because he was one of these jerks who never wants to show, trying to just wait out the other guy, hoping he'll show first. Well, I have the patience of Job in that situation. We call sit there all night if that's what it takes.

It didn't take all night, but he did take at least a full ten seconds before he finally exposed his cards: A-9 of clubs. He had had just second pair, no flush or straight draw, then hit his miracle river card. He had had five outs when the money went in. I showed my cards, as kind of a message to him and the table that I had had him thoroughly nailed.

OK, so I made the right read, had the courage to back it up with my chips, and got unlucky. It's annoying, but it happens--just part of the game. I would normally not say a word. But he had irked me with how long he took to get it over with. I'm emotionally cool enough that I don't sit there on pins and needles, in agony over whether I won or not. I either won or lost, nothing I can do about it, and ten seconds out of my life is pretty paltry. So if he was trying to make me fret and sweat, it failed.

Still, rude is rude, and what he did is generally considered one of the most unforgiveable breaches of etiquette one can pull at a poker table. I hate people that waste everybody's time for no reason.

So I said, "Nice slowroll," as I pull out another C-note. (He didn't break me, but it got me below the amount I like to have in play.) He said, "What do you mean?" I can't really believe he didn't understand the term; he has played in the WSOP, and certainly has enough experience to know what I meant. But I played along: "How long does it take you to show your cards?"

His response was bizarre: "I had all my chips out there already. What else was I supposed to do?"

So at this point we seem to be talking past each other. I have no idea what his chips had to do with it. But I decide it's not worth pursuing, and tell him, "Never mind."

He doesn't want to drop it, though. He says, "Anyway, what the hell are you doing calling with jack-ten there? You deserved to lose, making a call for that much money with that!"

Now this amuses me. When people reveal a level of stupidity beyond what I had judged them capable of, it always amuses me. I said, "So I shouldn't have put my money in with the best hand, huh?"

He said, "Not with that! You don't call that much with just a pair!"

I actually laughed at him. Sorry--couldn't help it. It was so absurd. This idiot genuinely believes, apparently, that the right way to make a call decision is based on the dollar amount involved and the absolute strength of one's hand. But I think it's safe to say that prevailing wisdom is that what really matters is the strength of one's hand relative to that of the opponent--which is exactly what I had spent all that time pondering.

His comment ended our lovely little chat, because I realized I was in a battle of wits with an unarmed man. I just chuckled at him, said, "OK, dude" and broke it off. He repeated something about what a bad call I had made, and I just smiled.

Morons and jerks are everywhere, often rolled up inside the same body. Can't do anything about it other than laugh.

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"The Duke" makes a magazine cover

Date: Sat, Sep 20, 2008

I picked up the new issue of Poker Pro magazine last night, but didn't even glance at it until today. I was surprised to see among the stories listed on the front cover "How 'THE DUKE' Had $30k at Risk in a $1-$2 Cash Game!" Oh, I had to read this! I've mentioned "The Duke" here before. He's one of the most recognizable inhabitants of Vegas poker rooms. He even got mentioned once in Jennifer Tilly's Bluff magazine column.

Unfortunately, I know that Poker Pro doesn't get distributed nearly as widely as Card Player and Bluff. I could direct you to the magazine's web site, but they only put a few articles from the current issue up there, and their archives are pathetic. So I'm afraid that most of my readers won't get to read what is really an interesting, entertaining story about The Duke--and one that contains a valuable poker lesson--unless I take matters into my own hands. So that's what I'm doing here. If they contact me and ask me to take it down, I will. But for now I hope this increases the number of people reading the story. Click on the images above, and it should be large enough to read online.

By the way, I think the author of the article is entirely wrong when he says that "I'll put you all in" does not constitute an actual bet. Were I the floorperson, that phrase would absolutely constitute a verbally binding bet of the number of chips/cash in front of the person to whom it was addressed. In the situtation described in the story here, that would have been interpreted to be an all-in bet by Duke, exactly the same as if he had simply said, "All in."

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Toothpicks--again

Date: Sat, Sep 20, 2008

I've grumbled before about people chewing toothpicks, here and here. I can't absolutely swear that this will be the last time I mention it, but it likely will be, because there just isn't much more to say on the subject.

But this guy from the Rio tonight deserved a mention, because he took it to a whole 'nuther level. You can't tell from the low-resolution cell phone photo, but he had a double-pointed toothpick that he gradually worked into a pulp. He would periodically spin it around in his mouth so that he could work on both ends and keep them about even, which meant that over time what one saw protruding from his mouth was a wet, soggy, split, chewed, bleached bit of wood. He somehow also nearly broke it in the middle, so that the protruding half was dangling kind of precariously, like the too-long ashes on a cigarette.

He was on vacation from North Carolina, which makes sense, because everybody who lives in North Carolina is, of course, a backwoods redneck uneducated hick unworthy of sharing city space with the rest of us.

:-)

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ARGH!

Date: Fri, Sep 19, 2008

Sahara last night. It is of considerable significance to the story that they recently added high-hand jackpots there.

I have 5-5. Somebody raises to $12. I call, as do several others. Flop is A-10-6. Original raiser bets. Second player calls. I might call the raiser if everybody else folded, because he could have whiffed. But with no flush draws and only gutshot straight draws on this board, the first call almost surely means that at least one of the two players now has a pair that has me beat, and there are still a couple of people yet to act behind me. So I fold.

Turn is a 5, making my set. River is the case 5, making my quads.

Jackpot for quad 5s is $236.

Argh!

A couple of hours later, the same dealer is back in the box. The game is short-handed, with just five of us. We're all pretty much playing any two cards. I'm on the button and join the limpers with 10-6 of hearts.

Flop is 7h-8c-9h. I have flopped a straight with a flush draw and gutshot straight flush draw. When it is checked to me, I bet small--$6. One caller. Turn is a blank. I bet $12. Fold.

I show my cards. The last guy to fold asks the dealer to rabbit hunt. (I never have made such a request, and never will.) She burns one, then turns over the 8 of hearts.

ARGH!

I'm probably near the top end of players in terms of being emotionally resistant to getting myself mentally tormented by "woulda coulda shoulda" syndrome. I realize that it would be completely irrational to play the first hand differently, in the hopes of hitting runner-runner quads (about a 1/2500 shot), or the second hand differently, in the hopes of making the straight flush (about a 2% shot on the turn)--especially since the jackpot was only $63.

But though I've tried hard to extinguish it, I do retain a flicker of the humanity with which I was born, and knowing how things turned out, it's hard not to feel a twinge of regret for not having gone for it.


The sketch above is "A Near Miss." See here.

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Weird rule at Planet Hollywood

Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2008

After seeing the lamest show in Vegas, I walked next door to play some $1-$2 NLHE at Planet Hollywood.

At one point, there was a raise to $12, then an attempted reraise to $22. The dealer told the reraiser that he had to make it $24, to double the previous bet. This is a type of error I've seen dealers make many times before, because they have a mental slip and forget that the initial raise was by an interval of only $10, so a raise from $12 to $22--i.e., another $10--is, in fact, legal.

So I said to the dealer, "$22 should be a legal raise." The dealer responded, "No, he has to double the previous bet." I pointed out that the first raise had been $10, so this interval was legitimate.

This is where it got interesting. Every other time I've had this exchange with a dealer, at this point he or she realizes his or her error and straightens things out. But yesterday I learned that Planet Hollywood does it differently. They actually have a house rule that a raise must be double the previous bet, not just a minimum of the same increment as the previous raise had been.

This dealer was by no means inexperienced, so he clearly wasn't saying this because he was first day on the job and didn't know his stuff. I told him that I had never heard of any other poker room using this rule. He said, "This is the only place in the world that does." The fact that he recognized that it was highly unusual--unique, even--strengthened my impression that he was speaking the truth, and didn't just misunderstand the standard rule.

So I asked him a hypothetical: After the flop, the first player bets $10, the second player raises to $20, now what is the minimum reraise? The standard rule would be that a minimum reraise would be to $30, adding to the prior bet the same increment that it had been over the bet it was raising. But the dealer said that at PH, the minimum reraise in that situation would be to $40, because every raise must be at least double the previous bet. And if the third player raises to $40, the next minimum reraise would be to $80.

I was convinced that he really did know what he was talking about here, but just to be doubly certain, I checked with the floorperson as I was cashing out. He confirmed what the dealer had told me, down to the fact that, as far as he knew, PH is the only poker room in the world that uses this bet-sizing rule. I asked whether there was any advantage he could think of over the standard rule. He admitted that he knew of none. So I asked the obvious question: Why do you do it this way? He said that he could only guess that whoever it was that originally implemented it had had brain damage as a child, because the rule caused confusion without conferring any advantages. It sometimes causes problems when somebody announces "raise" without realizing there had already been a raise, because now that person is committed to a larger minimum raise than if they used the standard rule.

I'm a big proponent of poker rules being standardized and uniform as far as possible, to prevent surprises and misunderstandings. This is one that I just don't get. The PH staff clearly understands that it is non-standard, and they can't offer any justification for using it. So why do they keep it, rather than changing their rules to match how everybody else operates?

I am perplexed.

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Madame Meg: Maybe the lamest show in Vegas

Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2008

Yesterday I got a free ticket (from showtickets4locals.com) to "Madame Meg's" at the Harmon Theater next to Planet Hollywood. Yuck. Definitely the most worthless show I've seen since living here.

"Madame Meg" herself does the world's mildest and most boring strip tease. PG-13 rating at worst.

There is a singer who does three songs. She wouldn't have been invited to Hollywood in an "American Idol" first-round audition. She attempted to sing "Life is a Cabaret," which is unwise. If you can't do it better than Liza Minelli--which, frankly, isn't very likely--you really shouldn't even attempt it.

There's a pantomime skit of a woman who wants to be a showgirl, but doesn't have the assets or talent for it.

There's a stage hypnotist. This was the most painful, embarrassing part of the whole show to watch. She had a reticent audience, and could only get two volunteers up on stage, one of whom was obviously just going through the motions with a perpetual "I wish I hadn't come here" look on his face. Basically, everything went wrong for the hypnotist. She couldn't coax any audience participation. If it had been done on "The Gong Show," she wouldn't have lasted two minutes.

Finally there was a magician. Not horrible, but not one original or interesting thing in her act. It was completely, 100% the same stuff we've been seeing magicians do for, oh, a hundred years or so: cards appearing and disappearing, doves being pulled out of scarves, paper being torn and reassembled, blah, blah, blah. Not a single word of patter or humor, either.

The whole thing was a complete waste of an hour. Even with free tickets, I felt like I had paid too much.

Lame. Just completely lame.


The print above is "Christ Healing the Lame," one of a large series of interesting re-interpretations of biblical scenes by Watanabe Sadao. See the art here, and read about the artist here.

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Poker gems, #165

Date: Thu, Sep 18, 2008

Terry, a poker dealer (female, it must be said) at Planet Hollywood, September 17, 2008:


You know the poker gods are all female. Men aren't capable of being that cruel.

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Doyle Brunson seems to be confused

Date: Wed, Sep 17, 2008

Doyle Brunson, in his blog, February 16, 2008:

During this poker cash game lull, I am on this race for President like stupid is
on Britney Spears. I have come to the conclusion that poker players have to
support Obama. We can’t possibly let McCain be our President because he supports
most of George W. Bush’s views.

Doyle Brunson, in his blog, September 12, 2008:

It’s hard to believe, but McCain has taken the lead in the presidential race.
They rolled the dice when they chose Governor Palin to run for Vice President
and they threw a seven because she really turned things around for the
Republicans. It’s hard not to be in McCain’s camp after listening to his life
story. He really is an American hero.

Doyle Brunson, when asked who he will be voting for in the presidential election, during red-carpet interview at the Hard Rock Poker Lounge Grand Opening, September 13, 2008, as shown on Wicked Chops Poker:

I'm undecided, but probably McCain.

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