Bank accounts, poker sites, and player's money

n an apparent crackdown on Internet gambling, federal authorities in New York have frozen or seized bank accounts worth $34 million belonging to 27,000 online poker players, according to representatives for the players and account holders.

That's the lead paragraph in a Wall Street Journal article the other day. And it's wrong.

It's correct that Poker Player's Association said that, but it's not correct that PPA represents players -- they are a lobbyist for poker sites. And, it's not true that poker player's money was seized.

The money seized does not belong to poker players. It belongs to third party payment processors (called money launderers by the DOJ) who owe the money to poker sites who in turn owe the money to poker sites.

Poker sites would like you to think it was your money seized so they can blame their failure to pay their debts on the US government. And PPA is just doing their part in helping poker sites prepare to scam you.

The misrepresentation that PPA is putting out gets picked up by the WSJ and even by some of my favorite bloggers. PPA disgusts me.

Celebrity Apprentice

Joan Rivers beat Annie Duke on Celebrity Apprentice. I didn't watch the final episode, although I did watch most of them during the season. I watched Breaking Bad last night and switched over in the final moments to see who Trump was going to pick as the winner.

2+2 has a long discussion on the show, most of which focuses on personalities and conspiracy theories. The best analysis of the show I've seen is Danny Boy's. He does a really good job of analyzing the show.

He's so much more coherent when he's not drunk.

(I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. I just don't have it in me to be able to compliment Danny without an insulting followup.)

Although I do think Danny Boy did a good job in his overall analysis of the show, I do have to disagree with him about one thing. He says

I wasn't all that thrilled with how the profession of poker was portrayed on the show and I'd like a crack at giving people a different perspective. Too much emphasis was put on words like "deceit" and "manipulation" and while those are tools used at a poker table, I don't believe that if you play poker for a living those tools are something that are necessary in order to succeed in life, or in a game like Celebrity Apprentice.

I think that as a general rule poker players are a bunch of weasels. I don't like most of them and I don't trust most of them. That probably has something to do with why a lot of them don't like me.

Danny himself is a good example of the kind of weasels poker player's can be even away from the table.

A few years ago, before he got rich and famous, Danny-Boy was insulted by me and he challenged me to a duel, a heads-up poker match. Normally I ignore such school-yard pestering, but Danny offered 10-1 on a cash wager on the outcome of a 40 hour heads up limit hold'em match.

That was almost impossible to turn down. Even if Danny was a better player than me (something that's entireely possible) there's no way he would be a 10-1 favorite.

The initial problem was that I had no money. I also think that Danny-boy was busted at the time (this was before he was rich and famous) but he wasn't going to admit it. I tried to get Danny to give me a number, a maximum bet he would be willing and able to cover. He wouldn't do it.

By offering investors 6-1 on their money I thought I could raise $100k. So I suggested that to Danny -- my $100k versus his million dollars. He agreed. But the way he behaved I still wasn't convinced he wasn't busted. I don't think he really had the money and I don't think his tournament backers would have been willing to lay 10-1.

But I went to work on it anyway. Trying to raise cash. I found a video film maker willing to produce a documentary on the event. I found a backer to finance a series of vidios on heads up poker. I got a radio DJ to do a live internet braodcast of the event. I even talked to a Swedish TV producer about doing a reality TV show on the event. This was all before poker on TV was widespread. One of Danny's stipulations was that we play in either Las Vegas or Los Angeles. The match would have been legal in Texas and we could have done it rake free (I had a volunteer with many years of WSOP dealing and floor experience to deal it). But Danny wouldn't go for that. So I found a casino in Las Vegas that would sponser the event.

Then Danny balked. His new stipulation was that I just come out to Vegas and find him at the Belogio and we'd sit down and play right then. No advance planning, no fund-raising, and if I showed up on a day he wasn't in town that's just my tough luck.

That stipulation was presented after he had a friend call me (I think it was a potential backer of Danny) and talk to me about backing me. He wanted to know why I thought I had a chance to beat Danny. I was fairly open about that and would have told have told Danny if he'd have just asked. I thought I could play close to a game theory strategy and that Danny would likely beat himself with FPS trying to dance around.

Anyway, when it came time for Danny to call the casino that would be hosting the event to make arrangements for him to deposit his buyin (I didn't want to go to far in the planning until I actually saw the money -- I had some commitments from backers but didn't collect the monies because I never did think Danny would actually follow through). When it came time to show the money Danny Boy went berserk and the match clearly wasn't going to happen.

Basically I think Danny Boy is a worthless pestering weasel and that his lack of character is very typical of professional poker players.

Annie Duke

I'm sorry, but this woman really does remind me of Annie.

Andy Beal

Andy Beal is the Texas banker who played a series of headsup matches against members of a Las Vegas "poker corporation". Micheal Craig wrote The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time about the series of matches.

It seems that Beal plays poker with his bank assets also. And he plays pretty well.

A banker who resisted the urge to invest in toxic assets during the boom is cleaning up during the bust. Andy Beal of Beal Bank in Plano, Texas "virtually stopped making or buying loans" from 2004 to 2007, leading people around him to think he was crazy. Now he's buying up loans at fire sale prices and has tripled his bank's assets to $7 billion in the last 15 months, and without government bailout money.

Have a drink

No, Danny-Boy doesn't have a drinking problem

I broke pretty much all of my rules going into this tournament, some of which just aren't my fault. My rules are simple:

1. Unpack immediately (did that)
2. No socializing the night before
3. Dinner alone in the room
4. No drinking
5. 8 hours of sleep

I broke 4 out of the 5 rules. I played in the Ante Up for Africa Celebrity event and came in 5th place. It was a lot of fun and I had a few drinks during the event. I had a fun table to start, but busted half of them and had the chip lead at the final table by a large margin before going card dead.

After the event I planned on going straight to bed, then somehow got convinced to have "one drink" at the bar. That never works! I don't know what it is about being in Europe but everything just seems like more fun. One drink turned into "more drinks" and then it just got late. I probably got about 5 hours of sleep and didn't really eat the whole night.

A weak/tight President?

Bostick wonders whether Obama is weak/tight.

Is he right?

Total Woman

I hope Annie homeschools her kids, because if they have to go to school tomorrow they aren't going to like it.

What do you think Annie was thinking?

Discussions

Gambling911

You know Annie, I loved you as a poker player, but as a person? Your 'I'm so great' attitude is grating. You constantly brag while putting everyone else down, this speaks volumes about you and less about your targets. I went into this rooting for you - but frankly, I just can't stand you anymore. It's going to be hard watching you play poker, you have really been behaving disgracefully - and this article cements my opinion - well, at least your brother seems to have class

rec.gambling.poker

Can you just imagine how many kids at school are going to bring up to
her children that she gives a "good blow job"
Kids will keep on recounting that little fact long beyond the time
they forget where it even came from. In fact, the history behind it
will be rewritten over and over against until it develops into a story
about annie blowing every male in the area.

Pokerati

I think the fact that she was talking to Playboy star Brande Roderick had something to do with her comment. I don’t know if she expected it to be aired.

IGN Boards

2+2

annie duke just became cool in my book and i would let her go down for the record

Mistakes They Make

This is an old article I did a while back and published on a now defunct website. I'm reprinting it as is
Mistakes They Make
by Gary Carson
September 20, 2000

In the last few essays we explored the conflict between the theory of poker that poker is a struggle among the players for the ante and the theory that money simply flows from the bad players to the good players. We saw how blending those ideas with the theory that poker is a betting game of choosing the right odds can help reconcile the conflict.

There are myriad theories of poker that you can bring to bear to develop a perspective for the game. As we go on in this series of essays we'll be talking about a lot more theoretical perspectives. It's important to keep the various ideas in mind. So far we've discussed:

Ante Theory. Poker is a struggle among the players for the rights to the ante.

Bad Player Theory. In poker, the money flows from the bad players to the good players. Good players win money from the bad players.

Odds Theory. Poker is about choosing bets where the odds you get on the bet are an overlay to your odds of winning.

This essay introduces a fourth theoretical view of poker -- a theory of poker as a game of mistake control.

Mistake Theory. The player who makes the fewest mistakes wins.

Looking at the game this way suggests that the road to winning poker is to keep your mistakes to a minimum. That leads to a game theory type approach with an objective that's more defensive than offensive. But, we can expand on a Mistake Theory.

Mistake Theory. The player who makes the fewest mistakes wins. The more mistakes your opponents make, the larger your win.

Now this leads us to the idea that we can win by playing defensively, but we can win big by actively exploiting our opponents' mistakes.

If you want to maximize your playing profits you must actively identify and exploit your opponents' mistakes. This approach can be risky, it usually is. But, it's the road to maximizing the net win.

To exploit your opponents' mistakes you have to know what they are. And, even knowing what mistakes they make isn't enough if you don't know when they make the mistakes. Sometimes you have to be able to predict mistakes. For example, if you know a player has a high likelihood of making a certain kind of mistake on the flop then you might call a bet preflop with a very wide range of hands, just so you'll later be in a position to exploit an opponent mistake.

So, knowing why a player tends to make mistakes can be critical. Knowing why often helps us predict mistakes.

This leads us to the importance of knowing your opponents. Not just general knowledge, but specific knowledge can have value. You need to know something about the kind of information you need to gather to develop strategies that will optimally exploit opponents' mistakes. This is not an easy thing to do, and it varies a lot from opponent to opponent.

Many proponents of a game theory approach to poker believe that players make mistakes because they don't know any better. They think that if players knew correct game theory strategies that no one would make mistakes and the games would die out. This argument is used to justify the idea that a defensive game theory approach to the game is optimal.

I think that belief is wrong. I think many players make mistakes, not because they don't know any better, but because they don't care. Players raise because it's fun. They call because they want to chase the illusive thrill of getting lucky. It's not about the money to most players. It's about the fun and the thrill.

This presumption that players only make mistakes because they don't know any better leads to mathematical and logical arguments are used to develop a strategy that has the characteristic that it is the best way to play against a player who plays well.

In a heads-up match against a player who plays well, that's probably a good approach. But, I'm not sure why anyone would want to be in that situation. In a full game, even when all the players are players who play well, I'm not so sure. Mathematically no one has ever found a game theory solution to such a multi-player game (they have to some multi-player games, just not any that look like poker). No one has even proved that any stable game theory solution exists to a multi-player poker game.

In a real poker game, against real people who are making real mistakes, the key is to identify those mistakes, predict when they'll make the mistakes, and act to exploit the mistakes.

I haven't said anything yet about how to accomplish any of this. That's not always easy to do. But, the first step is to identify what it is you want to accomplish. Only after that's done can you figure out how to accomplish it.

If you're playing heads-up, against an opponent who doesn't understand what a minimax strategy is, you can often play a minimax strategy and let him flail around trying to beat you and that might be the best way to play. Such an approach will certainly guarantee a profit. If you're heads-up against such a player who'll just keep playing until one of you is broke, then such a defensive approach will eventually get all the money.

But, that's not a typical poker situation. A typical situation pits you against many players, some of which call to much on the river, some of which fold to much on the river. So against some of the you don't want to bluff often but do want to make marginal value bets. Against others you might want to bluff a lot. Your tactics in a particular situation depend on the kinds of mistake your opponents tend to make, and that's often much more important information than the cards you happen to hold.

Segmenting the international poker market

I got a news release from Poker Stars about online poker in Italy.

We have recently obtained a licence from the Italian government to allow
players in Italy to play for real money on PokerStars.it.

Italian players can now play real money tournaments on the PokerStars.it
client, but not ring games. The PokerStars.it client will only be
available for players within Italy, and the tournaments will only have
players within Italy participating.

I'm not a big fan of this kind of market segregation, but that's the sort of thing that happens when you get too much cooperation with government.

Championship of online poker

A news release from Poker Stars

The PokerStars.com Spring Championship of Online Poker takes place from
April 2 -12. This is THE biggest online poker tournament series anywhere
online this year so far. Even better, the tournament series runs for low,
medium and high-stakes players, so everyone can have the chance to win
big. With $30,000,000 guaranteed, even the low-stakes can win big!
Satellites are running now

Theories of poker

This is a reprint of Chapter 10 in The Complete Book Of Hold 'Em Poker: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Winning

Chapter 10
Theories of Poker

Poker theory is a topic that takes much more than a chapter in a book to cover completely. At least two books devoted almost entirely to poker theory have been written, and neither of those books even attempts to fully cover the topic. The point of this chapter isn't to give a complete review of poker theory, but to provide a summary of how poker theory provides direction to strategic and tactical thinking in poker.

One problem in poker theory is that many poker analysts who write books or magazine articles about poker don't seem to really understand how theory influences thinking about the strategy and tactics of the game. Most analysts have a favorite theory about the game, and whenever they are confronted with a situation for analysis, they immediately view the situation through their favorite perspective. There are many alternative theories of poker, and a complete analysis of the game requires a frequent shifting of theoretical perspective.

In most fields it's not unusual for researchers or analysts to blur the distinction between the theory of some phenomena and a model based on the theory. That's particularly true in the poker literature. A theory of poker and a model of poker, however, are really distinct things, and I think it's important to understand that distinction when you're thinking and learning about poker.

What is a theory?
A theory has three characteristics: descriptive, explanatory, and predictive. None of these characteristics are necessarily explicit or even complete in any particular theory. A good theory is usually one that can be simply stated in one or more straightforward declarative sentences that has desirable implications for describing, explaining, or predicting observed behavior of the phenomena under study. A good theory doesn't need to do all three of these things. A good theory, however, does need to have some strong explanatory power. A theory that doesn't help us understand the game doesn't really help all that much.

An example is a simply stated theory of poker is: Poker is a struggle among the players for the rights to the ante. This theory doesn't lend much towards describing poker. It doesn't tell us how the betting is structured to facilitate the struggle among the players. It doesn't tell us how to determine which player ends up with the pot.

The theory does have some explanatory power for the first round of betting. It explains why it's usually best to limit your opening hands to those hands with self contained power rather than those that have value through drawing power. Since it does not address the pot growth that comes from multiple betting rounds, it adds nothing to an explanation of the value of hands like Jack, 10 suited in Hold 'Em.

The theory has some predictive power, but not much. A theoretical prediction for poker should provide us with a prescription for play - it should tell us something about the best way to play the game. For poker variants with multiple betting rounds, like Hold 'Em, it just doesn't do that. It does help us predict things like a tight range of likely hands that a knowledgeable player who opened from early position might have.

An example of a theory with a different kind of predictive power is: Money flows from bad players to good players. This theory doesn't have much descriptive power; it doesn't tell us who the good and bad players are. Assuming we have some other method to identify good and bad players, it does help us predict the outcome of a poker session. In fact, I used a simple mathematical model of that theory to develop the recommendations in Chapter 8 for when a single really bad player in a game can make an otherwise unprofitable game profitable.

What is a Model?
A model is a structured representation of a theory. It's descriptive of the theory, not necessarily descriptive of the phenomena. Often we can use a model to derive the predictive elements of a theory. A model might be in the form of an explicit mathematical statement, or it might just be a conceptual structuring.
An example is a game theory model of the Poker-is-a-struggle-for-the-ante-theory. You can use a game theory model to derive a list of opening hands by position. In relatively tight games, where it's typically heads-up after the first round of betting we can use that same game theory model to determine the hands with which we should be willing to call an opening bet. We can extend the use of the same model to determine when to bet, call, or bluff on the river.

For a game like draw poker, where in most games the players tend to be relatively tight and you only have two rounds of betting, you can use a game theory model to almost completely specify a winning playing strategy. That approach, however, just doesn't extend for a game with more than two betting rounds. It doesn't help all that much for a game like Hold 'Em.

Although a game theory model does help us analyze some situations, a game like Hold 'Em requires a different approach to the game. Hold 'Em is very complex and it's doubtful that we could formulate a complete model of the game - even if we could do so, the mathematics of solving it would very likely be intractable. We can, however, develop theories related to particular aspects of the game, and use the models that those theories suggest to analyze tightly defined situations.

The game theory model suggested by the ante theory is one such use. As I've already mentioned, that model can be used productively to analyze opening hand requirements in tight game conditions.

Another model is suggested by the theory that Poker is a struggle between made hands and drawing hands. This theory suggests the use of a multinomial probability model to analyze the play of drawing hands. By multinomial I mean a model that assumes multiple discrete outcomes, such as win large pot, win small pot, lose small pot, or lose large pot. Multinomial is like flipping a coin with more than two sides. A dice game is an example of a multinomial game.

The theory that Money flows from bad players to good players suggests a conceptual model of the game that implies that table selection involves looking for a table with large pots. This step from theory to model is not always an obvious one. But, it's an important one in an analysis of the game.

Variables in theory
Implicit in a theory of poker is the concept of a variable. This is something that might change value or might even be a constant with an indeterminate value. By indeterminate I mean we won't know its value until the hand is over. For example, the hand we are dealt is a variable. It's a special kind of variable in that it's random, but it's not indeterminate -- we know our hand as soon as we look at it.
The hand our opponent is dealt is also a variable, in the same way our hand is, but it's indeterminate, we won't know his hand until the showdown. By the way, my description of the hand you've been dealt as a random variable is something of an example of what I talked about earlier in the blur in the distinction between a theory and a model. In the extreme it's not really correct to call the deal random - once you've specified the initial order of the cards, tracked the exact shuffle and cut the deck it is perfectly deterministic and predictable. Of course, we don't keep track of things like the exact shuffle so it makes sense to just think of them as occurring as the result of randomness. Randomness is a model of the shuffling process, not a theory of shuffling.

Strategy and tactics
Although it's not directly relevant to theories and models, I think here is a good place to differentiate between strategy and tactics. Strategy is about the metagame. An optimal strategy is one that maximized your expected playing result over some period of time, maybe a playing session of a few hours, maybe a longer period such as months or years. Tactics are about the individual decisions that make up the play of the hand. An optimal tactic is one that maximizes the expected result of the particular situation.

The topics we've already discussed, game and seat selection, are strategic issues. There is no expectation of an immediate payoff from picking a good game or a good seat. In fact, there is no possibility of an immediate payoff. No one is going to toss you a few chips as soon as you sit down.

Playing poker as a string of tactically optimal plays does not generally lead to an optimal strategy. However, an optimal playing strategy will lead to optimal playing tactics. The reason for this is that a focus on strategic issues will tend to maximize the opportunity for profit. Without maximizing opportunity, you can't maximize profit. For example, if you consistently play in a game where the other players just aren't going to lose much money, then no amount of tactical superiority will win as much money as you would win by playing in a game where the other players will always just play until they go broke. Strategic issues, such as game selection, come first. Only then can you rationally deal with tactical issues such as a choice of what hands to play. In poker, it's usually the case that strategy focuses on the other players, and tactics focuses on the cards. The distinction isn't really that sharp, but you won't go far wrong by thinking of strategy and tactics in these terms.

Uses of Poker Theory
Poker theories help us gain a deeper understanding of inherent elements of the game. They help us develop a perspective of the game. Some of the current poker theories are given in the table below.

Table 10-1

Theoretical perspectives and game conditions


Perspective Game Conditions

Poker is a struggle among the players for the rights to the ante Very tight, tight

Money flows from bad players to good players all game types


Poker is a game of money and odds loose and very loose games

Poker is a game of partial information Very tight, tight, typical, loose, aggressive
Poker is a game of strategy and deception Very tight, tight, typical, aggressive

Poker is a contest between a made hand and a drawing hand Tight or typical

Poker is a game of kickers and hand domination Tight or very tight

Poker is a game of manipulation and pressure Typical, loose, very loose

As you can see, each of these different theoretical perspectives essentially focuses on the key variable of some particular facet of the game. No one of these theoretical perspectives provides a complete theory of poker, but each of them has its uses in developing a complete understanding of the game.
Uses of Poker Models
A poker model helps us explore the implications of a particular theory. It's through the analysis of either a formal mathematical model or a conceptual model of a theory that we can uncover the strengths and weaknesses of a particular theoretical perspective. A good poker model isn't going to try to reflect every nuance and quirk of a poker game. We can use explicit poker models, inspired by the appropriate theoretical perspective, to analyze the effects of a wide range of decisions; from deciding whether to play in a particular game or deciding whether to raise with an A A.
An example of a model is an Equity Model. PokerStove (downloadable from www.pokerstove.com) is an example of an implementation of an Equity Model.
Equity is the percentage of wins of a hand in a given situation. It’s not just the percentage of time that a hand will win, equity computation includes split pot situations as a half a win.
Some poker TV shows give hand equities of situations, some just give expected win probabilties, ignoring split pots. Some of the TV equity calculations include what’s known about discarded cards, some don’t.
A General Theory of Poker
We don't have a general theory of poker. By a general theory I mean a unified theoretical view that encompasses most, if not all, of the commonly accepted theoretical perspectives of the game. Some of these perspectives are:
Poker is a struggle among the players for the rights to the ante
Money flows from bad players to good players
Poker is a contest between a made hand and a drawing hand
Poker is a game of strategy and deception
Poker is a game of partial information
Poker is a game of money and odds
Poker is a game of manipulation and pressure
Poker is a game of kickers and hand domination
Poker is a game of implied odds

All of these theoretical perspectives are useful. No one of them is better than the others. Each is useful in a different aspect of the game. At different parts of this book, we look at poker through different perspectives. You've already seen two examples of this.
In Chapter 8, on game selection, we looked at poker through the perspective that money flows from bad players to good players. We used that perspective to identify games that involve many players putting a lot of money into the pot as profitable games.
Some poker players argue that the best games are those when the players are passive, preferably loose/passive, but also tight/passive. The reason they come to that conclusion is that they are looking at poker through a perspective of strategy and deception. A weak game of passive players does afford you more opportunity at using advanced strategies and deceptive plays, but that's not the most important source of profit in poker.
It's not a question of which perspective is superior to the other. It's a question of which perspective is more useful in helping to answer the question at hand. In the case of game selection, the key variable is the amount of money available. The money-flow perspective focuses on this key variable, and is the preferable perspective to use when considering selection of a game.
In Chapter 9, on seat selection, we looked at the game with a different perspective. There the focus was on the point of view suggested by a strategy and deception perspective. Most poker writers seem to look at seat selection through a prism of a partial information perspective.
One major difference in seat selection strategy that results from these different perspectives is in the case of maniacs. A common recommendation is to sit with the maniac to your immediate right. I suggest the opposite, sit with either him on your immediate left or half-way across the table from you. What is the reason for the difference? It's because of the difference in focus from the two different theoretical perspectives.
If you use a partial information perspective you'll want him on your right to ensure you have as much information as you can get before you have to act. There is nothing wrong with that except: We are talking about a maniac, someone who plays almost every hand and raises at every opportunity. How much more information can you have? You get very little extra information from having a maniac on your right. But having him on your left expands your tactical playing options tremendously.
Poker is a struggle among the players for the right to the ante
This perspective has relevance in the early parts of the first betting round. In Hold 'Em we use blinds rather than antes, but the point of the perspective is that the game begins as a struggle for the initial money in the pot. It's a useful perspective in determining opening hand requirements, particularly in somewhat tight games and from early position.
Money flows from bad players to good players
The premise of the ante-theory is that without some initial seed money in the pot, you have no game. The point of view of the bad-player perspective refutes that, however, with the observation that some players play so badly that they'd be willing to play even if the pot had no money to start with at all.
Poker is a contest between a made hand and a drawing hand
This is a perspective of a simple two-player confrontation where one of them has the best hand and the other has a possibility of becoming the best hand. It's a useful perspective to use when analyzing situations where you're fairly certain that you either have the best hand or are fairly certain what the best hand is. This perspective is not useful, and in fact can lead you far astray, once you have more than two or three players competing for the pot.
Poker is a game of strategy and deception.
This perspective has a focus on making advertising plays to establish a false image, outwitting your opponents by bluffs and semi-bluffs, and using position to steal pots.
Poker is a game of partial information
This perspective views poker as a mathematical game. The focus is on evaluation of information about your hand and the probable hands of your opponents. The idea of partial information games is derived from game theory.
Poker is a game of money and odds
This perspective is a view of poker where pot size and drawing odds are the important variables. It's a particularly valuable perspective for play in loose games and some aggressive games.
Poker is a game of manipulation and pressure
This perspective is similar to the strategy and deception perspective. The difference is primarily more of an emphasis on false image than on tactical uses of position. Players who view the game primarily through this perspective tend to use a lot of table talk to manipulate and confuse opponents. Amarillo Slim was a master of this. Other's who view the game through this perspective tend to apply pressure by playing in a fast, aggressive style. The current master of the techniques suggested by this perspective is probably Mike Caro.
Poker is a game of kickers and hand domination
This is an important perspective in tight games or in any games where tight players have entered the pot. The emphasis is on the added value of having two high cards rather than one. Of course, two high cards have value because of the increased probability of flopping the top pair, but the domination perspective focuses on the card that does not have a match on the board -- the kicker.

Poker is a game of implied odds
In deep stack no-limit games it’s often more important to think in terms of the possibility of winning future bets than it is to be concerned with current hand value.


What it all means
Which theoretical perspective you use to analyze a situation just depends on the situation and the game-condition context of the situation. Before you finish this book, you'll see examples of using all the theoretical perspectives to analyze the game. That's the key to developing a dynamic approach to the game. Developing the ability to quickly shift your point of view is the first step in being able to adjust to changes in game conditions - the key to winning poker.

Delusions

Danny is just being delusional when he says

In a nutshell- I'm cutting back... big time. Cutting back on all of the extra "stuff" that I do and also going to lighten my load in terms of travel. PokerVT is something I'll continue to put my efforts into and teach those that sign up, but aside from that I'll be doing a lot less teaching. People are already getting better and just giving away my secrets is starting to feel like a bad idea.

"Giving away his secrets"? That's just nonsense, he doesn't have any secrets.

I looked for an old rgp thead where he described his approach to analysis of poker but I couldn't find it. But it explains why he actually thinks he has secrets.

What he had said was that when he was moving up in limits in Las Vegas he made friends with the best players at his new table and learned tips on how to play that level from them.

It's not that doesn't work. It does. But it's not about secrets. There is nothing that any competent observer can't figure out about the game by actual observation and analysis. t's not a secret that a "6" in your hand in triple draw severely handicaps your hand. You can figure that out from first principles. It's an astute observation and a good thing to know, but it's not a secret.

Danny's a good poker player. He's just not very bright.

From the comments

Blogger Greylocks said...

The big rush he had that one year he cashed in all those tournaments is long over, he's good but he's nowhere near good enough to win at the stakes he plays, and he needs to blame something.

hmmm, maybe.

I looked again for that old post where he described his choice of how to analyze a poker situation. I still can't find it, I did narrow it down somewhat -- I think somewhere in the first half of 1999.

Basically he recommended finding someone who's "play tou respect" and then jusy asking them.

That's his idea of what analysis is. Don't actually think about it. Just ask someone smarter than you are (which in Danny's case is just about everybody).

He really does think that learning poker is about "knowing the secrets".

Happiness

Probably the most interesting thing about this post is that's actually an academic journal called Journal of Happiness Studies. There's nho subject so trivial that an academic can't devote a career to it.

"Achieving sustainable gains in happiness: Change your actions, not your circumstances" is a research article in that journal which actually has implications for poker players.

The idea of the research is that having good things happen to you makes you happy, but it's only temporary. For permanent happiness you need to actually achieve something. To translate that into poker speak -- getting lucky won't make you happy but playing better will.

h/t Tasty Research

Raise

Embedded in this little story about the poker playing television celebrity, Elix Powers is an example of a mistake that's very common among dealers (and even floormen in some places).

In the story he doesn't say what the blinds are but I'm guessing 2/5. So the relevant bets are Player B (Big blind) puts up a $5 blind, Player O (Opener) makes it $20, Player R (Raiser) makes it $50 and player A (All-in) makes it $90, and is all in.

The really bad ruling is that Player R is not then allowed to re-raise. I guess because the all-in bet wasn't "twice the bet".

The actual rule is that a raise must be at least the size of the last raise, not the size of the current total bet. The $50 bet represented a $30 raise, so Player A could have made it $80 and that would qualify as a raise.

This is misunderstood by so many dealers that I don't even bother to correct them anymore. I've just given up on the whole concept of expecting competent dealers.

Chill out

Tilt isn't really about a natural reaction to stress or even an over-reaction to stress. It's about a failure to calm down after a naturally stressful event. This short video doesn't offer an answer, but it does illustrate the problem.

Pajama gamblers

A press release from the U. of Chicago

Pajama Gamblers Could Lose Their Shirts: Online Gambling Can Be Dangerously Comfortable

People who gamble from the comfort of their home tend to think they’re more in control of their gambling than people who gamble in casinos, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Authors June Cotte (University of Western Ontario) and Kathryn A. Latour (University of Nevada-Las Vegas) found surprisingly little previous research on their subject: the habits and motivations of online gamblers, who contribute to a $10 billion a year industry.

Their study found that, unlike casino gamblers, who seek thrills and social experiences, online gamblers seek the anonymity their home computers provide. “For casino gamblers, gambling provides a perceived social connection with unknown others in a sense of shared fates and temporary community. Online gamblers, on the contrary, perceive a lack of social connections in the online realm.”

The researchers conducted a study of 30 Las Vegas gamblers. Ten were online gamblers and 20 were casino gamblers, and all considered themselves to be regular gamblers. The study involved in-depth interviews using visual images and collages created by the participants.

In the course of the study, the authors found significant differences in perceptions and attitudes between people who gamble in casinos and people who gamble on their home computers. Because sensations are not as intense in online gambling, online gamblers tend to play for longer amounts of time, and they think they’re more in control of their gambling, the authors found.

The authors believe that regulating online gambling may remove the excitement of doing something illicit.

“When gambling consumption moves into the home, gambling behavior becomes a part of everyday living. When not seen as reserved solely as behavior for an outing, gambling is more likely to become an insidiously integrated component of a consumer’s life,” the authors conclude.

June Cotte and Kathryn A. Latour. “Blackjack in the Kitchen: Understanding Online Versus Casino Gambling” Journal of Consumer Research: February 2009.

Controlling the Internet

Now Italy has joined the ranks of the US and the Netherlands in trying to control the internet. It isn't likely to work for them either.

Today's Gambling Music

Gambling Blues

Policing the internet

It appears that the United States isn't the only country having a problem getting banks to control the internet for them.

Dutch banks don't like the idea much either.

Of course with what's going on with that Lori Drew prosecution it may be that they won't need the banks to do their policing for them, they can just put us all in jail for violation of the TOS from random websites.

Today's Gambling Music

Blues for Gamblers

Characteristics of a good game

Will in New Haven started a thread on rec.gambling.poker talking about what he calls a paradox of game conditions.

If two games are available the game with the better conditions will
attract the thinking players, making the game with inferior conditions
the better game.

The paradox arises when you think of structural characteristics of a game (such as rake structure, ante structure, or house amenities) as important.
The structure of a game actually has almost nothing to do with a games profitability. The characteristics of the players is pretty much all that matters. Structure only matters to the extent that "good" structure will attract a bunch of nits.
There really isn't a paradox if you think of game conditions in terms of the players rather than the game.

Today's Gambling Music

Kentucky Gambler, Merle Haggard

Regulation of the internet

It appears that the US Treasury finally realized that trying to control the internet with silly banking regulation is just more than their little pea-brains can deal with.

After receiving a flood of objections from financial institutions, the Treasury Department will not require them to figure out the difference between legal and illegal online gambling, a distinction Congress deliberately left vague and regulators refuse to clarify. The Bush administration's final regulations under the UIGEA, issued last week, require American credit card companies to invent new codes for certain transactions and require financial institutions to ask their clients to avoid illegal gambling.

Showdown at FullTilt

With lawsuits come depositions. Depositions mean a lot of questions. Lederer and Ferguson have shown a lack of interest in giving straightforward explanations about ownership of FullTilt in the past (they claim to own the software that's being leased to FullTilt). It will be interesting to see how they handle the deposition questions from Clonie's lawyer.

Fixed Limit Texas Holdem Strategy Tips

When players start out in fixed limit Texas holdem, they often focus on the strength of their own hands.If they like their two cards, they bet, if not, they check or fold.
While limit Texas Holdem strategy does rely in large part on playingpremium hands, more advanced players can add other strategies to theirrepertoires to improve their chances of success.
We’ll mention two important stratagems that will your poker power.

Check-Raising in Limit Texas Holdem

One important strategy to employ in fixed limit holdem is thecheck-raise. Since the game is fixed limit, building big pots can be a challenge. Thecheck-raise is one way to get a lot of money in the pot when you have a big hand.
A great opportunity to check-raise occurs when someone has been bettingthe whole way and you have a monster. You can check call pre-flop, and onthe flop, then check the turn and raise when he bets. The pot is now so large thatunless the player is on a complete bluff he will have a hard time not callingthis bet and a subsequent bet on the river.
You can wait for the river to check-raise. However, you risk the otherplayer deciding the pot is sufficiently large and checking behind you on theend.

Making it Two Bets in Limit Texas Holdem

In limit TexasHoldem, there may be some situations in which you can benefit from forcing otherplayers out of the pot. If you have a made hand, you want to discourage draws. Oneway to do this is by making it two bets. If someone on your right bets, you canraise.
Now players who might have called one bet to try and hit their draw willhave incentive to fold. If you are first to act and you suspect a player onyour right will bet when it gets around to him, you can check. When everyoneelse checks looking for a free card and the last player bets, you can thenthrow in your raise.
Now all the drawing players face two bets and the risk that it will beraised and re-raised again, once it goes back around. You are highly likely toachieve your goal of a heads up pot in this instance. If you had a goodmulti-way hand, you would have bet out right away, let other players call and the lastplayer raise, then flat called so that the other players would be pricedin.

Poker Books

There's a thread on 2+2 suggesting that Sklansky should write a book on mathematics of poker.

He did. A long time ago.

It's called Getting the Best of It

To those kids at 2+2 it didn't happen if they haven't seen it on TV.

Dormant accounts

Poker Magazine has a story on online poker rooms that charge huge fees against dormant accounts. Read the story and beware.

Palin on gambling

From here

No expansion of gambling in Alaska
Q: Do you support the expansion of gambling in Alaska?
A: No, in so many cases, gambling has shown ill effects on families and as Governor I would not propose expansion legislation.

Q: Would you sign any bills that expand gaming in our state?

A: No.

Source: Eagle Forum 2006 Gubernatorial Candidate Questionnaire Jul 31, 2006

What a joke

One of my favorite pastimes has been making fun of stupid things about poker that Brother Ed Miller says on his blog. Sometimes I comment on it here, sometimes at playingnolimitpoker.

But Brother Ed has taken away one of my favorite pastimes by making his blog a pay site. What a twit. The guy's just an unfriendly neighbor.

The Complete Book of Casino Poker

I'm not sure but I think the book is out of print. That doesn't stop somebody from doing a review of The Complete Book Of Casino Poker though.

Don't try this at home

Another reason to not cold call with KQo.

Doyle Brunson's Secretsw

Random Shuffle Quotes David Benyamine:

Great cash-game players know when to play good games and when to leave bad games.

It calls to mind Doyle Brunson’s top two secrets for getting rich playing poker.

Major Riddle

Jimmy Chagra

Ghosts at the table

As I mentioned elsewhere, I've spent the last few days laying around in a hospital getting some heart bypass surgery.

One of the byproducts of that is that I got a chance to read a couple of books I've been meaning to read. Ghosts at the Table: Riverboat Gamblers, Texas Rounders, Roadside Hucksters, and the Living Legends Who Made Poker What It Is Today is one of them I've been meaning to read.

In the preface he touts himself as something of a historical treatment of poker. I'm not sure that's really accurate. It's more a treatment of the legends of poker than of the history of poker.

For example, the first chapter deals with the death of Wild Bill Hickock while playing in a poker game in Deadwood, South Dakota with the focus of the discussion on the Aces and Eights "Dead Man's Hand Legend".

History and legend are two different ways to use the past as a device to illuminate the present or future. Legends are cultural traditions formed around a story. They aren't true in a factual sense, but are true in a cultural sense.

That's not to say that legends are never factually true. Often they are. But the factual truth of a legend isn't the point of the legend.

On the first page of his preface, Wilson talks about a classic myth of poker, one that he (and almost everybody) treats as if it's factual. That's the idea that a poker player has to win at poker to be a winner at poker. That, of course, isn't true, and never has been. Many of the examples he gives in the book are of "professional poker players" who made their living making book on sporting events, or dealing faro games, or providing government protection to bordellos, or play using money from "backers", etc, etc.

There's nothing new in the book, although it's well put together. If you aren't up to date on the works on poker myths and legends it might be a good read for you. If you are it's probably a waste of time.

Update:

I wrote this review before finishing the book. I did run across something I hadn't run across in a book before -- a short discussion about poker in Victoria, Texas. I lived and played poker in Victoria in the period shortly after the boom time he talks about in the book and can verify the accuracy of what he has about Victoria. And, it is something you would not have run across in previous readings.

Collecting chips

If you're going to collect casino chips stick to casinos fixing to go busted or close up shop.

Criminals and gambling

Lou doesn't think actual criminals could possibly be involved in running an internet gambling operation.

The TV culture

It didn't happen if it's not on TV but they all look alike on TV.

Catfish Bend Casino

A few months ago Catfish Bend Casino, run by a bunch of dead raccoons in Iowa, fired a security supervisor for putting a Dilbert cartoon on a bulletin board in the employee break room.

I'm happy to report that he has a new job.

If you've been to Catfish Bend in the last few months you should be ashamed of yourself. It's run by truly worthless slime.

Bill-O and poker

Bill O'Reilly discovers poker blogging.

Effective yesterday, all articles on the site (Brother Ed's blog) older than 30 days are unavailable. We’re going to develop a system to allow the content to be accessed for a fee, and when it’s ready the archive articles will be available again at some cost per article.

What an ultimate weenie.
He's happy with providing free content.

My original vision for this site was that it would be free to read. I always intended to make money from it, but I wanted that money to come from advertising, from donations, and from other sources, not from my readers. For a year and a half I’ve been delighted with how that free-to-read model has been working out.

But his evil masters have objected.

For about the last nine months, behind the scenes, I’ve been receiving pressure and threats aimed at forcing me either to shut down Noted Poker Authority or to make the vast majority of its content available for pay only (sounds ridiculous, I know). Up until now I’ve refused. But it’s become unpleasant and disruptive enough to me that I’m giving in. I’m not proud of it, but when I weighed my options this one made the most sense for me personally.

It's not really his fault, he's just a pawn in the hands of "those who control him".

I’m not happy with this solution, but to me it was basically either this or take the site down completely, so I’m going with this.

Pathetic.

Value of a gambling operation

Whenever you see some TV report of a bust of a large drug or gambling operation you often hear some big number quoted as "street value" of the drugs or the "revenue" of the gambling operation. It's almost always some really big, really bogus number.

Some bookie who does a million dollars of business over a weekend isn't likely to seeing anything close to a million dollars. Almost all the bets he books are done on the books. He won't even collect half million from the losers to pay to the winners. Many of the winners had previous losses on the books so they aren't going to get paid anything for this weekends win. Many of of the losers will be allowed to carry this weeks loss over to next week.

But prosecutors like numbers like a million, it makes them sound important.

Also, federal sentencing guidelines used to allow them to seek longer sentences if they could invent really big numbers to describe the handle. A recent court decision seems to have changed that.

The Supreme Court says that judges have to take into account actual profits when determining the size of a gambling operation, not just look at some theoretical total cash flow. If state courts (and newspapers) would adopt the same thinking it would help a lot in reducing silly raids on private poker games. The way things are now a prosecutor can make a poker tournament look a lot bigger than it actually is by doing something really silly like counting the denomination of chips on the table.

I doubt that this court decision will actually change how local prosecutors try to manipulate local news stories, but it's a start.

Full Tilt Scam

Full Tilt isn't paying people their money.

They'd like to pay, but they aren't sure they will.

Check back with them in a couple of weeks and they'll let you know whether or not they decided to actually pay people their money.

All I can say is Wow.

From the chatline

Say in a chatline at a table today

can't seem to beat the river today

Why do we treat the elements of the game as opponents to fight?

Don't try to beat the river, cooperate with the river. Don't fight the game, play the game.

World Series Live

Back in the days when the newest technological advancement in communications was television broadcast in color, the World Series of Poker was a gambling event run by gamblers. Today it's run by hotel people at Harrahs and reality TV experts at ESPN.

I think they're fixing to get bit on the ass by the gamblers who still play in the World Series of Poker.

WickedChopsPoker reports the plans under consideration for this summer:

Play would be halted this July once the field was whittled down to its final nine players, and then delayed until three months later. The idea is to make the final table a big television event with plenty of lead time to hype the finalists and so no one knows who the winner is until the show airs.

Random Shuffles suggests that there might be some bad results from such a plan

Sure, let's give the final table three months to cut secret deals and work out what tapping twice vs tapping three times means when checking. Of course, they can do some of this in the short period between the last two sessions, but there's a limit on how much they can get accomplished. Over three months, you can not only work out a whole set of cheating signals, but you can practice your cheating.

But, the potential for cheating isn't just about deal making. Don't forget, we're dealing with gambler's here. Prediction markets are ripe for exploitation if the reality TV planners at ESPN and Harrahs actually give some gamblers a few extra months to set up something. What maroons.

The prediction market hustlers are already fixing Tennis and snooker matches. Does anybody really think it would be tough to exploit prediction markets on the winner of an over hyped WSOP final table given 3 months of hype time?

Even exchanges that are highly regulated and heavily policed can't keep out the cheats. We don't need to make it easy for them.

Research on skill and poker

I've been meaning to comment on this paper. But Random Shuffle said pretty much everything I intended to say about it. Not quite everything, but close enough.

Removing thorns from UIGEA

I wonder why the PPA hasn't been trying to support this legal effort rather than trying to have online poker declared illegal?

Online poker isn't currently illegal. If PPA has it's way then online poker offered by companies not approved by the US government would be illegal.

Update:
Here's some more on it.

Absolute Poker update

Although most poker players have ignored the cheats running Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet, it seems that it hasn't been totally ignored by network news.

This is a better story than one about David Sklansky's sex life

Elliot Spitzer, the Governer of New York, the guy who caused PayPal to retreat from the gambling site payment services business back when he was Attorney General of New York, got caught with a hooker.

A $4,300 hooker, which is more than even Sklansky has to pay to get layed.

Although four people have been indicted for Mann Act and money laundering violations, he hasn't yet been charged with anthing. If (when?) he is charged it likely won't be on prostitution related charges, it will likely be for structuring bank transfers and money laundering.Structuring is the sizing and timing of bank transactions designed to keep them under the radar, for example making frequent $9,900 cash deposits.

It appears that he has been a long time customer of the escort service (they refer to him as Customer #9). The federal investigation didn't begin as an investigation into prosecution. It began becuase his bank transaction structuring caused the Feds to suspect that he was trying to launder bribe money.

There's a lesson here for poker players. Don't structure bank transactions.

Update:
As you might expect, Wicked Chops Poker is all over this story.

Also, Simple Justice, a blog of a NY criminal defense attorney has some thoughts. Simple Justice is written by a better man than me.

I doubt that Spitzer has the good sense to actually hire a real criminal defense attorney, I'm sure he'll rely on some political hack for his defense. That isn't likely to work out for him real well.

Update II:
Letterman Top 10 Spitzer excuses.

Getting banned at 2+2

I'm probably the only person around who got banned at 2+2 for not posting there.

I used to post there. It was long ago, back when Mason didn't ban people but did delete posts he found offensive. Offensive pretty much was defined as a post that pointed out some error that Mason had made. Mason made a lot of errors and I often ponted it out. So he'd delete my posts often.

So I quit posting.

A few months later he banned me.

Now he has a whole team of volunteer banners moderators.

Update:
Other blogs on bans at two plus two.

If you say it often enough it becomes true

Neverwin tells some stories about various encounters with Sklansky. One of the stories is a good illustration of the truth of the title of this post.

Then the game gets shorthanded like 4 or 5 handed, and he says, I'm done too unless anyone is interested in some Omaha hi low with no restrictions, or maybe it was Stud hi lo with no restrictions. The other players pretty much said no fuckin way I'd play that game with you, your a fuckin math genius. Moral of the story : Sklansky is a feared Hi LO no restrictions specialist be careful.

I'm pretty sure the game he suggested was stud hi/lo with no restrictions. He used to play that game in college (Yes, David did go to college for a year). Ever since then, whenever he gets a chance he'll tell whoever wants to listen that he's the worlds greatest expert in the game. After all, he beat the game regularly in the Student Union during almost the entire year of 1967 (or whenever the hell it was).

The truth is that what David is is a nit. stud hi/lo with no restrictions is not a game that's often spread in cardrooms. When it does get spread it will be likely populated by people who don't know how to play hi/lo split games. Against that kind of opposition then all it takes to clean up is to be a nit. It doesn't take any more than that, against weak opponents being a nit is being an expert.

So whenever he gets a chance David will claim to be an expert at it. It's good for his reputation.

As far as David being a math genius. Well, that must have been a joke.

I actually like David. And I think he's written a couple of very good books. He's also written a couple of very bad books. And even his good ones have some major errors. David's not very well educated, he has some amazingly stupid beliefs (such as inbreading causes blindness and that autistic women have the mental capacity to give consent to sex with men 40 years older than them) but I still like him.

I'll still like him when he ends up in prison for statutory rape. But David's not actually an expert on much of anything and he's far from a math genius (his math skills are mostly computational). He does have some fun delusions though.

Tax and destroy

I don't understand why so many people seem to think it's a good idea for the government to view online poke as a potential cash cow for government tax collections.

Some in Congress are beginning to recognize the potential financial windfall of legalized online gaming.

Back when the mob ran the numbers game the payouts averaged 60% of the take, now that the state runs it a Pick 3 pays $500, 50% of the average take.

It's even worse for the big prizes. State lotteries target the million dollar payouts at 50% of projected sales, but that's the nominal payout, the actual payout is discounted from that based on a 20 year payout.

You got a better deal when crooks ran it.

Excessive taxation is destroying horseracing. Even New York City is in danger of losing it's off track parlors to high state taxes.

Find another arguement for justification of keeping poker legal. Don't use "if you legalize it you can destroy it and make money while you're destroying it" as your arguement. It's really self-destructive.

Brandi Hawbaker causes two plus two upheavel

There's enough other blogs out there that will tell me about what's going on at twoplustwo.com that I don't need to read it anymore. It's like all you have to do to follow the soap opera storylines is go to the beauty parlor. I learned about the most recent storyline development from Wicked Chops Poker.

David Sklansky has been banned from posting on twoplustwo.com. It's a temporary ban, but even after the ban is over he'll be on probation and his posting activity will be monitered closely by Mason.

That's pretty much what Mason promised me when I stopped posting over there. He promised to allow me to post again if I promised to be nice to him. Of course Mason never figured out that I wasn't actually banned until a few months after I'd stopped posting. None of those guys are what you might call real bright.

Maybe if Mason started a new policy of not employing 60 year old men who dated 16 year old runaways, 21 year old autistic women, or 30 year old alcholoic hookers then some of this stuff would not happen so often.

What's the law in Nevada about men having sex with women who aren't mentally capable of giving consent?

I'm glad the writer's strike is over. Mason would never be able to come up with these story lines without his team of comedy writer's back in action.

Slow Play

Slow play is really overrated. Here's a slowplay that probably cost the guy a bet.

It's a razz game. $2/$4 with 25c ante.

I'm dealt a (A 2) with an 8 up.

Relevant cards showing are a couple of 4's, a 7, a 2, and an A.

A Q brings it in for $1 from my immediate left (which makes me last on 3rd street).

The 2 raises to $2, the A calls. I call. The Q folds.

My hand's not so hot since my weakest link (the 8) is shown to the world. But the A 2 is a pretty good hidden start and it's not going to get re-popped.

On 4th street the 2 catches a 3 and the A catches a J. I catch a 2. It pairs me but nobody knows that.

The 2 3 bets, the A J folds. I probably should fold. But I think the chances are pretty good that the 3 paired him. If I catch little on 5th street I'm going to look like a made 8 with a nut redraw and if he catches a brick on 5th I might be able to steal it right then. It's a little bit FPS thinking on my part, but that's what I was thinking.

But it doesn't work out that way. He catches a 6 and I catch a brick (a K). I'm done now. But this is where he gets just really stupid. He checks.

Check? With a 2 3 6 board against a probable made K with a draw to a smooth 8?

He might as well have just turned his cards faceup. He has a made 6. I have no doubt.

If I didn't have the pair, if I actually had a draw to a smooth 8, then I might well call a bet from him here, still thinking that he's paired. But when he checks even if I'm drawing to an 8 and make it I'm done with this hand.




\

Theory of Poker and mistakes

Somebody asked about the two mistakes in Theory of Poker.

First is the Fundemental Theorem of Poker. It's not fundemental, it's not a theorem, and it's not about poker.

It basically says that if I have KK and you raise for all the chips and I know you have AA, KK, QQ, JJ and each of those possibilities is equally likely then I've made a mistake if I call and it turns out you have AA.

It's results oriented, it says it's a mistake to act on what you actually know, it has nothing to do with expected value. It's wrong.

The other error is David's idea about playing hours, not results. He claims that if you have an overall expected value of $1 per hour and you play 10 hours then you've earned $10 no matter what the actual outcome.

That's wrong on so many levels it takes more than a single blog post to discuss it. It's just an absurd idea.

Who to trust?

Poker Girl in Vegas asks

I never know who to trust

It's not difficult. Just never trust anyone you meet in a poker room or an NA meeting.

David Sklansky is an idiot.

An idiot. A total idiot. He has the brains of a dead armadillo.

He not only carries a vibrator in the glove compartment of his car, he thinks incest causes blindness.

I'm not the only one who thinks he's an idiot.

And Theory of Poker has at least 2 major errors.

Closing doors

The NYT has an article about research on the human tendency to want to leave themselves options, even when we know the options have no value. I was going to write about this and relate it to poker and getting yourself pot committed but decided to just point you the article and let you think about how it relates to poker.

Does Gambling Regulation Lead to Crooked Cops?

Maybe if we had fewer gambling laws we'd have more honest cops? Just a thought.

State regulation and internet poker

A commenter to my recent PPA post asked about the form of state regulation I might like to see.

I don't see any reason to change what is. Every state already regulates gambling to some extent (except for Hawaii and Utah, which just ban it outright).

Regulation of the internet should be done by international treaty, not by the Federal government, not by individual states. Whether it's internet porn, or internet gambling, or internet sales of motercycle parts, or internet political discussion doesn't really matter. It's a form of communication. It's protected by the first amendment. Government agencies have no business meddling in it.

Commercial transactions, such as gambling transactions, do have some special government interests involved. One such interest is to protect citizens from fraud. That's a good thing. But we don't need regulation to do that. We don't need criminal law to do that. Regulation and criminal law are both very heavy handed. Commercial fraud is a civil tort and we need wide discovery rules in the individual state courts for citizens who want to bring civil action against interet sites such as Absolute Poker. We need broad ability to go after affiliated assets, such as assets of high profile paid spokespersons or of internet companies who do business with internet gambling sites.

Let's see what Annie Duke and the PPA think about that idea?

More PPA thoughts

They actually have "talking points" on their website. I think that's creepy. But I have some thoughts about them.

Technology has progressed to effectively combat problem gambling and ensure that players are of legal age.

What does this even mean? What technology effectively combats problem gambling? I read a recent Newsweek story about advances in drug treatments for some addictions, but they talk mostly about more direct chemical addictions. Although the brain chemistry works in a similar way for gambling problems, were still a ways away from an actual technological treatment.

So I guess they're talking about computer technology. Are they talking about some overall government tracking of gambling activity? Some big brother technology? What are they talking about here? And why is it a good thing?

Billions in potential tax revenue from online poker are being lost under the UIGEA.

Uh. This is nonsense. There was no tax revenue. UIGEA didn't cause something that never was to be lost.

Appropriate federal regulation can ensure that minors are kept out of sites, services are provided to problem gamblers and the proper taxes are collected.

Now we get to the nitty-gritty. Federalism. Historically in the US gambling regulation has been a state function, not a federal function. The Wire Act was an exception and sports betting in general has been an exception. Casino gambling, poker, horseracing, bingo, and other forms of gambling have been left completely up to the states to regulate.

Is it the position of the PPA that the US government should federalize the regulation of gambling in the United States? Do they really think that's a good idea?

Prohibitions don't work. The UIGEA effectively bans online poker in the U.S. and drives those players underground. Meanwhile, poker continues to grow in popularity nationwide. 75 percent of Americans oppose banning online poker.

The problems with UIGEA is that it interferes with personal banking transactions and tries to regulate international internet financial transactions in a very heavy-handed way. Exempting poker isn't going to do anything to solve the fundamental attack on freedom represented by UIGEA.

If Congress allows me to bet on horses and state lotteries online, why can't I play a skill game like poker with other consenting adults?

This skill game arguement is a joke, as I've pointed out many, many times. It just makes PPA look like a bunch of rubes. Three Card Monte is a skill game.

Please co-sponsor and support HR 2046 "Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act" and HR 2610 "Skill Game Protection Act".

I don't know what these are, but they just sound bad.

Federal regulation of the internet is a bad thing. Period.

We don't need Federal Protection of Skill Games. We need Federalism in the sense of allowing the individual states to regulate gambling.

I don't know who PPA actually represents. But who do they think will the most likely to benefit from having federal regulation of gambling of of the internet? How do poker players benefit from that kind of nonsense?

Update:
Here's another view on PPA. Well not another view, another expression of the same view.

The culture of specialization

FemaleScienceProfessor has a post up about specialization among academic science researchers. I like her blog, she expresses her thoughts and observation in clear, simple language. I've found that talent somewhat unusual among both academics and feminists and she falls into both those categories. Mostly she writes as an academic observer with just a very slight feminist slant. The post about specialization falls into the strictly academic part of her writing. But the topic is about a lot more than academics, it's very relevant to poker players.

She doesn't call it specialization, she calls it focus, here's how she describes the two camps of the focused and the unfocused

We divided neatly into two subgroups, one of which was comprised of scientists whose research is highly focused on a particular topic, and the other by those who tend to work on a wide range of research topics at the same time.

The dangers of being too highly focused on a particular form of poker game should be very familiar to all you former loball, 7-card stud, or limit hold'em players. There will be a time in the not so distant future when those dangers will also become apparent to many current no-limit hold'em players.

Reviewing books

I got an email from somebody asking me about Sklansky on Poker He asked if I'd read it.

I haven't read it. But I read Sklansky on Razz long ago in its original edition. I think it's the best Sklansky ever. Sklansky on Poker is a collection of short works of Sklansky and includes a reprint of Slansky on Razz

My correspondent has wondered about the book because he'd read a bad review of it on 2+2 by one of the resident idiot posters and suspected that meant it was probably a good book. From the review:

The section “Sklansky on Razz” is certainly the best material on that game in print, but it’s a game that’s rarely spread anymore. As for the other essays, they were even at the time of publication little more than Theory of Poker simplified and explained for beginners. The examples and many of the concepts are specific to fixed limit games, and some even more restricted to obsolete games like jacks-or-better five card draw.

Obsolete games?

I think the typical 2+2 sage is looking for a book that says a lot of "If A then do X". That kind of potential reader probably wouldn't like Sklansky on Razz.

It's been a very long time since I've read Sklansky on Razz (over 20 years) but there are a couple of key points the reader should take away from what I remember about the book.

One is the importance of never forgetting what they think you have, or what they think you might have. The other is that a draw is sometimes in better shape than a made hand, even heads up.

Those are poker concepts, not Razz concepts, although Razz is the perfect game to illustrate that. (KK)A45 might well be a much better hand than (23)A89 in a matchup with those two hands. That's a scary looking board for the made 9. Also (23)A44 actually is way ahead of (23)A89 although it's still drawing.

Important concepts made clear when you look at it from the viewpoint of razz.

Sklansky on Razz is pretty much basic stuff but it's important basic stuff. Stuff that's important to all poker players, not just Razz players.

Danny goes on the wagon for a day

Danny Boy is going to try playing sober at the tournament at the Commerce just to see if it improves his performance any over his recent play in some European events. Never can tell.

He also tells us he isn't going to tell us.

<
Speaking of cool, I just got word today that I'll be adding yet another trip to my March schedule and I don't care how far it is. I'm scheduled to be in Australia from Mar 3-8 to be a part of something that is beyond cool. I'm not sure I have the ok to talk about it, so rather than ruin the opportunity for myself, I'll wait until I get the word that it's cool to talk about before mentioning it.

I'd always thought that it would be best to not mention it if you don't want to mention it.

Curious I did a quick google on Australia Mar 3-8 and came up with this.

Take off the hat, you bum

Phil Hellmuth probably will never visit the Alamo either. When he tried to go out to eat in London this is what happened to him

Phil was asked to remove his trademark baseball cap with a gold 'PH' logo in order to sit down in the Grill (at the Dorchester Hotel). The Poker Brat decided to stand his ground and refused to take it off. The management then asked the ex world champion to leave, which he did.

Just one little mistake

It's not how many mistakes you make that matters, it's whether the mistakes you make matter that matters.

I was reading Danny Boy's recent blog post and came across this gem of a short paragraph.

I've had a really strange year in that regard. Moments of great play overshadowed by a sloppy play here and a bad call there. Thing is, I'm not discouraged in the least! You'd think I should be, but I'm really not. Why? Well, because I know it's a pretty easy fix. It's in my control and my skill level today is better than it's ever been. It's a simple case of poor preparation before tournaments.

Easy fix? I'm not so sure about that. The only poor prepreation he talks about in that blog post is playing with a hangover, drinking, and drinking too much, when he knows he shouldn't. If that's a problem for you then I really don't think it's a problem that's likely to be easy to fix. If it's really easy to fix then you wouldn't do it in the first place.

It's been my experience in no limit that your overall outcome often hinges on just one or two decisions or outcomes. You can't control the outcomes, sometimes you'll just get beat. But controlling those decisions is hard. It's hard enough that if you keep trying to convince yourself that it's easy then it's probably not going to happen.

Fear and confusion in no limit poker

Sometimes it's hard coming up with topics to write on. It's so much easier to find a topic somebody else wrote on then pick on what they write. Original thought makes my head hurt.

I don't get a lot of work done, but I wouldn't get nearly as much written if I didn't have brother Ed feeding me straight lines.

He has a recent post on betting patterns that indicate weakness in opponents. The post was okay, although as he's been doing a lot lately I think he showed some symptoms of FPS, I don't think some of the betting patterns he talks about are nearly as reliable as he seems to think. In particular I think it can be a huge mistake to treat a small lead bet on the flop as a reliable indication of weakness by itself.

But what I really want to pick on this post is his lead. He starts with

Being too readable can really hurt your no-limit game.

I certainly don't have any arguement about that.

Winning no-limit depends on fear and surprise.

Whoa.

Actually I don't think he meant "fear", I think he meant "confusion", but the idea that you should try to instill fear is a pretty common one and it's a really bad idea.

Fear is a fairly strong emotion. When I was in the Navy and heard the sound of incoming artillery I felt fear. My stomoch knoted up, my mind raced, adrenalin pumped, my body reacted with automatic defense reactions (I ducked and hit the deck hard). So I know what fear is, but I've never felt fear at a poker table. (Well, I did once.

Some opponents do feel fear, and they will be easy to exploit. But there aren't very many of them. The ones that will cause you seriuos trouble are the ones who aren't going to be fearful and will also be able to exploit you if you try to rely on instilling fear as an important part of your gameplan.

So, don't be predicable. Confuse them whenever possible. But don't try to scare them. It's wasted effort and will more likely backfire. The few times it will work are really only with opponents that are so easy to beat that you didn't need to instill fear to accomplish the task, it will only seem like instilling fear worked.

Proving his theorem and checking it twice

Here's a guy who thinks he's disproved a claim that William Chen made about the EV of doubling up early in a large tournament. He wants Sklansky to check his work to verify that he's disproved Chen's work.

Chen has a Phd in math. Skalnsky flunked out of college as a sophomore business major.

Where do these people come from?

Ethics and online poker sites

I really have more and more serious doubts about Full Tilt poker. I didn't blog about it when Clonie Gowen got caught committing plagerism, although I did put some comments on a website. But she's one of the Full Tilt "pros". Plagerism is theft. Full Tilt doesn't seem to think that's a problem. Theft is okay with them.

I really don't know what kind of ethical compass they have over there. It just seems like a problem to me.

Now we have another Full Tilt "pro" with an ethical glitch. Matasow talks about some cheating he did as if it's just another day at the office.

He took over in a tournament for a friend when he was 6 hours deep, to bring a fresh mind to the game. I personally don't think sites should have rules against that simply becuase it's impossible to really enforce the rule. But they do have rules against it. It's cheating. Some sites will take your prize money back and 86 you if they catch you doing it.

But Full Tilt seems to think it's just find so long as it's one of their insiders who is doing it. I don't know if it happened on Full Tilt or not, Matasow won't say, but why they think supporting an admitted cheat is a good idea is beyond my ability to understand.

Update:
For a couple of viewpoints that differ from mine in some ways see PokerBlog.com and Random Shuffle.

For a negative view of FullTilt's approach to ethics that's unrelated to this particular event see BlogsRGhey

Another view of gambling addictions and compulsive gambling

Lou Krieger has a post about a recent psychiatrict study on gambling addiction.

the investigators found no evidence to support the commonly held assumptions that individuals cannot recover from (gambling addiction).

I don't think gambling addiction is a problem and I think the tendency to treat it as a mental disorder is a trip down the wrong path.

I think there are a lot of people who are compulsive losers. Gambling isn't their problem, losing is their problem. And if they didn't have gambling then they'd just find some other way to lose.

Be Careful on New Poker Sites

PokerScout suggests that there might be some problems on the new poker site, DoingPoker.

A routine observation of the traffic at DoingPoker revealed some unusual activity. After further investigation, it seems likely that the site uses robotic players, or bots, to fill up the games and create the illusion of an active player base.

...

The first remarkable thing about DoingPoker is the number of players. Every online poker site has a daily cycle, with traffic building throughout the day, peaking in the evening, and bottoming out in the early morning hours. Every poker site, that is, except DoingPoker.

The site averages about 90 real money ring game players, but what is unusual is that the site has the same number of players at all times of the day and night. Over the span of 48 hours, observations at many different times showed that DoingPoker always had between 90 and 95 real money ring game players. (At the time of this writing the table arrangement had been changed slightly and player counts were consistently in the mid-80s around the clock). This fact by itself is enough to indicate that something highly unusual is gong on, but it is certainly not the end of the story.

The site offers five different poker variations: hold’em, omaha, omaha high/low, stud and stud high/low. At most sites of a similar size, players naturally gravitate toward hold’em, the most popular game, and the other games will run only sporadically, if at all. DoingPoker, however, has at least one active game of every type around the clock. Such a high level of game diversity is unheard of for such a small site.

h/t to PokerFilter.Net

Making fun of Danny Boy

I just love Danny Boy. He's such an easy target, I just don't know what I'd do for intertainment without him.

In his recent blog post he leads with

I almost never, ever, ever, go out

The lead for the second paragraph is

If I go to a club it's usually Pure

He's the only guy I know who almost never, ever, ever goes out and has a favorite club.

A tax on poker

The feds tax marijuana without it being legal, maybe they should do the same thing with poker.

The people who keep saying they should legalize it so they can tax it just don't understand government.

For horseplayers

This is an old post about overlays and late money coming into the win pool. It's a good one thoug.

Roger Clemens

For you baseball fans out there, Freakonomics Blog looks at Roger Clemens career stats

We conclude that “the available data on Clemens’s career strongly hint that some unusual factors may have been at play in producing his excellent late-career statistics.”
To be clear, we don’t know whether Roger Clemens took steroids or not. But to argue that somehow the statistical record proves that he didn’t is simply dishonest, incompetent, or both. If anything, the very same data presented in the report — if analyzed properly — tends to suggest an unusual reversal of fortune for Clemens at around age 36 or 37, which is when the Mitchell Report suggests that, well, something funny was going on.

Going it alone

Continuation of my review of The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why.

I'm not sure what this has to do with poker or Crazy Asian Gamblers, but I still think it's interesting.

This was an experiment that compared Japanese to Americans. The experiment had two conditions -- an alone condition and a group condition.

Participants in the alone condition were told that they would draw four lottery tickets, each having a one digit number on it. In the group condition, all participants beleived that they were part of a four-person group (whose members they never actually saw) and that each person would draw a lottery ticket. To participants in both conditions it was explained that the sum of the numbers on the lottery tickets would determine who would have to take the bitter drink. (They) asked participants how likely they would be among the unlucky ones.

The Japanese thought they were more likely to escape the unpleasant experience in the group condition. American men thought they were more likely to escape in the alone condition. Aamerican women behaved like Japanese.

Like I said, I'm not sure what this means in relationship to gambling. Maybe nothing.

Aggression

Here's the lead on a recent post from Brother Ed.

Playing aggressively isn’t natural.

Huh?

Not Natural?

Maybe not for vegetarian yankees.

A holistic view of poker

Continuation of my review of The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why.

Nesbitt describes a study that compared Koreans to Americans. Holistic thinking is defined (in the study) as a tendency to agree with statements such as

1. Everything in the universe is somehow related to everything else. and
2. It's not possible to understand the pieces without considering the whole picture.

Koreans were much more holistic than Americans.

The study also involved telling the participants a short murder mystery story then giving them a list of 100 items of information, asking them to eliminate the items that they could safely assume would be irrelevant to the solution of the murder mystery.

On the average Koreans eliminated 37 items and Americans 55. In addition, the higher the participant scored on the Holistic scale the more items they eliminated as irrelevant, no matter what the nationality.

What does this have to do with poker? I'm not sure. But I think it points to the possibility that asians will tend to look at more pieces of information at the table and be more likely to detect weakness as a result. Or maybe Americans are more likely to zero in quickly on the relevant items of information. I don't know.

Tilt control and attitudes about change

As I mentioned before, I've been reading The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why.

Think about this passage from page 103

Ancient Greek philosphers were powerfully inclined to believe that things don't change much or, if they really are changing, future change will continue in the same direction, and at the same rate, as current change. And the same is true for ordinary modern Westerners. But like ancient Taoists and Confician philosophers, ordinary modern Asians believe that things are constantly changin, and movement in a particular direction, far from indicating future changes in the same direction, may be a sign that events are about to reverse direction.

If you look at that pasage from the viewpoint of a typical Westerner you'll be asking yourself which of the two views is the correct view.

Don't do that.

Become an Asian for a minute and just ask yourself which viewpoint of the world works.

Think about tilt.

A lot of you tilt after things go wrong, after a bad beat. But if you look at things from an Asian point of view a bad beat is just an indication that things are fixing to get better. You won't be nearly as likely to tilt if you look at the world that way.

That would be a good thing, whether the viepoint is correct or not.

Dead spreads

A dead spread is a table with a dealer sitting in front of an open tray of chips at a table with no players. It never made any sense to me to have a dead spread in a poker room. You aren't going to start a game unless 4 or 5 players happen to walk up together and even if that happens by the time you get them all in a chair you can have a dealer come in from the break room and get the tray opened up.

But this is just insane. A poker room with an actual policy of having as many as 3 dead spreads at once. Why casino bosses who think like this are allowed out of the house without being escorted by their mother is something I'll never understand.

Divorce and poker

The only person that you can be sure will benefit from a divorce is the divorce attorney. They almost always make out pretty well. Men and women not so much.

But the effects of divorce on men and women are typically different. Typically women suffer financial hardship from divorce and men suffer emotional hardship.

Women usually are the ones that initiate a divorce, so their unhappiness is in the past. The divorce is going to tend to make them happier even though because of the nature of gender roles in a marriage they'll usually take the short end financially. Men usually didn't know they were unhappy until they got blindsided by the divorce, so the divorce itself tends to make them very unhappy.

But maybe there's something different about poker players. I don't have a big sample, but if you look at the divorces of a couple of high profile poker players the typical pattern doesn't seem to play itself out.

When Annie Duke got divorced she did just find financially. But, of course ended up just fine financially. In her case, although her marriage started out with the traditional gender roles (her husband had a small trust fund income that supported them) she didn't move to get divorced until after she'd developed her own independent career.

And Danny Boy seems to be doing just fine emotionally since his divorce.

Maybe poker players tend to develop non-traditional gender roles in their marriages?

More on the crazy asian gambler

The other day I made some comments about a book I've been reading. Among other things, I said that the Chinese tendency to look at the world as tending towards change (versus the Western tendency to look at the world as tending towards staying static) has some implications for how the different cultures looked at poker strategy.

Anything But Hold'em commented on that and said

The Crazy Asian Gambler, in my experience, tends to believe that luck is a predictable quantity.

Yes, they do. That's consistent with the world view of a world undergoing change.

The asian tendency is to view the future as knowable. Changing, but knowable. They think they can predict the future and that future involves a change, but a predicable change that moves first away from the current state then will return to the current state. Luck and fate are part of a regularity of movement in the state of the world.

The westerner tends to think the future is unknowable. But the westerner also tends to think that future states will resemble the status quo. The westerner thinks thinks tend to stay the same but random forces will push things around so much that too much noise in any attempts at prediction.

The Asian thinks of the future as moving in a smooth, wavy line. The Westerner thinks of the future as being Brownian Motion.

When playing the table versus playing individual players you need to think like an asian. You need to think of the world as moving with everything in unison, following a rythm. It works. Trust me on this.

Bodog and bloggers

Bodog is a strong supporter of poker bloggers. They advertise heavily on blog sites, paying monthly ad rates to even very low volume blogs (not high rates, but anything is appreciated by a blogger).

For a while they were running weekly small buyin tournaments for bloggers with a little added money. I played in a couple of them, they tended to have a tough field, but I always enjoyed them. I didn't play in all of them because often I'd be busy -- you know taking a nap or something. But I played in some. I even promoted it some.

Well, they've changed things a little. They're still having them but now the added money is to some leader board nonsense. Whoever ends up with the most points after X months gets a free entry to the WSOP, or something like that. Some bloggers think that's just great. I don't.

I won't be playing in those events any more. The way they've structured it now I'm the one that is subsidizing the other players if I'm probably not going to play in every event. I don't need that.

Update:

Someone pointed out to me that the added money in the Bodog Blogger events is still there, they've just added even more money to the leader board winners. So, I'm not worse of than before, I'm at least the same in terms of expected value.

But that doesn't matter to me. I have no problem with cutting of my nose to spite my face. They're adding extra money and giving it to someone other than me (to those who play every week). So to hell with them.

The purpose of government

It seems that Lou Krieger thinks the purpose of government is to confiscate money.

According to the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, a new tax revenue
analysis announced by Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA), pictured left,
estimates that regulating Internet gambling would generate between $8.7 billion
to $42.8 billion in federal revenues over its first ten years. The findings of
the analysis, prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers, were provided to all Members
of Congress by McDermott earlier this week.

Why does the government need the money? Why, to pay PricewaterhouseCoupers to do more studies for them, of course.

Antes and bring in

I was poking around in the twoplustwo archives and ran across this old post by Ray Zee.

Posted by: Ray Zee
Posted on: Wednesday, 2 September 1998, at 12:40 a.m.

Shultz,

A $2 bring in with no ante per player is exactly the same as a 25 cent ante with 7 players and a 25 cent bring in. The difference is that with bad players they tend to come in more often when they have an ante as they already feel part of the pot. A no ante bring in game really has an ante that changes in relation to the number of players taking a hand. In your game the ante is fairly small so tight play should get the money if the rake is not too high. Straight and flush cards do well in multi-way pots and highest upcard that is a pair will win money when your cards are live and you improve or can narrow the field down to just a few people. You should play tighter than the good poker books recommend at least until you can get a better grasp of the game. Good Luck.

I don't really know Ray Zee so I don't know if he's an idiot or has a drinking problem or just has a habit of spouting off nonsense without thinking. It's probably the not thinking option.

Of course his two examples are different -- different in a huge way. With the bringin and no ante a caller is getting even money on the call. With the smaller bringin and an ante a caller is getting 8 to 1 on a call.

Of course you'll get more callers with the ante, and not because the callers are bad players who think the ante has tied them to the pot. You'll get more callers because you pretty much have to be insane not to call with that structure.

PPA Update

Life's a Bluff's blog has some criticism of PPA. I made a comment in the thread. You might want to check it out.

Frank (of Lifesabluff) also made a comment on PPA's discussion forum. I didn't bother because I don't know what their moderation policy is, but I can guess.

Their response to his post is interesting. Basically they argue that we should ignore systematic cheating in the poker industry because we don't want anyone to think there is systematic cheating in the industry.

Good thinking. Bunch of slimeballs.

Stereotypes

Everest Poker thinks they have something to say about country specific player stereotypes. The whole thing sounds fairly ad hoc and not really very rigorous. In fact, the more I think about it the weaker the whole thing looks and I'm wondering why I'm even posting this.




hat tip to PokerFilter.net

Ought versus Is

Poker how-to books tend to be prescriptive, they talk about what should be rather than what is. Some poker non-fiction is more descriptive, but those don't really tend to fall cleaning into the how-to genre. Examples of pretty straightforward how-to stuff would be my books, anything written by Harrington, that kind of stuff.

I always thought that was a pretty obvious characteristic of the how-to genre.

Which is why I was surprised when I saw the thread on 2+2 that started out

If you take a look at Harrington on Hold 'Em Volume 1, published just before 2005, you'll notice that in it Dan says "I like my continuation bets to be about half the size of the pot" and "...half-pot is an ideal size...". He goes on to say you can vary your c-bets from around 40% pot on the low side (for dryer flops) to 70% pot on the high side (for the very, very drawy flops). He appeared to believe half the pot was enough to deny proper odds even on something like a J82hh board

It seems to me the average size of a continuation bet has gradually gotten larger and larger since then.

Even more amazing than the question, it that none of the answers pointed out the question was based on a false premise, they all took it was a real question and tried to rationalize an answer.

The right answer was simply that the norm was never a half-pot bet. If used to be full-pot size bet, anthing smaller was considered an underbet. Since Chris Ferguson popularized the idea of a half-pot sized bet the typical bets have gotten smaller, not bigger.

Crazy Asian Gambler

I've been reading The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why.

A basic premise of the book is that

The Chinese believe in constant change, but with things always moving back to some prior state. They pay attention to a wide range of events; they search for relationships between things; and they think you can't understand the part without understanding the whole

and

Westerners live in a simpler, more deterministic world, they focus on salient objects or people instead of the larger picture; and they think they can control events

This has strong implications as an explanation for the stereotypical Crazy Asian Gambler. That Crazy Asian Gambler is playing the table, not playing individual opponents.

There really is a difference. That was part of the point I was trying to make in my hold'em book when I talked about adapting to table conditions as opposed to other author's suggestions that you should adapt to particular opponents. You can profit from exploiting characteristics of the total mix at the table without having to worry about exploiting individual opponents. That's what the successful Crazy Asian Gambler is doing.

I think this is actually pretty profound stuff.

Poker and cheating

I haven't blogged much about the cheating scandal at Absolute Poker, in fact I'm not sure I've blogged about it at all. Mostly because I think blogging about it is pretty much pointless. The attitude of poker rooms everywhere (online and offline) about cheating is that it's best to just ignore it and it will someday go away.

Of course it won't go away, it will always be with us, another reason I think it's almost pointless to blog about it.

An example of they typical attitude about cheating is something that happened at the Coushatta Grand in Kinder right after they opened a few years ago. I was in a 20/40 game and I suspected a player I didn't know of holding out cards. Without going into details of why I thought that (it was a conclusion I came to after a couple hours of observing him and others in the game) I even thought I knew what he was holding out, I thought he was holding out a queen.

I told the floorman my suspicions and asked if he could put a camera on the guy or otherwise watch him.

I don't remember the guys name, although when I later told this story to others in places like Biloxi, New Orleans, Shreveport, and Tunica they knew who he was and told me his name. Let's call him Billy-Bob.

The floorman said, "Oh, that's Billy-Bob, I know all about the stuff he used to pull in private games but I talked to him and he promised me he wouldn't cheat in my room".

That's the typical cardroom attitude about cheating.

I'm glad to see that Lou Krieger is trying to keep the Absolute Poker cheating story alive, but I think it's a futile effort.

Liars

This post briefly explores the idea that extroverts are better at lying than introverts.

This has some application to poker and tells. One of the common tells is that most players tend to shut up, even freeze up, when bluffing. The research above suggests that is more likely to be a reliable tell among non-extroverts. The loud and gregarious types are less likely to exhibit this tell.

Budgets and bankrolls

Ed Miller advocates stop loss as a bankroll management scheme. Mason would be rolling in his grave if he was in one.

Plagerism as a writing style

Hard-boiled Poker has a thoughtful post about some recently discovered plagerism on the part of Mason Malmuth and David Sklansky and it's possible relationship with Malmtuths lack of respect for the craft of writing.

I've written elsewhere about the importance of language in communication of technical ideas, and I've written specifically about Malmuths self-delusions about the writing craft.

A cardroom to avoid

Catfish Bend Casino in Burlington, Iowa appears to have a poker room.

I don't really know anything about the poker room, but I know enough about the casino it's located in to know that you should avoid the place.

It's the casino that fired a supervisor for posting a Dilbert cartoon on an employee bulliten board.

Casinos run by drunken lemurs are not good places to play poker.

Tough games and game selection

Random Shuffle has an interesting post that touches on the idea that even tough games are good games if the dead money is deep enough.

At higher stakes the good games tend to have just one or two players who can be counted on to piss off a whole bunch of money. At lower stakes a good game tends to be one that has a bunch of players who can be counted on to piss off at least some money.

It's not really worthwhile to pick a game based on some rigid concept of how tough the lineup is, it's really just all about the amount of money that will be left on the table, not about how tough the lineup is.

Barbara Gallamore

Barbara died recently. The funeral is Saturday, in Long Beach.

More nonsense from PPA paid spokesperson

Look, I'm all for legalization of gambling. I'm for legalization of all kinds of stuff, gambling, drugs, prostitution, home brewing whiskey, having chickens in the yard, just all kinds of things. But when you use nonsense to argue on behalf of your favorite illegal activity then you're just spouting nonsense.

Pokerblog.com seems to think Annie Duke is making a compelling argument when he quotes her as saying

"Having the right to continue to pursue my profession, wherever I might choose to pursue it, is very important to me from both a financial standpoint but also from the broader perspective of freedom, personal responsibility and civil liberties."

Huh? That's compelling?

She choose a profession, playing poker in public raked games, that was illegal in most states when she made the choice. Now she argues that her freedom is being restricted? That's not compelling, that's nonsense. Why not chose burglary, or prostitution, or canning pickles without allowing government oversight?

I'm all for legalizing poker. But please don't give that kind of nonsense and call it logical argument.

Laws and logic

Bill Rini attempts to make an argument against anti-gambling laws.

Groups like Focus on the Family are good at shaping these sorts of issues to fit their needs and the poker playing community needs to do so as well. Instead of framing this as an issue of being able to play poker we need to show how hypocritical laws actually put lives in danger. The shooting death of a mathematician and former professor while playing a simple game of poker should be branded a failure of the law the same way the rise of organized crime was blamed on prohibition. Because the legal system then has only one of two choices; they can either crack down on both the rooms and the players (which is politically uncomfortable) or look at making changes that protect poker players by adopting the law to allow it.

Nice sentiments, but he's wrong.

Attempts at logical argument only works on people who already agree with you. And it's really not as logical as the one making the argument thinks.

Laws against poker do make things more dangerous for gamblers. But laws against pretty much anything makes things more dangerous for those who do those things. That's just not a reason to not make the thing in question illegal.

Walking away from the table

Ed Brayton links to a youtube clip of an old Poker After Dark show where Hellmuth throws a temper tantrum.

I was waiting for someone to ask the floor to rule Hellmuth's hand dead because he got up from the table when it was his turn to act. Nobody did though. I guess because Annie really wanted the boy to call.

PPA and a softball interview

Lou Krieger interviews some PPA slimeball. Somehow I doubt that Lou asked him where the PPA gets their funding.

I think I'm an idiot

I saw this post about knowing when to quit and thought I'd write something about my own experience at playing really badly yesterday.

I've had two car engines blow up this year so I guess you could say I've been having some transportation problems. As a consequence I really haven't been playing this much poker. But bought a new car^* a couple of days ago and was thinking about driving down to Shawnee, Jim Hankins has been touting it up some and I think he's got pretty good judgement about game selection.

But I recently changed my psychiatric meds and there's always some risk that such a change will affect my judgement in a negative way without my realizing it. So I thought I'd give myself a little test in judgement by playing some online PLO8. I failed the test.

I bought into a 1c/2c short-handed PLO8 game with $1 (there's no reason to spend a lot of money on testing). Three handed. First hand I get 66xy in the big blind, button limps, SB completes, I check.

Flop is 46Q all spades. Maybe that's a good flop, maybe it's not. I don't like it much. SB checks, I check, button bets 6c, SB calls, I call.

I'm planning on folding to a bet on the turn if I don't fill up. If not then I'm drawing for half the pot (hoping the bad guys miss that low draw). I'm just not liking the situation much.

Turn is a 4. Now I'm full. But I'm not even sure I like this now that I think about it. It's not like I have the nuts or anything. SB checks, I check, button bets 6c.

I read that little bet as either queens full, quad 4's, or a nut flush making a feeler.

The small blind makes it 12c. I read that as likely a nut flush with an A23 low draw, or something like that (it turns out that I was right about that part).

Now what should I do? The answer is fold, one of these guys pretty likely has my 6's full beat. What do I actually do? I call. Because I'm an idiot.

Then button raises enough to put me all in. Small blind calls. What do I do? Well we've already established that I'm an idiot. So that pretty much leaves me no option. I have to call to maintain my idiot status.

River is a little card, the queens full on the button splits with the nut low on the small blind and then the ultimate proof of my mental state -- I rebuy.

At least I didn't drive to Shawnee after that. When you make the kind of bad call I made the next step isn't to rebuy. It's to take a nap. Which is what I did after I lost my rebuy.

^*Well, it has 140,000 miles on it and it's a van, but new car is a good approximate description. It's at least in better shape than the Toyota pickup in my carport with the blown engine. My yard is about as redneck as you can get without actually having a trailer house in it.

Half a million dollar buy in on high stakes poker

Random Shuffle has a post about the new buy-in and blind structure for the game on the weekly TV show, High Stakes Poker. They've increased the buy-in from $100,000 to $500,000.

I don't know why they did that but it's a pretty good bet that Doyle Brunson is the reason, not anything thought up by the producers. If there's one thing Doyle has shown himself to be good at over the years it's being able to build an ultra-high stakes poker game. He knows the players he wants in the game and he knows how to structure the game to attract those players.

I don't think the changes are about television. I think they're about Doyle.

Why more people should read my hold'em book

I ran across this post on 2+2

When talking about playing speculative hands, I often read about needed a certain number of callers/limpers to play hands such as K3s or 67s. However, I've don't recall anything specifically mathematical about such hands.

As an example, early in 180 player SNG I had K3 in the small blind. Blinds were 15/30. One caller, and it's to me with 75 in the pot.

One the one hand, there is only one limper to play a speculative hand. One the other hand, I'm getting 5:1 (75:15) to call.

Is this a call?

He only got one response who said he shouldn't call. I'm not sure how you can actually answer the question since the poster doesn't tell us whether it's a limit or no limit game. Most sit-n-goes are no limit, but his obsession with current pot odds suggests he's talking about a limit sit-n-go.

Calling might be okay in a no limit game because of implied odds, but he doesn't tell us anything about stack sizes so we can't really be sure about that either.

All in all I think folding is probably the best idea but a call might not be so bad.

But that's not the reason I'm posting.

I'm posting this because of his statement

I often read about needed a certain number of callers/limpers to play hands such as K3s or 67s. However, I've don't recall anything specifically mathematical about such hands.

I don't know what that means. A statement that you need a certain number of callers/limpers to play hands like XYs is a specific mathematical statement.

So if he's seen the statement that you need 4-6 callers to play 67s or 5-9 callers to play K3s then he's seen specific mathematical statements about how many limpers/callers you need to profitably play those hands.

That's, by the way, what I say about those hands in my hold'em book (p138-144).

The overlap is related to how badly you estimate your opponents play after the flop. Of course these estimates are also based on your being in a limit game, on having late position, and on the number of callers/limpers being typical for the lineup. That last dependency is on a distinction between 6 tight limpers and 6 loose limpers. In a game where most flops are seen by 2-3 people a situation with 6 limpers is very different from that of 6 limpers in a game where 6-7 limpers is the norm.

In a game that's generally tight and passive the K3s (or even something as strong as K9s) is pretty much worthless after 6 limpers. But in a game that's generally loose and aggressive a K3s might be worth a shot.

That might not look mathematical to you, but it's still a mathematical statement. Just because it doesn't use mathematical notation, or doesn't result in a close form statement using mathematical notation does not mean it's not a mathematical statement.

I'll use this as a plug for the blog Math and Poker which often talks about mathematical concepts without using a lot of mathematical notation. X=2 isn't really a mathematical statement (unless X is defined) but "I have two apples" is mathematical.

Be careful what you say

I'm playing in a sit-n-go, not really paying attention much, just playing very tight. My chips are dwindling some, we're down to 6 players. The guy on my immediate left says in chat "I'll take a hand any time now".

What does that tell me? It tells me that he's just waiting for a hand, not really playing situations. He's the short stack with about 1,000 chips, I'm next with about 1,200. Next hand I'm the button, he's the small blind, the chip leader is the big blind with over 6,000 chips.

It's folded to me. I have a couple of mid sized unsuited cards. Since the big blind has such a large stack I figure he's likely to call a steal attempt from my short stack so normally I'm just folding here. But after that comment from the small blind I figure a steal is a sure thing to work against the small blind, so rather than having to worry about a call from either of them I only have to worry about that big stack on the big blind. So I try to steal. It doesn't work, the big blind calls, but I get lucky and flop a pair, get a call for the rest of my chips on the flop from overcards and double up.

I'd have never doubled up that hand if the short stack hadn't made his witty comment.

More on PPA

Balko commented on my post about his upcoming PPA talk.

I like Balko's blog a lot and like his work. He's done some really good work on police use of SWAT and related subjects. Very good. But I think he's out of his league with PPA.

He says

As for regulation and barriers to entry, well, you fight your battles one at a time. The best bill in Congress right now is the Frank bill, which calls for complete legalization, albeit with a heavy federal regulatory structure. Yeah, that's a compromise. And even it doesn't have a chance in hell of becoming law.

Heavy regulation can easily result in poker becoming illegal, not legal. In most states it's already legal, with various degrees of regulation. There are no federal laws against poker, and so far courts have not supported the DOJ claim that the wire act covers the internet.

PPA and Balko

Balko should ask PPA where they get their money.

I wonder if he knows it's not from "members".

PPA isn't for legal poker, they are for heavily regulated poker with strong barriers to entry for providers of poker games.

Balko actually writes for Reason and calls himself a libertarian. He should be ashamed of himself for supporting those people.

A thread from 1998 rgp

Here's a thread started with a question about psychological impact of color of the suits where Caro/Sklansky/Carson/and even Paul Phillips (who once vowed to spit in my face if he ever met me) actually agree that people are more likely to draw to spade flushes than to flushes in other suits.

With the hand histories available today somebody could actually test that hypothesis.

A classic about poker people, not poker

Here's another old thread, this one about Mason and David, not about poker. One of my favorite lines is when I said

The only thing you can conclude from Sklansky saying "Activity X doesn't
require intelligence" is that Sklansky has no skills in Activity X. The
only thing you can conclude from Sklansky saying "Activity Y requires
intelligence" is that Sklansky thinks he has skills in Activity Y.

Sklansky is essentially the ultimimate sophomoric deep thinker.

Tom McEvoy chimes in a few times. Over 100 posts from the year 2000.

A classic

This is a classic old rgp thread. It has an interesting poker question (badly phrased), Steve Badger, Mason Malmuth, David Sklansky, me, Andrew Prock, and many others.

One of the funniest lines is David telling Steve

You are incorrect. You meant what I wrote, not what you wrote.

Read the whole thread.

Update on the PPA

I'm a member of PPA becuase I played in a freeroll on an online site (I don't remember which site) which was funded by PPA and every tournament entry was an automatic membership in PPA. Just a way to build a mailing list to them. I got an email from them recently.

They seem to be almost moving towards honesty about the law when they say

While it is clear that UIGEA does not apply to Internet poker nationwide (federal case law has consistently held that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting, and very few states have any laws against Internet poker), the fact is that this legislation has had a chilling effect on your ability to access and patronize these legal businesses. In some cases, the new law forced some of the most well known competitors out of the U.S. market.

AK offsuit

This thread on 2+2 asks the question

Your in mid position with AKoff. early in 9 man sit and go early position raises 4x BB do u call or reraise?

No response suggests that if that early position raiser is straightforward and a very tight early position opener then you should probably think about folding.

But you should fold if that's the case unless you're pretty sure you'll get some nutcase callers behind you.

Against an opener with the range {QQ+, AKs, AKo} your AKo is a 39/61 dog and you don't have any implied odds because you aren't likely to get a lot of action from QQ if you hit the flop.

If you get called behind from someone how has in the top 20% of their hands then the equity distribution of (you, EP, nutcase caller) is (30/45/25) and you do have some implied odds from the nutcase so calling might be okay in that case. But even then it's marginal.

One of the things that gets critized about my book is that I point out that AKo is a hand that should sometimes (rare occasions, but still sometimes) be folded preflop. This is an example of one of those times.

Things do look a little better for AKo if that EP opener is tight, but not extremely so. Against a range of {TT+, AJs+, AQo+} the AKo is about even money and does have some implied odds against that range.

Playing draw

I was playing limit draw on poker stars.

I raised, got one caller behind me, drew 2. He drew 2.

I didn't bet after the draw, he called, I showed JJJxx, he showed AAKxx

I guess he kept a King kicker to his pair of aces.

What did he think I had? If I didn't have trips my most likely hand was something like 77A. It was very unlikely I'd have drawn two to something link AAJ.

Why did he keep a kicker?

Correction: I did bet after the draw.

Save the Children

I assume most of y'all have read about Sean Sheikhan's immigration problems.

This has become pretty standard stuff these days, with a policy of deportation of criminal immigrants.

Part of the problem might be a severe misunderstanding about what's going on. Such a misunderstanding is shown by Lou when he makes this comment.

I’m no friend of Sean Sheikhan, but I do feel that ICE’s efforts to deport him amounts to piling on. After all, he served time for his offense. If deportation was deemed to be the thing to do, it should have been part of his original sentence.

The original sentence was for an infraction of a state law. Immigration status is a federal issue.

I don't think that's a small issue. Part of what's going on in this country is that the right wing anti-immigration nutcases want to blur the lines between state and feds -- they are very anti-federalists.

I'm surprised to see Lou arguing for a strong central government. Maybe his support of PPA is warping his politics.

I don't think violation of a state law should ever be a criteria for maintaining resident status.

Availability bias

The availability bias is the tendency of people to think of things in terms of whatever they've recently seen or experienced -- available to them in short-term memory.

An example of the exploitation of that bias in poker is at Greektown.

Update:
An example from draw poker. This is one I read about in a book by Fox many years ago. It's amazing in it's accuracy.

This works best from the blinds after one limper. If you have aces, raise, draw 3, check blind, call any bet.

It works on the availability bias. When you raise and draw 3 you're essentially announcing that you have AA. They just aren't going to put you on any other hand.

If they have a short pair they'll immediately hope to make two pair, if they have two pair they'll just hope you don't make two pair. It's about hope and no matter what they have their hope centers around two pair.

If they make two pair, or start with two pair, they won't bet because they'll worry that you won't call without aces up and they'll check it down. But if they miss they'll think the same thing, and they'll bluff. They also won't bet if they make trips because then they'll stop thinking about you have aces up and start thinking about you having AAA.

It's all about them looking at their own hand and thinking about your hand with a bias generated by what their own hand is. If they bet they either can't beat AA or they can beat AAA. They are very unlikely to have a hand in between.

It's not 100% accurate but I've found it amazingly effective over the years. I did it just yesterday in a small PL Draw sitngo on Stars. I checked and called a pot size bet after the draw and he couldn't beat AA. I had not seen that player bluff before that.

Don't you want to know?

In a comment on a previous thread, DMV asks

You didn't want to know?

I never really cared about making hand. It's always been about the pot, not about the hand.

Another long ago hand was a no-limit draw hand. I had a 6h7h8hJoker draw in late position and raised. One caller. He drew 3 cards. Probably a pair of aces, but maybe not.

If he had Aces, and didn't improve on the draw then I had 12 cards I could catch to make a straight, 10 flush cards. 22 outs, 45 unknown cards, almost even money. If he had Kings, I had an extra 4 outs and was a favorite to make the best hand if he didn't improve.

When he checked I made a huge all in bet, about $1,000 into less than $100 pot and showed him the four cards I was drawing to. He had me almost covered.

I just felt like gambling. Maybe he'd fold. Maybe we'd just flip a coin for the $1,000. I didn't really care which one he did. (I was generally a very tight no limit draw player but I thought this was a good situation to gambool up some).

I had not looked at my draw card. But the dealer had dealt it to my by pitching it through the air and the other guy convinced himself that I'd caught a glimpse of it in the air and knew I had a flush. I hadn't seen it, not even a flash.

We talked back and forth some, then he folded. I took the pot and mucked.

He went ballistic that I didn't even look and see if I'd made a straight flush. That 100% convinced him I'd seen the draw card.

The truth was that I just didn't care what the draw was. I won the pot. Over. Next hand.

Shut up at the table

Wow.

I think Phil Laak has the right idea and that Phil Hellmuth would do better if he'd shut up.

Protect your hand

I was sitting in the ten seat in a 20/40 game at Players in Lake Charles (this was a while back). There were two of us at the showdown and he bet into me.

I had a really good hand, I don't remember the actual cards, and I made it $80. I had an oversize stack of red chips sitting on my cards and I made the raise by picking up the stack and counting off 16 of them.

When I went to return the leftover chips to the top of my cards I found the cards gone. Gone. The dealer had scooped up the temporarily unprotected cards into the muck. I think he thought I was taking the chips off the top of them to fold.

The three seat (the other player) didn't see that my cards where gone. He was thinking about whether or not he should call.

I glared at the dealer. Death rays and stuff.

The dealer realized his mistake and slowly grabbed two cards from the muck and slid them in front of me. I doubt they were the cards he'd mucked, just two cards.

Seat three decided to fold so I didn't have to look and see what kind of cheese I ended up with.

I can outplay them

Brian Townsend said something that's interesting Or at least I find it interesting.

I generally play alittle to impatiently with a smaller stack in tourneys. I can get away with it in cash games because I as well as my opponents are much deeper and I cna out play them postflop. But its very hard to outplay someone who has 30BB and has flopped top pair since all there money is going in.

What exactly does that mean?

It sounds like he's saying that he doesn't play tournaments very well but he plays cash games better because his main leak is short stack play and that just doesn't occur in cash games.

But then when he talks about outplaying people it sounds like he's talking about just being sufficiently indifferent to money to make frequent big bluffs that work.

That's fine, that is a valuable personality trait to have in big bet poker, but I'm not so sure I'd call that "outplaying" them.

Am I misunderstanding what he's saying here?