It’s been a while since my last blog but that’s only because I haven’t had anything new to say about poker and I didn’t want to force things and have you all thinking that my blog jumped the shark (if you don’t already think that). But after last night I need to unload a bit about a deadly game called seven-deuce, also known as 7-2.
As you may know 7-2 is the worst possible starting hand in Texas Hold- ‘em, and sometimes bored players agree to play a side game called 7-2. The premise is simple. If a player wins a hand with 7-2 he collects money from all the other players. Since a starting hand of 7-2 rarely wins, players often resort to bluffing in order to win the game.
So here it is Christmas Eve and I’m at the Parx playing at a table filled with Jews, Asians, degenerates and combinations thereof when someone who was way too bored to be at the game suggested that we play 7-2 for $25.00 a man. At first I objected, pointing out that the game is a form of gambling and that I don’t gamble, but when the rest of the table unanimously agreed to play I had no choice but to accede.
My buddy Peddie was at the table, and as we do whenever we are forced to play this ridiculous game, we related the story of Potter’s cousin Greg who lost $5500.00 trying to bluff with 7-2. At the end of the story I commented that although I was a part of the action, I would muck 7-2 in any event.
Approximately five hands later I looked down at my hole cards and of course there they were, 7-2 offsuit. Since poker is a game of deception and everyone knows that I won’t play 7-2, I raised to 40 dollars hoping that everyone would fold and I would win the $200 total bounty. In this situation it seemed certainly worthwhile to risk 40 dollars in order to win 200. To my dismay Sean called me. He is a solid player and in my mind I decided that I was done with the hand. Assuming I didn’t hit a favorable flop I would simply kiss the 40 dollars goodbye.
The flop came 4,4,6 with two diamonds and it was my turn to act first. Since there was now $80 in the pot I decided that there was a likelihood that Sean played two big cards and if the flop did not help him I could win the pot with a bet, so I bet $100. He instantly called. Now I decided that I was absolutely, positively finished with this hand and would accept my $140 loss as a lesson to avoid dabbling in forces beyond my control.
The turn card was a 2 of diamonds giving me a pair of deuces. There were three diamonds on board though and I didn’t have a diamond so I checked with the intention of mucking to any bet or just checking it down and losing to any pair. Sean reached for chips and bet $175. As I watched him carefully I thought I could see a moment of hesitation in his action. What if he had ace-king with a big diamond? I could actually be ahead with my deuces. So instead of throwing my cards into the muck I found myself reaching for raising chips and pushing $400 into the pot. To my great dismay Sean immediately pushed an additional $225 to the middle of the table, calling my raise.
OKAY OKAY OKAY I’M DONE! $540 to learn a valuable lesson. I watched helplessly as the dealer turned over the river card. It was a 6, making the board 4,4,2,6,6 with three diamonds. Now even if Sean was holding ace-king I would lose because my deuces got counterfeited (meaning that two higher pair made my deuces worthless and Sean would have a better kicker). Things couldn’t be worse. Or could they as I found myself pushing an additional $1800 into the pot. Stubbornness is a killer in poker. Stupidity is even worse. Apparently I had a huge abundance of both. In my mangled thought process I considered that maybe Sean had a small pocket pair, and that maybe he would think I had a 4 or a 6 or a flush. Or maybe the power in the casino would suddenly go out and I could grab my chips and run.
As I pushed the chips forward Sean stared into my eyes and said the words that took 10 years off my life (and I don’t really have 10 years to waste). He smirked and said “Do you have seven deuce? Why would you make this bet?” And then he took 10 minutes as he began to analyze the hand. My huge river bet made no sense to him whatsoever. As he talked he showed me his hole cards hoping for a reaction. He had pocket queens. At least five times he commented that the only thing that made sense was that I was playing seven deuce. And then of course I remembered that another friend had told me that Sean is a calling station and rarely mucks when he has a good hand.
Finally after an agonizingly long analysis (during which time I simply stopped looking in his direction) I could actually hear his cards hit the table. I turned quickly and saw them in the muck. I had won the pot and $540 of his money. I was almost embarrassed to turn over 7-2 but not enough to forego the $200 bounty. Sean just smiled as the internet whiz sitting next to him told me that he would have insta-called (information which I later used against him when I overbet the nuts).
So here is my vow. I will never play 7-2 again… well maybe just for a small bet.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Odds and Ends
Home Game
For those of you who have played in the same home game as I have draw your own conclusions. Limp pot with 5 players. Flop is 7-7-9 rainbow. The board is checked by everyone. Turn is a 10. Again the board is checked by everyone. River is a 6. Someone bets and two players muck their cards from the two blinds at the same time. One set of cards accidentally turns face up and is a 7-4. Both players vehemently deny that the exposed hand was theirs. One player is Tony and the other is Visor. Who is lying?
Tells
You raise preflop from middle position with pocket 8s. Everyone mucks except the big blind who calls. The flop is A-7-2 rainbow. The big blind looks at his cards and after hesitating he checks. What is your play?
In my opinion the very fact that he looked at his cards in that situation is a tell that he doesn’t have an ace and your play is to make a significant enough bet to end the hand at that point. When a player has an ace he doesn’t usually look at his cards when an ace hits the flop.
Straddles
A straddle is essentially a blind raise (a raise made before the player looks at his hole cards) and while it is only allowed in Atlantic City casinos as such, in home games the straddler is allowed to reraise after all the other players have had their turns to act. One of the players in my home game complained that when people straddle it brings the game to a higher level than he is comfortable playing. Surprisingly this is a player who knows the game very well and yet he doesn’t seem to understand that when other people straddle and re-straddle it is an advantage to the rest of the table because the straddler(s) are putting blind money into the pot. If a player is willing to risk putting a significant amount of money into the pot without looking at his cards, players should be fighting for seats in that game and anyone who is fearful of such an act shouldn’t be playing poker.
Sweating a hand
This term refers to having the player next to you looking at your cards if he is out of the hand, in order to bring you luck. Of course there is no validity to doing this but I believe that my record of sweating people is unsurpassed in the western hemisphere. One night I sweated Russian Lenny and he flopped two pair six times in a row. While he was grateful for the hard work I did for him, he was furious at me whenever I played a hand because that meant that I couldn’t sweat him. I offered to muck my hands for half his winnings but I guess he didn’t want my help that badly.
Lobster
I arrived at a friend’s home game and when he mentioned that Lobster would be arriving shortly I began to salivate. I haven’t been at a game where lobster was served since the days of playing at the catering hall. Imagine my disappointment when this skinny bearded guy sauntered in and Jimmy introduced him to everyone as Lobster. I was crying in my veal scallopine. Anyway another player whispered to me that Lobster should really be nicknamed “Fish.” I filed that away and watched incredulously as the crustacean hit hand after hand and built a considerable stack. When he felted Tiny and thanked him for the donation I knew that something had to be done. Of course normally when something has to be done the cards never fall right and nothing gets done. But on we played. Although Lobster was king I had built a considerable stack myself. He was now raising almost every hand and when I peeked down at jack-10 offsuit I decided to see a flop (as did 3 others). The flop came Ace-King-7 with two spades and Lobster made a considerable bet. There was no doubt that he was ahead of me but I eyed his skyscraper of black chips and after thinking about his continual loose play decided to call to try to hit the gutshot or perhaps try to steal the pot later on if another spade hit the felt. And suddenly – JACKPOT – a queen. I had hit the gutshot and was now holding the nuts. So many things going through my mind. I hope he has a big hand. I hope the board doesn’t pair on the river, I hope a third spade doesn’t hit the river. I hope he bets. I hope the veal didn’t stain my shirt.
First things first and I was delighted as his hand moved towards his black chips pushing some forward. And now the dilemma, how much to raise. Wanting him to call I raised just enough to insure that if he wasn’t on a total bluff he would continue to play. And he pushed in calling chips instantly. At that point I put him on ace-king or ace-queen. I held my breath as the river card fell. It was a 5 of hearts. No flush, no boat. I was holding the nuts. Lobster checked to me and I had to make a decision. Should I make a value bet which he would have to call or should I roll the dice. Every factor in my decision led me to the conclusion that I should go all-in.
First I could not lose. Second if he had at least ace-queen he would make the call. (Good players could lay ace-queen or maybe even ace-king down but Lobster would have to make the call). Third he could put me on a missed draw in which case he might even call me with a naked ace. So in went all my chips and into the tank went lobster. (get it?) He thought and he pondered and he pondered and he thought (okay I’m getting carried away). Finally he looked at me and said “Would you take 300 back?” I had no idea what he meant. Did he mean take 300 back and he would call or we each take 300 back and he would fold? Since the pot was way larger than that, the very question seemed designed simply to get information from me and so I sat stonefaced and unresponsive. Lobster then made a mucking motion with his cards as he stared at me to see my reaction. Once again he got nothing. Then he showed his cards to the other side of the table to see if I would react to their reactions. And on it went as I wondered whether there was anything I could do to induce his call, finally deciding that I just needed to remain nonresponsive. Finally someone called the clock and when the dealer announced 15 seconds left I had all but given up hope for a call when suddenly out of the cornber of my eye I saw the lobster claw shoving a stack of chips forward as announced his call. When I turned over my hole cards he mucked his hand which I later learned was king-queen a terrible hand to call with. I had won most of his chips and within 20 minutes he had lost the rest, rebought, lost his rebuy and headed out the door. No offense catering hall but Jimmy’s was the best lobster I ever had.
For those of you who have played in the same home game as I have draw your own conclusions. Limp pot with 5 players. Flop is 7-7-9 rainbow. The board is checked by everyone. Turn is a 10. Again the board is checked by everyone. River is a 6. Someone bets and two players muck their cards from the two blinds at the same time. One set of cards accidentally turns face up and is a 7-4. Both players vehemently deny that the exposed hand was theirs. One player is Tony and the other is Visor. Who is lying?
Tells
You raise preflop from middle position with pocket 8s. Everyone mucks except the big blind who calls. The flop is A-7-2 rainbow. The big blind looks at his cards and after hesitating he checks. What is your play?
In my opinion the very fact that he looked at his cards in that situation is a tell that he doesn’t have an ace and your play is to make a significant enough bet to end the hand at that point. When a player has an ace he doesn’t usually look at his cards when an ace hits the flop.
Straddles
A straddle is essentially a blind raise (a raise made before the player looks at his hole cards) and while it is only allowed in Atlantic City casinos as such, in home games the straddler is allowed to reraise after all the other players have had their turns to act. One of the players in my home game complained that when people straddle it brings the game to a higher level than he is comfortable playing. Surprisingly this is a player who knows the game very well and yet he doesn’t seem to understand that when other people straddle and re-straddle it is an advantage to the rest of the table because the straddler(s) are putting blind money into the pot. If a player is willing to risk putting a significant amount of money into the pot without looking at his cards, players should be fighting for seats in that game and anyone who is fearful of such an act shouldn’t be playing poker.
Sweating a hand
This term refers to having the player next to you looking at your cards if he is out of the hand, in order to bring you luck. Of course there is no validity to doing this but I believe that my record of sweating people is unsurpassed in the western hemisphere. One night I sweated Russian Lenny and he flopped two pair six times in a row. While he was grateful for the hard work I did for him, he was furious at me whenever I played a hand because that meant that I couldn’t sweat him. I offered to muck my hands for half his winnings but I guess he didn’t want my help that badly.
Lobster
I arrived at a friend’s home game and when he mentioned that Lobster would be arriving shortly I began to salivate. I haven’t been at a game where lobster was served since the days of playing at the catering hall. Imagine my disappointment when this skinny bearded guy sauntered in and Jimmy introduced him to everyone as Lobster. I was crying in my veal scallopine. Anyway another player whispered to me that Lobster should really be nicknamed “Fish.” I filed that away and watched incredulously as the crustacean hit hand after hand and built a considerable stack. When he felted Tiny and thanked him for the donation I knew that something had to be done. Of course normally when something has to be done the cards never fall right and nothing gets done. But on we played. Although Lobster was king I had built a considerable stack myself. He was now raising almost every hand and when I peeked down at jack-10 offsuit I decided to see a flop (as did 3 others). The flop came Ace-King-7 with two spades and Lobster made a considerable bet. There was no doubt that he was ahead of me but I eyed his skyscraper of black chips and after thinking about his continual loose play decided to call to try to hit the gutshot or perhaps try to steal the pot later on if another spade hit the felt. And suddenly – JACKPOT – a queen. I had hit the gutshot and was now holding the nuts. So many things going through my mind. I hope he has a big hand. I hope the board doesn’t pair on the river, I hope a third spade doesn’t hit the river. I hope he bets. I hope the veal didn’t stain my shirt.
First things first and I was delighted as his hand moved towards his black chips pushing some forward. And now the dilemma, how much to raise. Wanting him to call I raised just enough to insure that if he wasn’t on a total bluff he would continue to play. And he pushed in calling chips instantly. At that point I put him on ace-king or ace-queen. I held my breath as the river card fell. It was a 5 of hearts. No flush, no boat. I was holding the nuts. Lobster checked to me and I had to make a decision. Should I make a value bet which he would have to call or should I roll the dice. Every factor in my decision led me to the conclusion that I should go all-in.
First I could not lose. Second if he had at least ace-queen he would make the call. (Good players could lay ace-queen or maybe even ace-king down but Lobster would have to make the call). Third he could put me on a missed draw in which case he might even call me with a naked ace. So in went all my chips and into the tank went lobster. (get it?) He thought and he pondered and he pondered and he thought (okay I’m getting carried away). Finally he looked at me and said “Would you take 300 back?” I had no idea what he meant. Did he mean take 300 back and he would call or we each take 300 back and he would fold? Since the pot was way larger than that, the very question seemed designed simply to get information from me and so I sat stonefaced and unresponsive. Lobster then made a mucking motion with his cards as he stared at me to see my reaction. Once again he got nothing. Then he showed his cards to the other side of the table to see if I would react to their reactions. And on it went as I wondered whether there was anything I could do to induce his call, finally deciding that I just needed to remain nonresponsive. Finally someone called the clock and when the dealer announced 15 seconds left I had all but given up hope for a call when suddenly out of the cornber of my eye I saw the lobster claw shoving a stack of chips forward as announced his call. When I turned over my hole cards he mucked his hand which I later learned was king-queen a terrible hand to call with. I had won most of his chips and within 20 minutes he had lost the rest, rebought, lost his rebuy and headed out the door. No offense catering hall but Jimmy’s was the best lobster I ever had.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Losing
I recently played in a 5-10 no-limit game at the Borgata, and as I dragged my sorry butt to the car at the end of the twelve hour session I knew that I would be writing this blog. I am normally a very aggressive player but as the hands began to unfold I quickly realized that the table was filled with young internet kamikaze’s willing to push their chips in at any given moment. For this reason I decided to play an extremely tight game, choosing my spots carefully. It is a general axiom in poker that if your opponents are playing loosely, you play tight and vice versa.
Over the course of the day I only played about a dozen hands to the river. That translates to only one hand per hour and those of you who know me probably find it hard to believe, but it is true.
On five of those occasions when I played through to the river, I was all-in on the flop or the turn. Each time I got my money in right and each time I lost.
For example, on the first all-in hand I called an under-the-gun raise with 7-5 of diamonds from the big blind after six other players called. The flop was 7-5-2 with two clubs. The original raiser made a large bet and everyone else folded. Assuming that the raiser had an overpair or perhaps A-K my proper play was to reraise, which I did. He instantly shoved all of his chips to the middle. I discounted the possibility that he had flopped a set because I don’t think he would have raised under the gun with a small pocket pair and so I knew that I was a considerable favorite, therefore I made the call. The turn was a club and he excitedly turned his cards over, revealing A-J of clubs. As a harmless card fell on the river I knew it was going to be a long day.
As a playwright I have gotten to know many actors over the years and one truism among them is that when they are working they believe they will always be working and when they are out of work they believe they will never work again.
In a similar vein when poker players are on a winning streak they often think it will never end, and then when they are on a losing streak they think they will never win again. In some respects for poker it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because many players are more relaxed and confident when they are winning, allowing them to play better, while conversely many play much worse when they are on an extended losing streak, either tilting and playing erratically aggressively or by shriveling into a shell and allowing themselves to be steamrolled.
As my opponents know, I have always been the former. In the long term it has worked for me and one of the popular sayings in my old home game was “Uncle Marv is off the mat.” But I recognize the fact that it is a bad plan, and of late it has cost a lot more than it has gained, forcing me to work to overcome my desire to throttle people who are beating me.
So how does a player handle an extended losing streak? The first thing to recognize is that there are going to be days on which you are simply going to lose no matter how well you play. When this happens you have to accept the inevitable without allowing it to affect your future play. Easier said than done for most people but if you keep long-term records of your progress and you are generally a winner then you have to absorb the loss in your mind and just start fresh next game. Of course if your long-term records portray you as a long-term loser then you have to regroup and figure out whether you should even be playing the game at all.
But maybe it’s not just the luck of the draw. Maybe your game has changed somehow, even in a barely perceptible way and if you want to go back to your winning ways you need to identify the problem and correct it. In the clear light of day (not when you are sitting at the poker table) you should focus on the way you have been playing of late. Has something changed. Sometimes slight variations of play can turn a winner into a loser. (And then again - most frustratingly – poker is about change, about not being pigeonholed. For example, one player in my former home game always raised a certain amount when he had ace-king preflop. For every other holding in which he raised he used a different amount. Smart players would vie for position, playing his ace-king raise with any two cards because he always made a continuation bet. Therefore if the flop did not contain an ace or a king, a post-flop raise was always in order and would take down the pot).
But as I was saying, although change is good, unintentional changes may be throwing your game off. For example suppose your strategy when you flop second pair in a limp pot is to never call a bet. Now you have been running very lucky and so you decide to call a bet with second pair. You miss the turn and muck but you do it again the next time and the next. Occasionally your hand improves and you still lose. You have now slipped into a pattern and almost imperceptibly it has begun to cost you money but since it is a small change in strategy you may not even consciously realize that you are doing it.
Another example is your range of starting hands. You normally try to be a tight-aggressive player. You never limp with Queen-rag suited for example. But you have been losing, losing, losing and you need to turn things around. So now you are calling even small raises with Queen-rag suited or 5-6 offsuit or other hands which can only lead to trouble. You are pressing desperately and your fear that you may never win again becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Losing streaks are an integral part of the poker scene. Doyle Brunson once commented that he has probably been broke 600 times during his lifetime of poker playing. And he’s among the best in the world. If you explore your play during an extended losing streak and are convinced that nothing has changed for the worse then you need to understand and accept the fact that the more you play, the truer your results will be to the odds and you need to just hang on, not hang yourself.
And let me address one other thing that has been hotly debated among my poker companions, and that is the efficacy of locking down or playing almost no hands in a game when you are winning a lot. One super-lucky s.o.b. in my home game always locks down if we are in the last two hours of the game and he is ahead. And since I’ve gone from a big winner to a loser in the last two hours of the game three times this month, my friends have suggested I follow the s.o.b.’s play. I could not disagree more with this concept. Poker is a game that never ends. You play, you stop, you eat, you sleep, you do other stuff and you play again. It is a true continuum and when you are running strong (and perhaps playing strong) you want to maximize your results. This does not mean that you should loosen up your game. It simply means that you should play to win when the cards dictate it. On one particular night in the last hour of a game in which I was doing very well I lost back-to-back hands with a flopped set to a straight on the river and a turned set to a gutshot straight on the river. I ended the night in the red but simply because my 80% chances of winning did not hold up. I did not sleep very well that night but not because I thought that I played badly or that I should have been in lockdown. For every instance in which I have gone from a winner to a loser in that situation, there have been four instances of going from a winner to a HUGE winner. If there is a reasonable chance that you will never play poker again and you want to end your career on a winning note then by all means go into lockdown. But if you’re like almost all of the poker players that I know, continue to play as if it were the first hand of the evening. In the long run it will definitely pay off.
Over the course of the day I only played about a dozen hands to the river. That translates to only one hand per hour and those of you who know me probably find it hard to believe, but it is true.
On five of those occasions when I played through to the river, I was all-in on the flop or the turn. Each time I got my money in right and each time I lost.
For example, on the first all-in hand I called an under-the-gun raise with 7-5 of diamonds from the big blind after six other players called. The flop was 7-5-2 with two clubs. The original raiser made a large bet and everyone else folded. Assuming that the raiser had an overpair or perhaps A-K my proper play was to reraise, which I did. He instantly shoved all of his chips to the middle. I discounted the possibility that he had flopped a set because I don’t think he would have raised under the gun with a small pocket pair and so I knew that I was a considerable favorite, therefore I made the call. The turn was a club and he excitedly turned his cards over, revealing A-J of clubs. As a harmless card fell on the river I knew it was going to be a long day.
As a playwright I have gotten to know many actors over the years and one truism among them is that when they are working they believe they will always be working and when they are out of work they believe they will never work again.
In a similar vein when poker players are on a winning streak they often think it will never end, and then when they are on a losing streak they think they will never win again. In some respects for poker it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because many players are more relaxed and confident when they are winning, allowing them to play better, while conversely many play much worse when they are on an extended losing streak, either tilting and playing erratically aggressively or by shriveling into a shell and allowing themselves to be steamrolled.
As my opponents know, I have always been the former. In the long term it has worked for me and one of the popular sayings in my old home game was “Uncle Marv is off the mat.” But I recognize the fact that it is a bad plan, and of late it has cost a lot more than it has gained, forcing me to work to overcome my desire to throttle people who are beating me.
So how does a player handle an extended losing streak? The first thing to recognize is that there are going to be days on which you are simply going to lose no matter how well you play. When this happens you have to accept the inevitable without allowing it to affect your future play. Easier said than done for most people but if you keep long-term records of your progress and you are generally a winner then you have to absorb the loss in your mind and just start fresh next game. Of course if your long-term records portray you as a long-term loser then you have to regroup and figure out whether you should even be playing the game at all.
But maybe it’s not just the luck of the draw. Maybe your game has changed somehow, even in a barely perceptible way and if you want to go back to your winning ways you need to identify the problem and correct it. In the clear light of day (not when you are sitting at the poker table) you should focus on the way you have been playing of late. Has something changed. Sometimes slight variations of play can turn a winner into a loser. (And then again - most frustratingly – poker is about change, about not being pigeonholed. For example, one player in my former home game always raised a certain amount when he had ace-king preflop. For every other holding in which he raised he used a different amount. Smart players would vie for position, playing his ace-king raise with any two cards because he always made a continuation bet. Therefore if the flop did not contain an ace or a king, a post-flop raise was always in order and would take down the pot).
But as I was saying, although change is good, unintentional changes may be throwing your game off. For example suppose your strategy when you flop second pair in a limp pot is to never call a bet. Now you have been running very lucky and so you decide to call a bet with second pair. You miss the turn and muck but you do it again the next time and the next. Occasionally your hand improves and you still lose. You have now slipped into a pattern and almost imperceptibly it has begun to cost you money but since it is a small change in strategy you may not even consciously realize that you are doing it.
Another example is your range of starting hands. You normally try to be a tight-aggressive player. You never limp with Queen-rag suited for example. But you have been losing, losing, losing and you need to turn things around. So now you are calling even small raises with Queen-rag suited or 5-6 offsuit or other hands which can only lead to trouble. You are pressing desperately and your fear that you may never win again becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Losing streaks are an integral part of the poker scene. Doyle Brunson once commented that he has probably been broke 600 times during his lifetime of poker playing. And he’s among the best in the world. If you explore your play during an extended losing streak and are convinced that nothing has changed for the worse then you need to understand and accept the fact that the more you play, the truer your results will be to the odds and you need to just hang on, not hang yourself.
And let me address one other thing that has been hotly debated among my poker companions, and that is the efficacy of locking down or playing almost no hands in a game when you are winning a lot. One super-lucky s.o.b. in my home game always locks down if we are in the last two hours of the game and he is ahead. And since I’ve gone from a big winner to a loser in the last two hours of the game three times this month, my friends have suggested I follow the s.o.b.’s play. I could not disagree more with this concept. Poker is a game that never ends. You play, you stop, you eat, you sleep, you do other stuff and you play again. It is a true continuum and when you are running strong (and perhaps playing strong) you want to maximize your results. This does not mean that you should loosen up your game. It simply means that you should play to win when the cards dictate it. On one particular night in the last hour of a game in which I was doing very well I lost back-to-back hands with a flopped set to a straight on the river and a turned set to a gutshot straight on the river. I ended the night in the red but simply because my 80% chances of winning did not hold up. I did not sleep very well that night but not because I thought that I played badly or that I should have been in lockdown. For every instance in which I have gone from a winner to a loser in that situation, there have been four instances of going from a winner to a HUGE winner. If there is a reasonable chance that you will never play poker again and you want to end your career on a winning note then by all means go into lockdown. But if you’re like almost all of the poker players that I know, continue to play as if it were the first hand of the evening. In the long run it will definitely pay off.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
An Interesting Session
I was involved in an interesting set of circumstances recently at the Borgata where I regularly play in the 5-10 no-limit cash game. After being moved to the main game from a must-move table I found myself in the unusual position of going all-in on the river three times in the first hour. In the first two instances the flops involved two suited cards making potential flush draws. Each time a third suited card failed to hit the board, leaving me with the nuts both times. In each case I moved all-in on the river because of the remaining stack sizes of my opponents and the fact that any river call at all would have warranted an all-in call. In both cases however, my opponents mucked and my cards were not shown to the table.
In the third instance I played pocket sixes in a limp pot of five players to a flop of jack, six, deuce with two hearts. The player to my right overbet $100 into the $50pot. I decided to smooth call and trap any raiser. Instead the other three players folded. The turn was a jack and the player now bet $300.00. I was confident that he didn’t have pocket jacks since he had limped and would certainly not make a large bet with quads. It was also highly unlikely that he played jack-deuce or jack-six and so I thought that he was probably either playing a blank jack or two hearts. This being the case I decided to smooth call my full-house hoping to see a big bet if a heart hit the board. The river was a harmless seven of spades and my opponent checked. At this point I was convinced that he didn’t have a full-house. Therefore he either had a missed flush draw or a blank jack for trips. I decided to go all-in for another $2000 into the $850 pot. If he had the missed draw he would muck to any bet but if he had the blank jack he might make the call. After all, I wasn’t dealing with Negreanu or Ivey. So I pushed and he went into the tank for two full minutes after which he showed jack-queen and mucked. A young aggressive player on the other side of the table responded immediately. “Oh my God I would have insta-called that missed flush draw.” A friend on my side of the table then whispered to me ”you’ve got that guy right where you want him,” and I knew that given the right set of circumstances I could make a killing with that information.
The right set of circumstances didn’t come for almost five hours as play continued. Finally I found myself in the big blind with ace-king of clubs. I raised to $50 and the young aggressive player at the other end of the table was the only caller. I was thrilled at the flop of queen, jack, three with two clubs. It gave me the nut flush draw, a gut shot straight draw and two overcards. I continuation bet $100 and my opponent immediately raised the minimum to $200.00. After some hesitation (for effect only) I called. A dream turn card then hit, the nine of clubs giving me the nut flush. I checked to my opponent who had about $3500.00 left. He bet $300. Once again I deliberated and asked to see his chips since he was covering his stacks with his hands. Of course I already knew approximately how much he had but I was hoping this request might make him think I had a naked ace of clubs and needed to calculate the implied odds of calling. I then made the call. The river was a red eight insuring me the nuts and putting four cards to a straight on board. And this is the moment at which his earlier comment determined my course of action. Normally I would make a pot sized value bet here because good play dictates that if he didn’t have a flush he should check the river. Knowing however that I was dealing with an aggressive player who likely makes impulsive decisions I checked. To my delight, out of the corner of my eye I saw him reaching for chips. I then watched somewhat incredulously as he bet only $300 into the $1100 pot, thus opening the door for me. Either he had a flush and was making a “call me” value bet or he had no hand whatsoever and could not win without betting. Of course I did consider a third option – that he had a hand with some limited potential such as a straight, a set or two pair but the reward of value betting in those situations is far outweighed by the possibility of being trapped by a big flush or even smooth-called by small one.
In any event the time had arrived for me to raise. If he had no hand whatsoever he would not call any raise. If he had a low flush, a straight, a set or two pair he would be very unlikely to call a huge raise – except that I knew he was convinced that I was making all-in moves on missed draws. And so I raised all-in. I suppose it seemed like a bizarre play to most of the players but the unique set of circumstances leading to it made me think otherwise. My opponent took almost five minutes to decide as he first stacked and restacked his chips and then glared at me without blinking. Finally he uttered the two words that are music to the ears of anyone holding the nuts “I call.” I turned up the nut flush and he threw his cards disgustedly to the muck where they flipped up. He was playing queen, ten offsuit and hit the straight. It was a horrible call. If I had a ten he would have simply chopped the pot and if I had a flush he would have lost. Based on my earlier play he had to have decided that I was bluffing a missed draw. It was the only reason for him to make the call.
The lesson is obvious. You shouldn’t only be alert to tells from those who are in a hand. You can gather plenty of information about others at the table simply by paying attention to comments they may make about hands in which they aren’t even involved.
In the third instance I played pocket sixes in a limp pot of five players to a flop of jack, six, deuce with two hearts. The player to my right overbet $100 into the $50pot. I decided to smooth call and trap any raiser. Instead the other three players folded. The turn was a jack and the player now bet $300.00. I was confident that he didn’t have pocket jacks since he had limped and would certainly not make a large bet with quads. It was also highly unlikely that he played jack-deuce or jack-six and so I thought that he was probably either playing a blank jack or two hearts. This being the case I decided to smooth call my full-house hoping to see a big bet if a heart hit the board. The river was a harmless seven of spades and my opponent checked. At this point I was convinced that he didn’t have a full-house. Therefore he either had a missed flush draw or a blank jack for trips. I decided to go all-in for another $2000 into the $850 pot. If he had the missed draw he would muck to any bet but if he had the blank jack he might make the call. After all, I wasn’t dealing with Negreanu or Ivey. So I pushed and he went into the tank for two full minutes after which he showed jack-queen and mucked. A young aggressive player on the other side of the table responded immediately. “Oh my God I would have insta-called that missed flush draw.” A friend on my side of the table then whispered to me ”you’ve got that guy right where you want him,” and I knew that given the right set of circumstances I could make a killing with that information.
The right set of circumstances didn’t come for almost five hours as play continued. Finally I found myself in the big blind with ace-king of clubs. I raised to $50 and the young aggressive player at the other end of the table was the only caller. I was thrilled at the flop of queen, jack, three with two clubs. It gave me the nut flush draw, a gut shot straight draw and two overcards. I continuation bet $100 and my opponent immediately raised the minimum to $200.00. After some hesitation (for effect only) I called. A dream turn card then hit, the nine of clubs giving me the nut flush. I checked to my opponent who had about $3500.00 left. He bet $300. Once again I deliberated and asked to see his chips since he was covering his stacks with his hands. Of course I already knew approximately how much he had but I was hoping this request might make him think I had a naked ace of clubs and needed to calculate the implied odds of calling. I then made the call. The river was a red eight insuring me the nuts and putting four cards to a straight on board. And this is the moment at which his earlier comment determined my course of action. Normally I would make a pot sized value bet here because good play dictates that if he didn’t have a flush he should check the river. Knowing however that I was dealing with an aggressive player who likely makes impulsive decisions I checked. To my delight, out of the corner of my eye I saw him reaching for chips. I then watched somewhat incredulously as he bet only $300 into the $1100 pot, thus opening the door for me. Either he had a flush and was making a “call me” value bet or he had no hand whatsoever and could not win without betting. Of course I did consider a third option – that he had a hand with some limited potential such as a straight, a set or two pair but the reward of value betting in those situations is far outweighed by the possibility of being trapped by a big flush or even smooth-called by small one.
In any event the time had arrived for me to raise. If he had no hand whatsoever he would not call any raise. If he had a low flush, a straight, a set or two pair he would be very unlikely to call a huge raise – except that I knew he was convinced that I was making all-in moves on missed draws. And so I raised all-in. I suppose it seemed like a bizarre play to most of the players but the unique set of circumstances leading to it made me think otherwise. My opponent took almost five minutes to decide as he first stacked and restacked his chips and then glared at me without blinking. Finally he uttered the two words that are music to the ears of anyone holding the nuts “I call.” I turned up the nut flush and he threw his cards disgustedly to the muck where they flipped up. He was playing queen, ten offsuit and hit the straight. It was a horrible call. If I had a ten he would have simply chopped the pot and if I had a flush he would have lost. Based on my earlier play he had to have decided that I was bluffing a missed draw. It was the only reason for him to make the call.
The lesson is obvious. You shouldn’t only be alert to tells from those who are in a hand. You can gather plenty of information about others at the table simply by paying attention to comments they may make about hands in which they aren’t even involved.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
LENNY
I have played poker with Lenny for at least five years and as a reader of my blog he wondered why he wasn’t included in my colorful characters blog. Lenny doesn’t play blind like Lance, he doesn’t call-muck or raise-muck like Doctor Dosh, he doesn’t read cards correctly and then call anyway when he’s beaten like Richie the Hat and he doesn’t straddle for $400 like Paul but that doesn’t mean he isn’t colorful.
He was especially “colorful” the night that he was chip leader in a thirty man tournament with a very large buy-in. Doctor Dosh had arrived late and was not in the tournament, and when Lenny was forced to leave the table in order to take an important business call, Doctor Dosh took it upon himself to play Lenny’s hands. Lenny returned to the table fifteen minutes later just as Doctor Dosh was pushing in the last of Lenny’s chips on an ill-timed bluff. Yes Lenny was quite “colorful” that night.
He was “colorful” on another night at a home game in his own house, when at about 3:30 A.M. from the button he looked down at his cards to find pocket aces. I happened to have been playing that hand and when another player made a significant raise I reraised even more significantly with pocket queens. Sitting between me and Lenny was Ariel, a player whose style of poker could best be described as maniacal. Without a thought Ariel called my reraise. It was then Lenny’s turn and since we were all deep-stacked he raised enough to drive all mortal men out of the pot. Any of the players in that home game would tell you that I was the most aggressive fearless player in that game and yet when Lenny reraised, my queens shriveled like a dead lizard in the desert. There was no doubt to anyone that he held pocket aces. We all mucked – all except for Ariel - who nonchalantly tossed his chips into the pot. When the flop came 10-5-2 rainbow Ariel calmly turned to Lenny and said “I’m all-in.” Lenny instantly called and Ariel turned up 10-2 offsuit, which held up to win the monster pot. Yes Lenny was “colorful” on that night as well.
In fact Lenny can be quite “colorful” whenever anybody sucks out on him. If he raises with A-K and some poor shnook calls with A-Q and the flop is Q-Q-A, you can be assured that Lenny will be “colorful”. And if it happens at the beginning of the session you can bet your last chip that he will be “colorful” until the final card of the final hand of the night is a distant memory. In fact there came a point when I would ask Lenny what he wanted me to do when he raised pre-flop. ”Lenny should I call or muck? I’ll do whatever you say.” I did this so that Lenny could only blame himself for any mishap and yet even then I could never be sure that he wouldn’t get “colorful”.
Lenny is an intelligent, fun guy and I will say without equivocation that he is a loveable teddy bear with a heart of gold. He’s one of the people I enjoy playing with the most because the laughs rarely stop – exceptof course when he’s “colorful”.
This is my Lenny column but I want to make a quick comment about another player in my home game: Tony would love to try bluffing but he hasn’t been able to get cards that are bad enough.
Now back to Lenny. Lenny we love you. Don't ever change!!!
He was especially “colorful” the night that he was chip leader in a thirty man tournament with a very large buy-in. Doctor Dosh had arrived late and was not in the tournament, and when Lenny was forced to leave the table in order to take an important business call, Doctor Dosh took it upon himself to play Lenny’s hands. Lenny returned to the table fifteen minutes later just as Doctor Dosh was pushing in the last of Lenny’s chips on an ill-timed bluff. Yes Lenny was quite “colorful” that night.
He was “colorful” on another night at a home game in his own house, when at about 3:30 A.M. from the button he looked down at his cards to find pocket aces. I happened to have been playing that hand and when another player made a significant raise I reraised even more significantly with pocket queens. Sitting between me and Lenny was Ariel, a player whose style of poker could best be described as maniacal. Without a thought Ariel called my reraise. It was then Lenny’s turn and since we were all deep-stacked he raised enough to drive all mortal men out of the pot. Any of the players in that home game would tell you that I was the most aggressive fearless player in that game and yet when Lenny reraised, my queens shriveled like a dead lizard in the desert. There was no doubt to anyone that he held pocket aces. We all mucked – all except for Ariel - who nonchalantly tossed his chips into the pot. When the flop came 10-5-2 rainbow Ariel calmly turned to Lenny and said “I’m all-in.” Lenny instantly called and Ariel turned up 10-2 offsuit, which held up to win the monster pot. Yes Lenny was “colorful” on that night as well.
In fact Lenny can be quite “colorful” whenever anybody sucks out on him. If he raises with A-K and some poor shnook calls with A-Q and the flop is Q-Q-A, you can be assured that Lenny will be “colorful”. And if it happens at the beginning of the session you can bet your last chip that he will be “colorful” until the final card of the final hand of the night is a distant memory. In fact there came a point when I would ask Lenny what he wanted me to do when he raised pre-flop. ”Lenny should I call or muck? I’ll do whatever you say.” I did this so that Lenny could only blame himself for any mishap and yet even then I could never be sure that he wouldn’t get “colorful”.
Lenny is an intelligent, fun guy and I will say without equivocation that he is a loveable teddy bear with a heart of gold. He’s one of the people I enjoy playing with the most because the laughs rarely stop – exceptof course when he’s “colorful”.
This is my Lenny column but I want to make a quick comment about another player in my home game: Tony would love to try bluffing but he hasn’t been able to get cards that are bad enough.
Now back to Lenny. Lenny we love you. Don't ever change!!!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Colorful Characters
Colorful characters
I was reading a book called The Tiltboys which is sort of a vanity story about a group of poker players and their Wednesday night home game. It was a difficult read for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that their hijinks didn’t translate well to retelling. More important to them than their poker game was an ongoing game of Rock, Scissors, Paper or as they called it Roshambo. While I’m sure that the game made the players feel as if they were too hip for the room, I frankly don’t see anything interesting or amusing about it, nor about the group of players, each of whom apparently fit a different stereotype. There was the lucky guy, the brain, the maniac, the fish, the complainer… all of the types you’d find in a poker room. Amazingly they had exactly one of each.
It got me to thinking about some of the people I’ve played with, many of whom were far more interesting than any of the guys in Tiltboys.
For example, some of you poker fans may remember a very unusual incident that took place during the U.S. Poker Championship on television a few years ago. At one point a player by the name of Lance asked the floor man whether a straight beat three of a kind, and he was quite serious. This taking place in a televised $10,000 entry event was one of the most bizarre things I had ever witnessed. So when my endodontist friend called to invite me to his game and told me that Lance would be one of the players nothing could keep me from that table. And I wasn’t disappointed. There’s so much to share about this night but I’ll limit it to this one story. Lance was a wine lover and at one point as the cards were in the air he was away from the table in the midst of pouring his 5th glass. I looked down at pocket queens and made a sizeable raise. Lance’s seat was to my immediate left and the dealer asked if he wanted to come back to the table to look at his cards. He simply responded “I call” as everyone behind him mucked. The flop was 8-5-2 rainbow. Lance was now reading the wine bottle as I overbet the pot hoping to take it down right there. (And I will tell you this, we are talking about serious money here). Instead of returning to the table to look at his cards, Lance simply said “I call” and continued to read the label of the wine bottle. The turn was a 10, leaving me with two choices. I could check in the hope that we check it down in the unlikely event that he had some sort of holding like 10-5, or I could try to end the hand on the turn. I have always believed that when faced with such a choice it is better to be aggressive and so I chose that course of action and moved all-in. At that point Lance said “well I guess I’d better look.” I held my breath as he returned to the table. He squeezed his cards and stared intently at them, then allowed his gaze to wander to the board. Each second passed agonizingly slowly until he finally turned his hand up showing 2-3, and conceded. One of the other players asked for a rabbit hunt and the dealer turned up a 3. If I had slow-played the turn I would have lost to two pair, 2-3. By the end of the night Lance spent ten minutes writing checks to other players as he smiled and joked. We all told him how much we looked forward to playing with him again because he was a “fun” player. That was 3 years ago and I haven’t seen him since.
Another extremely colorful character in my poker world is Doctor Dosh, an Indian doctor of internal medicine who plays some of the craziest poker I have ever seen. Among the many of Dosh’s creations is the call-muck, a move in which he would call a bet with one hand while mucking his cards in disgust with the other. Some of you may need to read this paragraph a few times for it to sink in and even then you would probably shake your head in disbelief but what I am saying is absolutely true – the second ultimate tilt – yes there was something worse which I will relate in the next paragraph – and these are things which even the Tiltboys could never hope to achieve. Doctor Dosh the chain-smoking medical man who would be talking on his cell phone at 3 A.M. prescribing medications for hospitalized patients while deciding how to play pocket 9s. He assured us that he never prescribed the wrong medication or dosage. He wasn’t as accurate in calling large raises.
Okay so what could possibly be more tiltable than the call-muck? How about the all-in muck. Now I know for a fact that the player who perfected this classic move reads my blog so I will not name him. Instead I will call him Tiny. As it happens Tiny is one of my favorite poker players of all time and I’m not just saying this because he reads my blog or because he has the biggest tell I have ever seen (he is aware of it but still can’t control it). There is so much that I love about Tiny that I don’t know where to start. And this despite the fact that last week I heard him complain to another player that we had Mug diet root beer rather than his favorite A&W diet root beer. I even dismiss the fact that two weeks earlier he whined about the Bachman’s popcorn not being as good as Herr’s popcorn. And let’s not even talk about his pizza and chicken critiques. None of that matters. I love Tiny! But alas I am on a tangent. You want to know about the all-in muck. It started innocently enough when the Visor raised pre-flop, but things deteriorated quickly when Tiny pushed all-in for a considerable amount of additional money. After everyone else folded, Visor pondered making the call, and displayed his cards to players seated next to him. For some reason this troubled Tiny, and when Visor finally made the call with pocket 9s, Tiny threw his cards into the muck conceding the hand and following up with an immediate rebuy. I do not post this story with the intent of embarrassing anyone, but rather to simply show that our group of players is far more uh..offbeat than the Tiltboys.
Another unique player that I’ve had the pleasure of battling was Richie the Hat. Richie was a young aggressive player who was without a doubt the best card reader I have ever played against. It was eerie the way he would look you in the eye and tell you exactly what two cards you were holding. That was Richie’s strength. His weakness was that despite this uncanny talent, he could not lay down hands which were worse. Time and time and time again he would make comments like “I know you have a queen high flush” (and he would be right) but then he would call with two pair. His favorite hand was 3-5 offsuit, which we nicknamed “the Richie.” When hands like that are your favorite hands, you tend to do poorly at poker. Richie the Hat is a fond memory.
Then there was Freddy Mo who actually introduced me to a home game in which as many as 50 different people played in tournaments and cash games. Sometimes a new player would try his luck in the tournament and get knocked out quickly. As he forlornly headed for the door Freddy would always call out to him “thanks for coming and grab a toaster on your way out.” Freddy was a master of the salt-in-the-wound. He also coined a few other oft-repeated phrases including “Hit to lose, America’s favorite new game show” which he would say whenever somebody who was drawing dead on the turn hit a card to seemingly improve his hand, and “I have a developer” whenever he made a foolish preflop call (which was often).
Paul was and will be another of my favorite players. I say “was and will be” because he has quit poker permanently for the fifth time this year,
Paul has a unique poker perspective. Losing $1 or $10,000 is still losing and so whenever he would find himself losing late in the evening he would straddle, sometimes for 30 times the small blind. And then if anyone dared call, he would raise another 500 times the small blind without looking at his cards. Talk about action, this man stood alone atop that mountain. He was also one of the most prolific bluffers I have ever played against. On one occasion he was seated across the table from me when he bluffed me out of a hand. He then texted the Visor who was sitting to my right saying “hahaha I bluffed him.” When the Visor turned to me and said aloud “look at this text that Paul just sent me,” it instigated the third time that Paul quit poker permanently, his logic being that it made no sense to play poker with people who can’t keep a secret.
My favorite poker moment of the year though came against Tony, arguably the tightest player I have ever played against (in fact last week in an 8 handed game where everyone else limped, he mucked his cards on the button and while discarding them an ace accidentally turned up). Tony is an extremely successful tournament player and a guy who never stops talking in an effort to gain information from his opponent. In this particular hand he raised preflop and I called with pocket 5s. He checked the flop of A-K-9, leading me to believe that he hit the flop hard. Otherwise he would surely have made a continuation bet. The turn was a 5, giving me a set on a totally rainbow board. He stared at me and in a very serious tone said “that 5 helps me.” I stared back without comment as he made a large bet. When I called his bet he reiterated “Be careful. I told you that 5 helped me.” Again I did not react. When a 7 hit the river and he checked I knew that I was a winner. As I reached for chips he desperately tried to stop me from betting. “Don’t bet,” he intoned, “the 5 is going to make me a winner,” the inference being that he had A-5 in his hand. I made a bet which couldn’t be resisted by anyone with a decent sized ace, including Tony. He called with his A-J and when I turned over my pocket 5s you could see the blood drain from his face. His embarrassment was obvious when he meekly pointed out that I had good reason not to fear the 5.
I play with a number of other characters. If they beg me to write about them then I will in the future. If they beg me not to write about them, then I’ll devote entire columns to them. In the meantime go find something else to read.
I was reading a book called The Tiltboys which is sort of a vanity story about a group of poker players and their Wednesday night home game. It was a difficult read for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that their hijinks didn’t translate well to retelling. More important to them than their poker game was an ongoing game of Rock, Scissors, Paper or as they called it Roshambo. While I’m sure that the game made the players feel as if they were too hip for the room, I frankly don’t see anything interesting or amusing about it, nor about the group of players, each of whom apparently fit a different stereotype. There was the lucky guy, the brain, the maniac, the fish, the complainer… all of the types you’d find in a poker room. Amazingly they had exactly one of each.
It got me to thinking about some of the people I’ve played with, many of whom were far more interesting than any of the guys in Tiltboys.
For example, some of you poker fans may remember a very unusual incident that took place during the U.S. Poker Championship on television a few years ago. At one point a player by the name of Lance asked the floor man whether a straight beat three of a kind, and he was quite serious. This taking place in a televised $10,000 entry event was one of the most bizarre things I had ever witnessed. So when my endodontist friend called to invite me to his game and told me that Lance would be one of the players nothing could keep me from that table. And I wasn’t disappointed. There’s so much to share about this night but I’ll limit it to this one story. Lance was a wine lover and at one point as the cards were in the air he was away from the table in the midst of pouring his 5th glass. I looked down at pocket queens and made a sizeable raise. Lance’s seat was to my immediate left and the dealer asked if he wanted to come back to the table to look at his cards. He simply responded “I call” as everyone behind him mucked. The flop was 8-5-2 rainbow. Lance was now reading the wine bottle as I overbet the pot hoping to take it down right there. (And I will tell you this, we are talking about serious money here). Instead of returning to the table to look at his cards, Lance simply said “I call” and continued to read the label of the wine bottle. The turn was a 10, leaving me with two choices. I could check in the hope that we check it down in the unlikely event that he had some sort of holding like 10-5, or I could try to end the hand on the turn. I have always believed that when faced with such a choice it is better to be aggressive and so I chose that course of action and moved all-in. At that point Lance said “well I guess I’d better look.” I held my breath as he returned to the table. He squeezed his cards and stared intently at them, then allowed his gaze to wander to the board. Each second passed agonizingly slowly until he finally turned his hand up showing 2-3, and conceded. One of the other players asked for a rabbit hunt and the dealer turned up a 3. If I had slow-played the turn I would have lost to two pair, 2-3. By the end of the night Lance spent ten minutes writing checks to other players as he smiled and joked. We all told him how much we looked forward to playing with him again because he was a “fun” player. That was 3 years ago and I haven’t seen him since.
Another extremely colorful character in my poker world is Doctor Dosh, an Indian doctor of internal medicine who plays some of the craziest poker I have ever seen. Among the many of Dosh’s creations is the call-muck, a move in which he would call a bet with one hand while mucking his cards in disgust with the other. Some of you may need to read this paragraph a few times for it to sink in and even then you would probably shake your head in disbelief but what I am saying is absolutely true – the second ultimate tilt – yes there was something worse which I will relate in the next paragraph – and these are things which even the Tiltboys could never hope to achieve. Doctor Dosh the chain-smoking medical man who would be talking on his cell phone at 3 A.M. prescribing medications for hospitalized patients while deciding how to play pocket 9s. He assured us that he never prescribed the wrong medication or dosage. He wasn’t as accurate in calling large raises.
Okay so what could possibly be more tiltable than the call-muck? How about the all-in muck. Now I know for a fact that the player who perfected this classic move reads my blog so I will not name him. Instead I will call him Tiny. As it happens Tiny is one of my favorite poker players of all time and I’m not just saying this because he reads my blog or because he has the biggest tell I have ever seen (he is aware of it but still can’t control it). There is so much that I love about Tiny that I don’t know where to start. And this despite the fact that last week I heard him complain to another player that we had Mug diet root beer rather than his favorite A&W diet root beer. I even dismiss the fact that two weeks earlier he whined about the Bachman’s popcorn not being as good as Herr’s popcorn. And let’s not even talk about his pizza and chicken critiques. None of that matters. I love Tiny! But alas I am on a tangent. You want to know about the all-in muck. It started innocently enough when the Visor raised pre-flop, but things deteriorated quickly when Tiny pushed all-in for a considerable amount of additional money. After everyone else folded, Visor pondered making the call, and displayed his cards to players seated next to him. For some reason this troubled Tiny, and when Visor finally made the call with pocket 9s, Tiny threw his cards into the muck conceding the hand and following up with an immediate rebuy. I do not post this story with the intent of embarrassing anyone, but rather to simply show that our group of players is far more uh..offbeat than the Tiltboys.
Another unique player that I’ve had the pleasure of battling was Richie the Hat. Richie was a young aggressive player who was without a doubt the best card reader I have ever played against. It was eerie the way he would look you in the eye and tell you exactly what two cards you were holding. That was Richie’s strength. His weakness was that despite this uncanny talent, he could not lay down hands which were worse. Time and time and time again he would make comments like “I know you have a queen high flush” (and he would be right) but then he would call with two pair. His favorite hand was 3-5 offsuit, which we nicknamed “the Richie.” When hands like that are your favorite hands, you tend to do poorly at poker. Richie the Hat is a fond memory.
Then there was Freddy Mo who actually introduced me to a home game in which as many as 50 different people played in tournaments and cash games. Sometimes a new player would try his luck in the tournament and get knocked out quickly. As he forlornly headed for the door Freddy would always call out to him “thanks for coming and grab a toaster on your way out.” Freddy was a master of the salt-in-the-wound. He also coined a few other oft-repeated phrases including “Hit to lose, America’s favorite new game show” which he would say whenever somebody who was drawing dead on the turn hit a card to seemingly improve his hand, and “I have a developer” whenever he made a foolish preflop call (which was often).
Paul was and will be another of my favorite players. I say “was and will be” because he has quit poker permanently for the fifth time this year,
Paul has a unique poker perspective. Losing $1 or $10,000 is still losing and so whenever he would find himself losing late in the evening he would straddle, sometimes for 30 times the small blind. And then if anyone dared call, he would raise another 500 times the small blind without looking at his cards. Talk about action, this man stood alone atop that mountain. He was also one of the most prolific bluffers I have ever played against. On one occasion he was seated across the table from me when he bluffed me out of a hand. He then texted the Visor who was sitting to my right saying “hahaha I bluffed him.” When the Visor turned to me and said aloud “look at this text that Paul just sent me,” it instigated the third time that Paul quit poker permanently, his logic being that it made no sense to play poker with people who can’t keep a secret.
My favorite poker moment of the year though came against Tony, arguably the tightest player I have ever played against (in fact last week in an 8 handed game where everyone else limped, he mucked his cards on the button and while discarding them an ace accidentally turned up). Tony is an extremely successful tournament player and a guy who never stops talking in an effort to gain information from his opponent. In this particular hand he raised preflop and I called with pocket 5s. He checked the flop of A-K-9, leading me to believe that he hit the flop hard. Otherwise he would surely have made a continuation bet. The turn was a 5, giving me a set on a totally rainbow board. He stared at me and in a very serious tone said “that 5 helps me.” I stared back without comment as he made a large bet. When I called his bet he reiterated “Be careful. I told you that 5 helped me.” Again I did not react. When a 7 hit the river and he checked I knew that I was a winner. As I reached for chips he desperately tried to stop me from betting. “Don’t bet,” he intoned, “the 5 is going to make me a winner,” the inference being that he had A-5 in his hand. I made a bet which couldn’t be resisted by anyone with a decent sized ace, including Tony. He called with his A-J and when I turned over my pocket 5s you could see the blood drain from his face. His embarrassment was obvious when he meekly pointed out that I had good reason not to fear the 5.
I play with a number of other characters. If they beg me to write about them then I will in the future. If they beg me not to write about them, then I’ll devote entire columns to them. In the meantime go find something else to read.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Atlantic City Poker Rooms
If you are going to play poker in Atlantic City you will find a great disparity among the poker rooms at the various casinos. By far the largest and most comfortable room is at the Borgata where the variety and depth of the games goes unmatched in Sin City East. That of course is the upside. The downside is that the room is filled with hundreds of regulars, grinders at every level who spend their lives inside those glittering walls seeking to pluck clean the tourist or amateur who happens to wander in. Sharks and pirhana feeding on guppies and minnows, the grinders often only play monster hands and you would be more likely to make a profit from Bernie Madoff than any of these people. The high limit room has been host to many notorious people aside from the local pros. Regulars include a former Yankees manager, a multi-gold medal winning Olympian and of course celebrity poker pros who find themselves in the metropolitan area and who wouldn’t be caught dead inside any other A.C. poker room. The fact that the room boasts the most attractive cocktail waitresses and massage therapists simply adds to the panache, as do the facts that the Borgata uses the most proficient dealers, runs the most organized tournaments, and has a bad beat jackpot that seems to defy the laws of mathematics, being hit more often than Rocky Balboa was by Apollo Creed.
But as I mentioned, this is the room in which a novice player is most likely to have to hitch a ride home. If you are such a player who won’t be deterred though and you want to play here, the time to do so is definitely on the weekend when you may have a chance of being seated with other novices. A few weeks ago I was playing in the high limit room on a Monday night. Monday nights are usually pretty quiet except when a major tournament is in progress. This was one of those quiet nights and the game was very tough for everyone when suddenly a young Asian pro looked around the table which was filled with all Borgata high limit regulars and lamented “This is no good. Everyone here is equal. The only way to win here is to get lucky,” Sharks trying to eat sharks simply is not the way to consistently make money.
So where is a player to go if he wants to face a generally weaker field? My first recommendation would be Caesars, which by virtue of the fact that it is on the boardwalk, attracts street people who wander in pulling three crumpled 20 dollar bills out of their pockets and smoothing them against the felt before handing them to the dealer for chips. Moments later, after having their bottom pair felted by a straight flush they repeat the ritual, and continue infusing crumpled dirty cash into the game until they finally stare forlornly at their empty tattered wallets and slowly stand for the agonizing trip back to the boardwalk where they will spend the rest of the day sitting on a bench and playing target for seagull droppings. The smart ones wear hats.
The Tropicana is another casino that attracts the boardwalk crowd but also boasts a bunch of grinders in its low limit games (for the most part the Borgata is the only casino that offers high limit games on a regular basis in Atlantic City). It is a seemingly larger room than Caesar’s but somewhat more claustrophobic, with very closely-placed tables. I should probably frequent the Trop because I don’t think that I’ve ever lost there (I’ve gone with my wife and friends a number of times and I always cover dinner at the Palm for all of us by playing for an hour) but it is a depressing room (actually two rooms) and the entire casino has been on a downhill slide for years now.
The Taj boasts the largest poker room along the boardwalk and also the dirtiest. Most of the poker players that I know have vowed never to set foot into that room again, although some do play in the annual U.S. Poker Championship at the Taj. Years earlier, before the Borgata was built, the Taj was the place to play, despite the annoying distraction of having a noisy conga line with minimally attractive people clad in togas. It offered the best games in a large comfortable room. Not any more though.
As for the other casinos, I have played poker in all of them and none offer much in the way of competition (so if you have been banned from Caesars for card counting or vomiting on a craps table, you can find pretty easy pickings at the Hilton, Harrahs, Bally’s (where the poker room is on the 6th floor if I remember correctly) or any of the other
rooms where a game might break out.
But as I mentioned, this is the room in which a novice player is most likely to have to hitch a ride home. If you are such a player who won’t be deterred though and you want to play here, the time to do so is definitely on the weekend when you may have a chance of being seated with other novices. A few weeks ago I was playing in the high limit room on a Monday night. Monday nights are usually pretty quiet except when a major tournament is in progress. This was one of those quiet nights and the game was very tough for everyone when suddenly a young Asian pro looked around the table which was filled with all Borgata high limit regulars and lamented “This is no good. Everyone here is equal. The only way to win here is to get lucky,” Sharks trying to eat sharks simply is not the way to consistently make money.
So where is a player to go if he wants to face a generally weaker field? My first recommendation would be Caesars, which by virtue of the fact that it is on the boardwalk, attracts street people who wander in pulling three crumpled 20 dollar bills out of their pockets and smoothing them against the felt before handing them to the dealer for chips. Moments later, after having their bottom pair felted by a straight flush they repeat the ritual, and continue infusing crumpled dirty cash into the game until they finally stare forlornly at their empty tattered wallets and slowly stand for the agonizing trip back to the boardwalk where they will spend the rest of the day sitting on a bench and playing target for seagull droppings. The smart ones wear hats.
The Tropicana is another casino that attracts the boardwalk crowd but also boasts a bunch of grinders in its low limit games (for the most part the Borgata is the only casino that offers high limit games on a regular basis in Atlantic City). It is a seemingly larger room than Caesar’s but somewhat more claustrophobic, with very closely-placed tables. I should probably frequent the Trop because I don’t think that I’ve ever lost there (I’ve gone with my wife and friends a number of times and I always cover dinner at the Palm for all of us by playing for an hour) but it is a depressing room (actually two rooms) and the entire casino has been on a downhill slide for years now.
The Taj boasts the largest poker room along the boardwalk and also the dirtiest. Most of the poker players that I know have vowed never to set foot into that room again, although some do play in the annual U.S. Poker Championship at the Taj. Years earlier, before the Borgata was built, the Taj was the place to play, despite the annoying distraction of having a noisy conga line with minimally attractive people clad in togas. It offered the best games in a large comfortable room. Not any more though.
As for the other casinos, I have played poker in all of them and none offer much in the way of competition (so if you have been banned from Caesars for card counting or vomiting on a craps table, you can find pretty easy pickings at the Hilton, Harrahs, Bally’s (where the poker room is on the 6th floor if I remember correctly) or any of the other
rooms where a game might break out.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Baaaaaaad Beeeeeeeats
I’m sorry for the delay in writing this next blog but every time I log on to the computer I end up playing poker online. I’m only here now because a bad beat reminded me that I need to stop every now and then. Of course we all have bad beat stories but since this is my blog you’ll have to listen to three of mine, one that I won and two that I lost. (I do believe that for every bad beat I win there are two that I lose). About three years ago I was playing in my regular home game which was a pretty big cash game and doing fairly well for the evening when I peeked down at my cards and lo and behold two gentlemen were peeking back at me. (I don’t really say lo and behold, nor do I call them gentlemen but this blog thing is show biz so I’m taking pokeretic license. And by the way I don’t really think that playing cards can look back at you but then again who knows). So anyway of course pocket kings is the second best starting hand and I was about to push in a sizeable raise when Al Cigar beat me to the punch. Okay, fine but there were three players behind me and I couldn’t let them see a flop so of course I re-raised, and this was met with muck, muck, mu-ALL-IN. ALL-IN? Who was this maniac? Since he was and is a friend of mine – and since he is one of the few people I play poker with who doesn’t have a nickname (someone suggested Shrek but it didn’t stick) I will call him “Nameless” although I have told the story so many times that probably people in Iowa know who he is, and sometimes other players who have memorized my tale just echo along with me when I retell it to a new player.
So anyway his ALL-IN was for a VERY considerable amount of money although I had him covered, and each of us had Al Cigar (who instantly called the all-in) well covered. This left me with a three-pronged dilemma. First, what were the odds that one of them had pocket aces, second would I be getting the right price to call if indeed either had pocket aces, and third what were the chances that Nameless would push all-in over the top of my raise with less than pocket aces.
Okay so let’s deal with part one first. Some of you are going to find this very hard to believe but the odds in a nine handed game of another player having pocket aces if you have pocket kings is only about 26 to 1.
Knowing this, I moved quickly to the second part of my dilemma, and concluded that I would be getting the right price to call if Al Cigar had pocket aces, and I would not be getting the right price if Nameless had them. (I also discounted the likelihood that both of them had pocket aces although that was certainly possible as well. In fact I was recently involved in a hand where two players had pocket aces and one had pocket kings. A king on the river spelled disaster for the other two guys. Poker is a very funny – not as in amusing - game).
This brought me to the third issue which I needed to resolve and I began by considering the range of hands with which Nameless might push a considerable amount of money into the middle of the table. Now if it were some of the other players at the table I would have insta-mucked. But Nameless was a super aggressive guy who always did a lot of bullying (not unlike myself) and he knew that I could re-raise with a somewhat marginal hand. So I became suspicious of some triple reverse psychology at work. Coupling this with my knowledge that Al Cigar would only call the all-in with QQ, KK, AK, or AA, this narrowed the possibility in my mind that Nameless actually held pocket aces. (Okay and one other thing. Whenever I really want to call a big raise, I decide that the raiser has a slightly worse hand than I do).
So I called and as Al Cigar turned up QQ I felt that sinking feeling - and not without just cause as Nameless proudly slammed his pocket rockets to the felt. I was a 4 ½ to 1 underdog and as was pretty standard in that game we all agreed to run the board twice. For those of you unfamiliar with this process, the dealer turns the entire board two times and whoever wins each run wins half the pot. This does not change the actual odds of winning but it does affect the variance. In the most unlikely circumstance I hit a king on the turn the first run and a king on the river the second run. Without saying a word, Nameless stood up and walked out the door. He was gone for about 10 minutes when my cell phone rang. I answered and it was him. “F**k you you mother f**ker!” To be honest I couldn’t help but laugh, and a few minutes later he returned to the game a lot poorer but with a great story to share some day with his grandchildren. (Actually over the years I have been the only one to tell the story while he squirms uncomfortably in his seat).
It would seem impossible that anyone could take a beat as bad or worse than that but trust me I have on at least two recent occasions. In the first instance only a few months ago in my home game an almost identical situation arose. I had pocket aces this time and by a strange coincidence Nameless was in the hand again, only this time he played the Al Cigar role. I raised, he reraised, and around it went to the Taco Man who smooth-called. At that point I had no choice but to push all-in. Nameless folded and Taco went into the tank for a long time before making a terrible call (in my hindsight opinion of course) with pocket jacks. Again we ran it twice and he hit a jack the first run and a jack the second. Clearly the laws of mathematics had ceased to exist.
But the worst is yet to come. It was another home game, this one a rather large oneas well, at the home of a poker-playing endodontist. Calling a pre-flop raise with pocket 4s I was thrilled with the flop of 7-4-2 rainbow. I bet the flop and the original raiser smooth called. The turn was a seemingly harmless 10. I made a large bet at that point and my opponent instantly pushed all-in. I was indeed worried about him having pocket 7s or pocket 10s but I made the call and was quite relieved when he turned up pocket queens. One card to go and we were running it twice. That’s the kind of insurance I like. I’m sure by now you can guess the result. Queen on the first run, queen on the second run. If it wasn’t for luck I would never lo.. oh wait, somebody else already used that line.
When you play a lot of poker you take a lot of bad beats. (Although you will also be on the winning end of a lot of bad beats I think that most players remember the hands they lost much more clearly than the hands they won). The most important thing to remember though after taking a bad beat is to retain your composure and not tilt. (Okay those of you who play regularly with me can take a moment to laugh. …. Done yet? Not yet? … Well I have to finish this blog so I can’t wait any longer). The bottom line is that you have to do your best to get your money in as a favorite and after that it is out of your hands. And believe me, when it comes to taking bad beats you are not alone. So if it is true that misery loves company, then poker is a game of true love.
On that note, I think that it’s time to return to the virtual felt. Thank you for reading this blog and If we play against each other may you tilt like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
So anyway his ALL-IN was for a VERY considerable amount of money although I had him covered, and each of us had Al Cigar (who instantly called the all-in) well covered. This left me with a three-pronged dilemma. First, what were the odds that one of them had pocket aces, second would I be getting the right price to call if indeed either had pocket aces, and third what were the chances that Nameless would push all-in over the top of my raise with less than pocket aces.
Okay so let’s deal with part one first. Some of you are going to find this very hard to believe but the odds in a nine handed game of another player having pocket aces if you have pocket kings is only about 26 to 1.
Knowing this, I moved quickly to the second part of my dilemma, and concluded that I would be getting the right price to call if Al Cigar had pocket aces, and I would not be getting the right price if Nameless had them. (I also discounted the likelihood that both of them had pocket aces although that was certainly possible as well. In fact I was recently involved in a hand where two players had pocket aces and one had pocket kings. A king on the river spelled disaster for the other two guys. Poker is a very funny – not as in amusing - game).
This brought me to the third issue which I needed to resolve and I began by considering the range of hands with which Nameless might push a considerable amount of money into the middle of the table. Now if it were some of the other players at the table I would have insta-mucked. But Nameless was a super aggressive guy who always did a lot of bullying (not unlike myself) and he knew that I could re-raise with a somewhat marginal hand. So I became suspicious of some triple reverse psychology at work. Coupling this with my knowledge that Al Cigar would only call the all-in with QQ, KK, AK, or AA, this narrowed the possibility in my mind that Nameless actually held pocket aces. (Okay and one other thing. Whenever I really want to call a big raise, I decide that the raiser has a slightly worse hand than I do).
So I called and as Al Cigar turned up QQ I felt that sinking feeling - and not without just cause as Nameless proudly slammed his pocket rockets to the felt. I was a 4 ½ to 1 underdog and as was pretty standard in that game we all agreed to run the board twice. For those of you unfamiliar with this process, the dealer turns the entire board two times and whoever wins each run wins half the pot. This does not change the actual odds of winning but it does affect the variance. In the most unlikely circumstance I hit a king on the turn the first run and a king on the river the second run. Without saying a word, Nameless stood up and walked out the door. He was gone for about 10 minutes when my cell phone rang. I answered and it was him. “F**k you you mother f**ker!” To be honest I couldn’t help but laugh, and a few minutes later he returned to the game a lot poorer but with a great story to share some day with his grandchildren. (Actually over the years I have been the only one to tell the story while he squirms uncomfortably in his seat).
It would seem impossible that anyone could take a beat as bad or worse than that but trust me I have on at least two recent occasions. In the first instance only a few months ago in my home game an almost identical situation arose. I had pocket aces this time and by a strange coincidence Nameless was in the hand again, only this time he played the Al Cigar role. I raised, he reraised, and around it went to the Taco Man who smooth-called. At that point I had no choice but to push all-in. Nameless folded and Taco went into the tank for a long time before making a terrible call (in my hindsight opinion of course) with pocket jacks. Again we ran it twice and he hit a jack the first run and a jack the second. Clearly the laws of mathematics had ceased to exist.
But the worst is yet to come. It was another home game, this one a rather large oneas well, at the home of a poker-playing endodontist. Calling a pre-flop raise with pocket 4s I was thrilled with the flop of 7-4-2 rainbow. I bet the flop and the original raiser smooth called. The turn was a seemingly harmless 10. I made a large bet at that point and my opponent instantly pushed all-in. I was indeed worried about him having pocket 7s or pocket 10s but I made the call and was quite relieved when he turned up pocket queens. One card to go and we were running it twice. That’s the kind of insurance I like. I’m sure by now you can guess the result. Queen on the first run, queen on the second run. If it wasn’t for luck I would never lo.. oh wait, somebody else already used that line.
When you play a lot of poker you take a lot of bad beats. (Although you will also be on the winning end of a lot of bad beats I think that most players remember the hands they lost much more clearly than the hands they won). The most important thing to remember though after taking a bad beat is to retain your composure and not tilt. (Okay those of you who play regularly with me can take a moment to laugh. …. Done yet? Not yet? … Well I have to finish this blog so I can’t wait any longer). The bottom line is that you have to do your best to get your money in as a favorite and after that it is out of your hands. And believe me, when it comes to taking bad beats you are not alone. So if it is true that misery loves company, then poker is a game of true love.
On that note, I think that it’s time to return to the virtual felt. Thank you for reading this blog and If we play against each other may you tilt like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Uncle Marv's Poker Philosophy
Let me begin with what is commonly known as housekeeping. As I reread my first blog it became clear to me that I ended it abruptly. Initially I thought that I had allotted myself enough time to do a complete job but then I clicked the wrong button and my text became barely readable. I spent the next hour trying to correct the problem and then as time ran short and my wife wandered over to help me, I decided to hit the send button rather than wait for her to “accidentally” hit the delete button. If Shakespeare had been as forceful with his wife, then he would have had 38 plays to his credit, not 37. Of course to be fair, computers were not as advanced back then as they are now – but then again, neither were wives.
That having been said, this is after all a poker blog so we should try to talk about poker a bit, and hopefully in some orderly fashion. In the last blog I told you my nickname and then found myself on a nickname tangent so I never really had a chance to lay out my poker background and philosophy. Let me do that now.
I first learned to play poker when I was about five years old because my dad got tired of playing war with me but it wasn’t until I was about 12 and sat week after week after torturous weeeeeek watching my family lose all their money playing poker that things about the game started to sink in. In those days the most popular game was 7 card stud. I would find a high chair (meaning a chair that would allow me to sit higher than the others, not a baby’s high chair) and place it strategically behind one of my family members so that I could see their hole cards as they played. Slowly but surely as I watched the other players consistently beat them I would find myself asking questions - not to them of course but just in my mind. Why did they raise when another player so obviously had them beat? Why didn’t they bluff when another player so obviously missed his draw? Why were they playing poker when they could have simply gone to the nearest bridge and thrown all those dollar bills into the river?
And then one day it happened. I was 12 years old but I remember it as clearly as if I had been 13. The family member I was sitting behind had just been dealt cards but she had to answer an important telephone call. Looking around the table at the adults she asked if it would be okay for me to play her hand. The others snickered and nodded anxiously hoping I would make a nice contribution before she returned. I moved excitedly into the seat and played the hand, milking the others and winning the largest pot of the night. The only other thing I remember about the hand was that as I raked in the money one of the men in the game started yelling that he did not want to play with a child who didn’t know what he was doing. And so at age 12 I was banned from the game, booted back to the bleachers where I continued my education.
Some years later I taught a class entitled “How to Win at Poker” at the Discovery Center in New York City and at the beginning of each session I would state my poker philosophy very succinctly. It is a philosophy that I learned at age 12 and when I would share it with the students it always got a big laugh until they realized that I was deadly serious. And this was what I told them: “If you want to win at poker, the best way to do this is to find people who are worse players than you.” Now I will admit that in almost any competitive endeavor competing against better players will make you a better player. But for the most part losing in tennis or golf or bowling is not costly. If you are wealthy enough to want to play against better poker players with no cares about losing money then fine. But if you want to win at poker, there is no better rule to follow than the one that I used to begin my poker classes.
Having established my first rule of poker, I do realize that it isn’t always possible to play with worse players than yourself. If you aren’t able to establish a home game filled with crummy players, or if you want to play more poker than that will allow and so you find yourself perhaps heading to a casino poker room where you have no control over who else is at the table, then you need to develop other skills. There are plenty of books available with plenty of ideas and strategies and suggestions. Some focus on the math, some on game theory, some on bluffing, some on psychology, some on tells, but I believe that in order to succeed you need to have a complete understanding of the game and what I consider to be an innate talent for making the right choices and executing them properly. It’s one thing to know when to push all of your chips into the center of the pot on a stone bluff, but it’s quite another to be able to physically maneuver those chips to their destination without letting your opponent know that if he calls you, you are going to crumble to the floor in a miserable heap. I have found that very few books address the totality of circumstances necessary to be the consummate player - not that I am that player, although I think I could be if I could conquer my Achilles heel. It’s no secret amongst my poker buddies so I don’t mind sharing it to end this blog. It is a four letter word which starts with a T, and it happens to me whenever I take a really bad beat on an all-in hand. In the same way that Marty McFly reacts to being called a chicken, that’s how I respond to a bad beat all-in. I am working on this problem and have been doing so since I first started playing no-limit hold ‘em. I will probably still be working on it as they pry the cards from my cold dead hands and that’s what keeps me from poker fame – well that and the fact that I almost never play tournaments. You know the golf saying “drive for show, putt for dough” I believe it is equally true for poker “tournaments for show, cash games for dough,” but now I notice that I am starting to babble so this might be a perfect time to say – until next time – and if you are playing against me, may you push your chips all-in thinking you have the nut flush after misreading the board. Bye bye for now.
That having been said, this is after all a poker blog so we should try to talk about poker a bit, and hopefully in some orderly fashion. In the last blog I told you my nickname and then found myself on a nickname tangent so I never really had a chance to lay out my poker background and philosophy. Let me do that now.
I first learned to play poker when I was about five years old because my dad got tired of playing war with me but it wasn’t until I was about 12 and sat week after week after torturous weeeeeek watching my family lose all their money playing poker that things about the game started to sink in. In those days the most popular game was 7 card stud. I would find a high chair (meaning a chair that would allow me to sit higher than the others, not a baby’s high chair) and place it strategically behind one of my family members so that I could see their hole cards as they played. Slowly but surely as I watched the other players consistently beat them I would find myself asking questions - not to them of course but just in my mind. Why did they raise when another player so obviously had them beat? Why didn’t they bluff when another player so obviously missed his draw? Why were they playing poker when they could have simply gone to the nearest bridge and thrown all those dollar bills into the river?
And then one day it happened. I was 12 years old but I remember it as clearly as if I had been 13. The family member I was sitting behind had just been dealt cards but she had to answer an important telephone call. Looking around the table at the adults she asked if it would be okay for me to play her hand. The others snickered and nodded anxiously hoping I would make a nice contribution before she returned. I moved excitedly into the seat and played the hand, milking the others and winning the largest pot of the night. The only other thing I remember about the hand was that as I raked in the money one of the men in the game started yelling that he did not want to play with a child who didn’t know what he was doing. And so at age 12 I was banned from the game, booted back to the bleachers where I continued my education.
Some years later I taught a class entitled “How to Win at Poker” at the Discovery Center in New York City and at the beginning of each session I would state my poker philosophy very succinctly. It is a philosophy that I learned at age 12 and when I would share it with the students it always got a big laugh until they realized that I was deadly serious. And this was what I told them: “If you want to win at poker, the best way to do this is to find people who are worse players than you.” Now I will admit that in almost any competitive endeavor competing against better players will make you a better player. But for the most part losing in tennis or golf or bowling is not costly. If you are wealthy enough to want to play against better poker players with no cares about losing money then fine. But if you want to win at poker, there is no better rule to follow than the one that I used to begin my poker classes.
Having established my first rule of poker, I do realize that it isn’t always possible to play with worse players than yourself. If you aren’t able to establish a home game filled with crummy players, or if you want to play more poker than that will allow and so you find yourself perhaps heading to a casino poker room where you have no control over who else is at the table, then you need to develop other skills. There are plenty of books available with plenty of ideas and strategies and suggestions. Some focus on the math, some on game theory, some on bluffing, some on psychology, some on tells, but I believe that in order to succeed you need to have a complete understanding of the game and what I consider to be an innate talent for making the right choices and executing them properly. It’s one thing to know when to push all of your chips into the center of the pot on a stone bluff, but it’s quite another to be able to physically maneuver those chips to their destination without letting your opponent know that if he calls you, you are going to crumble to the floor in a miserable heap. I have found that very few books address the totality of circumstances necessary to be the consummate player - not that I am that player, although I think I could be if I could conquer my Achilles heel. It’s no secret amongst my poker buddies so I don’t mind sharing it to end this blog. It is a four letter word which starts with a T, and it happens to me whenever I take a really bad beat on an all-in hand. In the same way that Marty McFly reacts to being called a chicken, that’s how I respond to a bad beat all-in. I am working on this problem and have been doing so since I first started playing no-limit hold ‘em. I will probably still be working on it as they pry the cards from my cold dead hands and that’s what keeps me from poker fame – well that and the fact that I almost never play tournaments. You know the golf saying “drive for show, putt for dough” I believe it is equally true for poker “tournaments for show, cash games for dough,” but now I notice that I am starting to babble so this might be a perfect time to say – until next time – and if you are playing against me, may you push your chips all-in thinking you have the nut flush after misreading the board. Bye bye for now.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
An Introduction to Uncle Marv's Poker Blog
Hello Poker Degenerates! Oh wait you're insulted because you're not a degenerate. You just enjoy playing occasionally. You don't suffer from withdrawal when you're not playing. In fact you can sit at home and happily watch television while all of your friends are playing poker because you don't want to go out in the rain. If this is you - THEN GO AWAY! THIS BLOG IS FOR THE PERSON WHOSE LIFE REVOLVES AROUND THE NEXT GAME, THE GUY OR GAL WHO BEGS FOR ONE MORE ROUND WHEN THE HOST SAYS IT'S LATE AND THE GAME MUST END, THE PERSON WHO PLAYS TILL 4 AM AND THEN CALLS ALL THE OTHER PLAYERS AT 10 AM THAT MORNING TO DISCUSS EACH HAND AD NAUSEAM, THE PERSON WHO TAKES A CRUISE TO THE CARIBBEAN AND WHOSE SPOUSE CAN'T DRAG HIM OR HER AWAY FROM THE POKER TABLE EXCEPT FOR A QUICK RUN TO THE BUFFET. If this is you, welcome. If not, a river datchee and a dew!
So you're still here. You know that you're a Poker Degenerate but you still don't like the phrase. Fine, I'll call you a P.D. Nobody will know what that stands for except us.
This is my first blog and I'm not really sure how to begin except to introduce myself. I'm Uncle Marv. I got this nickname because I used to play in a homegame with about 30 other players One of the players was my nephew as was one of the dealers and so everyone just started calling me Uncle Marv. Now the fact is that no serious self-respecting P.D. can truly succeed without having a nickname. In that original home game we had Billy Muscles and Billy Landscaper, Joe Trees and Richie Trees (no relation except they both cut down trees), Vinnie IE and Vinny Y, Richie the Hat and Richie the Pro, Al Cigar and Al Cigarless (nickname change after heart attack) the Handicapper (people who didn't know him but just heard the name always thought he was handicapped but Handicapper was just a euphemism for bookie), and we had The Visor (who always wore a visor - duh), Mikey Liquor and Liquored-up Mike (varying perspectives), Harry Potter, and let's see.. oh ok you want to know my nephew's nickname. Hmm I will assume that nobody else in the family will be reading this blog so ok - The Perv! You get the point. So now you're a little frantic. You don't have a nickname.What do you do? First of all I commend you because you came to the right place. As time passes I hope to provide even more information than Super Systems. Of course it won't be as good as Super Systems but it will be more.
Now where were we? Oh yes, you are a P.D. without a nickname. What do you do? Well I will defer to two of the players in my home game, Mike and Steve. Each took a slightly different approach. When Mike first joined the home game he introduced all 330 pounds of himself as Tiny. And so everyone calls him Tiny. In fact few people even know that his real name is Mike. So if you are joining a new game, give yourself a starting-out nickname. And try to use something that's not already in use. Don't call yourself the Poker Brat or the Unabomber because you'll look like a doofus. Be creative if you like but table image is important in poker so keep that in mind if you are choosing your own nickname.
Steve on the other hand has had to deal with the problem differently because he played in that 30 man home game for two years as "Steve," just Steve. Reinventing himself has not been easy but Steve is a resourceful guy and he came to a home game after playing in a tournament at the Borgata and told us about how he was mowing down the table and the remaining players started calling him "The Reaper." While it hasn't totally caught on yet, I have been calling him The Reaper, and as new players join the game, his nom de plume will begin to stick.
Okay I don't want to overload you on the first blog and I must get ready for a poker game so class is dismissed. In the mean time, if you are playing against me, may all your cards be rags and may all your rivers drown you.
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