Loss Aversion in Poker

“According to my calculations, winning a razz hand at showdown feels about 1/5 as good as losing one at showdown feels bad.”

I sent out this message -- with tongue only partially in cheek -- sometime Friday afternoon on Twitter towards the end of a moderately frustrating online session of razz. Nothing especially profound there, I don’t think, although I was glad to see some respond agreeably and/or sympathetically to my declaration. As someone who mostly plays pot-limit Omaha, fixed limit hold’em, mixed games, or NLHE tourneys, I was recognizing (i.e., whimpering about) what seemed to me to be a kind of imbalance in the relative “emotional EV” of the games. At least in my experience, anyway.

I’ll play razz as part of H.O.R.S.E. or rotation of mixed games (8-game on Stars, 10-game on Full Tilt), though only now and then will sit down at a razz-only table. One reason why I did so on Friday was in preparation for playing in the PokerGrump’s inaugural home game event later that night, which in recognition of April Fool’s Day he’d perversely made a razz tournament.

Turned out to be a very enjoyable tourney to play, made especially so because of the frequent chatbox witticisms being contributed by the participants. One of my favorite comments was when someone early on said he kept expecting the game to change (as in H.O.R.S.E.), and we all continued to joke about the collective misery being caused by being dealt yet another razz hand. I managed to catch hands frequently enough for a runner-up finish in the sucker, a nice turnaround from the earlier cash game woes.

Still, I found myself thinking further over the weekend about my little pronouncement about the “emotional EV” of razz. What exactly makes razz such a downer?

One who responded to my tweet on Friday was John “JimmyLegs” Wray, the CardRunners instructor and one of the minds behind “The Micros.” He first pointed me to a Wikipedia page on “loss aversion” which explains how studies have shown that many experience the pain of loss more than twice as powerfully (psychologically speaking) than they do the pleasure or satisfaction of winning. In other words, my reference to feeling more “bad” about losing a razz hand than “good” about winning one was unwittingly evoking an actual phenomenon.

Wray additionally pointed me to a whole series of vids he’d made for CR -- titled “Brain Fail” -- the first part of which was an application of this idea of loss aversion to poker. Here’s that video, available for viewing over at Poker News Daily.

I liked learning more about this phenomenon, but I still found myself wondering about razz in particular and why it seemed (to me, anyway) to be a game in which it was much more frustrating to lose than enjoyable to win when compared to games like PLO or LHE. What factors are relevant here that might explain why the pain of loss in razz relative to the satisfaction of winning could be proportionately greater than the ratios I experience in other games?

One way to start out comparing the “emotional EV” of different games would be to identify relevant factors in each of the games that might significantly affect our mood when playing them. Off the top of my head, I thought of four:

personal experience/knowledge of game

amount of win/loss per hand and/or session(s) (i.e., the “swinginess”)

expectation of winning/losing during course of hand

luck vs. skill component in game

The first two items are obviously going to be particularly subjective in nature. Each player brings a different skill set to a given game. Each player also is going to be affected differently by the relative “swinginess” of a game. I still think it might be possible, though, to consider those two factors objectively when assessing each particular game -- e.g., the swings are going to be greater in PLO than in razz, no matter how a player individually responds to that fact.

Meanwhile, the latter two factors can certainly be discussed objectively, I think. Even mathematically, if you have the brain for that sort of thing. For instance, under the heading of “expectation of winning/losing,” an example to explore might be “starting good” in razz versus “starting good” in other games.

Say by fourth street in razz you hold 2-4-A-6 and you’re up against an opponent with x-x-8-9. There are three betting rounds left, and your expectation to win is quite high -- not to mention obvious to all. Then you draw nothing but face cards and pairs to the end and somehow lose to a crummy 9-8.

Compare that to having a strong starting hand in pot-limit Omaha, say A-A-J-10 double-suited. You raise from the button and get a caller, and again three betting rounds remain. But here you’re expectation of winning isn’t nearly as great (or shouldn’t be, anyway).

I deliberately added the qualification “at showdown” to my statement about winning or losing a razz hand, since by the time you fight your way to seventh street you had to have had some expectation -- perhaps quite high -- along the way of winning. (Indeed, you almost never get to the end of a razz hand without having bet most or every street to get there!) My sense is that we find ourselves at showdown in PLO or hold’em a lot more often without necessarily having had such high expectations.

The fourth factor -- measuring the relative importance of luck and skill in each game and comparing them -- also seems like it could be approached mathematically, although it would be a challenge to do so. (I’m remembering David Sklansky once making a list of ten poker games and ranking them according to the relative luck involved in each, although at the moment I cannot put my finger on where that list appears.) It does seem as though a game that involves more luck would be one in which winning would probably be less satisfying (to most) while losing would perhaps be more frustrating.

Anyhow, call these tentative thoughts to be refined and collected as a proposal toward a larger study regarding differences between poker games and how loss aversion might work in each. My apologies to those who made it to the end of the post with an expectation of finding something more conclusive on this subject.

Hey, you can't win ’em all.

Triple Stud Ain’t Flipping Pennies

Another late one with the World Championship of Online Poker, this time following Event No. 8, the $215 buy-in Triple Stud event (recap here). PokerStars introduced Triple Stud just last month, another mixed game variation which rotates between seven-card stud (high), razz, and seven-card stud high/low eight-or-better. So you go high, you go low, and then you try to go both.

I don’t play these stud games all that often, aside from when I occasionally sit down in the 8-game mix games. (I also will play razz now and then.) And when I do play, it is just about always in ring games and practically never in tournaments.

While watching the action last night, I thought more than once about John Lukacs’ denouncing of “seven-card stud, high-low” is his 1963 article “Poker and American Character.” That’s the piece I took a couple of posts to discuss last week (part 1 & part 2).

Lukacs, raised on five-card draw (which he deems “classic” poker), says in his article that “seven-card stud resembles a gambling game with poker nomenclature but not very different from flipping seven pennies and betting on them in turn.” Too much luck, not enough skill -- or at least too much diminishment of the “psychological factors” -- says Lukacs.

I suggested last week that Lukacs may not have understood seven-card stud especially well. It’s true, I suppose, that any game for which we lack a familiarity with strategy and/or an appreciation for its required skills has the potential to look like “flipping pennies” to us. As I said, I don’t play these games a lot, and I guess there were times last night when I might’ve talked myself into thinking it was just a card-drawing contest, if I didn’t know better.

Heck, for someone who hasn’t played golf before, even that game perhaps might look like a collection of random actions compiled together in the name of competition. But for those who have played the game seriously, they know how complicated the strategy can be, as well as how greatly skill does affect players’ relative success.

Last night’s event featured a number of skilled players, and once the final table began it was apparent from the rapidity of players’ actions that generally speaking all knew exactly what they were doing with pretty much every decision they were making. There was one notable exception, however, right at the final table bubble when there were nine players remaining.

The game had just moved to razz (from stud high). The way the tourney worked, they played 20 minutes of each game before switching, with each game change also bringing an increase in the stakes. There were two tables left, one four-handed and the other five-handed.

At the four-handed table, a few hands had gone by with a player named CianoMar having won a couple of pots to move his stack to around 325,000. That was below average at the time, but there were three or four other players in much worse shape at the time. Not sure, but I think in those hands he won CianoMar had started with an ace and was able to bet his opponents out of the hands by fourth or fifth street.

Then came a hand in which CianoMar bet with a queen showing, then kept pushing the action as he drew a nine and then a jack. Finally the player folded on sixth street, but it was odd to see him remain aggressive with two face cards up.

On the next hand, he stayed in again with a king showing, and when he stuck around after drawing a ten on fourth street it was obvious he hadn’t realized the game had changed to razz. I noticed railbirds in the chatbox starting to type “omg” and the like, noting there that CianoMar was in error. I also saw players on the other five-handed table start to talk to one another about how he didn’t realize the game was razz.

Finally a player at CianoMar’s table typed “it’s razz dude” (or something) and CianoMar quickly corrected his course. By then he’d slipped all of the way down to 75,000 -- 9th out of 9! -- and was in danger of bubbling the final table. But he caught some cards and scraped back to nearly 500,000 by the end of the level. (He’d eventually finish fourth.)

A bit of an ethical dilemma there, I suppose, for his opponents, one of whom decided it prudent to let him know of his mistake. I’d say it was unfortunate that observers in the chatbox could’ve affected the action there, too. (I believe it isn’t until the final table that observer chat is finally turned off.)

Was kind of wild to see that happening at such a crucial moment in the tournament. Of course, we’ve all been there, I imagine. I know I have when playing mixed games, not realizing until after a hand or two the game had changed.

I guess in a way those few hands which CianoMar misplayed could be said to help prove the point that these games are in fact very different from “flipping seven pennies.” After all, the player who thought he was playing stud during the razz level clearly didn’t have an equal chance to win those hands!

2008 WSOP, Day 21: No Expectations

Amid discussing the last event I covered, I remember babbling something on here prior to my Day 2 that it could well be a short day. Turned out to be the longest I’ve worked yet, extending well into dawn of the next. Ain’t gonna be so bold this time around. (I did read Mean Gene’s recent discussion of jinx protocol.) So I’ll just share the facts of the case and let you decide.

There are 48 players left in Event No. 34, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha with rebuys event. The top 36 spots pay, so we weren’t that far from playing down to the money on Day 1. The plan today, as is usually the case on Day 2s, is to whittle the field down to the final nine. The final table for this one looks to be scheduled as another one of those ESPN360 live presentations -- I’m hearing good things about those, by the way, for the lucky ones getting to watch -- so I wouldn’t expect any audibles to be called with regard to the plan to play down to nine.

There were a lot of rebuys in this one. The 320 entrants rebought a total of 1,350 times, making the prize pool over $2.4 million. That means we have over 4.8 million chips play. With 48 players left, the math is easy -- average stack is about 100,000 heading into Day 2.

When we start play today, we’ll be at Level 11, with blinds of 1,000/2,000. I don’t believe Harrington’s “M” applies to pot-limit Omaha the same way it does to no-limit hold’em, so it really doesn’t mean much to say the players have an average “M” of 33 or whatever. The pots in PLO tend to balloon rather quickly. An opening preflop raise with these blinds can range from 4,000 to 7,000. Say a guy in the cutoff opens by betting pot (which happens a fair amount), and then the button reraises pot. Suddenly you’ve got over 30,000 in the middle. One more raise and folks with average stacks will be pot committed.

Even so, I think there’s a lot about PLO that tends to thwart strict mathematical analyses. People talk about playing by “feel” and whatnot, but that’s not what I’m referring to here. There’s a weird kind of momentum that takes place in PLO tourneys whereby players feed off of each other’s desire (or lack of desire) to gamble it up. (By the way, if you didn’t read Dr. Pauly’s elegy to PLO from a couple of days ago, it’s worth it. He does a nice job there trying to characterize the “action game.”)

Fact is, PLO doesn’t always live up to its maniacal, flying-without-a-net reputation, particularly if you get a table of clear-headed individuals who realize their stacks are deep enough to allow them to be choosy when it comes to picking spots to put their chips in the middle.

Like I say, no expectations here about how long today is going to take. Just gonna play the cards I’m dealt here.

Speaking of jinxes, I have to add that after I got back last night I was too wired to sleep (as usual) and fired up some more o’ that 1/2 Razz. And simply killed. I’ll refrain from saying how much I made at this relatively low limit, but it was a nice little session (by my short-stacked standards). I’ve probably done enough damage crowing this much.

I mentioned before how F-Train’s nice run in the Razz event had inspired such experimentation. Have also been discussing Razz hands with the Poker Grump. And last night I ended up chatting with one of our reporters, Mickey, about Razz, which is a favorite game of his. Mickey routinely plays 3/6 and 5/10 online and is doing well, so I paid attention to what he had to say. A little bit of strategy goes a long way in Razz, especially when up against players who aren’t exercising sound reasoning in their betting decisions. (As always -- with any poker game -- the best formula for success is to find the bad players.)

There’s a lot to be said for playing different games. Definitely keeps the interest up. One reason why I’m intrigued about the event I’m next scheduled to cover after this one -- Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw Lowball.

As has been the case most days over the last couple of weeks, there are six different WSOP events going on today. So head on over to PokerNews for all the latest.

2008 WSOP, Days 19-20: Catching Kings, Z’s, then a Break

Day 19 of the WSOP was a quiet one for me, spent almost entirely at the home-away-from-home as I rested up between events.

Encouraged by the exploits of F-Train, I found myself playing a bit of 1/2 Razz online. Was running particularly well for a couple of hours, to the point where I was starting to become slightly deluded about how “easy” Razz was. Was only playing good starters (other than the obvious steal opportunities), and the right cards just kept coming. Was up over 30 big bets without encountering much strife at all. Then came the run of terrible cards. Either paint or a pair every hand, it seemed.

Finally, I picked up 6-3-2 which looked pretty sweet after such a long dry stretch. A player with an ace showing completed, and I went ahead and raised. Just the two of us left for fourth street.

You can guess how it went.

Razz is such a heartbreak. Ended up losing most of what I’d made before. Was ahead just a few bucks when I finally packed it in and called it a night.

Somehow ended up sleeping 13 solid hours, waking up much later than I’d hoped to this morning. Thus Day 20 of the WSOP began with me rushing over to the Rio for the noon start of today’s Event No. 34, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha w/Rebuys event. Grabbed a coffee at the hallway stand on my way in, and three hours of rebuying frenzy later finally caught my breath.

Thought maybe I’d grab me another coffee, but when I stood up and reached in my pocket I realized I no longer had my wallet. Criminy. This could be much worse than catching kings on fourth and fifth.

I went back to the coffee stand, really the only possible place I could have left it. The cashier, Mary, recognized me immediately. She had turned the wallet over to Security. I spent the break dashing all over the Rio, finally recovering my wallet up at the Security podium in the Casino (a half-mile away from the Amazon).

A stone-faced officer spread out all of my credit cards and cash to see if it jibed with what was supposed to be there. “What, no one doubled my money?” I said, eliciting a suprising chuckle from the uniformed guard.

On my way back, I grabbed another coffee, tipping Mary a five spot for saving me a huge headache. Raced back to my perch here at the Amazon for seven more levels of PLO fun. More later.

An Epic Razz Hand

Had been at this particular H.O.R.S.E. table for a while. Probably 70-80 hands or so. Had sat down with twenty clams and had chipped up to $26.20 when the following Razz hand took place. Even if yr not a big Razz fan, take a look at this one. It’s worth it, I promise.

The table had been on the passive side, without much raising/reraising on third street in the stud games. So when I picked up 2-6-3 with the trey showing, I looked forward to raising it up. Glancing around the table at everyone else’s upcards, I noticed one other trey, two fours, two eights, and two queens. That’s right. Everyone’s upcards were duplicated. Shoulda known then this was going to be a strange one.

One of the queens brought in the quarter. Then the other Q surprisingly called. Then one of the fours completed to fifty cents. I raised to a buck, and the other trey made it $1.50. The original bettor capped it, and in the end there were four of us left to see the flop: yr humble servant, the other 3, a 4, and a hard-headed Q. Pot already $8.65.

Fourth street looked as though it might have been favorable to everyone.

*** 4th STREET ***
Dealt to PhyllisN [3d] [4h]
Dealt to Nirdlinger [Qd] [5s]
Dealt to WalterHuff [4s] [3h]
Dealt to Short-Stacked Shamus [2s 6c 3c] [As]

I have the lead with my ace, and so bet the half dollar. Phyllis makes it a dollar with her 3-4. (Probably believes I paired up, I remember thinking fleetingly.) Nirdlinger calls the two bets. Then WalterHuff makes it $1.50 with his 4-3. I call the three bets, as do Phyllis and Nirdlinger. Pot now $14.65.

*** 5th STREET ***
Dealt to PhyllisN [3d 4h] [Kh]
Dealt to Nirdlinger [Qd 5s] [Js]
Dealt to WalterHuff [4s 3h] [Qh]
Dealt to Short-Stacked Shamus [2s 6c 3c As] [Ts]

Enough bricks to build a shed. Could have seen that coming, actually, as most of the baby cards have already been dealt. I’m technically leading at the moment, though, and so I bet out again. Everyone calls my dollar. Pot is now $18.65, easily the biggest pot of the session. Much like the previous streets, sixth street was also essentially the same for all of us.

*** 6th STREET ***
Dealt to PhyllisN [3d 4h Kh] [9c]
Dealt to Nirdlinger [Qd 5s Js] [Td]
Dealt to WalterHuff [4s 3h Qh] [9d]
Dealt to Short-Stacked Shamus [2s 6c 3c As Ts] [9s]

Nothing has changed, really, although I do see I could now be behind. I bet my 9-6, Phyllis and Nirdlinger both call. (That’s right, with his Q-J-T showing and all that action, Nirdlinger is sticking around.) Then WalterHuff raises to $2. Looking back, I can see now it is pretty clear that Walter must have had an ace, deuce, or five in the hole, and thus was surely ahead of me. At the time, I didn’t really think about that, though, and so three-bet it. Two calls, Walter caps it, and we all call again. (Incidentally, Nirdlinger runs out of chips on the fourth bet here.) “HUGE pot" types a player not involved. Huge is right. The pot is now a whopping $34.50.

As I await 7th street, I’m consciously thinking that if I happen to catch a four, five, or seven, there’s a decent chance I’m going to be good here. I know the fours are about gone (I’ve seen three of them). Have only seen one five, though, and no sevens. Of course, the pot is so friggin’ big, I’m probably not folding no matter what comes on seventh. Here it comes . . . .

I get a seven. Sweet. I’ve made a 7-6-3-2-A. And all that money in the middle. I like it. I bet.

And Phyllis raises. Walter Huff just calls the two bets. I like Walter just calling, as he was my primary concern. I three-bet. Phyllis just calls. NICE! Walter just calls, too. The final pot is $43.50. (Fifty cents will be taken for the rake.)

What does everyone have . . . ?

Short-Stacked Shamus: shows [2s 6c 3c As Ts 9s 7h] (Lo: 7,6,3,2,A)
PhyllisN: shows [Ah 5c 3d 4h Kh 9c 7c] (Lo: 7,5,4,3,A)
WalterHuff: shows [Ad 2h 4s 3h Qh 9d 7d] (Lo: 7,4,3,2,A)
WalterHuff collected $9.45 from side pot
Nirdlinger: mucks hand [4d 2c Qd 5s Js Td 5h]
WalterHuff collected $9.45 from side pot
WalterHuff collected $33.55 from main pot

All three of us caught sevens on seventh street. (Stars does not reorder the cards as Full Tilt does, so we can be sure of the order of things.) Not only did I not win the hand, I was third-best! (Hell, I was third-best on sixth street, too!) In fact, if you look at our relative levels of confidence there on seventh, the poor sap with the third-best hand (me) acted with the most confidence, followed by the second-best hand (PhyllisN), followed by the winner (WalterHuff).

Looking back over the entire hand, it was almost as though each of us (aside from crazy Nirdlinger, that is) had been dealt essentially the same cards on each street. I believe it is a general truism of all forms of poker that whenever players get dealt hands of equal value, action tends to increase. Here we had three of us getting pretty much the same cards every step of the way. (Plus a goofball fourth who couldn’t bring himself to leave the party.)

I’d lost a total $11.50 on the hand, so my six-dollar profit for the session had instantly become a six-dollar deficit. Wasn’t too upset, though. In fact, I kind of enjoyed it when the entire table began chatting amiably about the marvel we’d just witnessed.

Don’t imagine any of us will be seeing any 43-big bet pots again anytime soon.

Everybody's Talkin'

Was at the Razz tables again today for a bit (on Full Tilt Poker, the only major site that currently spreads Razz). There are easier things in the world than trying to find a Razz game, frankly. I found only four tables going -- 21 players total (out of about 5000 who were on the site at the time). And three of those tables were out of my league, stakes-wise. But there was that one $0.25/$0.50 table that mostly held together for the hour or so I was there. Actually ended up ahead this time (about $7.00). Was able to resist playing those 9-high hands or chasing other dubious draws, unlike before.

I’m starting to see that while Razz might appear to be overwhelmingly a “math” or “numbers” game, it actually involves a lot more “feel” than I realized before trying it out. I haven’t played enough, obviously, to be able to explain what that means, really. But it has been interesting to see how the third-street raising tends to go (usually only two or three players see fourth), how you really can bluff folks out of pots (and/or be bluffed out of pots), how one can go from being the favorite to a dog and back several times before a hand is complete, among other aspects of the game.

When I finished I tripped over to the 2+2 Forums to see if anyone ever talks about Razz over there. Didn’t find much. There is no “Razz” forum -- only an “Other Poker Games” section where Razz very occasionally comes up. (A couple of Razz-related threads actually popped up over in the “Stud” section as well.) As usually happens whenever I skim through the forums (at 2+2, RGP, the Card Clubs Network Forums, CardPlayer, THF), I ended up clicking around and getting distracted by other threads that looked interesting. I enjoy reading these and occasionally will contribute. Given that I live hundreds of miles from the nearest casino and am currently without a regular home game, it’s good to be able from time to time to have a kind of “community” of poker players with whom to discuss the game.

The poker forum is an interesting animal, really. Some of the threads on 2+2 get fairly competitive, almost as though those who are posting see themselves as participating in a hand of poker. One will “open bet” (let’s say) with a comment challenging some sort of accepted wisdom, for example, “Harrington’s Law of Bluffing” which states “the probability that your opponent is bluffing when he shoves a big bet in the pot is always at least 10 percent” (from Volume 1 of Harrington on Hold ‘em). Nonsense, says the thread-starter -- there are some players who simply never ever bluff. The first few respondents write comments that essentially agree with the original post (they “call” him). Then someone decides to put in a small “raise” by modifying the original argument, applying the principle to limit hold ’em (not NL tourneys). Then another “reraises” by challenging that assumption. And so forth.

That particular thread has thus far remained fairly amicable, although sometimes you’ll see posters aggressively battling each other as if vying for a huge pot. Another similarity with playing online is the fact that irony/sarcasm generally doesn’t go over terribly well -- oftentimes you’ll see threads taken completely off-track by someone having mistaken a tongue-in-cheek comment for sincerity, follow-up “I-was-half-joking-when-I-said-that”-type posts, or the like.

These phenomena aren’t specific to poker forums, of course, but the fact that poker players are usually trying not to “communicate” with complete transparency when at the table -- instead deliberately deceiving others with false cues -- makes it doubly interesting to witness these genuine attempts to communicate in the forums.

Or via blogs, for that matter.

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 . . . .