Analyzing NLHE:TAP Concepts 1-2

This is the first in what I'm hoping will be a series of discussions of the "Concepts" section of No Limit Holdem by Sklansky and Miller. There are 60 concepts total. Today I'll look at the first two.

Concept No. 1: When in doubt, bet more.

Right off the bat, I have to say I'm not a big fan of this one. My main problem is that it's not really clear what this means, although the discussion in the book gives some clues.

Taken literally, this concept suggests that it is always best to just push all-in: since there is doubt inherent in every poker situation (even with the nuts, it's not clear how much is best to bet), we should always be betting more than any given amount X, unless X is all-in. I know this is not what they are trying to say, so I guess we should not be taking this concept so literally.

Taken more figuratively, I can see two reasonable interpretations. One is that players are generally inclined to bet less than they should, especially when they are in a lot of doubt as to how much to bet. I think this is good advice, actually. Beginners, especially, tend to bet far too little (compared to what would maximize EV), and one reason for this is probably that they doubt themselves. However, in my experience, lots of intermediate players tend to bet too much when they are in doubt, trying to end the hand immediately. In any case, I don't think this is the interpretation that Sklansky and Miller were thinking of, either.

Judging by the discussion in the text, I think the authors are saying that the EV lost when betting too little is worse than the EV lost when betting too much. "Try to err on the big side," they say. "In general, you're better off betting a bit too much than you are betting a bit too little." These comments suggest that there is a bet size that maximizes EV, and I whole-heartedly agree with this. I also agree that it can be difficult to determine this bet size (usually, it's impossible). However, I do not agree that a player should stray from the bet size that he thinks will yield the greatest EV. They say: "try to err on the big side." I say: "try not err." If trying to decide between betting $X or $X+1, the authors suggest you bet $X+1. I suggest you choose whichever seems better!

There actually are situations where there rules might not allow you to bet the amount you think is optimal. For example, you might want to bet $17.50 in a game where you are required to bet in increments of $5. So what is better? Betting $15 or $20? Honestly, I don't know, but this concept suggests you should bet $20. Let's come up a sample situation. I doubt this will be very fruitful, but sometimes this can help to get a better idea of what's going on.

Suppose I'm bluffing into a $30 pot, and would like to bet $17.50 because I think I would win the pot 50% of the time with this bet (EV = $30*.5 - $17.50*.5 = $6.25). However, the rules require $5 increments, so I'll bet either $15 or $20.

Suppose betting $20 will win the pot 52% of the time. Then EV = $30*.52 - $20*.48 = $6.

Suppose betting $15 will win the pot 48% of the time. Then EV = $30*.48 - $15*.52 = $6.60.

Oops! my example broke because betting less than my supposed "optimal" amount was actually better than "optimal." Of course, these numbers are entirely dependent on my approximations of folding rates, but it doesn't look too good for the "bet more" philosophy!

Now let's try those same numbers again, except now I have a hand that I think beats my opponent 90% of the time.

My supposed "optimal" amount is still $17.50.

50%: my opponent folds and I win the $30 pot.

40%: my opponent calls and I win $47.50.

10%: I lose $17.50.

EV = $30*.5 + $47.50*.4 - $17.50*.1 = $32.25.

Betting $20: EV= $30*.52 + $50*.38 - $20*.1 = $34.60.

Betting $15: EV = $30*.48 + $45*.42 - $15*.1 = $31.80.

Once again, my example broke, but this time betting more had a higher EV than my supposed "optimal" bet size of $17.50. I have to admit that if these numbers were correct, I would do better betting $20 than $15 in general, but I think the real issue here is that I should have made my opponent more responsive to changes in bet sizes so that my examples actually made sense (maybe I should have used 55% and 45% instead of 52% and 48%). In any case, I think it's still an open question whether it's better to "err on the big side," but I still say it's better not to err at all if you don't need to!

Concept No. 2: Don't give action to tight and trapping players. Know who not to play big pots against.

I think we can all agree with this very straightforward advice. Tight players tend to have better cards, so you must be careful! I'm not sure why this was worthy of it's own "concept" on the list, but I suppose it is a common mistake people make.

Hitting the Books

As I mentioned last time, I'm taking some time off from work, and I wanted to use some of my free time to analyze poker. As planned, I did absolutely nothing poker-related for my first week off, but now I've started to hit the books. I reread a few sections of The Mathematics of Poker (probably my favorite poker book despite typos and other flaws), and I'm almost done with Gus Hansen's book, Every Hand Revealed. The only thing really earth-shattering about Hansen's book is his humility, which is very uncharacteristic of poker players. He unabashedly admits that he often doesn't know what the best play is, but describes his thinking of the pros and cons of each option. It's a good book, as it gives the reader a taste for how to play a super-aggressive style and what it's like to play in one of these big televised poker tournaments, but I don't feel that I've taken much away from it strategically except that I may be playing too tight in the blinds and with suited connectors.

In addition to The Mathematics of Poker and Every Hand Revealed, I'm also revisiting No Limit Hold 'Em: Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller. I never got around to writing a review for this book, but I thought it was mostly quite good. There are already lots of reviews online. (The book is three years old now, but one extensive review was just published yesterday.) However, I remember thinking that there was a lot of questionable advice, and, as always with "2+2" publications, astonishingly feeble editing. Anyway, the last part of the book, called "Concepts and Weapons," is simply a list of 60 NLHE concepts, and I've always thought this would be fertile ground for some poker discussion. I think it might be interesting to go through them all and give my impression of them. No promises, but I think I'll start that tomorrow. I go back to work at the Bike the next day, but hopefully I'll eventually work my way through the whole list.

The other thing I thought I might do before I go back to work was play in the $1070 tournament in the Bike's Legends of Poker. However, my plans for being staked by other players fell through, and I opted not to pay for it myself.

Summer Vacation and Being Staked

Starting last Saturday (Aug 1), I'm taking two and a half weeks off and going back to work on August 20. This should give me time to run errands, make appointments, do some reading, plan a honeymoon, think about my future, and maybe start an online course. (Did you know MIT puts all their courses online?) I'm also going to Cleveland for a few days (after Hawaii airfare almost doubled). All the props at the Bike were encouraged to take time off this month because the big Legends tournament attracts plenty of action to the Bike. Of course, the action would probably have been profitable for me if I stayed and played, but they offered unlimited time off in August without penalty- but without pay, either.

For the first week or so I'm not doing anything poker-related (other than this blog post). I think it may be beneficial for me to take a step back from poker for at least a few days. I've been having more difficulty concentrating at the table, and it's interfering with the quality of my play. Also, I've been doing almost no analysis of my game when I'm not at the casino. Analyzing poker theory, strategy, and tactics not only keeps my game sharp, it also is what keeps the game fun for me. When I don't study, I don't have as much fun playing, I don't concentrate as well, and I have almost no chance of getting any better. If I'm not getting better and I'm not having a lot of fun, what's the point of playing poker? Well, there's the money, of course, but I don't make enough for that alone to justify it. I haven't completely lost interest yet, but if I can't get myself to refocus on studying the game, I think I'd be making a mistake if I kept on playing just for the money and job benefits.

In the second week of my break, after my poker hiatus, I want to re-immerse myself in poker analysis. Discovering new theories and strategies has always been the driving force that has made poker fun for me and made me want to get back to the tables. I'm hoping this will reignite my excitement in playing poker. I think there's a good chance that it will. The real challenge will be to maintain this interest for more than a few months.

At the end of July, I had several people offer to put me into various tournaments during Legends. I haven't played any tournaments in quite a long time. There are lots of reasons. Essentially, I just think I can make more money in cash games, and for the past year I've been paid a salary by the Bike when I play in cash games. Tournaments have lots of hidden fees that make them tough to beat: they often take 20% up front, plus sometimes another 2% for "bonus chips", plus often 3% goes back to tournament staff and dealers, and then they will certainly ask for a tip at the end, expected to be another 2-5%. I don't like having to prepare myself to play for 14 hours when I might be done after 1 hour. I also don't like the culture of tournaments. For one thing, there is a lot of pressure to chop the winnings at the final table, and I find the negotiations for the chop to be an unwelcome distraction from the game. I could just refuse to chop, as I've done in the past, but this actually incentivizes the other players to try to knock me out as soon as possible. In a cash game it is profitable to have people gunning for me, but in tournaments it is very unprofitable. Another problem with tournaments is that people routinely work together. For example, players might sell 50% of their winnings to other players in the tournaments for 50% of the entry fee. The problem here is that these players have incentive to let each other stick around, which is unfair to all players who are not involved in such deals because it makes it more difficult to outlast those who have made deals. Of course, people push chips to each other and soft play in cash games a lot, too. I just don't think the effect is nearly as deleterious as in tournaments.

Anyway, I have had several people offer to stake me for the Legends of Poker tournaments. I have almost never made any deals in poker. The exceptions include a few intances involving close friends when I first started playing casino poker and one chop I agreed to at a final table in a tournament. My general philosophy regarding such things is that even if I were willing to trust other players, such deals often have insidious effects on the integrity of the game. However, as long as the person staking me has no other "horses" in the tournament and does not enter himself, I don't see how there could be any conflict of interest. I suppose I have to take my backer's word that he is not backing anyone else, but as long as I don't know of anyone else, there shouldn't be any problem (unless that person is aiding me unfairly without my knowledge, but this idea is pretty far-fetched). The deal, by the way, would be that my backer would pay my entire entry fee and we would split any winnings 50/50. According to one of my prospective backers, I can even ask the tournament director to cut me two checks, each with the taxes taken out, to make it a little more official. I've had one person offer to back me for as many of the tournaments as I am willing to play. Frankly, though, only the bigger ones are worth my time, even playing for free. Most of the tournaments are only $300, which is too small. I'm considering playing in the $1070 NL holdem tournament on Aug 17. As a rough guess, I'd say my EV for this tournament is around $1400. This means that buying myself into the tournament, I'd expect to net about $330, but by getting backed for it, it's worth about $700 to me. Also, my volatility is obviously much lower if I pay no entry fee and only get half the winnings.

Frankly, I think my backers are overly optimistic about my chances: my EV would have to be at least $2140 after taxes for them to make a profit on me. Then again, I may be shortchanging myself; I have very little idea of what the level of competition will be. Another reason it seems like a bad idea to stake someone to a tournament is that it would be so easy for the "horse" to screw you over. For instance, if I took five people up on their offer for one tournament, I could take the $5350 and then intentionally dump off my chips before reaching the money, ensuring that I wouldn't have to pay anyone off! Of course, this would require quite a bit of subterfuge on my part, which has never been my strong suit.

"Exterminator" Mike Defends his Honor

On Saturday, there was a strange occurence at the 20-40 limit holdem game. As you might expect, players are not allowed to turn over the cards of another player under any circumstances, even if the hand is over and they are just curious about what the player had. This would be considered a form of cheating, and, ideally, the offending player would be thrown out of the casino indefinitely. In actuality, this happens every few weeks, and is usually taken as a joke and not such a big deal. The floorperson will, at worst, give the offending player a stern talking to. This seems way too lenient to me, but I can live with it. A much worse offense, of course, would be to turn over another player's hand while the hand is still being played out. A player who did this intentionally should probably never be allowed back into the casino. Until last week, I would have told you I would be unwilling to play with such a player ever again. However, this exact situation occurred on Saturday, it was done pointedly to screw over the other player, and, remarkably, I was quite willing to keep playing in the game with the offending player. Oddly enough, he revealed the hand of the player next to him on the river in order to defend his poker honor.

The player in question is a latino guy named Mike (AKA "Exterminator" Mike because he runs an exterminator business), who I have since learned was in the Marines. He's generally been pretty straight, only rarely getting in arguments, and always keeping his cool. He also happens to be one of the few other players who (like me) doesn't chop.

Here's what happened. An unfamiliar player saying he usually plays at Commerce was in seat 4. I was on the button in seat 7, a talkative Asian man was in seat 8, and Mike was in seat 9, next to the dealer. I wasn't paying very close attention to the hand until the end, but this is how I remember it. Seats 1-3 folded before the flop, seat 4 raised, and only seats 8 and 9 (the blinds) called.

The flop was something like 973 with two spades. The turn was the 7 of spades, and the river was the 6 of spades. So, there were 4 spades on the board. I'm not sure how big the pot was, but probably around $240.

On the river, seat 8 bet out, saying something along the lines of "I have the flush, save your money!" Of course, it's not acceptable to talk like this when there are still more than two players in the hand, but it happens a lot. Anyway, Mike asked, "what's that?" and seat 8 repeated, "save your money, throw it away!" At this point, seat 4 became upset, complaining about the chatter. "Are you guys working together? I'm still in the hand here!" Mike tried to explain to seat 4 that he didn't know the guy in seat 8, but the player in seat 4 pointed out that he had no way of knowing if Mike was telling the truth.

At the time, I didn't really understand what Mike was doing or why, but he suddenly threw his own hand in the muck and simultaneously flipped over seat 8's hand. It was J9, no spades. "There, see! He doesn't have a flush!" Seat 4 called, showing 44 with the 4 of spades for a small flush. A quite impressive scene ensued, wherein seat 8 became considerably animated and angry and called the floorman over. Mike immediately said, "it's my fault. I was out of line." The ruling was that seat 4 would be awarded the pot, and in my opinion this was a pretty easy decision. No "disciplinary" action was taken whatsoever except to tell everyone at the table that there would be no more talking during hands and no more turning over people's cards.

I thought about the situation after the hand and I can't think of any other way Mike could have convinced seat 4 that there was nothing fishy going on. Personally, I wouldn't have screwed over seat 8 like that in order to prove that I wasn't cheating, but that really was an incredibly effective way to prove it. Still, I can't understand why he wasn't at least forced to take a 20 minute "time-out."

Mike was back again today. He said "hi," and I joked "they let you back in here after what you did last week?" He laughed and said "Yeah, any other casino and I would have been 86ed for at least a month."

In other news, I wanted to mention that for the first time in my life I was dealt one of the two candidates for the best possible opening hand in Omaha Hi: AAKK double suited. The other candindate is AAJT double suited. I was playing $80NL Omaha (a new game at the Bike that I think has some hope of catching on... they have also spread it at $100NL), and I won about $50 in the hand by limp-raising and then betting on the flop with a set of kings (both players folded).

Jackpots, My Win Rate, and Volatility

Shortly after winning over $20k in a jackpot and another $1500 table share, I won yet another table share of over $1000.

I make daily records of my results in an Excel spreadsheet. I have it set up to calculate my hourly win rate and hourly standard deviation. After I won the jackpots, I simply included them each in a row of my database, listing each as having taken one hour. Of course, each jackpot actually only required one hand, so the assignment of one-hour time period was completely arbitrary.

Needless to say, the jackpots have a had an effect on my win rate and standard deviation. My SD especially has gone haywire: it went from about $350/hr over the course of my entire career to about $600/hr. My SD for this year comes to $1218/hr after being only $338/hr last year. In other words, recording the jackpots in this way is screwing with my volatility metric. What can be done about this?

I could just leave it like it is. After all, it's true that the jackpots increase the volatility of my income. However, the arbitrary choice of 1 hour per jackpot has far too much influence on the SD for me to be comfortable. For example, if I change the entries to say that each jackpot took only 1/10th of an hour, my SD increases from $600 to $1564/hr, and my 2009 SD skyrockets to $3721/hr.

I think a better solution is to try to separate out my poker-playing results from the jackpot results. I'm reluctant to do this because, in reality, the two are entangled quite insidiously. For example, I am much more likely to call with QQ when there are three aces on the board if I know there's a good chance I'll win a $20kjackpot. Similarly, my opponents certainly play differently - a few will play anytime they have an Ace before the flop because these hands have the best chance at making a jackpot. Many players would not be willing to play the game in the first place if not for the jackpot, and most players won't play with fewer than 4 opponents (the minimum needed for the jackpot to go into effect). Also, my win rate in jackpot games has always been dampened by $2-$8/hr because $1 is taken out of each pot for the jackpot.

Still, what I'm going to try to do is separate out the jackpot results from the poker results. I'll ignore all the above complications except for the most straightforward: I'll subtract out my jackpot winnings and add back in the $4/hr that I approximate I pay into the jackpot drop.

One other thing: the Bicycle Casino is being sued by some poker players over the jackpot drop. The owner is quoted a few times in the LA Times article.

30-60 Holdem, Other Games Returning to the Bike?

I played 30-60 limit holdem at the Bike this past week, and the game was also spread at least two other times since then. This is the first time in months that the Bike has had anything between 20-40 and 200-400. It's a welcome sight to me, because although I do not have to play in games bigger than 20-40 limit, I usually have the option to do so. If I were playing on my own (rather than propping for the Bike), I think I would be playing 40-80 limit mostly. The competition is actually often worse at 30-60 and 40-80 than at 20-40, because the worst players from the 20-40 game are actually the most likely to move up in stakes. In particular, these are often the extremely wealthy people who come to blow off steam but have no patience for trying to play well. I think they just like the comraderie of the game and the excitement of gambling.

Meanwhile, some other new games have been spread at the Bike the past couple of weeks. The most successful is a $100-$300 buyin NL game that has replaced the $100 fixed buyin NL game. It still uses 2-3 blinds, but now players can buyin up to $300. Obviously, this game overlaps with the $200 NL game, which has indeed suffered. Usually, in the afternoon there have been about four $100-$300 and one $200 NL game, although there have been as many as ten $100-$300 NL games at once.

Another thing I'm keeping my eye on is an effort to convert the 20-40 stud hi-lo game into a mixed game combining that and Omaha hi-lo. Hollywood Park has been spreading this exact mix game for years now, and supposedly they often have two games a day (as they did last time I was there). So far I haven't seen this mixed game get started, but other mixed games have occassionally been spread at the 15-30 limit level. For example, I played a badugi-razz mix for two hours two weeks ago, a badugi-razz-holdem-2/7 triple draw the next day, and a badugi-razz-stud hi/lo-2/7 triple draw this week (I won $580 total). I tend to do well in these mixed games. I like to think that it's because I have a good understand of genreal gambling/poker theory, but for the amount I've played, the results depend mostly on luck.

Jackpot(s)!

I've mentioned my disdain for the jackpot promotions in poker rooms quite a few times in this blog. As I was complaining to my brother this weekend, nobody will be willing to listen to my complaints anymore, as I won a jackpot for over $20k on Friday (the 10th) around 3pm. Then, on Tuesday, the jackpot was hit again at my table, and I won an additional $1477 for the table share. I've calculated that I've contributed between $5k-$10k to the jackpot drop since I started, so I'm now up a considerable amount. I still think the jackpot is stupid. Anyway, here's how it happened:

I was in the big blind, playing 6 handed. The first player limped, the second player (Joel, a host for the $500 NL game), raised, and everyone folded to me. I reraised with QQ, the limper folded, and Joel called. The flop was A86, and I bet (not my standard play, but I think it was okay against Joel, who I think is more likely to call me with a pocket pair than to try to bluff my with one). Joel called. The turn was another A. I checked, Joel bet, and I called (I had the jackpot possibility in mind at this point, but I likely would have called anyway). The river was a third A. I sat straight  up a bit in surprise. Again, I checked, Joel bet, and I called. 

"I hope you have it," said Joel, but I wasn't sure if he meant he hoped I had the A (he could have been holding KK, QQ, JJ, or TT, and hoping that I had the A, but he probably would have expected I would keep raising in that case). He showed AJ. The bad beat jackpot require that both cards in both players' hands play. The losing hand must be aces full of tens or better, and the winning hand must be four of a kind or better. I've come close to winning before, but was thwarted by my opponent's small kicker not playing. 

The jackpot was up over $46k (it starts at $40 and goes up by a few hundred a day until it is hit). I got 45% (20,911), Joel got 20%, the other four player in the hand got 5% each, and the players at the other 20-40 table shared the last 15%. 

We had to wait two hours to get paid (the excuse was that another jackpot was hit in the casino just after ours, and we had to wait for all the paper work to be done). After finally getting my money (paid in chips), I opened a player's bank account so that I would not have to carry it all home with me. So now I have money at the casino that I can withdraw whenever I want, which is nice because I don't have to carry much cash to the casino with me anymore.

New Schedule,Again

This past week I've been working on a new schedule. It's not all that different: I now go in at 9am instead of 7am. I'm not thrilled about the change, since it means I have to drive through traffic before 9 and then again at 5pm when I go home. The traffic isn't so bad, though (about 15 minutes extra in both directions), and it's nice being able to get up later than 6am. Also, I was ready for a change of pace after listening to NPR's Marketplace at 3pm every day for the past several months.

It seems like the 2-11 game has died out. I don't think the Bike ever spread it above 4-8.

I'm getting married this Saturday, so I'm taking most of the week off from work.

Soft Play and A Gift Pot

I've come to view my no-chopping policy as part of a larger campaign against "soft play." I would define soft play as any behavior that is intended to benefit another player or players at the table. Since this behavior is usually intended only to be nice, it can be awkward to protest it. However, when players are being selectively "nice" only to certain other players at the table, it becomes unfair. As a professional gambler who is wary of gambling in general, I am not comfortable when I'm in a game that I consider "unfair," even when it is relatively benign.

A few common examples of soft-play: two players may agree to always check on the river if it's heads-up, or they may agree to chop the pot in half, or a player may say "take two chips back" after raising. Sometimes, a player with just give $10 or $20 back to a losing player after the hand is finished. In my mind, the main problem with soft play is that it is akin to collusion and undermines the basic integrity of the game. In order to make good decisions in a poker game, I need to try to figure out my opponents' most likely actions, which depends upon having an understanding of their motivations. 

In a poker game devoid of emotions and personal interactions, each player would be concerned only with maximizing his own EV, and the best players would simply be those who were best able to figure out how to accomplish that. In real life, of course, players have all sorts of motivating factors beyond. For example most players are at least a little concerned about their reputations as decent poker players, so they may be less likely to call with a long-shot draw (which other players will identify as a "lucky" play if the draw is hit) or might be inclined to show their hands at the end if they feel they made a great play. Or maybe two players don't like each other, so they try to give each other bad-beats. These and all sorts of other deviations from "pure" poker play are commonplace at poker tables, and, in fact, this is one of the reasons I can make money playing poker. 

This is all fine and good. I'm not arguing that players cannot or should not consider factors beyond EV. (In fact, if they did that, over 90% of players would be correct not to show up at the casino at all!) In my mind, all motivating factors are fair game unless it can be construed as collusion. 

I have more to say about this, but I feel I'm starting to ramble, so I'll leave it for a later time.

In addition to chopping, there are certain situations where "soft play" are so commonplace that I think people view me as cold-hearted. Here's an example that I felt a little bad about.

Last week I lucked into over $280 when my opponent mucked his winning hand after calling my bluff on the river. I've seen this happen before, and the winning player will sometimes give the other player his last bet back, or even give half the pot back, so I couldn't look him in the eye when he got up and left afterwards. Here's how it went down, as best I can remember: 

In a 20-40 limit holdem game, I had 44 in the big blind. Everyone folded to the button (a supposedly talented omaha hi-low player) raised. The small blind folded, and I re-raised. The button called. $6 is taken out for the house and the jackpot, so the pot was $124.

Flop($124)   998. I bet $20, button raised, I called.

Turn($204) 7. I checked. Button checked.

River($204) 8. Now I play the board. My hand was so weak that I decided to bluff. My opponent called the $40. I quickly turned over my 44. My opponent started to muck his hand, then stopped to think, and then turned his cards over (but he did not lay them on the table). I saw AK, which beat me. Then he mucked his cards. The surprised dealer pushed me the pot.

While I was stacking my chips, other players at the table pointed out my opponent's mistake. He took it pretty well, said something like "well, I'd better go home if I can't even read the board anymore," and left.

Introduction of 2-11 Poker at the Bike

A week from today, on 2/11, the Bike is going to start spreading a game that they are calling "two-one-one" poker (even though the inventor of the game says it should be called "two eleven" in this youtube interview). The name is a reference to the fact that, while there are many similarities to other holdem games like Omaha and Texas holdem, 2-11 has only two cards on the flop. Like Omaha, each player gets four cards, but unlike Omaha, players can use either two or three cards from their hands. Half the pot goes to the low hand, but there is a 7-qualifier (ie, you must have five cards 7 or lower, the best low hand being A2345). It seems that the Bike has exclusive rights to the game. At least, the Bike is hosting its "Grand Premier." 

Actually, the game is already being spread at the Bike, but only for practice for the dealers. I played for a couple of hours one morning with the fake chips that were available. I thought it was fun, but that should be no surprise because I always like trying new games. Frankly, I would be a little surprised if 2-11 becomes a popular casino game. Most casino poker players these days are really stuck in their ways. It's not like a few years ago when there were lots of new players who were up for anything. Nowadays, players won't tolerate it if anything changes about the game they want to play. They won't play short-handed, they want a particular seat at the table, and sometimes they get angry at me for not chopping with them. I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see poker players getting excited about a new game right now. The best case scenario is that the game attracts a different sort of poker player who is willing to play for the fun of it rather than trying to grind out a few dollars an hour by playing by the book. After all, there is no book on 2-11 strategy, as far as I know. 

Since I'll probably be playing this game in the near future (the Bike plans to spread 4-8 and 15-30 limit), I'd like to consider some strategy this week. If I have any insights, it may make for an interesting post.

I'm Getting Married!

Let's see... what have I been up to since I last posted three months ago? Most significantly, Brigid and I have decided to get married; the wedding will be March 28 in Cleveland. I'm still working at the Bike, where things have slowed down a bit. I went home to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, but I stayed in LA for Christmas. I was recognized at the casino by a reader of this blog (a first for me - see the comments in the previous post). One of my friends who shared my schedule has taken the past two weeks off due a death in his family; I'm not sure when he'll be back. Poker's still going well for me: I made more this year than the past two, but mostly because I played more hours (last year I had a much better win rate). I played a very small tournament in Vegas and came in 5th out of 40 players.  

Possible topics of future posts: 

• A new game coming to the Bike called "2-1-1," a variation on Omaha high-low 
  
• The strange conventional wisdom among poker players pertaining to being "stuck," playing short-handed, and other things
  
• Good things about playing at the Bike
• My future in poker
• Interesting or amusing poker hands (these still come up almost every day)

Chopping the Blinds

If everyone folds around to the blinds in holdem, it's common for the two players in the blinds to "chop," meaning they take their blind bets back and move on to the next hand. In Los Angeles, $1 is taken for the house from the person in the small-blind. In Las Vegas, the house takes nothing. On the other hand, if there is a flop, usually there is a lot more taken (eg $5 more is taken in 20-40 limit holdem at the Bike if there are at least 7 players). There is an unwritten rule (it is rather strongly enforced socially at the poker tables) that you should either always or never agree to chop when given the opportunity. This means that you shouldn't be looking at your cards, seeing AA, and deciding not to chop if you have established yourself as someone who does not chop. I'd say that at least 90% of players agree to chop, but if either player refuses, then the two players play the hand out heads-up. 

I recently stopped agreeing to chop. Although I don't like having to pay the extra $5 to the house for what is often a small pot, I think it's worth it because I have a big edge against most players, and lots of players play even more poorly heads-up. One issue for me is that there is social pressure to chop. Some people take offense if I refuse to chop, and in fact, this was the main reason I ever agreed to chopp in the first place. It didn't seem worth making enemies. Since I had been chopping with people for the past several months, I was in particular danger of angering people by not chopping with them all of a sudden. On the advice of another prop player (Johnny), I made myself a little sign on a sticky-note saying "no chop." After a day or so it was defaced with "Please Raise Me!" Now I use a slightly larger sign that a player made for me. It's pink and says "please Raise me! NO CHOP" It's ridiculous enough that it seems to defuse any animosity towards me.

Re: The Pinky Nail

In a previous post I brought up the odd trend of men keeping a long pinky nail. Reader comments informed me that the purpose was to snort coke. Since then, I've actually seen a lot of women with the extra long pinky nail, as well.

This past week, for the first time, the topic was brought up at a poker table. A middle-aged middle-eastern man at my 20-40 limit table sported the long pinky nail, and a 40-something Asian woman asked him, "what's with the long finger-nail? Is that supposed to be a sex symbol or something?"

Rather bashfully, the man answered, "no, it's just a habit of mine. No reason."

I still find it remarkable that so many people have made cocaine such an integral part of their lives that they are willing to make a public statement about it by keeping their pinky nails long. My view of the average cocaine user has certainly been altered; while the pinky nail is still most common in middle-aged asian and middle-eastern men, these men have a fully diverse range of occupations and personalities.

YTD Results: High-Low Stud 8

When I get home from work each day, one of the first things I do is go to the computer and record my results in as much detail as possible. This can include specific start and end times for each game I played, as well as notes and of course win or loss amounts. I try to keep track in my head each time I move from one game to another, but sometimes I move so many times that I can't remember, and instead of particular games, my record for that day will just be under "various" (I've done this 8 times for a total of 58 hours). I do have accurate records of my total win or loss each day, which is important for tax reasons; this is easier to keep track of because I can just subtract how much I started with from how much I have at the end of the day.

Fifty-eight hours of play in "various" games notwithstanding (and also a few hours in mixed games), here are my results this year in Stud High-Low Eight or Better:

month profit hours rate

Jan:  472 15 31.47

Feb:  -48 35 -1.37

Mar: 2145 25 85.80

Apr:  172 23 7.40

May: 3793 34 112.39

June: 2041 24 85.94

July: -1392 23 -61.87

Aug: -562 9 -66.12

Sept: -566 13 -44.39

Oct: 1966 19 102.13

2008: 8021 219 36.67

If these results look erratic, I think it's only because that's the nature of poker and the fact that I didn't play very many hours of stud8 in some of these months. I think this chart may give you a better idea of how difficult it is for a lot of poker players to stay emotionally detached from their winnings and losses. Three straight losing months can instill a lot of doubt. Overall, I've made over $35 an hour, but I've had four losing months out of nine and a half. My hourly standard deviation is $300, about 8 times my win rate.

I think this is the first time I've listed any summary statistics here in my blog. I haven't felt comfortable giving detailed information about my income, but I think this cross-section is a good compromise between my own privacy and giving my readers an idea of what results can look like. Personally, I'm very happy with my result in this game this year- I had almost never played stud High-Low before.

$40 NL at the Bike

Sorry for another long delay - I went on vacation for about ten days, during which I served as Best Man at my brother's wedding on Long Island. Congratulations, Max and Marie!

On Friday after work, my friend Alex and his friend Brian came to the Bike. They sat down in a $40 NL game, with $1 and $2 blinds. I moved from my $20-40 limit game to their game once I was off the clock. I had heard this game described as "the biggest little game in town" because there was supposedly so much action that it's possible to really make a lot of money despite the low stakes, but I had never ventured to sit in the game before. Although I had a lot of fun playing, I didn't really see the potential for big winnings. There was one guy who consistently pushed all-in with nothing, but he only lasted about an hour before finally giving up. A few of the other players were pretty bad, too, but they were losing their chips rather slowly. I think the rake was $4 - it may have even been $5 after the jackpot fee, I don't remember exactly. In any case, when pots generally range from $6 to $50 or $100, it's pretty significant to have $4 taken out of each pot. Unless there are usually two or three maniacs per table rather than just the one that was in our game in Friday, I think it would be very tough to average more than $5-$10 per hour at this game, and that's assuming it's possible to keep focused. Me, I was chatting with my friends and watching baseball on TV.

Poker Academy

I thought I saw Annie Duke at the Bike on Saturday. Someone who looked a lot like her came in and talked to a player unfamiliar to me at the hi-lo stud table, then left. Two of my prop friends told me they didn't think it was her, and I had to concede that she didn't seem to be dressed much like how I imagine Annie Duke (this woman was dressed in a sort of punk style). I now think I was right, though. A few minutes ago I just remembered that there is a "poker academy" event going on in a side room at the Bike. That link says that Annie Duke is one of the five instructors. I also saw Kenny Tran at the Bike on Saturday, but I'd seen him there before. Turns out he's another of the instructors.

The Last Six Weeks

Sorry to those of you who I've disappointed with the long, announced delay in my posting here. Over the past six weeks, Brigid and I have had four visitors from out of town, and I've had my scheduled changed. I'm now working 7am-3pm Tuesday-Friday, and noon-8pm on Saturdays. So, this is the first day of my weekend. My new schedule obviously forces me to get up very early, but there are some definite benefits, as well. I miss the worst of the traffic, and I have the whole afternoon off after I get home around 3:30.

The "Legends of Poker" has been going on this month at the Bike. Yesterday began the finale, a $10,000 tournament that is part of the World Poker Tour. For me, the main effect is that the games are overly crowded, and I have to move around a lot or sit around doing nothing, which gets extremely boring. On the plus side, I've met some interesting people, including one guy who gets $1.8 million a year from Hawaii for the rest of his life because he was wrongfully incarcerated for 17 years and another guy who looks about 60 years old but is really 83 and used to run Sears in the 1970's.

I'll try to write something more interesting out soon, but I just wanted to give a quick update, and hopefully I'll get back into the routine of posting at least once a week.

Poker Good, Schedule Bad

I've increased my win rate each month this year (it was negative in Jan and Feb), and my past two months were both record highs for me. Surprisingly, I now much prefer the limit games (both holdem and stud hi-lo) to the no-limit games, but it's interesting to alternate between the two. It really highlights the differences between the two games, and I also find that I can sometimes use certain ideas that are central to limit when I play no-limit, and vice-versa. For example, I like to value bet on the river a lot in limit when I'm in position. If my opponents had had a decent hand, they would probably have bet, but they're still likely to call with their weaker hands because in limit the bets are so small compared to the pot. In no-limit, I think I had become too timid on the river, fearing a check-raise, but I've found that check-raises on the river have become exceedingly rare in the no-limit games I play in. Having gotten into the habit of betting the river in limit, I have recently been finding some river value bets in no-limit with hands that I would previously have just checked.

Eric, one of the players I'm rather friendly with at the Bike, recently played a 16-hour session at 400-800 limit with Jerry Buss and two or three others, and supposedly he won $140K, which is a phenomenal sum. He's only 22 and usually plays 40-80, but I think that's only because it's usually the biggest limit game going at the Bike. Last week, I was talking with him about his big win, and he suggested to me that I don't give myself enough credit and should try playing higher stakes more often. I mentioned in my last post that I was already considering doing this, so it was nice to get a vote of confidence. Still, a player coming off a $140K win at 400-800 might be a little biased when it comes to the advisability of taking shots at higher limits. The 40-80 game actually only goes during the day Mon-Fri, and I'm never working those hours anymore.

I'm still working the 9pm-5am shift. I've done it for four weeks now, and every weekend I've felt sort of jet-lagged, having to get up 4-5 hours earlier than I do during the week. This past weekend I failed to get more than two or three hours of sleep before I needed to leave for work, so I just called in sick both days. Since this is a terrible strategy for dealing with the problem long-term, I think I'm going to ask my supervisor to give me the weekends off if he still won't let me move back to my old 1pm-9pm shift.

My New Schedule

I've finished one week of my new schedule, which is similar to what I described in my previous post (9pm-5am during the week, noon-8pm weekends), except I now get Friday off instead of Wednesday. This change was in response to my complaint that they had been asking me to work Friday night until 5am and then come back and work at noon on Saturday.

I actually didn't mind working overnight. I did get tired around 3 or 4 in the morning, but it wasn't too bad, and it was easy to get to sleep by around 6am. Also, I haven't been moved from game to game as much as I had been during the day, so I've been able to settle in at one game or another each night. The main issue I have is that I'm forced to change my sleep schedule each weekend and then switch back during the week. I asked to have my weekend shift moved to later in the day, but they insisted that they need all the props to come in at noon on the weekends. Supposedly, it will be just a couple more weeks before a new prop takes over my shift and I can revert to my old 1pm-9pm schedule. Also, I think I'm getting a $.50/hr raise, as of this week.

Meanwhile, for the past three months, I've been winning at a higher rate than ever. I've improved a lot, and I now think I'm usually the best player at any given table (or close to it). Given my recent results, I assume I have been getting luckier than average, too, but that sort of thing is hard to ascertain. I'm tempted to start playing the 40-80 limit holdem game more often, but I'm a little scared because the swings would be much bigger than what I'm accustomed to. Not only are the bets twice as large as my normal 20-40 game, but the players tend to be more aggressive (also slightly better on average, but only slightly).

Last week, Cheryl Hines and Teri Hatcher came to the casino and played $100 NL and sit-n-go tournaments. They seem to be friends with a couple of the regular $200 NL players who I am friendly with. I didn't get to play with them, although Teri Hatcher was about to sit at my table at one point. A seat opened up in another game before she sat down in mine, though. I've also played with this guy a few times. I'm not sure if he's famous, but someone did ask him to autograph a picture of himself. Jerry Buss has come in the past two days to play 400-800 limit.

Some Turmoil at the Office

On Monday I was told by my new supervisor that my hours would soon be changed to 9pm-5am for Monday, Thursday, and Friday. On Saturday and Sunday the want me to work noon-8pm. I had been pretty happy to have a somewhat normal routine working 1pm-9pm, so I'm not happy about this potential switch. Also, I'm going to make them change my Saturday schedule. Currently, they seem to expect me to work until 5am and then come back again at noon.

All the props in the upper section at the Bike had a meeting last week. The guy who had been the interim supervisor is being replaced by Mo, who had been the supervisor for the "hosts," who are essentially just props who play the bigger NL games. This is unfortunate - I thought the interim supervisor did a great job.

It seems that most new hires start in my position as a 20-40 open prop. However, most people find this job too difficult and either quit or switch jobs within a few months. A lot of them move to the middle section where the swings are much smaller, but others become "silent" props, who just play one game all day (eg 20-40 limit holdem) and cannot be moved by the floor people. The "open" props make less than 10% more than these "silent" props after taxes, so the casino has trouble keeping people in the open prop position. Their solution is to lower the silent props' salaries by 20% and offer to let them switch to being open props. Meanwhile, it was determined that there were not enough props working overnight, so we were warned at the meeting that some people's schedules would be changing. Considering that all the silent props were already given the bad news of a pay cut, I figured there was a good chance I would be among those moved to the graveyard shift. So, I wasn't too surprised by the news that they were, indeed, changing my schedule.

Mo, my new supervisor, tells me that I might be able to switch my schedule back if they hire some new props for the graveyard shift. Short of that, he says he would rotate in the other props in a few months if I still wanted to switch back to a day-shift. My current plan is to get my weekend schedule changed to something more reasonable, and then at least try my new schedule for a while (assuming they actually go through with all these proposed changes, which seems likely). I've heard the games overnight are pretty good, so maybe it will be okay. The main problem is I don't know when I'll be sleeping. I'll need to put up some darker curtains, I guess.

The Boss Gets a Pair of Twos of Spades

Something happened in the 20-40 limit game today that I'd never witnessed before: We were playing with a bad deck of cards. It had two 2 of spadeses.

I was in the big blind in the hand, and the owner of the casino was two to my left and limped, as did the player before the button. The small blind raised, I folded, and both limpers called. The flop had two spades, including the 2. The small blind bet, and only the "boss" called. On the turn, the small blind bet again, the boss peeked at his cards, and said, "uh, we have a problem..." but called the bet. The small blind bet the river and was called again. The boss held J2 of spades.

The floorman (Peter) was called over and thought that I should get my $20 big blind back, the other guy who saw the flop should get his $40 back, and the rest of the pot should go to the player in the small blind, because the boss should failed to end the hand at the appropriate time. The boss argued that since he didn't know that was what he was supposed to do, he should also get back the money he put into the pot. Another floorperson (Mike) was called over. He agreed with Peter, but they called in yet another guy, who I think may have been their boss. He took the money away, saying "we'll discuss what to do. Meanwhile, just keep playing." The button was moved and I was now in the small blind. (As it turned out, I never actually had to pay a big blind in that round, so the situation wasn't handled perfectly.)

One of the other props at the table agreed with the boss that he should get his money back. "A player shouldn't be penalized for a mistake by the casino," he said. He asked me my opinion. I said that because the boss had never been the aggressor (he never bet or raised, only called), it could not be argued that he was trying to take advantage of the situation, and thus he should get his money back. (The worry is that if the player with the bad card can assume that he will get his money back if he loses, he can take advantage of the situation by trying risk-free to bluff his opponent out of the pot.) Meanwhile, the boss had to leave to go to a meeting or something.

After quite some time (I think they reviewed the videotape), the floorpeople came back with the money and announced their decision: the original ruling would stand. I got my $20 back, the other guy got his $40 back, and the guy in the small blind got the rest of the pot.

Mike the floorperson said that he was a little unsure of the decision because the rulebook supposedly said something like "if the bettor has a duplicate card, he must forfeit the pot." He wasn't sure if a player who was just calling could be classified as a "bettor," but he decided that he probably should be. In any case, I think it's a bad rule. Another player suggested that the player in the small blind should get the pot and the casino should foot the bill and pay back the player with the bad card. Ironically, what that would have meant in this case was that the casino would be paying back its own owner.

Certainly, what a player with a bad card should do is stop the hand and reveal his cards as soon as he realizes the problem. However, I don't see the logic in penalizing a player who fails to do this but does nothing to try to exploit the situation.

After all this, the guy who had been awarded the pot decided to give the owner his money back. At least that's what he told me, but I didn't actually see it happen.

Not Much of a "Craze" Anymore

When I started this blog, Poker was in what I think can be called it's heyday. There was something of a poker craze going on, and thus "caughtupinthecraze" was born. In my first post, I claimed that I could teach anyone with a 3-digit IQ to win at poker in a casino. While that may have been true at the time, it's certainly not the case any more. The competition has gotten so much tougher that the players who now provide most of my income are probably better than I was back when I wrote that first blog entry.

There are now only two "open" props in my section who have been working longer than I have. One of the guys who had been there longer is now a "silent" prop for the stud 8-or-better game, meaning he doesn't have to play any other games. Also, both of the props who started the week after I did are no longer working for the Bike. One guy who has been a prop for about a month is actually working another full time job as a bio-chemist at a local biotech company. I don't think he's making any money playing poker - the only game he's good at is NL holdem. He thinks he'll keep both jobs for about a year, at which point his wife should be done with nursing school. Personally, I can barely imagine any scenario where I would decide to work 16 hour days when I had the option of working 8. If I get into grad school, I plan on quitting the propping job. (I'm on the wait list for UCLA's stat PhD program, and should hear back this week.)

I'm The Best

One of the floor people told me today that I was the best prop. That doesn't mean I'm actually any good at the games, he's just referring to the fact that I actually try to help start games and keep them going. I guess it's time to start slacking off before the other prop players become resentful.

As for actually playing the games, I'm now quite comfortable with both 20-40 holdem and 20-40 hi-lo stud. When I first started I'm not sure I had much positive expectation in these games, but now I'm beating them handily. In fact, 20-40 hi-lo stud would be my favorite game now, except that the other players are so horrible to be around. As for the holdem game, one of the other props, who I think is one of the best players there, suggested to me that I should try to always have enough chips in front of me to avoid ever having to be all-in, because when that happens I miss opportunities to outplay people. I told him my philosophy of the mathematical advantages of being all in (ie, someone who is not all-in might fold what would have been a hand that beat me). He said he thought I had enough of a skill advantage over the other players that I'd do better with more chips despite the theoretical all-in advantages. It was nice to get a vote of confidence in my limit holdem game, which I'm still working on.

About three weeks ago, a hi-lo regular named Gus died right at the table. It happened about an hour before I got to the casino. Heart attack, I think. I remember him just sitting at the table looking angry, but not usually actually playing.

Barry Greenstein was behind me in line at the cashier at one point today. I did a double-take when I noticed him, and he promptly left. There's often a big game in the corner of the room where I work (a mix-game up to 2000-4000, I think), which is often started when Jerry Buss shows up. He was there a couple weeks ago playing against Layne Flack, among others. I didn't see either of them there today, though.

About a month ago I was playing in a 4-handed $500 NL game, and one of the other players had a jacket with Tom "Captain" Franklin on the back. I didn't make anything of it, but then I saw his name in Card Player magazine. He's got a long tournament history. At the hi-lo game I often play with Joe Wynn (who also plays NL holdem) and David Young, who are both quite good. Joe folded 3 aces to me on 5th street after I bet with a board of 457 (I had an 8-high straight). Not many people would have gotten away from that hand so cheaply. David's been sort of trying to coach me. He says there used to be a big hi-lo stud game at the Bike (100-200 maybe) and he used to play against Ray Zee.

I also had a conversation with the keyboardist from My Morning Jacket, which I later found out is a favorite bad of my brother's. I had never heard of them. Brigid called just after he told me the name of the band, though, and she is apparently also a fan. We were playing $300-500 buying NL holdem (5-5 blinds). Sometimes I play these bigger NL games if they're just getting started and I'm not needed anywhere else, even though I'm only required to play $100 or $200 NL.

This and That

It's been a few weeks since I last wrote, and I've been playing poker 40 hours a week at my new prop job, so there are lots of little stories to recount. The job itself I find to be pretty agreeable, except that I miss being able to take a few days off whenever I want to.

The owner of the Bike likes to play the 20-40 limit game. He's pretty bad, but mostly just because he plays way too many hands. If you don't care too much about losing a few hundred, I suppose it's probably a lot more fun to play almost every hand than it is to fold a lot. I was sitting next to him in the game a few weeks ago and Johnny Chan ambled over wearing a Bellagio shirt and a hat with some other casino's name on it. They discussed some project together for about 10 minutes. I don't think I've noticed any other recognizable players at the Bike, though. However, few days ago I did play high-low stud with the supposedly well-known whale Kim "The Dragon" Nguyen, who confirms that she once bet $1mil on the Superbowl. (Did she win? "Of course.") She seemed about as bad as the average stud high-low player.

Speaking of the high-low game, I've actually been doing well in it. I think it has something to do with the fact that I tend to give it my full attention, which I guess makes up for the 50 years of experience that the other players can draw upon. The culture of these games is startlingly different from that of the holdem games I'm used to. The most obvious difference is that most of the players have no qualms about harassing the dealers for any reason, usually just because they are not getting good enough hands. I honestly think they believe the dealers have something to do with the cards they get. Perhaps 40 years ago there was a lot of cheating going on, and so maybe the dealers really did have had the ability to manipulate the game, but in this game the dealers don't even shuffle the cards themselves (there are machines for that). Besides, I don't think the disgruntled players are trying to imply that the dealers are cheating, but rather just that they are bad luck, which, somehow, calls for them to be verbally abused. It is sometimes really shocking how convinced people are of their superstitions. Yesterday I overheard one such player ("Otto") respond to the question "are you in?" by shouting "With HER dealing? I'd have to be NUTS!" In other words, he was sitting out until a new dealer came to the table. This isn't actually one of the more ridiculous examples, but usually the abuse just involves berating the dealer for being "brain-dead" or something. Another odd thing about this game is that players will get quite upset if I take more than 2 seconds to make a decision during the hand, but on the last betting round, they will sometimes take literally 10 seconds before even looking at their last card. I think they like to keep themselves in suspense, and this is such standard practice that nobody ever complains about the delay. Then after all the action is finished, they will sometimes take as long as 20 seconds to decide whether to show their hand (I've actually considered calling for a clock on someone who was doing this), and often even more time is allotted to complaining to the other players about how unlucky they were to have lost. Then they often call for a new setup (ie, a brand new deck of cards), which they are allowed to ask for once an hour. This takes about 2 more minutes for the dealer to examine to make sure the cards are all there and unmarked. All of this is taken in stride by the other stud high-low players, but I am not allowed to consider how to play my hand for more than a second. In their minds, I think the honestly consider the actual play of the hands to be less important than these other practices of superstition and self-pity.

Holding AJc, I made a royal flush in 20-40 holdem on Sunday. If I were playing lower stakes, I would have been awarded a $1000 jackpot, but that promotion isn't offered at these stakes. I did get a couple hundred from the pot, though.

There is, however, a "bad beat jackpot" in the 20-40 game. If you have aces full of tens or better and lose to quads or better, you win half the jackpot, the winner of the hand gets a quarter of the jackpot, and the other players at the table split the rest. However, you need to use both cards in your hand. During odd hours (eg 1-2pm, 3-4pm), the jackpot is $100k, the rest of the time it's a progressive jackpot that starts around $10k. Last week the Jackpot was at $25k, and I held KK in the big blind. The first player raised, and there were three callers. I reraised, and 5 players saw a flop of AA6. Now, if someone had an A and either the turn or the river is another A, I would have the losing end of the jackpot, good for $12.5k. Everyone now checked to the button, who bet. I called, as did the pre-flop raiser. Since the button cold-called a raise preflop, it's reasonable to assume he has either a pocket pair (which I'm beating) or an A with a decent kicker (probably 8 or better). The turn was another A, so now I figure I'm either going to win the hand or the $12.5k (as long as the river card is lower than the kicker that goes with the A). Again the button bet, I called, and the third player folded. The river was a 4, which is a great card for me because now I will either win the pot or the jackpot unless the button has specifically A5, A4, A3, or A2. I bet, figuring it's pretty likely the button just has TT or 99 or something. When the button then raised, I realized he must have the A. I called expecting to win the jackpot... but my opponent showed A2. I lost $200 on the hand.

I am already halfway up on the seniority list for 20-40 props. There are seven of us, three of whom were hired after I started last month.

I overheard a lady in the 40-80 holdem game say "I raise... NOT!" The floorman was called over, and it was ruled that she would be required to put in the raise.

Stud Eight-or-Better

I've been holding my own in the 20-40 limit holdem game and crushing the no-limit games, but I'm still pretty lost when it comes to Stud eight-or-better. Through pure luck, I'm actually still up at this game after playing for 15 hours or so, but it takes all my concentration just to avoid making bonehead plays. There are a ton of things to think about and keep track of during the hands, and the skills and instincts I've developed for holdem have not translated as easily as I'd hoped. Here's a list of some things that are second nature for experienced stud8 players that I need to train myself to do better:

1. Keep track of several boards (one for each player) rather than just one community board.
2. Remember which cards have been folded. Part of this is identifying early which cards will be important to remember.
3. Calculate approximate odds for 3-card starting hands with 4 cards to come, and for 4-card hands with 3 cards to come. These odds need to be approximated for both the low and the high half.
4. Understand the meaning of other player's bets.
5. Keep track of who has to bet first (it's whoever has the best high hand showing, but this can change with each card) so that I know what my position will likely be in future rounds.
6. Immediately identify which players have caught good cards and are likely to bet, which is necessary to know in order to make effective check-raises.
7. Identify situations where I want to try to push certain players out of the hand. Often this means trying to check-raise in order to force another player going the same way I am to put in two bets at once. Lots of players will automatically call a single bet, but if I can force them to call two at once there's a much better chance they will fold. For example, if the player to my left and I are the only two players going low in a 5-way pot, getting him to fold should often be my primary focus. I need to be able to identify when I'm in this situation and can count on one of the high hands to bet behind him so I can check raise. Too often I miss opportunities like this because I'm still trying to do points 1-6.
8. Recognizing situations where I will be caught in a raising war between other players, forcing me to put in many bets to see the next card. These situations demand that I fold to the first bet, but if I'm too slow to recognize that this is going to happen, I will call a bet before either having to fold or calling $160 worth of bets (only 4 bets allowed on each round, $40 each).
9. Keep track of what my own board looks like to the other players.

There are certainly some other things I haven't thought of and some others that I've never even considered. For the time being, I think I need to prioritize a few of these things to focus on. At this point, it's too overwhelming for me to keep track of all this. Maybe just studying the odds away from the table would be a good first step.

My First Full Work Week as a Prop

So far I like it. Last week I mentioned that I didn't understand how there could be so much downtime, but the past couple of days I did spend a lot of time sitting and doing almost nothing. The floormen will occasionally ask me to leave a game if a wait list has formed. Fortunately, there were some football games going on on Sunday. So, for several hours, I was being paid while I sat around, watched sports on TV, and chatted with other props and service people who were also bored. It seems like this sort of downtime will constitute at least 10% of my work week.

Most of the time, though, I have been playing. After a slow start, I'm back in the swing of things with my limit holdem, which is what they have me play the most (20-40). They've also been putting me in no-limit games quite a bit, often as low as $100 buy-in, and these are reasonably soft. I've played high-low split stud 8-or-better for a total of 15 minutes and won $9. I'm not confident that I'd be able to beat that game yet, so I've been avoiding it when given the choice.

I've made a good enough impression on one of the servers that she now stops by while I'm playing just to give me an iced tea or bottle of water. I've usually been eating two free meals a day at the casino, but sometimes one is just a fruit plate or soup. I've also gotten two milkshakes and two slices of pie, all on the house. They were good.

On Sunday, in the 20-40 holdem game, I was playing 6-handed with 5 other prop players for at least 20 minutes before another player showed up. This other player happened to be the most offensively angry and vulgar woman I think I've ever encountered. It took me quite a while to memorize her name, which was on her casino comp card, but it was worth it - "Spomenka Zeljkovic." She's overweight, around 50 years old, and speaks with something like a Russian accent. Supposedly she is a semi-regular player, but I can't understand how she has managed to avoid being kicked out of the casino. If you're curious what sorts of comments she was making, you'll have to ask me later. I'm not prepared to write the full extent of it here on my blog, but I will say that she was spewing a nearly nonstop stream of filth, and occasionally it was impressively creative. One less creatively vulgar incident was when another player got upset about being called a "fucking idiot," to which she responded "I don't mean you in particular." Later, a dealer complained to the floorman about her at one point, and so the floorman told Spomenka that "it's not nice to say those things." Actually, she did settle down quite a bit after that.

Now begins my Tuesday-Wednesday weekend.

New Schedule

I went to the Bike on Monday for my first day as a prop, and they switched up the schedule on me. I'll be working 1-9 pm Thursday-Monday, which I actually like quite a bit better than 3-11 pm. I figure I can get lunch when I first get there, and then dinner before I go (meals are free). On Monday I played 20-40 limit from 2-9 pm. I lost more in the game than I made in salary, but I found it relatively easy to sit and play that long. I didn't get tired until about 8. However, by the time I left at 9 I was rather tired, and in my diminished mental state I forgot to bring home my employee handbook (I did remember to sign out at least). This means I still don't really know what my health benefits and vacation time are like or anything like that. Hopefully, I'll be able to find the employee parking lot tomorrow.

Supposedly there is usually a lot of downtime as a prop player, and I was warned that I should bring a book. I'm not accustomed to bringing things with me to the casino (hence my forgetting my handbook on Monday). Also, I don't understand when this downtime would happen. On Monday I was put in a game almost immediately when I arrived, and unless the game breaks I'm not really sure how I could have any downtime whatsoever. I was a little unsure of whether I was supposed to keep playing after the game filled up, but there were some other props playing the same game at another table, and they didn't leave, so I figured I probably shouldn't either. (Actually, one moved from my table to the other 20-40 limit game, but I have no idea why.) I guess tomorrow I'll need to ask the floorman to clarify the protocol a little more for me.

Back to Work

I'm starting my new job on Monday. Meanwhile, I've read the entire High-Low Split Stud book by Ray Zee already (it's rather short) and am nearly through Todd Brunson's chapter in Super System 2 (also short). Hopefully I'll be competent at this game when I dive in at 20-40. I don't actually have much of an idea of how much I'll be asked to play it, though. Maybe I should brush up on my limit holdem, as well. The $200 no-limit game, on the other hand, will be old hat for me. That's what I used to play about 80% of the time back in Vegas.

Prop Job Soon

I seem to be close to getting the job as a 20-40 prop player at the Bike. On Tuesday, I'm scheduled for a physical (not sure why they need this), and I assume I'll be starting soon after that. I'd be working Friday-Tuesday, 3pm-11pm. Including the commute it will probably be more like 1:45-11:45, so the job will consume about 50 hours a week. This is quite a bit more than I've been playing up until now, and I'm not very optimistic about how much I'm going to like giving up some of my free time. For the past few months I've been getting rather tired after playing for about 6 hours, and it's usually not worth sticking around when fatigue sets in except in the increasingly rare event that the game is extremely soft. I've been playing poker on my own schedule for two and a half years now, and I've become accustomed to having plenty of time during the week for everything I want to do. On the other hand, I've also spent more time at unproductive activities such as watching TV than I would have liked, and I know from experience that when my time is more structured I tend to get more done. Fortunately, as far as making the decision whether to take the prop job, it's not necessary for me to know ahead of time whether I'll like being a prop: if I don't, I can always quit and immediately return to my old job with no difficulty whatsoever.

Meanwhile, I need to learn to play stud eight-or-better without losing all my money. My brother got me Ray Zee's book High-Low-Split Poker for Advanced Players, which also covers Omaha. It actually seems like it would be nearly useless for an advanced player at these games, but for me it's been quite helpful. It gives an idea of what starting hands are worthwhile and what to expect from other players. I read Sklansky's section in the original Super System, but that is so outdated that the rules have changed too significantly since it was written for it to be useful (most significantly, there was no requirement of an 8-qualifier for the low). Supposedly, Todd Brunson wrote a chapter on stud-8 in Super System 2 that is much more worthwhile. I think I may go ahead and order that one. Phil Hellmuth has the only other published stud-8 advice that I could find, but I would never purchase anything published by him unless it were the absolute best source on a particular game. Even then, I would probably just avoid playing that game.

Prop Player Application

I've officially applied to be a "20-40 open prop player" at the Bicycle Casino, 25 minutes from my apartment when there's not much traffic. I would have to play 20-40 limit holdem or hi-lo stud eight-or-better, or $200 buy-in NL, depending on what the floorperson needs me for at any given time. My impression is that a lot of the time I would get to play whatever I want if I'm not needed. The two guys I talked to about the job (one current prop player and a supervisor) were very friendly, I'd get paid pretty well (probably about what my win rate is at the $500 game, thus doubling my income if I can maintain that win rate at these other games), and I think I'd even get health benefits and whatnot. On the other hand, it's a pretty long haul through LA traffic and I'm not accustomed to having to play a full 8 hours every day. Mostly I'll miss being able to set my own schedule, although there's also certainly something to be said for having some structure. I should know if I've got the job in two weeks, and I would possibly start in early January.

I'm also applying for grad school, and I'd start in fall '08 if I get in. Statistics.

More Bluff Calling

When in need of something to write about, describing big calls of bluffs usually serve pretty well, and it's fun for me to recount them. So, here's a couple good ones from the past month:

I was in the big blind with 73o in a 5-10 NL game at Hollywood Park with no maximum buyin. I was in seat 6 and had a little over $400. There were two limpers, so I got to see a flop, which came T43 with two diamonds. Everyone checked to Fernando, a regular in this game who I'm reasonably familiar with. He bet $45. This looked suspiciously like a bluff, and I called with my pair of 3's. On the turn, an 8 came (not a diamond), and I bet out $100, trying to end the hand here. Fernando called immediately. The fact that he didn't stop to think even for a couple seconds made me pretty sure he was on a draw, probably diamond but maybe a straight draw like J9 or even QJ. The other possibility is that he had a little pair like 66 and called hoping I was on a draw, but even this type of hand would probably have to think, and might have raised before the flop. The fact that he didn't even consider raising here on the turn suggested to me he didn't have a ten. If he had a ten, he would have to consider raising because it is most likely the best hand at this point, but is very vulnerable to getting outdrawn on the river. Also, stronger hands such as a set or two pair would fear a flush or straight draw and would probably raise as well.

The river was a 2, not a diamond. At this point the pot was about $315. Fernando pushed all-in, and I had $375 left. Unless he was holding 22, A5, or 56, there is no way the river could have helped him. Since these hands are very unlikely here, and he didn't need to consider a raise on the turn, his attempt to represent a big hand on the river wasn't very convincing. I called. He turned over J6d, and my 73 took the $1000 pot.

This next one was a bit more nerve-wracking for me. I was playing in the same game (seat 6 again, actually) on a different day. A 75 year old white guy who I'd never played against before was in seat 2, and he had been playing very recklessly, with lots of bluffs and calls with weak hands. Still, he seemed to have some idea what he's doing, making decent reads. He just liked action too much.

I was the big blind again, and the old guy was in late position. I had about $1500, and he had me covered. After a limper or two, he raised to $50. With AKo, I reraised him to $170, and he was the only caller. I thought he probably had AQ, AJ, KQ, or a little pair. Maybe a suited connector. Really though, he could have almost anything.

Flop(~$350): 369. There's no way I'm going to get him to fold a pocket pair, so there's not much reason for me to bet here. I check. He bets $175. At this point in the hand, he's going to bet no matter what he's holding. I'm hoping here that he has something like AQ or KQ and is just hoping I'll fold. With this guy, even J2 seems possible. If he does have a pair, I still have 6 outs. If he has AQ or KQ, I stand to win a big pot if we both pair on the turn (of course, there are only 2 cards that would accomplish this). I call.

Turn(~$700): 7. I check again. He bets $275, which is less than half the pot. I have the feeling that he senses weakness in my checks, and probably puts me on AK, which is indeed what I hold. He probably figures I'll fold if he bets anything, but that I'll call or raise if I have a big pair. Betting small here buys him a nice pot if I fold, and allows him to get out cheaply if I raise. If he has a big hand I think he would make a bigger bet here, hoping I have an overpair. Anyway, I just call.

River(~$1250): 3. I check again. He bets $500. At this point it seems likely he actually has something, probably pocket 6's, 7's or 9's, and I misread his small bet on the turn. Still, with a little pair on the board (33), he can no longer confidently bet a two-pair hand like 67, because if I do have an overpair, he'll lose. Although I thought there was at least a 60% chance he had me beat here (with either a set or an overpair, maybe even the 3), his $500 bet was still small for this pot. I was being offered 3.5-1 odds, so if I had at least a 23% chance to win, then calling was the right play. I thought my chances were around 30%. I reluctantly put in $500, expecting my winning session to become a losing one. However, the old guy turned over AQ. I showed my winning AK and was sent the $2250 pot. Some of the other players muttered that they would have to remember not to try to bluff me.

In other news, I have a lead that could result in an offer of a job as a prop player at the Bicycle casino. In other words, I might get paid to play, thus fitting more solidly into the definition of "professional" poker player. Supposedly the graveyard shift is the one most likely to have an opening, so my sleeping schedule would need to revert back to staying up all night. On the other hand, this would mean I probably wouldn't have to fight through terrible traffic.

"No Free Rides!"

The helmet guy was back today, only this time sans helmet. Even without his signature accessory, he's easily recognizable as the ostentatiously dressed 6'8" jacked bearded black guy with a huge gap between his front teeth, which he frequently displays with his large grin. Today he was wearing a cowboy hat and a brown pin-striped suit-jacket over mesh navy-blue tank-top reminiscent of a gym-class pinney. I'd been playing in the $100 NL game for an hour or so when he joined the table. According to a woman at our table, he is a well-known reggae singer, but I have no idea who he was. He did have the awesome Jamaican accent and a couple friends who would stop by who appeared much more stereotypically Rastafarian, with dreadlocks and whatnot.

Occasionally, a player will try to get a slow game going by raising indiscriminately for several hands, essentially daring his opponents to play with him. Usually this goes along with frequent comments meant to annoy his opponents, to goad them into playing looser, or just to gain attention. I think the reggae guy may have been parodying this sort of player; he incorporated all the normal characteristics of the goading player, but in a humorous and seemingly self-aware sort of way. On the other hand, maybe he's just good-naturedly insane. In any case, for about 45 minutes he raised 95% of the hands to $10 preflop (from $3), saying "no free rides!" every time, without fail. Well, he did occasionally fail to raise because he made string-bets, but he never forgot to say "no free rides!" Unfortunately for me, the guy to my left liked to occasionally reraise allin for another $300 or so, each time winning the $30 or so that was in the pot. The majority of the time, though, this didn't happen, and we'd get to see a flop with a pot of around $50.

Often a stereotypical attention-seeking player will call out for something just before the flop, turn, or river is put out. For example "2!" or "diamond!" The formerly behelmeted reggae singer, though, took this to new heights, hurriedly spouting off "No high, no low, no middle, no straight, no flush!" before each flop. Then, regardless of the cards on the flop, "Perfect!" If he decided to check on the flop, he'd declare, "okay, free ride."

At one point I beat him and another player in a hand where I caught a flush on the river. The pot ended up around $300. Lots of players get upset if they lose on the river, but this guy stood up in his seat, reached across the table to me and, smiling, said "gimme five!" in his Jamaican accent. I obliged. Despite his maniacal behavior, he still managed to be a much better sport than my average opponent.

Other guys I've played with or seen playing at the casino recently: Norman Chad, this guy, who co-wrote the movie "300," the guy who plays the main character's brother on "Big Love," and an NBA hopeful who supposedly played for NC State, was at one point signed by the Clippers (not sure if he played), and thinks Atlanta is going to sign him soon. I can't remember this guy's name either, and I couldn't figure it out doing some google research. Some more info for anyone who may want to try to figure it out: he's under 6'5" and had a horrible motorcycle accident in which he suffered an open fracture of his leg. Obviously, if he were anyone notable I would have been able to identify him already.

Shady Characters Outside Hollywood Park

Last week, I was talking to my brother on my cell phone just outside one of the entrances to the poker room at Hollywood Park. A man approached me and showed me a watch. This seemed not just strange but rather rude since I was clearly on the phone so I just turned away from him and tried to continue my conversation. The guy approached me with his watch again and said something I didn't hear. I figured maybe he was trying to ask me for the time so that he could set his watch, so I told my brother to hold on a second as I checked my phone's screens. It didn't have the time. I told the man with the watch the bad news and went back to my conversation, assuming he'd move on to someone else. Instead he continued talking to me. I told my brother to hold on again.

"What?" I snapped, now agitated.
"Do you want to buy this watch?"
"No! I'm on the phone," I said, assuming he would realize I meant "go away."
"It's $12,000, you can have it for $500," he persisted.
"I don't want it."
"$400." At this point I just shook my head and walked away. This time he finally let me be.

An hour or so later I saw the guy again, this time sitting at a slot machine or something. He waved at me with two fingers up. "Two hundred?" I shook my head and continued on.

Later, as I made my way to the parking lot when I was done playing, a shabby looking man approached me.

"Hey, how are you?" he asked. I'd been solicited for money outside the entrance before, but this guy was half way to the parking lot, with nobody else within earshot.

"I'm okay..." I responded suspiciously. Then he made his pitch. He is NOT a bum, he tells me. He never asks people for money, and he's embarrassed to have to ask me. However, he was there with his wife and child, but something (I don't remember the story he gave me) had happened and now he needed money for a cab. "Could you spare me $37? I'm not a bum, I'll pay you back."

"No, sorry."
"$20 maybe? Just to get me on my way?"

I think this is a fairly standard tactic: come up with a compelling story of emergent need of some quick cash of some specific amount.

"I'd rather not get involved. They could probably help you at the desk inside."
"You don't have to get involved... there's nothing to get involved in. I just need to get a cab."

This went on for another 20 seconds or so, then I just said "sorry" again and started walking to my car. He followed me. Again he assured me he was not a bum and would pay me back. I turned him down again and continued to the parking lot. He still followed. My car happened to be in the very first row, and there I was, standing right next to it with this guy still hassling me. I had about $3500 in my pocket. I decided not to get in the car with him right there; in fact, I didn't even indicate it was my car. After one more failed attempt to get rid of him, I turned and walked back to the casino. When I came back a couple minutes later, the guy was nowhere to be found.

When I was heading back to the parking lot the second time, I was approached AGAIN by yet another shady guy. He wanted my advice on whether he owed somebody money. This was a new one: I wasn't sure how he was going to turn this into a plea for me to give him money. He had supposedly been playing blackjack, and somebody had given him $4 and asked him to bet it for him. He won the hand. Does he now owe the guy $8 or only $4? To his chagrin, I informed him that it sounded like he owed $8. To my surprise, he left without asking me for money.

Do I really look so much like a sucker that con artists (if you can call them that) will persist in trying to get me to give them money even after I've pointedly turned them down? Wouldn't it be more worth their time to move on to one of the dozens of other people in the areas outside the casino? Well, the situation was rather anomalous, so I guess there's no real reason to think there's something about me that caused it.

Oh, and the Helmet Man has been hanging around again, too.

Tournament "Insurance"

I'm worried about the integrity of poker. A couple weeks ago I turned on ESPN2 and saw Phil Hellmuth get put all-in pre-flop at the final table of some WSOP event. Once the two hands were revealed, Hellmuth went over to the sidelines and, on camera, made a deal with a spectator (Phil Ivey) for "insurance": if Hellmuth won, he'd pay his "insurer" some amount, and if he lost, his "insurer" would pay Hellmuth some amount to cushion the loss. For reasons that I can only assume involve TV ratings, the dealer and other players waited for Hellmuth while he negotiated the deal. When finally he came back and the cards were dealt out, he won the hand. The next time he was all in, the dealer, players, and viewers were all subjected to this display again. I stopped watching, but I think it may have happened a few more times.

One of the most compelling aspects of poker is that players can occasionally force their opponents to make decisions for more money than they are really comfortable losing. I think this aspect of poker is especially important when you consider poker's value as a spectator sport: these high-risk situations create pretty intense drama. Why, then were ESPN and the WSOP willing to allow Phil Hellmuth to sap the drama out of these situations by stopping the game while he negotiated "insurance" for himself? I'm not really sure, but I assume it's because Hellmuth is one of their most recognizable star players, and this was an opportunity to show him doing something other than whining or deriding other players. Unfortunately, in addition to losing entertainment value, allowing players to insure themselves in the midst of individual hands also interferes with the integrity and fairness of the game.

A standard strategy used by players with big stacks in tournaments is to try to push around their more vulnerable short-stacked opponents by forcing them all-in and making them risk elimination if they decide to call. Allowing players to insure themselves against being knocked out greatly diminishes the effectiveness of this strategy. I'm assuming that the WSOP doesn't allow ALL players to stop play and negotiate insurance packages whenever they are put all-in, since this is clearly infeasible due to time constraints. (Not to mention the fact that this would encourage an odd black-market insurance industry where financiers would jockey for position on the sidelines of major tournaments!). By allowing some players to insure themselves and not others, the WSOP is making their tournaments blatantly unfair.

Poker tournaments like the WSOP and the WPT have had plenty of scandals already. For example it has been exposed recently that there have been instances of collusion in tournaments (a problem that is especially rampant online). Another example is the better known situation where the WSOP invited Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, and Phil Hellmuth to join the WSOP Tournament of Champions, thus diluting the pool for all the players who had earned their spots in the tournament. The difference in this situation with the insurance is that it was entirely condoned by the WSOP, ESPN and the commentators. The one hit I could find on google discussing the event also seems to condone it. Previous infractions were either fixed or at least swept under the rug in shame. The fact that nobody else seems upset about Hellmuth being able to pause the game to get an insurance deal and that the WSOP and ESPN producers don't seem to consider it necessary to hide such behavior is what really worries me. I hate to see poker losing it's distinction as being a truly equal-opportunity endeavor.

LA to Vegas to LA to Philly to Boston to Cleveland, back to LA

Having just returned from another trip east, I haven't had the opportunity to blog or play much poker recently. Two weeks ago I was in Vegas for a bachelor party, and I managed to find some time for some poker. I didn't play much, but from what I saw the game has gotten tougher in Vegas since last year. At the Bellagio, I sat down at their 5-10 NL game and immediately recognized two pros to my left, one of whom I remember as being among the best players I can remember playing against (I don't know his name, just remember him making lots of good decisions and no bad ones). When a new 2-5 NL game started, I got up and moved over there. Several of my fellow bachelor-party-goers also joined this game (I think Ben, Joe, Andrew, and Aaron were all there), but since this was "must move" table, we were soon dispersed to other 2-5 games. My table had a few drinkers, one of whom was pretty bad. Other than the the table was rather tough. This was a Saturday afternoon, so although I didn't expect the games to be very wild, I thought there may be more inexperienced tourists there. The Bellagio used to be teeming with them on the weekends, but it seems the pool has dried up a bit. I think Andrew was the only one to come out ahead.

Incidentally, James Woods sat at the 5-10 table shortly after I left it. He was accompanied by a woman who I suspect was his girlfriend, but, by the look of her, she could just as easily have been a professional escort. In any case, Woods seemed to find it satisfying to show her off to the other poker players.

Speaking of celebrities playing poker, supposedly Jose Canseco comes to Hollywood Park rather frequently and plays in their daily tournaments; I haven't noticed him. (How do they know it wasn't Ozzie?)