Stirring Things Up

I’ve written here before -- although it’s been a while -- about Dashiel Hammett’s unnamed detective the Continental Op who appears in about two dozen stories and a couple of novels by the hard-boiled writer.

Most of the stories follow a similar trajectory in which the Op is given some sort of assignment that often seems relatively simple, then discovers early on the particulars are more complicated than had been earlier suggested. From there, a favorite response by the Op is to introduce some further, often creative complication -- kind of like putting in a surprising check-raise -- to see how others will react and thus perhaps reveal their motives. Or crimes.

The Op often benignly describes this strategy as “stirring things up.” For example, “The House in Turk Street” (1924) is a weird little story in which the Op finds himself accidentally holed up with a gang of bank robbers whom he notices gradually starting to turn on each other. Despite being their prisoner and tied to a chair, he nurtures their growing conflict himself at one point -- in fact, he uses a poker analogy when he refers to having “led my ace” with one false statement, something which he subsequently refers to as “my little lie that was meant to stir things up.”

When I brought up the phrase here before, in was in the context of talking about poker strategy, referring to the choice “to stir things up” with a bet or raise or anything that takes one out of one’s typical style or approach. Doing so can sometimes be worthwhile, a means to improve one’s game and prevent falling into predictable patterns that others can exploit.

Over the last week or so I have been thinking of the phrase in a different way, though, as there have been a lot of examples of people “stirring things up” in the poker world, with several different debates flying about concerning a host of topics.

I’m thinking of course about the recent brouhaha following Daniel Colman’s victory in the “Big One for One Drop” and his subsequent decision not to go through the usual picture-taking and interviewing, with various op-eds popping up in response, then Colman’s own provoking “I don’t owe poker a single thing” explanation.

Also from this week I’m thinking about the back-and-forthing instigated by Greg Merson regarding the World Poker Tour scheduling a low buy-in event at the Aria during the WSOP Main Event. Jeff Walsh summarizes that one at F5 Poker, covering most of the discussion except for a few WPT-directed blasts fired by WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart along the way.

Then yesterday came another quasi-tempest when Earl Burton wrote an op-ed complaining about Kevin “Kevmath” Mathers of Bluff getting bought into the Main Event by some poker pros wishing to give something back to Kev after he’s given so much to the community for several years. Haley Hintze does a good job explaining that one and responding to it, too, over at Flushdraw.

There are real issues at the heart of all of these conversations, involving poker as it played, organized, and reported upon and discussed. Not to be too elusive about my own positions on all of these matters, but I’m finding myself almost more interested to observe how others are responding to the “stirring up” that to be inspired to respond myself, with some in a few cases revealing themselves like characters in Hammett’s stories.

To tip my hand a little... Colman certainly overlooks most of the positives about poker, while others have overlooked some of the negatives. Those running competing poker tours and series should feel free to compete with each other, but should also find ways to communicate and respect each other, too. And the indefatigable Kevmath more than deserves whatever the poker community wishes to give him by way of gratitude, while most discussions of “journalistic ethics” in poker reporting tend to forget that most of it doesn’t really qualify as journalism, anyway.

It’s a funny world, the one surrounding poker. To be in it sometimes feels like sitting among a mob on the run, listening to them argue back and forth about what their next step will be.

Hammett's Op & the Perils of Stirring Things Up

Was looking back through a volume of Dashiell Hammett stories, all of which feature that nameless private eye who is an operative of the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco -- a character usually referred to as the “Continental Op.” Hammett started his career writing stories about the Continental Op, the earliest of which appeared in Black Mask way back in the early 1920s. Would end up writing over thirty stories featuring the savvy, hardened detective, some of which got compiled and refashioned as his first novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse.

Anyhow, was reading one particular story titled “The House on Turk Street” and was reminded of a situation that comes up now and again at the poker table. In fact, it recalled a particular hand of pot limit Omaha ($25 max. buy-in) I’d played earlier in the week.

In the story, the Op has been assigned the task of tracking down a particular person -- we’re not told why -- and so has been going door-to-door on a particular block of Turk Street with a fabricated tale designed to uncover the man’s whereabouts. After several unsuccessful visits, the Op finds himself having been invited into an elderly couple’s home for a cup of tea. The trio chat aimlessly, then with one sentence the light mood turns swiftly dark:

“Something cold touched the nape of my neck.”

It’s a gun, all right. Turns out the house is the hideout of a gang who has just pulled a bank heist in Los Angeles (they’ve paid the old couple to cover for them). Completely unrelated to the job for which the Op had been originally assigned. Before long, the Op is tied to a chair wondering how he’s gonna get out of the house on Turk Street alive. I won’t go through the rest of the plot, but eventually the Op succeeds in getting the gang members to turn against each other, thereby managing to wiggle himself free of a tricky spot.

What’s familiar here is that situation where you find yourself trying “to stir things up” (a favorite phrase of the Continental Op), then get into an entirely unexpected jam that forces you to find a completely new strategy in order to survive. You aren’t innocent, here. Like the Op, you were trying to get something from others and were using a bit of subterfuge to accomplish that task. But suddenly you feel something cold on the back of your neck and yr caught in an entirely different imbroglio than the one into which you thought you were entering. (Or creating.)

Here’s the hand. I was sitting in late position with 9-8-7-6 unsuited and it folded to me. I raised it up, as I’ll sometimes do with these rundown-type hands, and ended up getting two callers. The pot was around three bucks. (Sorry, don’t have the hand history.)

The flop wasn’t so hot -- . Really only three viable outs for me there. The early position player thought a sec and bet two dollars, and the guy in between us calls. What do we have here? Coupla draws? I ended up calling. Not so hot, I know. That’s the moment where the entire situation had changed. Like the Continental Op, I started out thinking I was in charge of the proceedings, but now I’d found myself tied to a chair, wondering what exactly I’d gotten myself into.

The turn was the and both players checked to me. This is one of those situations where it is probably better to be up against two players than one. They’re worried about each other, perhaps more so than about me. I checked as well, though I was starting to see a way out of this pickle.

The river brought the , a card that completed no draws. Both checked to me again. I quickly made something like a two-thirds-pot-sized bet into the $9 pot, and both folded instantly.

Doesn’t always work out for me the way it tends to do for Hammett’s Op. Sometimes in that spot a player who flopped bottom set -- or who is sitting there with K-Q-x-x -- will look me up there, and I’m cooked . . . .

The Op usually winds up in the clear, though. Not conscience-wise, necessarily. But breathing-wise.

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.