Not the Madman Theory

I’m only finally getting around to this much-derided article from Wired last week titled “How Poker Theory Explains Ted Cruz’s Convention Speech” by Jason Tanz.

The speech was quite something, by the way, with Cruz very deliberately withholding a specific endorsement of the party's nominee, smirking all the way.

Saw a number of responses to the Wired piece last week, most of which seemed to find the poker analogy weakly presented. Also saw several eyeball-roll references to the article’s reliance on Phil Hellmuth’s “animal types” theory as presented in his 2003 book Play Poker Like the Pros.

You remember Hellmuth’s idea, don’t you? As a way of presenting certain categories of players according to playing styles, Hellmuth described the mouse (squeaky tight), the lion (aggressive and bluffy), the jackal (loose and maniacal), the elephant (unmovable calling station), and the eagle (soaring over the rest as “one of the top 100 players in the world”).

In actuality, the idea to explain different playing styles in such a manner isn’t such a bad one, particularly when addressing relatively untutored players (as most readers of Hellmuth’s book were). The presentation in the book is kind of rushed and a little vague, though, making the “animal types” idea a bit less useful than it could have been.

Meanwhile for someone in 2016 to bring it up as a seemingly unchallenged bit of “game theory” as Tanz does is not nearly as brilliant an idea as the author probably thought it was. He identifies Donald Trump as a jackal, then tries to argue that Cruz is one, too, with his RNC speech showing his willingness to play wild and loose. He then tries to give Cruz some of the characteristics of the lion as well, crediting him in a guarded way with having at least some strategic know-how.

Tanz does successfully highlight the importance of position in poker, noting how Cruz’s place in the speaking order (before others) was disadvantageous. But concluding by saying “maybe Cruz mis-bet” again belies the author’s understanding of the game. (Who says “mis-bet”?)

There’s one other problem in the article, though -- a passing reference to Richard Nixon that also misses the mark. Here’s the line:

“Jackals can be difficult to play against because, as in Nixon’s Mad Man theory, they don’t abide by the rational rules of poker.”

That’s more or less what Hellmuth says about jackals, but that’s not what the “madman theory” actually was. Rather than being an example of someone recklessly betting and raising without any seeming logic, the madman theory concerned projecting the image of someone who “played” that way, but who in actuality did not. It was, at its core, a strategy of bluffing.

Via others, Nixon wished to convince foreign leaders that he was irrational and ready to bomb away on a whim. For example, during the prolonged and mostly unsuccessful negotiations with the North Vietnamese, there were multiple instances of Nixon having National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger try to represent RN in this way, hoping it would frighten the North Vietnamese into a truce.

The comparison in the Wired article is thus entirely misleading, suggesting the “madman theory” wasn’t an actual strategy, but just a literal description of Nixon’s “mad” style of dealing with certain, unfriendly opponents.

Nixon was kind of mad, mind you. But the “madman theory” wasn’t this.

Image: Play Poker Like the Pros, Phil Hellmuth, available via Amazon.

Raising Hellmuth

Well, the Poker Brat did it. Phil Hellmuth, Jr. won the $1,000 NL Hold ‘em with rebuys event (Event No. 34), besting a field of 754 to grab his tenth WSOP bracelet. It didn’t appear too likely once Daryn Firicano busted out in third and Hellmuth was left to battle Juha Helppi. (You might remember Helppi was the fellow who as an amateur beat out Phil Gordon in that amateurs-vs.-pros WPT event from the first season.) When heads-up play began, Hellmuth was outchipped 2-to-1. Six hands later Helppi had a 3-to-1 advantage. Then came that wild, miraculous hand that turned the tide.

Helppi was sitting pretty with about $1,850,000 in chips while Hellmuth was down to $650,000. The blinds were $15,000/$30,000 with a $5,000 ante. Helppi raised to $90,000 from the button and Hellmuth moved all in from the big blind. Helppi called and it was his versus Hellmuth’s . The flop was a crowd-electrifying , giving Hellmuth a set but also giving Helppi nine outs to a possible tourney-winning flush. The came on the turn, completing the Finnish player’s flush and leaving Hellmuth ten outs to fill up or make quads. Fortunately for Hellmuth, the came on the river and he survived, pulling about even in chips. Over the next thirty hands or so, Hellmuth slowly increased his lead before finally taking the last of the chips when his outlasted Helppi's .

Not that huge of a surprise, really, considering how the Brat has been going at this year’s series. He had already seen a couple of final tables, including a second place finish (out of 622) in the $5,000 NL Hold ’em event (Event No. 9). Of course, Hellmuth would've been the center of attention anyway. Everyone seems to have an opinion about him. His books and DVDs routinely receive a fair amount of criticism on message boards, newsgroups, and blogs. Despite his many accomplishments, it has almost become a cliché for poker players to dismiss outright his best-selling Play Poker Like the Pros.

I’d mentioned in an earlier post that I’d read Hellmuth’s book and intended at some point to say something about it, so I thought this might be as good of an occasion as any to do so. Play Poker Like the Pros is hardly the best or most helpful poker book I’ve read, but I’ll grant that it does possess some merit, especially for someone brand new to poker.

Nearly half of Play Poker Like the Pros concerns limit hold ‘em cash games. Hellmuth outlines a “beginner” strategy whereby one is encouraged only to play “top ten” premium hands, and almost always to play them aggressively (to “ram and jam” the pot). This advice gets targeted a lot by critics, particularly since Hellmuth includes 77 in his “top ten,” a hand that rarely survives the “ram and jam” approach unless one is up against a set of meek opponents (or if you’ve so well established your tight image no one will play back at you). He goes on to add other possible hands to the mix for “intermediate” and “advanced” play, and offers a lot of specific advice about post-flop play and dealing with various, commonly-faced scenarios.

Another issue Hellmuth discusses early on in Play Poker Like the Pros is how to interpret other players’ styles and act accordingly. His infamous “animal types”-approach to classifying players has been mocked by many -- Hellmuth calls the conservative rock a “mouse,” the loose-aggressive maniac a “jackal,” the immovable calling station an “elephant,” and so forth. Even if the idea is reductive (or even silly), the approach isn’t that bad of a way of introducing the importance of paying attention to what others are doing at the table.

The first poker book I ever read was David Sklansky’s Hold ’em Poker, a decent primer for learning about starting hand groupings, pot odds, and other strategies. While Sklansky does explain at times how to interpret another player’s action during a hand, he really is focusing throughout on a single kind of opponent, the kind that played the somewhat-tight $10-$20 limit game at the Mirage back in the 70s and 80s when he wrote and revised the book. Sklansky’s advice is theoretically sound, but it doesn’t always apply very well to the looser games one encounters online (esp. at lower limits). Just being aware of different styles (as Hellmuth encourages the limit hold ’em player to be) is a benefit, especially to the beginning player. (Of course, Miller/Sklansky/Malmuth go way beyond Hellmuth in this regard with their Small Stakes Hold ’em, a much much better resource for dealing with loose low limit games, though not necessarily the best book for beginners.)

Play Poker Like the Pros also includes a much briefer discussion of pot-limit and no-limit hold ’em cash games, as well as a tiny chapter (only a dozen pages or so) about limit hold ’em tourneys. I’ve never gotten much at all out of these chapters, and indeed, it is somewhat baffling to consider how little Hellmuth has to offer here to the person wanting to learn how to play hold ’em tourneys. (All ten of his WSOP bracelets have been in hold ‘em events.)

Finally, Hellmuth includes chapters on Pot Limit Omaha, Omaha 8-or-better, Seven-Card Stud, Stud 8-or-better, and Razz, as well as a cursory discussion of playing online. These chapters on other games are not bad to have around as a reference, I suppose. As I mentioned earlier, the chapter on Razz is apparently one of the few strategy discussions of that game available. Still, none of this material really distinguishes the book that greatly.

People continue to buy Play Poker Like the Pros, though certainly not at the clip they were a couple of years ago. Looking over at Amazon’s up-to-the-minute listing of top-selling poker books, there are 25 other poker books outselling Play Poker Like the Pros at the moment I'm publishing this post. Looks like the Brat’s win didn’t really cause that much of a jump in sales. Meanwhile, Dan Harrington is riding high, with both Volume I and Volume III of his Harrington on Hold ’em coming close to cracking the top 100 selling books overall. That’s among all the books Amazon sells! (Harrington did say on The Circuit the other night one of the main reasons he wrote his Hold ’em volumes was for the money . . . . Action Dan knows what he’s doing, all right.)

The loudest censure of Play Poker Like the Pros usually concerns the large amount of anecdotal material Hellmuth includes, most of which reads as more of that ego-massage-type behavior we've come to expect from Hellmuth. I’m not going to disagree with that criticism here -- especially in the chapters about non-hold ’em games, one gets the sense at times that Hellmuth's purpose is more to prove his worth in these games than to teach strategy.

As far as instruction goes, there are much better books about limit hold ’em than Hellmuth’s, no doubt. And for the NL hold ’em tourney player, the book has practically no value at all. That being said, while I don’t necessarily recommend the book outright, I’ll admit to have benefitted somewhat from the experience of having read it as a novice player. That’s why I usually don’t rush to join the chorus of Hellmuth-haters whenever the subject of Play Poker Like the Pros comes up.

I usually don't rush to defend him either, though. Hellmuth takes care of that just fine on his own.

Image: Phil Hellmuth, Play Poker Like the Pros (2003), Amazon.

All That Razz

All eyes on the WSOP today as the much-ballyhooed H.O.R.S.E. event finally began. I discussed the event in an earlier post, where I also mentioned how it had renewed my interest in games other than hold ’em. Coincidentally or not, today was the day I finally took the plunge on the Razz tables over on Full Tilt Poker. Intended only to play a few dozen hands, but ended up sticking around for close to two hours. I ended up on the losing side, but had a lot of fun and will likely be back soon.

Before playing my first hand, I had compiled some advice from a few different sources. No exhaustive study, mind you. But I did at least make sure I knew the rules of the game going in. The original cue to give Razz a try had come from an episode of the excellent Ante Up! podcast from a few months back. Hosts Christopher Cosenza and Scott Long discussed how the game is played and offered a few strategy tips, then Cosenza followed up with a post on the Ante Up! blog in which he shared some more advice. I read through Cosenza’s comments there, then (as he recommends) I also read over the brief section on Razz in Doyle Brunson's Super/System: A Course in Power Poker as well as Phil Hellmuth’s chapter on Razz in Play Poker Like the Pros.

(I am aware how Hellmuth’s book tends to provoke extreme responses -- mostly negative -- and one day will post something here about Play Poker Like the Pros. I won’t be blindly defending the book or Hellmuth, mind you, but neither will I reject it wholesale as most seem to do.)

When I clicked the Razz tab at Full Tilt I saw that there were only a few tables going. There were a couple of active tables at higher stakes (one $2.00/$4.00 and one $8.00/$16.00). I knew I didn’t want to venture there. I scrolled down to find a couple of $0.25/$0.50 tables going and so took a spot at one of those. I adopted Cosenza’s “tight is right” strategy and restricted myself only to playing hands where I had been dealt three cards eight or lower (non-paired, of course) -- i.e., a "three-card eight." Was actually dealt once and cringed as I folded. I was doing a lot of folding, actually, and after a while decided to fill the time calculating exactly the chances of being dealt a three-card eight. (If my math is correct, it is a little over 16% . . . just about 1 out of 6 hands.)

I finally got involved in a few pots, winning a few and losing a few. I won about half of my showdowns -- I don’t know if that’s a decent percentage or not, really. I realized fairly quickly how you can often know precisely whether or not you are holding a winner. Occasionally you have your opponent “board-locked” (as Hellmuth says), meaning you can know with 100% certainty that your hand beats what he is showing. This circumstance comes up more frequently (per hands played) than does having the “absolute nuts” in hold ’em, to be sure.

By far the most memorable hand came when I was dealt . Everyone put in the $0.05 ante. A player two seats to my right with had to put in the bring-in of $0.10. The player to his left, Petty, called with . I completed to $0.25, and GenialGeorge called with the . Petty called as well. Fourth street brought me the , giving me four-fifths of a wheel, so I bet out the quarter. GenialGeorge had picked up the and called. Petty folded. Fifth street was a sweet for yours truly, giving me a “smooth 6-low” -- a very strong hand, especially by fifth street. GenialGeorge, meanwhile, had picked up the and so he was first to act. He bet the $0.50, and I immediately raised him to $1.00. He called. He drew the on sixth street, and so I bet out again only to be raised by GenialGeorge. I reraised to $1.50 and he called.

Looking at the hands -- I had and George had -- I felt pretty confident I had to be ahead. He had to have precisely a deuce and a trey in the hole to be ahead of me, and I had one of each. (Also, Petty had folded a trey as well.) Seventh street cards were dealt face down, and I again bet. GenialGeorge again raised me. Could it be? I called and yes, indeed, he had the wheel: . We had been dealt the two best possible hands in Razz, and we both had hit those hands on fifth street!

I couldn’t complain, though. I did make a couple of wheels myself before I finished, and while I ended up down about $12 for the session I went back over to the limit hold ’em tables and quickly made that back. Looking back, I realize I did end up chasing a few times when I shouldn’t have and even allowed myself to play a couple of 9-high hands when I knew better. Most folks at the table seemed to know what they were doing, although there was that one guy who showed down a full house on one hand and quads on another. (That caused some chat.)

Fun to learn and play a new game. I certainly recommend it. Meanwhile, what is this I hear about marked cards at the H.O.R.S.E. event?! I can see how marking the cards would make Razz easier. Somewhat, anyway . . . .