Barry Tanenbaum (1945-2011)

I noticed a few days ago that Lee Jones had started a thread over in Two Plus Two reporting that Barry Tanenbaum had fallen ill. Sadly, the Card Player columnist, author, and friend to many in the poker community passed away yesterday.

Recent Poker Hall of Fame inductee Linda Johnson has written a nice piece on the Card Player site about Tanenbaum. There you’ll find one of Tanenbaum’s many friends sharing details of his endearing personality and his talents as a poker player and teacher.

He was a winner. In many respects.

As someone who only barely knew Tanenbaum, I haven’t a lot to add to Johnson’s remembrance, although I do have one small story to share.

Like many, I got to know Tanenbaum through his articles in Card Player, of which there are well over 100. For a long time I was primarily a limit hold’em player, and since his pieces were always focused on LHE I routinely turned to them whenever a new issue of the magazine arrived. I also always enjoyed his appearances on podcasts, including Lou Krieger’s Keep Flopping Aces. Thus was I especially glad to see him bring forth a book collecting his wisdom in late 2007, Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy.

It was Tanenbaum’s second poker strategy book, technically -- he’d collaborated before with a couple of others titled Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies -- but this was the first solely devoted to his own ideas and thinking about LHE. I read the book from cover to cover, then reread to absorb further the advice it contained. Looking back at my records, this was actually my most profitable period playing online, and I know it wasn’t a coincidence I was spending a lot of time then with Tanenbaum’s columns and book.

It wasn’t long after that I began to review poker books for PokerNews, and when I proposed writing a review of Tanenbaum’s book to my editor, Haley Hintze, she said she thought that was a good idea.

It was a challenging book to review, given that its primary audience were the middle- and high-stakes LHE players against whom Tanenbaum often played. Indeed, the book begins with disclaimers about it not being for beginners, and while I wasn’t that, I was hardly one who could reasonably sit down at those $30/$60 and $40/$80 LHE games (or higher) and expect to succeed.

But I knew I had gotten a great deal from the book, and so in my review explained how I believed it was of value to players of all stakes. I also tried to get across this central idea that Tanenbaum wasn’t so much teaching players a particular style but rather was trying get them to understand (and improve upon) whatever style they already played.

As Tanenbaum explains, his intention wasn’t to write a how-to book that told players what to play when, but rather to teach LHE players how better to think about the game. “I am trying to improve your game, not give you one,” he writes.

You can check out the review for a full summary of what the book covers as well as other ideas I had about what Tanenbaum is up to in Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy.

Sometime after the review went up, I received a very nice email from Tanenbaum thanking me for it. We ended up exchanging a few messages in which he complimented me for having understood the book and successfully gotten its message across in the review.

As I mentioned, I’d been a little apprehensive about writing the review. It was among the first I had written for PokerNews, actually, so I was especially grateful to get such feedback from the author. (I’d continue to review books for PN until the summer of 2009; they’ve since gotten others to write reviews for them.)

It will happen from time to time that after reviewing a book I’ll hear from the author, but rarely do we get beyond a simple thank-you-and-you’re-welcome. But with Tanenbaum our exchange was more substantive and meaningful -- something I suspect most who knew him would say was the case in their interactions with him, too.

I think it was the following spring (2009) that Vera and I visited Las Vegas for a dressage show, the big World Cup that used to come to LV every other year. I remember talking with Tanenbaum a few times over the phone during that visit. His wife also rode horses, and I think we had an extra ticket to one of the sessions and were talking about perhaps giving it to her, but the plan fell through.

Tanenbaum had a website and fairly popular forum, too, where I participated occasionally and continued to interact with both him and others. And we stayed in touch a bit over email as well. I remember at some point providing him some .mp3s of some podcasts on which he had appeared that I had saved, but it has been awhile since our last exchange of messages.

Anyhow, like I say the story of my interactions with Tanenbaum is a relatively small one, but I wanted to share it today as further testament of his friendliness as well as his being one of those “poker people” who always welcomed newcomers into the game in a variety of ways.

Optimism

Ooh, I left this here cup of coffee on the burner too long. Bitter. Gotta remember to grab that sucker more quickly next time.

For many, New Year’s Day is all about making resolutions, setting goals, and doing a general rethink of whatever it is about yr existence seems in need of such.

Well, maybe not right off. Could be all that important work of self-analysis comes later -- after the effects of the previous evening’s let’s-party-like-there’s-no-tomorrow activities have sufficiently skedaddled, thereby allowing for relatively clear-headed cogitatin’.

I’ve certainly gone that route on January 1 numerous times. Might even be more tempting to do so here on the first day of the science-fictiony-sounding 2010 -- a new decade. This-is-the-year-I’m-gonna... and then you fill in the blank. Or blanks.

Three years ago I kicked off the year writing about “Getting Off to a Good Start.” Was referring to something Barry Tanenbaum once wrote about beginning new sessions, but applied the idea as well to how one might approach any new stage in life.

Two years ago I began with a post titled “Looking Back & Looking Forward” in which I outlined a bunch of specific goals. Did accomplish some of those that year, but a couple got left behind pretty early on. One goal I set at the start of 2008 and did accomplish was the one of posting here every weekday, which I continued through last year, too. Not planning at the moment to deviate from that one in 2010.

Then I began 2009 writing about the “False Start” -- the most frequently-called penalty in football, actually. There I suggested that false starts frequently happen at the poker tables, too. We’re excited just to be playing, and somehow it takes us a hand or ten to get our heads on straight and find our game.

Am a little too spent this year to do much more than look back at those earlier New Year posts. One reason is all the energy I put into a Betfair post, this one documenting the “Top Moments in Poker, 2000-2009.” Go check it out and let me know if I missed any of the biggies.

I will say this, though, as kind of a general introduction to 2010. I’m optimistic. Lots of reasons not to be, I suppose, if one has been reading any of those other, non-poker related “2000s in Review”-type articles over the last few days.

But I can’t help it. Like I say, I’m sitting here drinking this burnt-tasting cup of coffee, and while I should be grimacing, I can’t seem to get rid of this goofy grin.

Last year was a good one for me in terms of writing and poker, but I have higher expectations for this one. Am also anticipating other big “life stuff”-type changes in the new year, too, some of which I’ll chronicle here for sure.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll go get myself another cup of java. This one will be better.

False Start

Been watching a lot of football over the last few weeks. Saw one particular bowl game the other day, the Kentucky-East Carolina one. The Liberty Bowl, I think. A close game (won by Kentucky), and thus interesting enough to see through to the finish. Even so, I had to disagree with the color commentator when he suggested near the end that the game’s competitiveness proved that 34 bowls aren’t too many.

By that time -- late in the fourth quarter -- I had already long decided I was watching a sloppily-played football game. All apologies to Wildcat and Pirate fans, but those were two fairly middling teams going at it that day. Everything about the game was below average -- the play, the coaching, even the refs. Especially the refs, actually. Several horrific calls, some made despite lengthy consultation in the replay booth. In fact, the winning touchdown -- a returned fumble by Kentucky -- came on a play in which the refs missed the fact that the defensive tackle recovering the ball had his knee down prior to his game-winning jaunt down the sideline.

Like I say, to me the poorly-played game seemed pretty strong evidence that having 68 of 119 eligible teams playing in college football’s post-season -- well over half -- is a bit much. But that’s not the topic of today’s post.

I read somewhere once that in football the “false start” is the most frequently called penalty, causing something like 20% (or more) of the flags thrown. Offensive holding is a close second, I believe.

False starts are frustrating, of course, particularly because unlike most penalties, they are often “mental errors” that could have easily been avoided had the offender -- usually an over-eager lineman -- listened to the quarterback’s signal more closely and/or possessed the mind-body discipline to prevent himself from moving an instant before the ball was snapped.

In poker, I think the “false start” is probably a fairly frequent occurrence as well. In fact, if we really scrutinized our play and gave ourselves “penalties” for all of our missteps at the tables, I’d bet “false starts” would make up a significant percentage of our overall “yardage” lost.

Most of you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. You sit down and at the beginning of your session play in a manner -- usually less carefully -- totally unlike your usual, controlled game. Playing that way partly stems from just being excited about rejoining the game, and having some impatience about getting involved early. So you play hands you might normally have passed without a thought, make a few rash calls or raises, and before your seat is warm you’re already searching the playbook for what to call when it’s first-and-fifteen.

I wrote a post a couple of New Year’s Days ago called “Getting Off to a Good Start” in which I talked about something Barry Tanenbaum, author of Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy, had said on a podcast regarding the importance of winning the first hand one plays in a given session. You can read the post to see the full discussion, but the gist is that Tanenbaum recommends players “Always Start Slowly,” meaning essentially to avoid marginal situations and try one’s best to win that first showdown.

Doing so has at least a couple of benefits. For one, it affects how others perceive you, giving you what Tanenbaum calls a “winning image.” By winning that first showdown, you perhaps have given others reasons to respect your bets later on, or maybe to fold to your bluffs or semi-bluffs. Secondly, it affects how you perceive yourself (I think), adding to your confidence in much the same way that initial first down encourages a football team to believe they can move the ball even further.

Tommy Angelo also makes a similar point in Elements of Poker in a section titled “Take the Blind or Post Behind?” Angelo, who plays both limit and no-limit hold’em, says he now always waits for the blind to come around in limit, and only sometimes will go ahead and post from the cutoff in no-limit. He provides a bit of mathematical analysis of the issue, then talks about how he eventually came to realize the huge difference caused by this seemingly innocuous decision.

By posting from the cutoff, Angelo found himself getting involved in hands -- often aggressively -- that he normally wouldn’t be playing if he hadn’t already committed some chips to the pot. “It’s hand number one, and already I’m inviting instability,” was Angelo’s revelation. “It’s the difference between jumping in and settling in,” he continues. “It’s the difference between being afraid and being feared.”

By waiting for the big blind -- something he now always does in LHE -- Angelo realized he reduced variance (or “fluctuation”) and thus minimized the possibility of early tilting. In other words, starting slowly helps him, like Tanenbaum, avoid false starts.

After my lengthy, sometimes-thrilling, sometimes-abusive, year-and-a-half long relationship with pot-limit Omaha, I’m finding myself starting to play more limit hold’em again, and so have been trying to get back into the LHE mindset over the last few days. Had kind of a “false start” to the year, though, when I indulged in a one-night fling with PLO on January 1. I’ll share more about that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, let’s all try to limit those flags and play a good, sound game out there. As that philosopher of the gridiron Knute Rockne once said, “build up your weaknesses until they become strong points.”

Sartre’s Gambler (3 of 3)

If you ever to listen to PokerRoad Radio, you’ve probably heard a clip of T.J. Cloutier from his appearance on PRR back in early March. They’ve been using it repeatedly as a bumper on all of their shows. The clip begins with co-host Ali Nejad asking Cloutier what advice he has for players who are running bad or “who feel snakebit.”

“I wake up every day with a new attitude,” Cloutier responds. “I’m not gonna worry about what happened yeseterday. I just go on to the next day.” Then he adds, “How can anybody who’s won about 11 million in poker and lost about 3 million in craps worry about what happened yesterday?”

That last question elicits laughter -- and a bit of sarcasm -- from the PokerRoad crew. It’s a very existentialist thing for Cloutier to say, actually. In fact, every time I hear that clip, it makes me think again about Sartre’s gambler.

By describing each day as a new one -- or, to say it differently, to distinguish between what one is or does today from what one was or has done previously -- is to regard the past as Sartre does, as an example of “nothingness” that Cloutier says he chooses not to draw upon as he endeavors to make meaning of the present.

Of course, it isn’t as though Cloutier is “reborn” each day. There’s obviously a lot that he has experienced during those previous thousands of days that does help him figure out what today means for him. But his “attitude” or philosophy is basically existentialist, at least in the way he puts it. And frankly, all poker players who have enjoyed long-term success almost without exception adopt a similar approach in the way they view and interpret the game.

As a way to close the discussion, let me refer to three examples of poker writers also evoking this very existentialist view of life in their discussions of poker.

One comes from one of my favorite passages in Small Stakes Hold ‘em by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth, that short little section early on titled “Random and Independent Events.” After talking a bit about how the human brain has a remarkable capacity for seeking out and identifying patterns, the trio explain how easy it is at the poker table to make the error of seeing patterns where none exist. “When it comes to gambling,” they point out, “mistaking false patterns as real has led many to ruin.”

In particular, many sometimes falsely conclude that the cards dealt in one hand have something to do with what gets dealt in the next. The authors underscore the importance of avoiding such a fallacy by using italics: “The cards dealt on any poker hand are, for practical purposes, completely random and independent of the cards dealt on any previous hands.” Indeed, the cards are simply “existents,” or “pieces of plastic” with “no knowledge, no memory, no cosmic plan.” An obvious point, perhaps, but we’ve all made that mistake at one time or another. (He can’t have aces again, can he?)

The second passage I’ll quote comes from the first volume of Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold ’em. It’s a point he makes over and over again when talking us through sample hands, particularly when he is narrating one in which his player has made an error early in the hand, and now faces a new quandary later on. “Once you’re in a hand,” he explains, “every subsequent decision has to be determined by your hand, the pot odds, and the total table situation.” Like the authors of SSHE, Harrington brings in the italics to emphasize the point: “Every betting decision is a new problem. Don’t forget that.”

Finally, I’ll share something from Barry Tanenbaum’s epilogue to his terrific Advanced Limit Hold ’em Strategy (published last year). Tanenbaum is especially gifted at explaining poker-related concepts, and in fact a lot of them apply regardless of the game one is playing.

The epilogue is titled “Forgive Yourself” and there Tanenbaum stresses the importance of not brooding over yr screw-ups (which, for most of us, are inevitable) and instead focusing on the next hand. “A positive attitude is essential,” Tanenbaum argues, thus the need to avoid beating oneself up over that missed bet or incorrect fold. “The better you get at not dwelling on past mistakes other than to learn from them and move on,” says Tanenbaum, “the better your play will be.”

Sounds a lot like Cloutier. And Sartre, in a way . . . .

The point, I suppose, is to understand that as humans we necessarily allow a lot of stuff that isn’t really “there” -- a lot of “nothingness” -- to creep into our understanding of what is there, such as all the different “existents” (cards, chips, people) gathered around a poker table at any given moment. We take that “nothingness” (be it from memories of the past, or ideas of the future, or wherever) and make meaning of our present. We can’t help it. We’re human.

But as we do, we should try to recognize and avoid those circumstances when we might be tempted to make meaning and then apply it incorrectly (and thus go down that path that “has led many to ruin”), e.g., expecting the next hand to balance the previous one, allowing a preflop mistake to affect unduly a post-flop decision, letting a bad session affect our play in the next one, and so forth.

All important to keep in mind, I would think. I just hope I remember it tomorrow.

Like an Open Book

Everyone knows about the "Hammer" (72 offsuit). However, when 73 offsuit became the hand that won $7.5 million last July, the quickly-anointed “Hachem” emerged as a new favorite for sneaks looking for ways to send opponents tiltward by cracking their premium holdings with obvious trash.

Not too long ago, I was in a game of six-handed limit hold ’em ($0.50/$1) when a mostly-tight player, Archer, opened with a preflop raise from the cutoff. The button and SB folded to me in the BB where I’d been dealt said Hachem. Now I’m a reasonable fellow. Not too bright, mind you, but reasonable. And it was the not-too-bright part that had me hesitating, oddly contemplating putting in the dollar to call.

Now there are a few sad sacks who hate hate hate to give up their blinds, no matter how unreasonable a defense appears to be. Not I, said the fly. I’ll happily donate my cabbage when such obvious weakness warrants doing so. For some reason, though -- perhaps just “to stir things up,” as Hammett’s Op might say -- I broke routine and made the call.

In a December 2005 CardPlayer column on “Defending Blinds,” Matt Matros notes how in heads-up situations such as the one I faced, one can be marginally more liberal with the calls, although one must be cognizant of other factors as well. One does get 3.5-to-1 to call here, with $1.75 already in the pot awaiting my additional $0.50 to make a flop happen. And, as Matros points out, one can virtually guarantee a postflop continuation bet from the raiser, thus, in a sense, making the odds 4.5-to-1. However, as Matros also explains, opening raises from the cutoff generally mean more strength than do button raises. The opponent’s tendencies (as far as one has a line on them) are essential to consider as well.

Of these three pieces of advice, then, only one (the first) could possibly be twisted into something resembling a recommendation to call. In other words, I’d crawled out on this limb all by myself, and yes I was more than vaguely aware what I looked like out there.

But there I was. And there was the flop. A real looker, in fact. Ace-seven-trey, all different suits. I check-raised Archer who after a bewildered pause called. Two more crying calls and I’d scooped an $8 pot when my two pair bested Archer’s ace-queen.

Now the gist of this here parable ain’t to supply the world with yet another example of the cold unfairness of our existence. Nor is it to prove any sort of special prescience at the table for your humble whatever. Rather, the crux of the matter is in what came next, when a suddenly-vocal Archer fumes to no one in particular

Archer: who calls a raise with 7 3?

A reasonable question, to be sure. No one at the table rushed to offer our crestfallen comrade any assistance with his query. So Archer tried again:

Archer: wtf
Archer: u r one lucky FISHHHH
Archer: ****er

And so forth. Within 40-50 hands, Archer’s once handsome stack of $35 had been reduced to $11 when one player after another pushed him off pots and/or showed down two pair, trips, straights, and flushes to his unfortunate run of second-best hands. As for me, I mostly stayed on the sideline, paring my fingernails and whistling, unable to take any real advantage of the new table image I seemed to have created for myself.

Although Archer may well have loosened up his starting hand requirements somewhat (e.g., limping from UTG w/A7o, etc.), I wouldn’t describe his subsequent play as overtly tiltish. And while his temporary slide certainly involved some more bad luck, it nevertheless appeared that everyone at the table had become suddenly able to take advantage, suddenly able to know when to reraise him, when to show down hands against him, when to fold to him. Archer had become an “open book,” so to speak. I wondered if perhaps a principle of poker might be hidden somewhere in the machinations I was witnessing. Something along the lines of

WITH EVERY COMPLAINT ABOUT OTHERS’ PLAY, YOU ANNOUNCE TO THE TABLE SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR OWN.

By articulating his frustration at having been called and beaten with 73o, Archer effectively broadcasted to everyone his own tendency to play “by the book” (and, even more significantly, his yearning for others to do the same). Indeed, his complaints communicated this message much more explicitly than did his play in the actual hand, which, if one had paid attention, might well have seemed unorthodox (calling down two more big bets after a check-raise to a board with no obvious draws). Such is a consequence of which “table coaches” don’t always seem aware.

The moral? You should know I don’t go in for morals very much. Let’s just say defend your blind with seven-trey only on special occasions. When heads-up in the WSOP main event, for instance. And think twice before complaining when someone else does.