One more whine before I quit for the night

Date: Wed, Aug 6, 2008

I apparently didn't get the email from the poker gods warning me to just stay off of PokerStars tonight.

After the unsuccessful tournament, I tried my usual $2-$4 razz cash game. Up and down for a while, nothing spectacular. But then I went unusually card-dead. I checked the hand histories, and actually went for 45 consecutive deals without getting three unpaired cards 7 or below.

On average, one should get such a good starting hand about 14.8% of the time. Using the handy binomial probability calculator here I found that the probability of not getting one in 45 hands is 0.00074. That is, if you start at any arbitrary time and ask, "What are the chances of the next 45 starting hands all being bad ones?" the answer would be 0.074%; it should happen only about 7 times out of 10,000 trials of 45 hands each. That's pretty impressively bad luck, I'd say.

I did actually win one hand in there, with a K-Q-Q, when I had the bring-in and nobody even called it.

Then did I get rewarded for my patience? I certainly did. The hand that broke the streak was a nice 2-4-6. I raised and won the antes and bring-in. About three hands later the same thing happened again. Woohoo!

I was down about $20 for the session at that point, and started mentally composing this little rant. But then I caught a bit of a rush against a guy who apparently thought I was bluffing and unwisely tried calling and raising me, in three almost-consecutive hands, when I actually had the goods, and I logged off up by $30. Yeah, I did a hit-and-run on him. I was tired of playing and feeling like that was probably the peak of my good luck for the night.

So it wasn't a complete loss.

But I'm still gonna whine about it. Why? Because I feel like it, that's why.

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And I love this game WHY?

Date: Tue, Aug 5, 2008

It's actually been a long time since I entered an online multitable NLHE tournament, but the one being held tonight on PokerStars in honor of Dr. Pauly's five years of poker blogging (on which, BTW, mad props, dude) seemed like one I should participate in.

Started out quite badly, chased for too many chips when it wasn't really warranted. Then I got lucky and pushed all in with A-J against two opponents, one of whom had 9-9 and the other A-K. I sucked out a jack on the turn to knock out both shorter stacks and nearly triple up. Had another huge all-in with my K-K against another guy's Q-Q and nearly doubled again, pushing me into 5th place. (See screen shot of tourney lobby below. I snapped it because, well, I know from experience that these things tend not to last.)



Held about there for quite a while. Then... disaster. See below.



I was sitting in 8th place in this large field, with one of just a handful of people with enough chips to bust me sitting on my immediate right, and acting like a bully. Mr. "Whaaaaaa?" and I got it all in before the flop, with me putting in the fourth raise and him calling. That 10 on the turn was the ugliest card I've seen in a long time. Would have been at the top of the leader board if not for that lousy 10.

A purely rational person would shrug, say "Easy come, easy go," figure that the highly unlucky card here pretty much compensates for the highly lucky card I caught earlier, tell himself that he deserved to go broke (or, to be more precise, be down to just a few chips, then probably go broke soon thereafter) an hour before, in the A-J vx. A-K vs. 9-9 hand, so there's really no harm done.

But it doesn't feel that way, man. It just stings like a son of a gun.

So I'm doing something that is pretty rare for me--maybe even unprecedented: Using my blog to whine about a bad beat.

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The best advice

Date: Tue, Aug 5, 2008

There are a lot of pieces of poker advice that can and have been boiled down to a single, memorable line. Some of my favorite one-liners include:

• Don't go broke with just one pair.
• Don't go broke with a queen in your hand.
• Don't go broke in a limped pot.

I appreciate such aphorisms, because they tend to come to mind easily in high-pressure situations, and push a close decision one way or the other. Many times I have remembered one in a crucial moment, heeded it, and ended up glad I did, or disregarded it and lived to regret it.

But it occurs to me that even as compact and distilled as these lines are, they still might be wordier than necessary. It seems to me that we could replace them with one more generalized bit of poker advice:

Don't go broke.

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Poker gems, #154

Date: Tue, Aug 5, 2008

John Vorhaus, in Card Player magazine column, July 30, 2008 (vol. 21, #15), p. 104.


I'm certain that I know less than half of what I think I know about poker and only a tiny fraction of what there is to know. After 20 years of trying to solve this problem, of one thing am I convinced: This problem will never be solved. I don't find that thought depressing--to the contrary. Faced with a challenge I never get tired of confronting, I think I chose my obsession wisely.

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Poker gems, #153

Date: Tue, Aug 5, 2008

Stu Ungar, as quoted in James McManus's article on the history of poker in Card Player magazine, July 30, 3008 (vol. 21, #15), p. 102.


I just have to make myself hate my opponents. I just want to rip their throats out.

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Obama is not your savior

Date: Mon, Aug 4, 2008

(I couldn't decide between Obama as Jesus and Obama as Superman to illustrate this post, so I went with one of each.)

Wicked Chops Poker points to a news story here about big-name poker professionals who are openly supporting Barrack Obama for president because he plays poker.

These people are deluded. Or perhaps it would be more accurate (and kind) to say that they're being bluffed.

Has Mr. Obama at any point gone on record as saying that he will work to repeal the UIGEA, or to make online gaming unambiguously legal in the United States? Not that I'm aware of. And it's not from lack of being asked. Doyle Brunson said in his blog back in February: "Jennifer Harman and I have emailed Obama and asked what his position is on internet gaming. Hopefully we will get a response from his camp." As far as I can tell, they never got an answer--at least none that has been reported publicly.

Why would he not respond to a straightforward question about his stance on Internet poker posed by the most famous poker player in the world (and the nominal proprietor of a large online poker site), one who would publicize the answer in a blog read by thousands of like-minded poker players? There are really only two possibilities. The first is that he knows that his answer would anger Brunson and Harman--meaning that he favors keeping the UIGEA in place. The second is that he either has no firm position on the matter, or he's unwilling to express one for fear of alienating one side or the other, in which case he's such a mealy-mouthed, wishy-washy, spineless wimp that it's impossible to respect him.

Check out Obama's own web site. Here's a list of issues with his policy positions. Here's his "answer center" where you can search for subjects you're interested in. Go ahead--try a search for "poker" or "gambling." See what comes up. I get zero results.

Rich Muny, at the Poker Players Alliance, rates Obama a C, just a bit above McCain at D. Bob Barr, of course, gets a grade of A+. He's the only one of the three who has stated publicly and unequivocally that he's for ensuring that online poker is fully legal. Guess who gets my support?

If a politician refuses to tell you that he supports your policy preference on some question, if he won't even bother to lie to tell you he's on your side, it's because he's not. It really is that simple.

Seeing Barrack Obama as God's gift to poker players is like shoving all-in drawing to a one-outer gutshot straight flush. Yeah, you might win big, but you shouldn't count on it. The odds are heavily against you.

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Mocking

Date: Mon, Aug 4, 2008

Update on Echelon Place construction, as reported by the Vegas-focused "Movable Buffet" blog from the L.A. Times:

Breaking news: Echelon construction suspended

10:49 AM PT, Aug 1 2008

Boyd Gaming announced today they were suspending construction on the nearly $5-billion Echelon project that is going up where the Stardust once was located. According to the statement:

"Due to the difficult environment in today's capital markets, as well as
weak economic conditions, we have decided to delay our Echelon project on the
Las Vegas Strip. Our present expectation is to resume construction in three to
four quarters, assuming credit market conditions and the economic outlook
improves."

Though rumors of problems with Echelon construction financing had been
widespread, the resort was actually already being built. I don't think anyone
was fully prepared for Boyd Gaming (one of the local companies that really has
mastered the Vegas market for decades) to simply bring the project to a total,
if ostensibly temporary, halt.

Good ol' Vegas Rex has up photos of what the place looks like right now, as construction is suspended.

I don't really care much one way or the other when or if this thing gets finished. I just find it amusing how closely the situation resembles that of a biblical story I learned in Sunday School long ago:

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and
counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish
it, all that behold it begin to mock him,
Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.
Luke 14:28-30 (King James Version)

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Quick razz update

Date: Mon, Aug 4, 2008

WARNING! This post is one of those occasional ones where I talk about my personal recent poker-playing results, a topic that really should be of interest to virtually nobody. Permission to skip reading is hereby granted.

But if you want to know....

About two weeks ago, there were no tables going for my regular $1/$2 PokerStars razz game. I had to decide whether to move back down to $0.50/$1 or take a shot at the next level up, $2/$4. Well, that took all of about five seconds to decide, since I had been both playing well and running good (still makes me wince to say or write that phrase).

The results? My online bankroll has swelled. It's almost double what it was when I first took the step up two weeks ago.

I have not kept careful track, because until now, I considered this whole razz thing some combination of (1) an experiment, (2) fun, (3) stretching my wings a little, (4) a step towards eventually having some root competence at all of the major forms of poker, (5) a very small supplemental income that I could make while doing other computer work between hands (like blogging). The last is possible because, at least at these levels, there is not a whole lot of variation in players' styles, so I feel less need to pay attention to the play of the hands I'm not in.

But now I have to reevaluate. My results for the past four days have been +$205, -$120, +$40, and +$165. This is still playing just 3-4 hours a day, never more than one table, in the background while I'm doing other stuff on the computer, so occupying maybe 20% of my time and attention. To my great surprise, at these rates, it starts to become a significant fraction of my total poker income, and I think I'm going to have to start keeping more diligent records, rather than writing it off as too little money to bother tracking.

There is a definite, palpable difference in the quality of play between $1/2 and $2/4 that I did not detect with the previous step up. The most noticeable change is the virtual absence of the completely clueless players who are just giving away their money (although I lucked into one of them Thursday, the $205 day).

The other thing I've noticed is that there are many more close decisions. At the lower levels, it was common for opponents to be chasing so hopelessly that decisions on the river were a breeze, because it was virtually impossible for them to catch up with just one card to come. (Or, conversely, it was virtually impossible for me to have the winner.) Now, however, I find myself much more frequently in hands that appear very nearly tied going to the river, and it's a lot harder to tell whether I should bet or check if I'm first to act, or call or fold if I'm last. Multi-way pots at the river are far rarer, because players don't tend to chase as hopelessly or mindlessly. But over my last few hundred hands, Stars statistics show me winning 65% of hands that make it to showdown, so I'm apparently making those last, difficult decisions at least a little bit better than my average opponent is.

I find myself having to think hands through more carefully than before, and actually remember at what points in the hand an opponent checked, bet, or raised, to gain clues to whether he liked or disliked a particular card (mainly for trying to tell whether he hit a disguised pair). Similarly, a change in the rhythm of betting seems to be a clue I need to pay attention to more than previously, and for the same reason. I think this is a result of the decisions being closer, so every piece of information I can glean matters. When playing lower, a good percentage of the time I was either so obviously ahead or so obviously behind that smaller clues just didn't need to be factored in.

Overall, I'm quite pleased to discover that my hourly win rate has kept up proportionately with the doubling of the stakes. It flattened out for the first several days at this level, when I basically just broke even, until I realized that the game really was harder now and required more analysis before acting. Some of my old habits weren't cutting it very well, and better opponents were able to exploit my mistakes. But I've already plugged a couple of leaks, and the early results seem to be quite favorable.

The one easiest to describe is that I've given up playing most starting hands with an 8 in them. Tightening up in that way means I go through longer stretches without playing a hand, but get rewarded by taking down the really big pots when I finally go after them. The 8 hands were really pretty much just break-even, winning little or no more often than they lost. The price I paid, though, was less credibility, because they were dragging down the percentage of times I won at showdown, which I think, in turn, made opponents more willing to call, suspicious that I might be playing a mediocre hand again. My impression is that I've gained credibility by habitually playing only stronger hands, and I win more pots without showdowns by betting in situations where I've secretly double-paired.

Although, as I mentioned, there are far fewer players who are completely at sea in the game than I was seeing before, one of the unusual little pleasures is that a couple of times a week somebody sits down apparently thinking that it's a straight stud game, and plays what appears to be completely backwards, then after losing one big hand beats a hasty retreat. Sometimes they put an explanatory message in chat about their horror at discovering the mistake after the first showdown. Other times they just slink away, and we're left to guess that they accidentally clicked the wrong button in the PS lobby, and didn't notice the label on the table until it was too late.

There's really not much of any other way to explain hands such as the one below. "HR58" had just sat down one hand before. ($80 is the standard buy-in here, and you can see that he started this hand with $79.75, down one ante.) He called capped betting on 3rd street with K-Q-9, and it only went downhill from there, culminating in a call of a river bet with a Q-9 low, against two opponents! He probably thought his pair of aces was good, poor chap. I wonder if it occurred to him that something was wrong when he had an open A-A but the computer didn't give him first chance to act. Of course, his play was pretty bad for straight stud, too, but not nearly as atrocious as it was for razz, so guessing that he was mistaken about the game is the charitable conclusion.

He did not stick around for a third hand.


PokerStars Game #19207922211: Razz Limit ($2/$4) - 2008/07/29 - 21:20:00 (ET)
Table 'Annschnell III' 8-max
Seat 2: rocky8 ($36.50 in chips)
Seat 3: Dust_0ff! ($93 in chips)
Seat 4: ragmuppet ($37 in chips)
Seat 5: bearfan99 ($108.75 in chips)
Seat 6: HR58 ($79.75 in chips)
Seat 7: Rakewell1 ($39 in chips)
Seat 8: bizzlenuts ($72 in chips)
rocky8: posts the ante $0.25
Dust_0ff!: posts the ante $0.25
ragmuppet: posts the ante $0.25
bearfan99: posts the ante $0.25
HR58: posts the ante $0.25
Rakewell1: posts the ante $0.25
bizzlenuts: posts the ante $0.25
*** 3rd STREET ***
Dealt to rocky8 [Js]
Dealt to Dust_0ff! [7d]
Dealt to ragmuppet [Qs]
Dealt to bearfan99 [Jh]
Dealt to HR58 [9d]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [3s 5c 7h]
Dealt to bizzlenuts [2s]
ragmuppet: brings in for $1
bearfan99: folds
HR58: calls $1
Rakewell1: raises $1 to $2
bizzlenuts: raises $2 to $4
rocky8: folds
Dust_0ff!: folds
ragmuppet: folds
HR58: calls $3
Rakewell1: raises $2 to $6
bizzlenuts: raises $2 to $8
Betting is capped
HR58: calls $4
Rakewell1: calls $2
*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to HR58 [9d] [Ac]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [3s 5c 7h] [3c]
Dealt to bizzlenuts [2s] [5d]
bizzlenuts: bets $2
HR58: calls $2
Rakewell1: calls $2
*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to HR58 [9d Ac] [2d]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [3s 5c 7h 3c] [8h]
Dealt to bizzlenuts [2s 5d] [Ts]
Rakewell1: checks
bizzlenuts: checks
HR58: checks
*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to HR58 [9d Ac 2d] [As]
Dealt to Rakewell1 [3s 5c 7h 3c 8h] [Ah]
Dealt to bizzlenuts [2s 5d Ts] [7c]
Rakewell1: bets $4
bizzlenuts: calls $4
HR58: calls $4
*** RIVER ***
Dealt to Rakewell1 [3s 5c 7h 3c 8h Ah] [4d]
Rakewell1: bets $4
bizzlenuts: calls $4
HR58: calls $4
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Rakewell1: shows [3s 5c 7h 3c 8h Ah 4d] (Lo: 7,5,4,3,A)
bizzlenuts: mucks hand
HR58: mucks hand
Rakewell1 collected $54.75 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $56.75 Rake $2
Seat 2: rocky8 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Dust_0ff! folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 4: ragmuppet folded on the 3rd Street
Seat 5: bearfan99 folded on the 3rd Street (didn't bet)
Seat 6: HR58 mucked [Kh Qd 9d Ac 2d As 5h]
Seat 7: Rakewell1 showed [3s 5c 7h 3c 8h Ah 4d] and won ($54.75) with Lo: 7,5,4,3,A
Seat 8: bizzlenuts mucked [6d 8c 2s 5d Ts 7c 4s]

(I have to give myself a little pat on the back for this hand. In retrospect, I actively bet and raised all I could on each of the three streets where I was ahead--3rd, 6th, and 7th--and on the two where I was behind--4th and 5th--just called once and checked the other time. Golly, that's sort of like what the books say that one should be doing! I'd better be careful, or opponents will start to think I have a super-user account!)

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No jackpot for you!

Date: Sun, Aug 3, 2008

Last night at the Palms, it was a $1-3 game. In a limped pot, I had pocket 10s, and the flop came A-10-x, rainbow. All three of us in the hand checked. The turn was the fourth 10. When both opponents checked to me, I put out a smallish bet, hoping that one of them had a weak ace that had just improved to two pairs, or possibly a flopped set that had just improved to a full house (not very likely, I'll admit). They both folded.

I knew enough to stop the dealer before he swept the board cards away, and showed my quads. But I had forgotten something: The house jackpot rules require there to be $10 in the pot to qualify. Three of us limping in had made it just $9, and uncalled bets are not considered part of the pot for purposes of the jackpot requirements.

D'oh!

I guess somewhere in the back of my mind I did know that there was a minimum pot requirement, because that's pretty common--but even if the general idea had occurred to me in time, I wouldn't have known offhand what the qualifying amount was. Almost all of the high-hand jackpots I've won were at the old Hilton poker room, just because I spent so much more time there than anyplace else. There was no pot size requirement at the Hilton. That's why I never developed the habit of checking it. On the few occasions that I've hit a qualifying high hand at other casinos, the pot has been well over any stated minimum, so again I just have had no reason to think much about it--until it was too late.

As it turns out, the quad-10 jackpot had just been hit a short time earlier, so the jackpot amount had been reset to its minimum of $50. Not the costliest mistake I've ever made playing poker, but certainly one that could have been avoided had I been thinking more clearly.

What could I have done differently? Well, I see three possibilities.

First, making the absolute minimum bet ($3) instead of the $6 or $7 that I actually put in might have gotten a nibble. Checking the turn and only betting on the river might have allowed one of the other two players to catch something with which they could call, but, conversely, it might have put another scare card out there (like another ace) and made them even more inclined to throw their hands away. It's impossible to know.

Second, if I had been consciously aware of the minimum pot needed, and after a bet it looked like both opponents would fold, I could stop the last one and say something like, "Please call. If you lose, I'll reimburse you." Most players are alert enough that they would pick up on what this meant and cooperate. That would achieve the pot size requirement.

But I'm uncomfortable with that. It's probably not strictly against the rules, but it's skating on thin ice. Most jackpot rules have an explicit stipulation that the players cannot discuss the possibility of the jackpot during the play of the hand, precisely because such comments will tend to queer the action in favor of the jackpot paying out. That's not fair to those who meet the hand requirements without having discussed it, because every payout reduces the jackpot for the next person to hit it, so all should have to play by the same rules.

It's clear that I can't say something like, "I have four 10s, so I'd really appreciate a call so we can get the pot size above the minimum required, and I'll pay you your bet back." Now, in reality, lots of dealers will turn a blind eye (or, I suppose, a deaf ear) to such remarks, because they don't want to deprive a player of a jackpot and themselves of the resulting tip. One could probably get away with it, without the dealer (or anybody else) snitching to management about what occurred. But I'd feel sleazy about that, knowing that it was a direct violation of the rules.

The alternative mentioned above, which falls just short of being explicit, is a gray area. For the same reasons, one could probably do it, have it work, and have nothing said or done about it, but it would make me uneasy.

The third possibility that has occurred to me in retrospect is, I think, the best solution. I could ask the dealer, "What is the minimum pot size requirement for the high hand jackpot here?" Since I really didn't know, it would be a perfectly honest and legitimate question. And there's certainly no rule against asking the dealer what the house rules are at any time. If this question were not combined with a direct request to another player to call or an offer to reimburse a bet, I think this is far enough above board that it would not trouble me ethically.

The timing of it is tricky, though. I'd prefer to make a bet and have it called in the natural order of play, and not have to resort to secondary means. That means that I'd rather not ask that question before I make my bet. This is not only a rules consideration, but one directly related to the poker. If one of my opponents has, by chance, just made a full house, and he's slow-playing it, hoping to check-raise me, I sure don't want to scare him out of putting a lot of money into the pot by virtually announcing that I have four of a kind.

That means that I'd pretty much have to make the bet, then be prepared to jump in if it looked like the last remaining opponent was going to fold. I would then have to tell that person to wait, then ask the dealer the question, and hope that the other player caught my drift and was feeling cooperative.

On a few occasions, I have seen a thinking-ahead player suggest some code word to the entire table to be used in just such a situation. I've never seen it deployed, though.

Actually, I think that the best solution is just not to have minimum pot sizes for high-hand jackpots in the first place, because it pretty much ensures that all sorts of gray-area maneuvering and outright open negotiation will take place to get around the rule. I assume the minimum pot size is there to prevent two players from checking it down anytime one of them has a pair or two suited cards within the range of a straight, just trying to hit the jackpot. But I think that's a pretty small consideration, when you take into account how rare it is for those possible starters to actually develop into a qualifying high hand.

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Dealer shenanigans at Bally's

Date: Sat, Aug 2, 2008

I just got home from a session at the poker room at Bally's. I ran into two consecutive dealers who just couldn't keep information to themselves.

In the first situation, two players (not including me) were contesting a pot. The board read A-K-Q-J rainbow. As the dealer put out the river card (some baby card that presumably didn't change anything), before either player had had a chance to act, she said, "If both of you have a 10, it's chop-chop!"

This is just appallingly bad form. It would still be bad if she said it after the action was complete, because you never know when a player might have misread his hand or the board, and the announcement makes him rethink a decision to muck his cards unseen, thinking that he had nothing. (For example, he has a 10-2 and mistakenly thinks that the jack is a second king.) But to say this before either player has had a chance to evaluate the final board and act on it is so unforgivably inappropriate that it would be grounds for disciplinary action, if I ran a card room. One warning for such conduct, and the next time it's a pink slip. There are way more dealers than positions for them, so no need to put up with one who queers the action.

The next dealer to our table accidentally exposed my second card as she was pitching it to me in Seat 1. It was a 7. She replaced it in the standard fashion and showed it to the table. I was first to act. When I looked at my cards, they were a 2 and a 7. I had not noticed which one I got first, so I don't know whether I would have a pair of 7s or just a different 2-7 if not for the flub. But it didn't matter to me. These things happen, and they're just part of the game. I pushed the cards back to her in exactly the same way I do every time I fold.

I said or did nothing that would provoke what this dealer did next, and it's something I've never seen any dealer do before. She peeked at my mucked cards, without invitation. Then, as if that weren't bad enough, she reacted with horror, nudged me with her arm, and said, "Oh, I'm sorry!"

So now, instead of everybody knowing one card that's out of play, anybody who was paying attention to her little song and dance now could infer that a second 7 was gone. It's impossible to know on any given hand, but this kind of improper information has the potential to cause all sorts of changes to the ensuing action.

If you click on the "dealer" label at the end of this post, it will give you a list of all the posts I've written on dealers who feel an odd compulsion to inject themselves into the game in ways and at times that they have no business interfering. I may never, ever understand what the hell their problem is. But based on my small sample today, it seems that Bally's is chock full of blabbermouths in the box.

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Why play online?

Date: Sat, Aug 2, 2008

At least a few times a week when I'm playing poker online, somebody else at the table notices that my location is listed as "Las Vegas," and asks, "Why are you playing online?" Apparently these people think that the only reason for playing online is the lack of a convenient brick-and-mortar poker room. I think it should be pretty easy for people to come up with other reasons that one might choose to play online even while living in a city with 50+ poker rooms available 24 hours a day. But since that seems to be beyond a fair number of players, let me list a bunch of them.

• I would like to be a well-rounded poker professional some day. That includes being able to play respectably well online. There are real differences between live play and online play, and it is not trivially easy to apply skills from one arena to the other.
• There are times when even if the casino were right next door I wouldn't feel like going out. Maybe I'm sick. Maybe I'm lazy. Maybe I have insomnia and want to play a game in my underwear until I get sleepy.
• I can accomplish other things while playing online--writing, watching TV, doing email, web surfing, paying bills, etc.
• Conversely, if one is easily bothered by distractions, one can make one's home environment much more suited to intense concentration than a live poker room. Casinos are mostly noisy, busy places with lots of stuff going on. If one has difficulty tuning out the chatter from other players, the constant irritating sound of chip shuffling, the bells and whistles of nearby slot machines, the scantily clad cocktail waitresses, and so on, home might be a better place from which to play serious poker.
• People who are even more bothered by cigarette smoke than I am might hate the casino environment.
• There are many games readily available online that one would be hard-pressed to find being spread live at any Vegas casino. That includes razz. Even if a game like HORSE is being spread somewere in town, it might only be at stakes higher (or lower) than one cares to play.
• Players who are talented at playing many tables at once may well be able to earn far more per hour playing online than they could in a casino.
• One might be too young to legally play live.
• For tournament specialists, there's much less down time between events online, and the sites tend to take less juice than casinos do.
• It's easy to track down specific profitable opponents online. They haven't yet invented a system for doing this in casinos.
• I suppose that for some people the temptations of free alcohol, along with sports betting, craps, blackjack, etc., are too tempting if they enter casinos. (Not a problem for me.)
• People who don't live here tend to underestimate the PITA factor of getting around in this city. Yeah, I know that I'm spoiled, and if your closest casino is a four-hour drive you're not going to have any sympathy. But it's just a fact that from the moment I decide I'd like to play, it's going to be at least 30 minutes before I'm in a game, given the time to get ready to go, drive somewhere, park, walk inside, register, etc. Traffic can be horrendous and totally unpredictable here, and if there is either a traffic jam or a long waiting list for a table, that 30 minutes can easily stretch into an hour. Online, it's rare for it to take more than three minutes from when I decide to play until I'm in a game.

None of the above is intended to suggest that I consider online poker to be superior to live play as a general rule. I don't. For the most part, I find playing live both more enjoyable and more profitable. But playing online has its own distinct pleasures and advantages that are not by any means negated by living in even the most absurdly poker-rich city in the world.

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Picking a horse

Date: Sat, Aug 2, 2008

Here's a question that, for no discernible reason, I wonder about from time to time.

Suppose that tomorrow there will be a poker game and today you have to pick, as if in a fantasy league, a player to put your money on. However, in advance we don't know if it will be a cash game or a tournament. If it's a tournament, we don't yet know if there will be 10 entrants or 10,000. The version of poker to be played will be determined by a random drawing just before the event begins--it might be hold'em or stud/8 or razz or deuce-to-seven or Spit in the Ocean or just about anything else, limit or no-limit or pot-limit. Similarly, the format might be full-table, short-handed, or even heads-up. We won't know until it's about ready to start. (Never mind the logistical nightmares that this uncertainty would cause the organizers.)

Who will you pick to have the best chance of bringing you the money? In other words, who is the best all-around player to be able to do well in cash game or tournament, against any size field, against any size table, playing any game that they happen to select?

I think my top picks would be, in no particular order:

Daniel Negreanu
Jennifer Harman
Doyle Brunson
Phil Ivey
Barry Greenstein
Todd Brunson
Chau Giang
Ted Forrest
Freddy Deeb
David Oppenheim
Lyle Berman
Johnny Chan
Dewey Tomko
Howard Lederer
Erick Lindgren

If I had to narrow it down further, I think I'd pick Negreanu, Ivey, Greenstein, Forrest, and the two Brunsons.

If I were forced to pick just one of those, I think I'd resort to throwing a dart at a board, because it's awfully hard to determine that any one of them has an edge over the others.

Your ideas, readers?

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Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show

Date: Fri, Aug 1, 2008

A new installment of my favorite poker podcast, the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, is now up. I'm not in this one (at least partly because I have been tardy about getting my next contribution recorded--sorry, Shamus!), but it's still, I think, the most interesting poker podcast out there, way different from what anybody else is doing.

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Blogroll

Date: Fri, Aug 1, 2008

Something I've been meaning to do for, oh, about a year now is finally here. Way down in the lower left corner you'll find a list of other poker blogs that I like and read on a regular basis. There are others, but this is the core group. I'll add more over time. Check them out, if you don't already read them.

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