Funniest. Poker. Video. Ever.

Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008

Thanks to Pauly for pointing it out.





I had seen some of these before individually, but never so many compiled together. My favorites are Bill Chen as Mao, the sly references to David Williams and feet (we who get that are just way more immersed in the world of poker than could possibly be healthy), Barry Greenstein as Sesame Street's "The Count," Tom Dwan as Data, Daniel Negreanu in the Village People, Joe Sebok and Gavin Smith in "Dumb and Dumber," Dutch Boyd selling lemonade (it helps to know his history from several years ago), Jimmy Fricke as Einstein, Hevad Khan as The Hulk, Phil Ivey homeless, Jerry Yang as Dr. Evil, Paul Magriel (whom I saw at Planet Hollywood Monday night--dealer tells me he plays $1-$2 no-limit there all the time) in Kiss, Phil Hellmuth at McDonald's, Men Nguyen, Scottie Nguyen, and Chau Giang pedaling rickshaws, and Sammy Farha as Tony Montana (Scarface).

But hands-down the best is the "Blubber From Down Under," especially with little Freddy Deeb peeking into his own shorts.

Some excellent Photoshopping talent on display there. I wonder how many man-hours have been expended on making and browsing those things, and what sort of productive-for-society accomplishments could have been made with that time and creativity instead. Meh--who cares? It wouldn't have been as amusing, anyway.

Thanks for noticing

Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008

For some reason, it appears that other bloggers have lately been saying a lot nice things about me, either specific posts I've written or this whole darn blog. I don't know how to keep this from sounding like shameless self-promotion, but really my primary intentions are (1) to say thanks, and (2) to point readers to those bloggers who have had nice things to say about me, on the theory that if readers like me, they might also like writers who seem to like me. So here are the links:

Welcome, from Vandit's Poker Journey.

Nausea and fatigue--and tilt, from Fredrik Paulsson.

Indian summer in the poker world, from Yourbloggingpro.

Tuesday morning link dump, from Dr. Pauly. (For some reason, I can never find a way to link to specific posts on his site, so you have to scroll down to the one from August 12.)

Retooling my poker game, from Plan3tgongpoker.

Inspired by the Grump, from Poker Gnome.

25 best poker blogs, from Million Dollar Blog.

Stupid/System Chapter 9, from Julius Goat (guest blogging at Poker From the Rail).

Just tearing it up, from Morning Thunder.

I may be a little too set in my ways

Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2008

Just as I was leaving the Venetian last night, a guy who had been playing at my table stopped me. He asked if I was the Poker Grump. I confessed. I've posted my mug here a few times, so it's not too surprising that occasionally a reader recognizes me in a poker room.

This was different, though. He introduced himself and said that he had friends that were blog readers--former Hilton dealers who knew me. OK, that's cool. Nice to know they're checking in on me from time to time.

But then the oddness of this dawned on me. How did he recognize me, if he didn't read my blog himself and therefore hadn't seen my photo? He hemmed and hawed a bit, but then said that his dealer friends had described me pretty well.

Wow. Barring some really remarkable physical feature (a big scar across the face, maybe, or a Van Gogh-esque missing ear), could you describe a friend in such detail that a person who has never met him before could pick him out of a crowd, especially if that person has no advance warning of where or when he might run into the subject of your description? That's quite a task--or so I thought at first. I'd like to think that I'm pretty average and unremarkable, and that I basically vanish into the background. Norman Chad says of Allen Cunningham that you don't even notice he's at the table until your chips are suddenly being shipped over to him. That's exactly the effect I try to achieve. So I have an image--perhaps an illusion--of myself as not standing out in any way, sort of hidden or camouflaged at the table. It's a bit unnerving to hear that I could be spotted so easily from just a verbal description.

Then I got to thinking about it. Here's what the dealers could have said about me--and probably did: He's about 5'7", 145 pounds. Really short, thinning hair. Wire frame glasses. No hat. Always wears blue jeans and a dorky fanny pack. Almost always wears the same style of collarless, long-sleeve, crinkly cotton shirt. There will be a pen and a folded-up sheet of paper (for note-taking) in the breast pocket. Always carries a sweatshirt in case the poker room is overly air-conditioned (which they often are). Expect to see some stubble, because he's too lazy to shave more than once or twice a week, and doesn't care that everybody knows it. Sometimes uses an MP3 player with ear buds, though not consistently. Usually occupies either Seat 1 or Seat 10 next to the dealer, and will be the quietest guy at the table, playing a classic tight-aggressive game.

But here's the part I didn't anticipate. The guy didn't give me any details (which is why I have had to surmise what they must have told him), just saying that his dealer friends' description of me was good enough that he thought he had me spotted, but the clincher was that they had told him I always keep my chips in meticulous stacks of $50 (i.e., ten chips high). Oh, man, that is me all over. I don't do any chip tricks, but I confess that I do tend to simultaneously assuage my boredom and satisfy my craving for order in the world by working on making those stacks as neat and precise as possible. Why stacks of 10 instead of the more common 20? Simple--I'm a klutz, and I tend to knock them over if they're any taller.

I guess I hadn't realized that it had become something of a trademark.

But put all of those obsevations together, and it no longer seems especially remarkable that somebody who has never seen my photograph could pick me out, even at one of the biggest, busiest poker rooms in the city. In fact, given that information, if he couldn't nail me within a few minutes, his observational skills would have to be so weak that he wouldn't make it as a poker player.

Sigh. I guess I'm not as camouflaged as I thought.

This is all tongue-in-cheek, by the way. It honestly doesn't bother me if people know who I am. In fact, it's quite flattering. If you're a reader and happen to notice me at the table, feel free to speak up about it if you want. I occasionally even mention this blog to people I'm playing with, if there is some reason to (such as I'm going to write about them, or some topic of conversation arises that I've written about and I want to point them to it), so it's not like I try to keep it a deep, dark secret.

**********

By the way, not that I really needed further evidence that my recent losing streak was over, after the straight-flush incident, but I got it last night anyway. In six hours of poker, I had aces four times, kings one time, queens one time, jacks one time.

Not.

Cracked.

Once.

All praise be to the poker gods, for surely they are good and wise (most of the time).

***********

The interesting bit of artwork above is from Ann Huey. See her web site here.

Ken Warren book review, part 2

Date: Tue, Aug 19, 2008

This is a continuation of the book review begun here.

P. 127: Warren here gives us his "Golden Rule of Fourth Street Strategy," which is, "If you started with three good cards and catch a bad card while your opponent catches a good card--fold. Yes, I said fold. Cut it off right there. The pot is small and you are now playing with only six cards while he is playing seven-card poker. You don't mathematically figure to catch up by the river and the pot is not offering you the right odds to continue with the hand."

I like listening to Tom and Ray on NPR's "Car Talk" every Saturday morning. When presented with an idea or theory that they think is wrong-headed, their favorite thing to say about it is that it is "Bo-wo-wo-wo-GUS!" Well, that's what I think of Ken Warren's "Golden Rule."

Let's consider my usual $2/4 razz game on PokerStars. There's a $0.25 ante from eight players, plus a $1 bring-in, so $3 in the pot to start with. Suppose we get two limpers (very common scenario). Then my main opponent and I, who both have A-2-3, get into a raising war. Nobody else comes with us, but we cap it at $8 each. That's a pot of $21 going into 4th street. Now he catches, say, a 7, and Stars throws a brick at me, a king. He bets, of course. The pot is now $23. According to the wonderful razz equity calculator found here, my equity in this pot is now 29% to his 71%. But it costs me just the $2 call. I'm getting over 11:1 on the call. Mr. Warren, please explain how this is not the right pot odds to continue in the hand.

Ah, you say, but it's uncommon to have capped betting on 3rd. True. So let's consider a more typical example. Suppose I have 5-4-2 and my opponent has 7-6-A. It's a hand he wants to play, but he's not going to reraise me with it. He puts in the first raise and then just calls my reraise, ending the 3rd street round of betting. Even if both limpers fold, that's still a $13 pot. Now he catches a 5, I get a Q. He bets, making the pot $15. I have about 28% equity, and the pot is offering me 7.5:1 on a $2 call. Sure looks to me like the right pot odds to continue.

Moreover, as I've said several times in these two book reviews, at least at these stakes, a large fraction of players are coming in with one bad down card already. Usually these folks won't raise it themselves on 3rd, but they'll readily call a single raise, because it's only a buck, right? So let's say my opponent this time has J-A-2. He's the third limper. I raise with 2-3-6. He's my only caller. Pot is $8. He catches a 7 on 4th street, I get a Q. He bets, making the pot $10. My equity here is 47%, and I'm getting 5:1 on a call. Mr. Warren's advice is to fold. How does that make ANY sense?

Sure, I can set up parameters in which folding is correct: My opponent has the perfect A-2-3. I have the mediocre 5-6-8. There are no limpers. He puts in a raise, I call. Pot is $7. He catches perfect, a 4, while I get a K. He bets, making the pot $9. My pot equity is only 16%, or about 7:1. I'm getting 4.5:1 on a call. In this exact situation, I'd agree that a call is erroneous. But consider what I had to do in order to make folding the right move: Give myself mediocre cards to start, my opponent the best possible cards, and the pot the smallest that would be plausible. Change just about anything in that formula, and a call becomes correct.

Warren provide exactly zero mathematical support for his blanket assertion that a brick on 4th street means that the correct move is always to fold to a bet. I say it's bogus. Folding is indeed sometimes correct there, but it's often a huge mistake, in terms of the math.

Mitchell Cogert, to his credit, get this point right in his book. He says it depends on the size of the pot, the strength of your draw, and your best estimation of what your opponent holds. That is the only sensible answer.

P. 132: Warren writes, "Smooth draws to low cards are always favorites over 8- and 9-low hands at this point [i.e., 5th street]."

This is just plain false, as Cogert meticulously laid out in his book (appendix, pp. 119-128). For example, (4-5) 6, 7, 8 (the worst 8-low hand) is a 55% favorite against (A-2) 3, 4, Q (the best low drawing hand). I didn't just take Mitchell's word for this--I checked it on the simulator myself, and he is correct. As Mitchell emphasizes repeatedly (pp. 50, 115, and 125), "The player with a made 8 low is a favorite to any drawing hand."

The fact that Ken Warren apparently just repeated what he had heard or read somewhere on this crucial point without bothering to take, oh, about five minutes to run some comparisons himself on a readily available web calculator speaks volumes about his general lack of attention to accuracy in this book, or at least in the razz section.

P. 132 (again): "A four-card 5 or 6 is a favorite against a made 9." Again, this is just plain wrong, and Warren could have demonstrated that fact to himself if he had put in even the most trivial effort to do so. For example, (4-5) 6, 2, 9 is a slight favorite over (A-3) 5, 6, Q. (Cogert gives it as 53% on his p. 122; I came up with 52%.) (A-3) 4, 6, 9 is an even heavier favorite over the same 6-5 drawing hand--Mitchell's book (p. 121) and my run both show it at 61%.

You can't just lump all made 9s together. The second card tips the scales toward or away from favoring the made hand. As Cogert correctly points out (p. 55), a made 9-6 is a "slight favorite over a player who has any 7, 6, or 5 low draw, and a big favorite over an opponent with any 8 low draw." A made 9-5 or 9-4 obviously does even better than the made 9-6.

P. 132 (yet again): "A made 8 is a favorite over any four wheel cards." Well, this happens to be true, but it directly contradicts what Warren wrote two paragraphs before! (I.e., "Smooth draws to low cards are always favorites over 8- and 9-low hands....") Did Mr. Warren not even read over his own work, or think about what he was saying?

P. 140: On 7th street, Warren advises, "Raise only when you're certain your opponent will call with a worse hand."

I'm flabbergasted by this. If I have the nuts (a wheel), and my opponent bets into me on 7th street, I am going to raise, even if I have no idea whether he will call, fold, or reraise. That is obviously the correct thing to do, because there is absolutely no down side to raising. The worst possible outcome is that the two of you cap the betting, discover that you both made the nuts, and split the pot. When you have the best possible hand, you do not need to make even the slightest projection about whether your opponent will call--you just plain raise, regardless, because doing so is all potential gain with zero potential loss. And if he raises you back, you put in another raise, without stopping to ponder whether he will call it. That's all there is to it. I can't imagine why anybody would think there's any other smart strategy. Yet Ken Warren teaches that you should not raise with the nuts unless you are "certain" that your opponent will call.

It is sheer lunacy.


That's the end of my list of specific complaints, disagreements, and observations. I just want to add the general note that it seems apparent that Mr. Warren does not like razz poker. The last thing he adds in his section on razz is that he advises that the reader not play it! "That's right, I said don't play razz." He says razz is a "relatively boring game."

I would like to suggest to Cardoza Publishing that the next time they think a book on some form of poker would be a good publishing venture, they enlist an author who (1) actually knows what he's talking about, (2) actually plays the form of poker that the book will be about, and (3) enjoys doing so, in order that his enthusiasm for it will be conveyed to the readers. Ken Warren fails on all three points, insofar as razz is concerned. He doesn't know the subject well, he apparently doesn't play it (assuming he takes his own advice), and he freely admits that he doesn't like it. All three of those facts show through plainly in the essentially worthless section he wrote on razz. It is full of bad writing, contradictory statements, unjustified and unjustifiable advice, and erroneous statements of fact.

It may be that Warren is far better when writing about straight 7-card stud and the high-low split version. But I doubt I'm going to be finding out. After seeing what a horrendously botched job he did on razz, I don't trust him to give sound advice on any other form of poker, either.

If you're looking for a book from which to learn razz, Mitchell Cogert's is superior in every way, despite its flaws and omissions.

Book review: "Ken Warren Teaches 7-Card Stud"

Date: Tue, Aug 19, 2008

Having just read and reviewed Mitchell Cogert's introduction to razz poker, I thought it would be interesting to jump right to another new book on the market (released in February) on the same subject, Ken Warren Teaches 7-Card Stud.

The razz section--which is the only part I've read so far, and the only part this review will discuss--is the shortest in the book, a mere 32 pages. Worse, several of those pages are taken up with sketches. The card graphics are so bulky that it takes a full page to show six players' up cards on 3rd street. It's a ridiculously inefficient use of space.

Despite the fact that this book came from a major gaming-related publisher (Cardoza), it is almost as riddled with dumb errors as I griped about Mitchell's book being. Three times in the first few pages Warren uses "it's" instead of "its." Uh, Mr. Warren, you might need to go back to, oh, about 5th grade, where you were supposed to learn that stuff.

On p. 119, he says, "When you see that you have a three-card 9, your fist reaction is that you have a bad hand." Wow. I guess Mr. Warren is an unusually violent man, if seeing that he was dealt a bad hand causes him to make a fist!

The worst grammatical error, though, requires a bit of explanation. There's an American linguistic phenomenon that I started noticing seven or eight years ago, and it has grown exponentially in frequency since then, spreading like a virus. It's the use of a bizarrely redundant "is." For example, "My point is is that we should be...," or "The bottom line is is that we...," or "The important thing is is that one can't...," or "What I wanted to say is is that I think...." When George W. Bush took office, he wasn't saying things like that, but a few years ago he caught the virus, and now does it all the time. Eight years ago, radio talk show hosts didn't do it, but now at least Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity both routinely say such things.

So far, though, this has been limited to speech. I had never seen this weird usage in print--until now. There it is, on p. 138 of Mr. Warren's book: "You should call. The reason is, is that he should be afraid of your draw." What the hell is going on with that??? What is the point of inserting that idiotic extra "is" and comma there? The sentence could and should simply be, "The reason is that he should be afraid of your draw." Mr. Warren, please explain the grammatical purpose of duplicating the verb in that sentence. You went out of your way to type it twice. Why?

And who hired the editors that let that sort of crap go through. "Yeah, looks OK to me, boss." Really? Then you deserve to be fired as a copy editor.

Drives me crazy. (In case you hadn't noticed.)

OK, on to more substantive matters.

Warren's book is ultra-simplified and basic. It took me less than an hour to read, and I'm a pretty slow reader, especially when I'm taking notes and thinking carefully about the material, as I was here (because I knew I'd be writing up my impressions). Maybe there's a niche for a book this rudimentary, but really, I don't know. I think that I had figured out essentially all of the strategy he covers on my own after maybe six or eight hours of online play.

Throughout the razz section, Warren denotes hands as, e.g., 4-5-6-7-8, or A-2-3-4-9. This is backwards from the standard notation format, which starts with the highest card and moves down, e.g., 8-7-6-5-4, or 9-4-3-2-A. The standard system makes a lot more sense, because the cards are listed in the same order that is used to gauge the hand's strength. I have no idea why Warren goes the opposite way, but it's confusing and counterproductive, and will, I think, cause the beginning reader confusion if he gets used to seeing things this way, and then reads virtually anything else written about razz (or any other form of lowball poker, for that matter), and finds the opposite notation used. Frankly, it makes me suspect that Warren just hasn't read very much on the subject, or he would know better.

One of the things I was looking for (and one of the reasons I decided to move immediately to this book after finishing Mitchell's) was contrasting advice between the two authors. I didn't have to read very far to find some. Mitchell emphasizes stealing the antes and bring-in bet to the point that he advises, "Look to steal when you are to the right of the bring-in bettor. If everyone folds to you, raise with your lower exposed card. Example: If you have a 9 showing and everyone folds to you, you must raise the bring-in bettor who shows a Q, even if you have pocket 9's as your hole cards." (p. 16) Further, "You have (K-Q) 4 and your opponent has a (10-7) 8. Everyone folds to you, so you raise as a steal with two high cards in the hole." (p. 17) On the latter page, he also advises trying to steal with an ace showing (though not every time), even with two bad down cards.

Contrast this with the extremely conservative advice from Ken Warren: "Never try to steal with only one low card, even if it looks like you won't be called.... Never try to steal when you hold a hand like [(J K) 2]. Your two bad cards coupled with the chance that you might be called by even one player makes it a very unprofitable play." (p. 116)

Honestly, I think they're both wrong, and the truth (or at least what works for me) lies about halfway in between. It's rare that I attempt stealing with two face cards in the hole, even in otherwise optimal circumstances (on the right of the bring-in, with a low card showing, and everybody folding to me). Maybe I should, though.

The problem, as both authors acknowledge, is that the bring-in bettor, unless he's a complete dolt, will recognize an obvious steal attempt as such and will be inclined to play back at you with a wide range of hands. So you can choose not to bother, leaving that money on the table, but not risking anything more, or you can take your shot at it and hope it works, ready to abandon ship if you meet resistance. I don't know that one approach is unambiguously more correct than the other, but if I had to rule in favor of one of these two opposing published points of view, I think Mitchell's is smarter and probably more profitable, though clearly riskier.

P. 116: Warren gives what I think is confusing advice: "Don't try to steal the antes with your very good hands. Steal with A-2-9, but not with A-2-5. [Note: the accompanying illustration makes clear that he means (A-9)-2 and (A-5)-2, not (A-2)-9 and (A-2)-5. The text is misleading--another editing oversight.] Why? It's because you'll win a lot more money with the A-2-5 if you let players in to play against you all the way to the last card. You can win either the antes right now or a big pot in a minute or two. Your choice."

Well, since an attempt to steal the antes is simply a raise, and in limit poker a raise is a raise is a raise, Warren here apparently means that you should just call the bring-in with your strongest starting hands, and let several mediocre starting hands come along.

I think this is bordering on insane. It's what many people have called playing "backwards" poker--raising with your medium hands and limping with your best hands. Opponents will catch on to this pattern quickly, and Warren says nothing about randomizing or mixing up this play with the more obvious raise. Worse, this inverse approach keeps the pot small when you're strongest, and bloats the pot when you're less likely to end up winning it. It makes no sense to me.

If your steals look just like the raise you put in when you have three great starting cards, your opponents will have to guess whether you're on a steal or you have the goods. Their confusion is exactly what you want, because it will make them inclined to make mistakes. If you actually followed Warren's advice here, pretty soon opponents would be saying, "Oh, look--he's limping again, and the last 25 times that he did that, he had three wheel cards. Better fold my 9 here." Then you end up with squat, which is allegedly the outcome that Warren says he's trying to help you avoid.

P. 126: "Keep the pot small if you have a decent, but vulnerable hand." (That comma shouldn't be there, Mr. Editor.) Um, well, OK, but you also told us to keep the pot small by not raising with our best hands, back on p. 116. So I guess we have to conclude that Warren believes either that there should never be aggressive raising on 3rd street, or that it should be done only with the really atrocious hands.

Really, though, again I don't get this advice. If a hand is "vulnerable," then the usual recourse is to try to protect it. How does one do that? The only way is by betting and raising. Warren's argument is that you don't want to do that because it swells the pot, thus giving proper pot odds for weaker hands to chase. There is some truth to that, but it's just an inevitable fact of life in limit poker of any form. You could make the same argument about pocket aces in limit hold'em: don't raise because you'll make the pot bigger and therefore more attractive to speculative hands to try to get lucky. But if you don't raise and make chasing as costly as you can, you'll encourage people to come along for another card because it's cheap or free. If Warren really believes that raising with a "decent but vulnerable hand" changes erroneous pot odds to correct ones for opponents with weaker hands, he should at least show us the math that he uses to arrive at this conclusion. I'm not buying it.

P. 126 (again): In the very next paragraph, Warren's advice becomes even more confusing: "Remember, this advice applies when you have a decent, [sic] but vulnerable hand. If you have an awesome three-card starting hand, go ahead and build that pot, because it's wrong for them to try to run you down."

Apparently he has forgotten what he wrote ten pages earlier--that one should not raise with one's best hands, because one does not want to shoo away the weaker hands. These two pieces of advice are not only inconsistent, they are incoherent. I'm not sure Warren actually knows what he wants to convey.

P. 126 (yet again): The bedlam of incoherence continues. Warren writes, "It's wrong for a player to chase you down when he holds [(5 9) 7] when the pot or small [sic; I think it's supposed to say "pot is small"] or contains only the antes, but it's correct for him to play this hand when the pot is big."

Let's think about this. How would a pot get big on 3rd street? By there being many players involved. So Warren is saying, apparently, that it is "correct" to play 5-9-7 against multiple opponents because of the favorable pot odds.

But back on p. 117, Warren told us, "You can beat one player with a mediocre low hand but you need a great starting low to beat two or three more players.... [Y]ou need a smooth 8 or [better] to play against three more players."

I don't know of any way to resolve the apparent conflict between these two sets of statements. First he says that you need a smooth 8 or better against three or more opponents, then tells us that it's "correct" to play 5-9-7 if the pot is large, which presumably means that a lot of players are involved in the hand.

Speaking of hands, it seems that Mr. Warren's right hand does not know what his left hand is doing, so to speak. It's hard to imagine how he managed to cram so many contradictory bits of advice into fewer than 40 pages.


Well, as with the last book review, I'm running long here, and I need to get to bed. (I tried sleeping but had a bout of insomnia, so got up to write for a while--hence the strange hour of posting here.) I'll finish up the rest of my comments later.

The losing streak comes to a definitive end

Date: Tue, Aug 19, 2008

Razz book review, part 2

Date: Mon, Aug 18, 2008

This is a continuation of the review begun here.

P. 50: There is a peculiar example situation given on pp. 50-51. It's labeled "You hit a good card on 5th street." The situation is, "You have (4-8) 6,2,4 and your opponent has (x-x) A,J,9.... You started with three good cards, and improved on 4th street. When you bet on 4th street, your opponent called your bet since he had a strong draw. On 5th street, you hit good and he hit bad. Analysis: This is sweet when it happens. You are in the lead and you have the best draw."

I don't get this. How does pairing a hole card with a second 4 constitute "a good card"? How am I "in the lead" here? What is "sweet" about pairing? This makes no sense at all.

I read this over several times, and my best guess is that it's not trying to discuss a card that is actually bad but looks good to an opponent, because that situation is described elsewhere. I think this is a simple typo, and that one of the 4s should have been something like a 3 or an A. But I'm not certain about that. It's a terribly confusing section, whatever the explanation.

Pp. 52-53: Here's the example where pairing a hole card on 5th street is discussed. The example uses the same cards as above, which is probably somehow connected to what I think was just a typographical error in the faulty example I just described.

Anyway, the situation is that you have (4-8) 6,2,4, opponent has (x-x) A,6,J. Mitchell gives this analysis: "Usually when you have the 'visible' lead, you should bet as a bluff. But, since he led with a bet on 4th street, he is not going to fold. In this situation, your opponent is actually both in the lead and has a better 'four-card draw.' Therefore, your best play is to check and your opponent will most likely check behind with his J low. Save your money and see what happens on 6th street."

I don't think this is terrible advice, but it's not the way I would play it. Again, this is a result of having seen literally hundreds of hands in which the opponent bet on 4th while secretly owning a pair or face card in the hole. I think it's mistaken to say flatly that "your opponent is...in the lead." Maybe, but not necessarily (assuming that one disregards my pair and his jack). It would not shock me to see in the hand history when it's all over with that the opponent actually had something like 2-Q in the hole. Even if he isn't on that level of bad as a player, he could simply have started rough. I have 8-6-4-2, but he could have 8-7-6-A or 8-6-5-A, for example. It's not something one should count on, but it's not a possibility one should ignore, either. I see it time after time, day after day.

I would bet here and see how he reacts. If he started rough or with a pair or big card down, he's probably going to give up now, and I don't want to give him a free card with which to catch up.

Perhaps more importantly, poker is a game of deception. Checking is a virtual announcement that the 4 paired one of my hole cards. I don't want my opponent to know that. If one routinely checks the betting lead upon pairing a down card, but bets when given a non-pairing good card, well, you might as well turn your hole cards face up for your opponent. I think a smarter long-term strategy is to routinely bet as if this card were a good one, and make your opponent guess whether it paired you. When he has to guess, he's likely to make mistakes.

At the very least, I think it is imperative, if one is going to check here, that one also sometimes check in the same situation if one caught, say, a 3 instead of a 4. That is, mix up checks and bets in some way that is independent of whether the card received actually improved one's hand, so that opponents can't confidently draw an inference about one's hole cards. Because I essentially never check if 5th street improved my hand, I can't engage in checking when it secretly pairs me, lest I give away my situation.

I want my opponent to think I just made my hand. Even more than that, I want him to fear that I have a made 6-4, if possible. That way, he will think he's drawing super-thin or even dead (depending on what he has in the hole), particularly if he calls here and bricks again on 6th street. I agree with Mitchell that he is probably not going to fold here, but getting him to fold is not really my intention (unless he is one of those that started much worse than would have been smart). My intention primarily has to do with setting him up to worry about my strength from this point in the hand onward, unless he catches perfect cards.

Pp. 56-57: The situation described is you with A-3-4-7-Q, opponent with x-x-6-8-9. Mitchell describes this as "On 5th street, he hit good and you hit bad." Maybe this is overly picky, but I wouldn't describe a 9 as hitting "good." Yeah, it's better than a Q, but if I'm the opponent in this situation, I don't feel very secure about my hand. Yes, the 9 might end up winning it for me if we both go brick-brick on 6th and 7th, so it's a bit of a safety net. But I consider that precious little comfort.

P. 64: Situation is you with 3-2-8-A-6-K, opponent with x-x-6-7-J-5. Mitchell writes, "You had a good starting hand, fell behind on 4th...."

Huh? How did an ace for me and a 7 for my opponent make me fall behind? I don't get this analysis. There may be another typo here, perhaps with an inversion of the cards--for example if he meant to give the example as 3-2-A-8 instead of 3-2-8-A.

P. 71: The two examples on this page describe potentially difficult decisions on 6th street after starting with 4-8-6.

Well, I have a solution for that: Don't start with 4-8-6!

Maybe I'm all wrong about this, but I've come to believe in the gospel of truly tight starting hand requirements (except for steal situations, of course). Hands like 4-8-6 are just plain trouble from the get-go, much like playing stuff like Q-J offsuit in hold'em. They have a high propensity to become second best. They also have a nasty tendency to force one into making very difficult decisions later in the hand, where it's essentially impossible to do more than guess whether one is ahead or behind. That is a situation ripe for making costly mistakes. I say avoid the problem before it begins. If I know that my starting hand requirements are, on average, significantly tighter than those of most of my opponents, that tips the balance in my favor for the entire remainder of the hand, when otherwise close calls arise.

I have almost entirely abandoned starting hands that include an 8--especially any 8-7 or 8-6. They're just not worth it, in my experience. Maybe an 8-3-A or 8-2-A or 8-3-2, but that's about it for me with the 8s. Now, admittedly, this may not be optimally profitable play. I honestly don't know. It's possible that restricting my starting hand range that way in the long run leaves some money on the table. But I am highly confident that it has had at least these beneficial effects: (1) I have fewer agonizing decisions on later streets. (2) On hands where the open cards are very close, I win more showdowns on the river. (3) Opponents defend their bring-ins against my steals less often. (4) My bluffs when I have secretly paired get respected more than they used to.

In short, I'm kind of on the extreme end of both the "selective" and the "aggression" parts of the ol' "selective aggression" advice. It's not the only way to fly, but it's working for me so far.

This is a particularly good trade-off for me, given the peculiar situation in which I play--with my attention mostly focused on other stuff, and looking at the game only when I have a good starting hand. I think it would also be well-suited to playing multiple tables at once, if one were so inclined, because playing only 10-12% of starting hands is feasible on several tables, without being faced with simultaneous difficult situations on two or more tables very often.

This leads me to discuss another general gripe I have about most of Mitchell's examples, which otherwise doesn't fit neatly anywhere in this review: The examples essentially all deal with hands in which 3rd street had one raise and a call, nothing more. My preference is to be unusually aggressive on 3rd street. I think that just about any starting hand I'm willing to go with is worth four-betting if I get reraised. That gets me additional information about how much my opponent values his hand, when he has to choose to cap the betting or just call. Also, it often traps another guy with a stinker hand, who is hoping to get lucky, into putting more money into the pot when well behind, or forces him out after he has contributed a few bets of dead money to the pot, either of which is a +EV situation for me. Again, doing so also projects strength, an image that I will use against my opponent later in the hand, if need be. Besides, because I have a narrower range of starting hands than most other players, I usually am, in fact, ahead on 3rd street, so more money in the pot is what I want.

Unfortunately, by setting up his examples to all have just a single raise/call on 3rd street, Mitchell is unable to discuss how the information one might have gained from watching an opponent's reaction to a 3rd-street reraise influences decisions on later streets. For example, if my opponent capped the betting, it makes it more likely that he's on the best end of his starting hand range, which in turn means that an A or 2 hitting on 4th, 5th, or 6th street is more likely to have paired him--especially if there is an added little pause before he acts (in which you can sense, from hundreds of miles away, his brain working on whether to pretend that he really liked that ace, rather than instantly reacting with glee that he caught it). Mitchell does discuss, on pp. 29-31, tips for deducing where on the strength spectrum an opponent might be sitting on 3rd street, but then he doesn't incorporate this information at all, as far as I can tell, into decision-making on the big-bet streets. For me, this is crucial data. What degree of strength an opponent showed on 3rd often tips the scales for me between a bet and a check, or a call and a raise, on 5th, 6th, and 7th streets.

P. 79: The situation described is you with A-3-2-6-Q-4, opponent with x-x-4-5-9-3. Mitchell advises: "You have a 6-4 made low hand. Your opponent could already have a bike. If he bets into you, you need to call. If he checks, you don't want to be check-raised, so check behind him."

Wow. That strikes me as extraordinarily conservative advice, perhaps even veering into the "weak and timid" range. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but there are very few situations in which I would be unwilling to cap the betting with a 6-perfect. It's kind of like having a king-high flush with three of one's suit on the board on the turn in hold'em. Sure, an opponent might have two of the same suit, with one of them the ace, but that happens so rarely that I'll usually be willing to bet the farm in that spot. In Mitchell's example, the opponent would have to have exactly an A-2 in the hole to be ahead here--no other cards will work. Yet the range of hole cards with which he could have played the hand as described is a lot broader. I'm willing to put my money in saying that he doesn't have the only possible two-card combination that has me beat. I'm going to jam the pot here on both 6th and 7th, and I'm confident that if I do so in this situation a thousand times, I'm the winner well over the 50% that I need to be for this to be profitable.

P. 92: I have exactly the same criticism of the example here. It shows you with (A-3) 2,5,J,K (6), and opponent with (x-x) 3,8,6,Q (x). Mitchell recommends raising his bet. Good--I agree. But then if the opponent reraises, he says just to call. Not me--I'm jamming here. I simply refuse to believe that he has a 6-5 beat. It's not impossible, of course, and once in a while I'll lose a huge pot for my disbelief. But think about it: First, there's only a very few specific combinations of three down cards he could have that beat a 6-5. Second, my opponent here is looking at my J-K showing. He could easily think that I'm bluffing with a third brick on the river and believe that an 8-6 is way good, and it is on that basis that he is pushing. If we both caught a miracle on the end, and his miracle turns out to have edged out my miracle, well, OK, that's how it goes sometimes. But a made 6-5 in a situation in which my opponent can have only the narrowest possible range of down cards to win (i.e., he needs all three of them to be perfect) is so rare that I'll take my chances.


Now for other general comments about the book that aren't really tied to specific pages.

1. I gather from comments I've seen from Mitchell that the contribution of which he is most proud is the analysis of made hands versus drawing hands on 5th street. I absolutely agree that 5th street is the big pivot point in the hand--for the most part, you make it or break it here. It is not always obvious whether a mediocre made hand or a strong draw is favored. So I heartily applaud the work Mitchell did in working this out once and for all. His list of the various made-hand-versus-drawing-hand scenarios, on pp. 55-62, and again summarized neatly on p. 115, is an extremely valuable piece of work. I haven't yet played since reading this stuff, but I'm going to figure out some way of making my own cheat sheet to keep at hand, because this situation comes up all the time, and I'm often not confident what the right move is. With Mitchell's list of all of the possibilties, I'll know what to do.

2. Every single example in the book is against just one opponent. Granted, this is the most common situation, especially on the later streets. But I think it's a disservice to the reader to have zero discussion of multi-way pots. It is the three-way and four-way pots that have been the most profitable ones when I have won them--and, conversely, among the most costly ones when I have lost them, because of the raising wars that they frequently generate. It makes no sense to me to pretend that they don't exist or are unimportant.

3. I think a book like this needs a list of resources--blogs, online forums dedicated to razz, online calculators/simulators, etc. With only 130 pages of text, the author obviously doesn't believe he has taught the reader everything there is to know about the game, so why not point the reader to other places in which to learn more?

4. There is no discussion of razz tournament strategy versus cash game play, and only little scraps here and there about short-handed versus full-table play. A thorough treatment of razz would include large sections devoted to those subjects.

5. I think it would also have been helpful to the novice reader to have some discussion comparing the online sites for razz, since probably 99% of all of the razz played in the world is done online, rather than in casinos.


OK, that's the end of my observations. I want to again reiterate my two big caveats--that I'm no expert and I could easily be dead wrong in my opinions here, and that many or most of my disagreements may be based on differences in how people actually play at low stakes versus medium or higher stakes. In fact, I should perhaps add that caveat to my general list of omissions for which I criticize the author--explicit discussion of how play differs at low versus medium stakes would probably be highly valuable for the beginning razz player.

Even with the differences in opinion in the spots I've detailed above, please remember that there is page after page after page where I worked out what I would do in the situation described, and then found that Mitchell came to exactly the same recommendation--which obviously means that he's a friggin' genius! It looks like less than ten spots where I disagreed with his recommended action, out of well over a hundred examples given in the book.

This book has its flaws, but I still wouldn't hesitate to recommend it as an excellent introduction to sound basic strategy. And given the dearth of competition, it's hard to think of anything else that one could recommend. (Possible exception: A couple of days ago, I received in the mail Ken Warren's new book on straight stud, stud/8, and razz. Haven't read it yet, so I can't say how its razz section will compare to Mitchell's work.) So if you want to learn razz, go buy it. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Book review: "Play Razz Poker To Win"

Date: Mon, Aug 18, 2008

I mentioned Mitchell Cogert's book back in March when the subject of razz first caught my attention. Mitchell has a poker blog here (mostly about razz, but with some stuff on hold'em) and a web site about his book--which appears to be self-published--here. When the book arrived in the mail, I spent an hour or so reading the first couple of chapters, then put it aside and never finished it. Based on that initial reading, I recommended it to a couple of people.

Well, tonight I finally got around to really tackling it head-on. I have read it carefully, except for the final section, which is basically a description of every hand that the author played in a $5/$10 razz session last December. I'm interested in going through those hands, but it won't affect my analysis of the book, so I'm writing up my impressions now.

I should mention at the outset that Mitchell and I have exchanged several emails, and I've found him to be friendly, smart, analytical, and open to suggestions.

First, the minor stuff. This book really needed an editor. It's far from the worst I've seen in terms of typographical and grammatical errors, but enough of them slipped through that it leaves readers--at least a reader as picky as I am--with a sense of unprofessionalism. For example, "odds" as a singular noun on pp. 12 and 44, the strange use of the word "flop" on p. 22, a missing possessive apostrophe on p. 29, confusion between "affect" and "effect" on p. 29, "maybe" versus "may be" on p. 35, "goods odds" on p. 44, "whose" instead of "who's" on p. 47, "weary" instead of "wary" on p. 54, "you was called" on p. 64 and again on p. 65, "there was two or more raises" on p. 115. Stuff like that drives me crazy.

Now for the substantive matters. Here I have to introduce a caveat so large that you may want to disregard the entire rest of my review: I'm not an expert at razz by any means, and it may be laughable for me to be reviewing a book on the subject as if I know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, my understanding of the game is still in rapid evolution, the steep part of the learning curve, and it may be that where I disagree with Mitchell, he's absolutely right, I'm absolutely wrong, and six months or a year from now I'll reread these words and cringe at how foolish I was.

However, as I have occasionally reported here, I have been more successful at the game than I thought I would be, at least for the past month or so. I'm in a much better position to do a book review now than I was when it came in the mail in, I think, early April.

There's another caveat: In many, perhaps most, cases, my disagreements on strategy choice are based on my experiences playing PokerStars razz at $0.50/$1, $1/$2, and $2/4, plus the razz component of my almost-daily $10 HORSE single-table tournaments on the same site. What works at these lowest stakes may not be good advice upon moving up to $5/$10 and above. Similarly, I found Sklansky's book on razz not only quite poorly written, but almost completely useless as an introductory text, because he focuses very specifically on live $15/$30 and $30/$60 games. That's a whole different razz world than the one I inhabit.

I also want to mention that I'm diligent about checking the hand history (either the text-only form or PS's snazzy new animated version) immediately after virtually every hand I'm involved with, so I really do know what people have been playing against me. Unlike on Full Tilt (where I believe Mitchell puts in most of his time), Stars lets you see the cards in the order they were dealt, so you don't have to guess what starting hands players took to battle. In my view, that's such a big advantage that it makes playing razz on FTP a vastly inferior choice to Stars, if you care about understanding your opponents' play.

So with those preliminaries out of the way, I'll plunge ahead.

Because I'm going to list my specific disagreements, it's worth pointing out explicitly that I agreed with maybe 90-95% of the advice and analysis and statements about what he would do in specific cases. It's easy to lose sight of that fact when looking at what will appear to be a litany of differences of opinion.

P. 19: Mitchell advises not defending the bring-in if one's up card is two ranks or more above the up card of the raiser. Frankly, I think this is pretty silly. If I'm defending my bring-in, I don't really care if I'm showing a K, a Q, a J, or a 10. Nor do I care whether my opponent is showing an A or a 7 or a 9. Let me explain why.

There are really only two possibilities. First, I think my opponent in late position is simply trying to steal with a bad hand. In that case, I assume that, regardless of what he's showing, he has at least one stinker card, a pair or a face card. When that's so, we're basically on even footing, even if my bad card is a K and his is a J, because neither of us is going to be pressing on later streets if we're including that bad card in our best five-card hand. In other words, if my bad card on 3rd is still part of my best hand on 7th, I'm not going to be putting any more money into the pot anyway. I'm either going to make a hand in which the bad card doesn't play, or I'm going to give up--so I don't care if it's a K or a 10.

The other possibility is that I actually believe my opponent is starting off strong, with three unpaired small cards, and I'm just hoping that I get lucky and he gets unlucky. Now, this may be utter donkey play, but I think it makes sense, with specific constraints. I have no mathematical justification for this, but my practice has been to defend against a single opponent for a single raise if my hole cards are both 5 or lower. If I catch bad on 4th, I'll shut down and fold to a bet even if my opponent caught bad, too. I'm not going to try to catch three good cards in a row to beat him. But if on 4th I catch good and he catches bad, then we're on roughly equal ground, and I'm often a favorite, since I've probably been pickier about selecting my two down cards to go to war with than my opponent has been. If on 4th I have A-3-K-6, and he has X-X-6-J, I'm very happy with the situation. Yeah, I'm officially behind as the hands are, but most likely neither my K nor his J will be a factor at the end, and my 6-3-A is quite likely to be ahead of his best three cards.

That's why I think Mitchell's "two level" rule doesn't make sense. It keeps coming up in other contexts through the book, and I disagree with it in those spots, too, for similar reasons.

Again, this may be specific to the bad players in the low levels at which I play and not a valid observation at higher stakes. I don't know. But I see a lot of players raising quite indiscriminately, with a hidden bad card and without good position.

P. 24: Mitchell introduces his point system for evaluating razz starting hands based on the cards, position, what other cards are showing, and the action before one makes a decision.

I'm highly suspicious of all attempts in poker to reduce decisions to formulas, and I have to include this one in my doubts. I would feel better about it if Mitchell could tell us that he had run thousands of simulated hands using a variety of differently tweaked point systems, and this is the one that yielded the best results. But as it is, it looks homemade and like guesswork to me.

A point system is undoubtedly better than if somebody does nothing but look at his own three cards, because it does incorporate all of the relevant factors (at least all those that are quantifiable--it doesn't and can't include factors such as whether the raiser is a known maniac). But I'm not at all sure that it's better than a non-quantitative, gestalt evaluation of the situation. I think it would work just as well to give general advice, such as "Be less inclined to call or raise when more of the cards you need to catch are showing," as to try to make a mechanical point system. But if it helps new players force themselves to notice and account for the relevant facts, perhaps it's more useful to them than I'm giving it credit for.

P. 30: "If a player raises with a 4 showing and a player calls with a 6 showing, the raiser may be on a steal but the caller most likely has three cards to an 8 or better."

Well, this is certainly how it should be, but, trust me, it ain't necessarily so at low stakes. People call raises with K-A-3 or 2-2-4 all the time.

P. 37: The example given is me with a 6-7-4-K against an opponent's X-X-7-7. Mitchell writes, "Don't bet here.... Wait till 5th street to decide the relative strength of your hand. Otherwise, if he hits good on 5th street and you hit bad, you have wasted a bet."

I couldn't disagree more strongly here, though yet again this may be because of the bad average quality of opposition that I'm used to. When a substantial fraction of opponents here actually have a hidden bad card (high one or a pair), both of us hitting bad on 4th becomes a great time to discover that fact and take down the pot with a bet. If I get called, then I can be reasonably confident that he is not in that category. In other words, this is a juicy time to set up a screening test by betting. It usually chases away the hands that now have two bad cards. So you either win the pot or you more clearly define your opponent's hand.

Moreover, because I'm so dang tight with my 3rd-street starting requirements, by the same logic I explained above (i.e., that if both my opponent and I have one bad card each now, neither of us will be using that bad card by the end of the hand), I should on average be ahead here, because both of us catching bad on 4th street leaves the status basically as it was on 3rd street. Perhaps if my opponent reraised me on 3rd and I just called that would imply a different situation. But if my opponent just called me on 3rd, he probably doesn't have one of the ultra-premium starting hands.

Even if we're very close at this point, I don't mind getting an extra bet from each of us into the pot, because I believe that I make, on average, better decisions on the later streets, so more money in the pot works to my advantage.

Finally, betting instead of checking projects more strength, and may help make a bluff more likely to succeed on later streets. Checking seems to be saying, "I not only didn't like that card, but I'm no longer as thrilled about my first three." Betting, conversely, seems to announce, "Yeah, 4th street didn't help me, but I started out this race ahead of you, I'm still ahead, and you, my sad little friend, are running out of streets on which to catch up."

P. 43: Mitchell writes, "As a result, you have an outcome you wanted to avoid: putting in three bets on 4th street and still having two opponents."

I don't think it's correct that this is necessarily a situation one wants to avoid. If I'm in a close race with a good opponent, but there's a bad one with an awful hand desperately trying to catch up, I'm delighted to have him stick around and continue contributing money to the pot. Hell, it's best for me if he raises when he's way behind!

It's kind of like in high/low games: if you and another player are going to be taking the high and low, but there's a third player who is drawing nearly dead for both parts of it, by all means let him put as many chips in as he is willing to!

In razz, of course, the pot won't be chopped like that, but the idea is the same: welcome into the hand the player who has the worst chance of winning it, and cap the betting if you can. If one opponent and I are roughly equally likely to take it down at the end, it is in both of our best interests to suck as many chips as possible out of the guy who is trailing. Repeat that scenario a thousand times, and if I win 40% of the pots, my good opponent 40%, and the lagging-behind guy only 20%, it's hugely +EV for both me and the other good opponent to pump the pot as far as the bad opponent will tolerate.

A couple of years ago, Mike Caro opened my eyes about the flawed concept of "thinning the field" in poker. In brief, overly aggressive raising tends to weed out the wrong players. You may keep the strongest players with the best hands, and drive away the weakest players with the worst hands, which is not what you want to accomplish. There is also, for each poker hand, a mathematically optimal number of opponents to maximize long-term profit, and that number is often something different from one. See his eye-opening article from Bluff magazine here. He was writing about hold'em specifically, but surely the same concepts are valid in razz. Yet Mitchell seems to sort of blithely assume that one always wants to contest a pot heads-up. It's just not true.

OK, that's enough for now. Much more to say, but it's after 2 a.m. and I have to take my car in for a couple of new tires in the morning. I'll try to finish up this review tomorrow.

On my non-iPod

Date: Mon, Aug 18, 2008

The first I heard of this CD was when Shamus mentioned it last week in a post detailing the poker references made in Rolling Stone magazine over the years. I zipped over to amazon.com and ordered myself a used copy right away. I've never come across anything that Ricky Jay has done or been in that I didn't like, so it was not a difficult decision. The disc arrived Friday, and I gave it a first listen today. Me likey.

There are 19 poker-related songs, plus one track that is a snippet of dialog between Jay and Joe Mantegna from the movie "House of Games"--coincidentally the same scene that I mentioned here.

The songs selected range in dates from 1914 to 2004, and come from jazz, blues, country, plus a few not readily categorized, such as Bob Dylan, or Lorne Greene narrating (rather than attempting to sing) a ballad, the plot of which might remind modern poker-playing listeners of the movie "Lucky You."

I think my favorite song on the first time through was, ironically, probably the least directly connected to poker: "Ace in the Hole," by Dave Van Ronk. Below are the lyrics, as found here:

This town is full of guys who think they’re mighty wise,
Just because they know a thing or two.
You can see them every day, strolling up and down Broadway,
Telling of the wonders they can do.
You’ll see wise guys and boosters,
Card sharps and crap shooters,
They congregate around the Metropole.
They wear those flashy ties and collars,
But where they get their dollars,
They’ve all got an ace down in the hole.

Some of them write to the old folks for coin,
That’s their ace in the hole.
Others have girls on that old tenderloin,
That’s their ace in the hole.

They’ll tell you of trips they are going to take,
From Frisco up to the North Pole.
But they’d end up on that line, in their clothes not a dime,
If they lost that old ace in the hole.

Wherever you might stray, along the Great White Way,
They’ll corner you and start in telling lies.
Of oil wells in Nebraska and gold mines in Alaska,
You’ll be immersed in bullshit to your eyes.
But every hustler knows
Bullshit buys no clothes
And only cold cash keeps you off the dole.
So some of them wash dishes,
And some of them are snitches,
But all of them have aces in the hole.

Drifters who dwell on that slippery slope,
Grifters who jump their parole,
Trying to sell bags of catnip for dope,
That’s their ace in the hole.

They’ll tell you of money they’ve made and they’ve spent
And flash a Missouri bankroll.*
But their names would be mud,
Like a chump dealing stud
If they lost that old ace in the hole.


*I had to look up this term. It's "a roll or wad of blank paper, cut to the same size as dollar bills, surrounded by a few real notes of high denomination." See here for the defintion and history.

Mr. Helpful

Date: Sun, Aug 17, 2008

Friday night I was at the Venetian, as previously mentioned. There was another player at the table who is worthy of being memorialized here, for good or ill--mostly the latter.

When you get a seat in a poker room, in some places you buy chips from the dealer. In others they sell you chips at the check-in desk. In some you have to make a detour to the cashier's window for chips before taking your seat. And in yet others you sit down and they have a chip runner make the trek to the cashier for you. The Venetian uses the last approach. That means that for the first hand or two, you play without chips. Whatever you may lose, you have to make up to the winner of the hand(s) when your chips arrive. (One time, though, I had the pleasure of doubling up on my first hand there. The chip runner was very confused when she arrived back from the cage and I already had a stack of chips sitting in front of me.)

My first hand, I was the big blind. I know the drill. Even if I don't play the hand, I'll owe $2 to whoever takes the pot. But there was a guy on my immediate left who couldn't leave it at that. Without asking, he takes $50 in chips from his stack and plops them down in front of me. "I'm lending you $50," he says. I don't need it, and frankly I'd rather handle it in the usual way. Among other potential problems, the dealer didn't see this exchange, and will have to wonder where those chips came from. (It's against the rules for one player to give chips to another, because if somebody needs chips, the casino wants to sell them to the person in need, thus putting more money into play and increasing their revenue.) You can also imagine this causing problems if he later claims that he gave me $60, or whatever. I don't say anything about his pushy "helpfulness," but I also don't put a chip out for my big blind, preferring not to touch the chips he has given me if possible. It all got worked out quickly, and didn't end up being anything more than a minor annoyance, but it was my first taste of how intrusive this guy was going to be about everything.

He was the self-appointed table captain, though not in the usual way that term is used, with respect to dominating the action with aggressive betting. He was actually a fairly weak player. But his demeanor and actions in regard to what was happening at the table were clearly designed to convey that he knew what was going on better than anybody else.

Whenever a question arose--where is the action, what is the bet, how many chips does that guy have left, stuff like that--Mr. Helpful was the first to pipe up with the answer. If a player had a question about what his options were or what the correct procedure was for handling some situation, Mr. Helpful was right there. After all, obviously the dealer can't handle such complicated matters nearly as well as he could.

One time when I made a bet of $35, with the seven red chips in one stack, Mr. Helpful reached out and broke the stack down into two stacks of three each and one separate. He commented to me, "That way it's easier for them to see how much it is."

Yeah, well, I understand that. But there's a reason I do it the way I do. I'm not trying to be an obstructionist, but if the amount is not entirely obvious to an opponent across the table, he will need to ask the dealer for a count of the bet, and in the way he asks for a count, the way he watches the dealer count it, and the way responds to the dealer's answer, there is often useful information about his reaction to the bet--that is, is he eager to call, reluctant to call, pondering a raise, perhaps? Mr. Helpful stepping in takes away that potential bit of revelation.

Moreover, it is generally considered very rude to touch another player's cards or chips. It doesn't happen often, but you never know when some scam artist will palm a chip or two off the top when handling them, or miscount and thus cause a problem, or topple a tall stack that then falls into the pot, making it impossible to know the bet size. (The only time I do it is if a player is habitually not placing the items within the dealer's reach, even after being asked to do so. In that situation, if I can do it easily, I'll give the chips or cards a quick flick towards the center with an open hand.)

So I didn't appreciate Mr. Helpful stepping in, but I don't want to speak in the middle of a hand, and I don't want to generate animosity with a guy I have to sit next to, so I don't say anything about it.

Mr. Helpful reminds me a lot of Pauli Gualtieri from "The Sopranos." He's about that age. He has apparently taken up bodybuilding late in life, and loves showing off his muscles. He's wearing a skin-tight shirt with almost no sleeves, made of black Lyrca, or some such silly, thin, stretchy fabric, plus a ridiculous amount of cheap, fake bling, including a hugely oversized cross on a thick gold chain. He has a meticulously trimmed moustache, which looked like it belonged on one of the Village People. As you might expect from this personality type, he's full of stupid self-indulgent stories about his life, his bad beats, his money, his adventures, etc. The earbuds went in a lot earlier than they usually do, with this bozo on my left. It was worse with us being in seats 9 and 10, because he had nobody (except the dealer) on his other side to make a victim of his ramblings.

If you were to ask this guy why he injects himself into every tiny question that arises at the table, he would insist that he's just trying to be helpful. He might even believe that himself. But if so, it's self-delusion. Combined with the other aspects of his personality I described, it's perfectly apparent that what really matters to him is being noticed, being admired, being seen as the guy who has been there/done that and knows how everything works.

To be sure, there is a lot about casino poker that can be confusing and/or intimidating to a newcomer, and it's good to have more experienced players willing to step in and lend a little help when it's called for. But you have to be careful about this, for several reasons. First, it's better, overall, if the new player develops the habit of asking his questions to the dealer rather than to other players. Second, it's easy to accidentally cross the line and give more help than is proper. Third, just like guys who won't stop to ask for directions untill they've driven off the pier into the Atlantic Ocean, some people deeply resent being given assistance they didn't ask for, because it chips away at their masculinity and independence. I flatter myself that I have a pretty good sense of which pieces of advice are OK and when they will or will not be welcomed, but maybe I'm more oblivious to people's feelings that I know. Regardless, this guy was like a bull in a china shop* with his aggressively invasive advice, without respect to whether the player involved either wanted or needed his help. It was pretty obnoxious.

Mr. Helpful's veneer of excessive friendliness was proven to be a sham, a cover for deep-seated personal insecurities, when he started losing and went on Super Monkey Tilt. The first evidence of this was when Seat 5 opened up and he wanted to move there. Because of where the button was, this meant that he had to post the amount of the big blind.** He got into a huge argument with the dealer about this, insisting that he knew this was wrong because at his home casino they wouldn't make a player post in this situation. (House rules do indeed vary quite a bit on this point.) From the glances and rolled eyes and head shakes exchanged around the table it was clear that the universal opinion was this: Dude, it's two friggin' dollars--either shut up and pay it, or go back to your previous seat, but stop holding up the damn game.

The same dealer ended up in another argument with Mr. Helpful a short time later. I don't remember the preflop and flop action, because nothing about them caught my attention. (I wasn't involved.) But it was Mr. Helpful and a guy two seats to his left, who was a scary-solid player. On the turn, Mr. Helpful bet $70, leaving himself exactly $2 behind--a pretty silly move in itself. He had unimproved aces. Mr. Solid had flopped a set, as it turned out, so one way or another all of the money was going in here. Mr. Solid saw the bet, had the dealer count it out, noticed that Mr. Helpful had just $2 left, and therefore pushed out a stack of exactly 25 red chips--$75--obviously assuming that Mr. Helpful would just toss in his last $2, he'd get $3 change, and they'd quickly finish up the hand. The dealer told Mr. Helpful, "He's putting you all in."

Mr. Helpful protested. "He can't do that. That's not a legal raise." Well, technically this is true. A full raise would have to be to $140, and when Mr. Solid put out an amount slightly greater than the bet he was facing, the usual ruling would be that it was just a call. But in this specific situation, where it was only these two players involved, and Mr. Solid was obviously just trying to find the least complicated way of getting the last of the chips in, it was a completely bogus, absurd, hypertechnical complaint. The dealer tried to explain it, but Mr. Helpful was adamant in his protest. Mr. Solid, a quiet, thoughtful, smart guy, quickly relented, so as to de-escalate the confrontation. "That's fine, you can just leave it as a call." He took back one redbird.

So that's what they did. But it was completely stupid, because there was another card to come and another round of betting, so even if Mr. Helpful wanted to save his last $2 for some idiotic reason, Mr. Solid, acting last, would still have the option of making a $2 bet on the river, which Mr. Helpful would basically have to call anyway. As it happened, Mr. Helpful made the bet himself on the river, and, of course, got called, and, of course, lost. Mr. Helpful couldn't just let it go, but continued well after the hand was over to engage the dealer in an argument about how that bet should have been handled. He said, "I'm a dealer, too. I know how these things work." Utterly pointless. Unfortunately, the dealer was not level-headed enough to just shut up and ignore the rantings, but took the bait and continued the argument, thus delaying the start of the next hand for another minute or two of aggressive penis-wagging (which I understand will be an official Olympic event in 2012). I hope they enjoyed themselves.

Unlike my usual approach to story-telling, I don't really have a meaningful larger point to be made here. I just thought this guy was enough of a ludicrous tool that readers might find it amusing to read about him. The world is full of strange characters, and the poker rooms of Vegas seem to attract them in droves.



*BTW, this expression turns out not to be very accurate. For one of most surprising results in the history of "Mythbusters," one of my favorite TV shows, see here for what actually happens when you put bulls in a china shop.

**Simplified explanation: If you change seats in such a way that you will end up in the big blind sooner than you would have if you stayed put, there is no problem. But if you move in such a way that it delays your big blind by more than one or two spots, you have to post the amount of the big blind upon moving. This is to deter nits from moving around the table over and over again in an attempt to avoid paying the blind. Yeah, there really are people out there who would do that, if allowed to get away with it.

Nice watches, horrible editing

Date: Sun, Aug 17, 2008

In Todd Bruson's Card Player magazine column in the current issue, he mentions having recently become an endorser of Hardcore Watches. So I checked out the company's web site to see what cool stuff they produce. They have a few other poker players shilling for them, though I didn't recognize any of the other names.

The first thing I noticed on the home page, though, was the invitation shown above: "Your invited" to the Grand Opening (I think that means of their new store inside the Rio). Apparently the company is so cheap it can't afford an "e" and an apostrophe. Or an editor who knows the difference between "your" and "you're."

Idiots.

Life is all about the EV (expected value)

Date: Sun, Aug 17, 2008

-EV: Having the tread suddenly separate from my right front tire at 65 mph on I-15 on my way home from Bill's.

+EV: Having no traffic around me when this occurred, so no resulting collision.

+EV: Driving a Honda Prelude, which, when I bought it 16 years ago, was dubbed by Car and Driver magazine as the "best-handling car for under $20,000." (Amazing what a nice car one could buy for that price back then.) It has proven this with flying colors in a few emergency situations in our time together, and tonight was another. It remained unbelievably stable and controllable for having a front tire suddenly blow out, and I had no difficulty at all pulling off onto the shoulder and stopping without panic or incident. In fact, it was so perfectly under control at all times that I was stunned when I inspected the damage and found that the problem was not a loosened wheel, as I had guessed, but an absolutely shredded tire.

-EV: I was about 100 yards past the Sahara exit, which would have been very handy if I could have used it. I decided it was too dangerous to try to back up to get off of the interstate that way, and much too far to the next exit (Charleston) to proceed.

+EV: I have the original spare tire, fully inflated, which has been waiting in the trunk for 16 years for its moment on the stage.

-EV: When my car was stolen last year, the thieves apparently decided to keep the lug wrench before abandoning the car in North Las Vegas--a fact of which I have been blissfully unaware until now. Spare tire, yes. Jack, yes. Lug wrench, no.

+EV: I have a friend whom I can call even at 2:00 in the morning to rescue me, and I have a working cell phone with a good signal.

-EV: She discovers that she, too, is missing a lug wrench from her trunk.

+EV: I carry a yellow pages phone book in the car, and quickly locate a nearby towing service that will come change the tire for me.

-EV: Highway shoulders are terribly dangerous places. Lots of people get killed every year when drunk/crazy/distracted/sleeping/swerving drivers plow into disabled cars and/or their owners.

+EV: By happenstance, I have come to a stop at the very beginning of a construction zone, so there is a row of those concrete barricades that I can hop over, providing me quite decent protection from such accidents while I wait.

-EV: Soon after I call for the tow truck, a homeless guy comes up the embankment and chooses a spot about 15 yards from me as the place where he will (1) drink his bottle of booze, (2) apparently spend the night, and (3) engage in a loud argument with somebody unseen, either imaginary or hidden in the rocks and trees below. He doesn't give me any specific reason to think that he's a threat to me, but since I'm carrying about $1500 cash, this definitely adds to my level of discomfort.

+EV: I habitually have on my person implements adequate for very reasonable self-defense if necessary. 'Nuff said.

+EV: About 45 minutes and $55 later, I'm on my way again.

Overall, it was yet another unpleasant and annoying detour and obstacle in my life, but there are all sorts of ways in which it could have turned out much, much worse.

Most unusual sunglasses

Date: Sun, Aug 17, 2008

This very nice man was seated to my immediate left at Bill's tonight. He had the most unusual sunglasses I've ever seen. They had no lenses, but just solid slats, occupying about 50% of the "lens" area, with the remainder completely open--sort of like looking through a horizontal picket fence. Very peculiar.

Update on reversal of fortune

Date: Sun, Aug 17, 2008

After a quick stop at a friend's housewarming party tonight, I was off to Bill's Gamblin' Hall. I left 2 1/2 hours later with an extra $294 in my wallet. So I think I can state with some conclusiveness that the horrid skid has come to an end. Poker feels back under control again.

Both of my most profitable hands were quirky little ones with which I called a pre-flop raise with position on the raiser. The first was 7-8 offsuit, which matched rather nicely with the 5-6-9 rainbow flop, and gave me the entire stack of a nice woman who was holding pocket kings.

On the second one I called the raise from the button with 3-5 of hearts. The final board was 3-3-9-10-J, and I took all of the chips of two other players, one with an overpair (the original raiser) and one with J-9.

It definitely feels like the poker train is back on the tracks. Confidence and patience are rapidly returning to pre-disaster levels.