Was the Webster-Clay Hand Misreported?

One of the most famous hands of poker played during the 19th century was one involving a couple of U.S. statesmen, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay.

Both men served as representatives in the House, as senators, and as Secretary of State. Both also came close to becoming president, too. Clay would run three times without winning, while Webster turned down a chance to be William Henry Harrison’s vice-president, then Harrison would die just a month after being elected. And both were well known to be avid poker players.

Clay, in fact, was credited by some of his contemporaries as having invented poker, although such appears to be mostly an exaggeration of his having been one of poker’s more prominent enthusiasts during the game’s earliest decades. Joe Cowell, for instance, in Thirty Years Passed Among the Players in England and America -- a book published in 1844, the year of the third and last of Clay’s unsuccessful presidential runs -- refers to poker as “exclusively a high-gambling Western game, founded on brag [and] invented, as it is said, by Henry Clay when a youth.”

The story of the hand of five-card draw has been told and retold many times over, and in most versions picks up the action during the draw when Clay takes but one card while Webster stands pat. The two then bet back and forth until each has contributed $2,000 to the pot, with the betting concluding when Clay calls Webster’s final raise.

Webster then turns over a pair of deuces, which turns out to be a winner as Clay has only ace-high.

Writing about the hand in Poker: Bluffs, Bets, and Bad Beats (2001), Al Alvarez attempts to explain why exactly both players would risk such fortunes on such weak hands.

“What made these two shrewd operators go on raising and reraising each other?” Alvarez asks. “The only answer can be that each somehow sensed that the other was weak, that each had some small, unconscious physical tell -- a flicker of the eyelid, an odd inflection of the voice, a slight hesitation when he handled his chips -- that showed the other player that the pat hand and the one-card draw were both bluffs.”

It’s a sensible explanation, to say as Alvarez does that “each smelled the other’s weakness and was determined not to blink.” Meanwhile John W. Keller, author of A Game of Draw Poker (1887), offers a different explanation, presenting his interpretation as representative of what most card players of his era believed regarding the hand -- namely, that the hand wasn’t so much an illustration of a couple of famous poker players bluffing one another, but rather the whole story was one big bluff.

After expressing cynicism about Clay and Webster and the pair’s repuation as “redoubtable warriors in terrific poker battles,” Keller refers specifically to the fact that Clay calls Webster’s final raise while holding just ace-high. Keller thinks such a “play would indicate that he was ignorant of Poker,” and adds that “Poker players of to-day do not accept this story as true.”

Such a conclusion makes me think of those too-crazy-to-be-believed hands that sometimes really do happen in poker tournaments, and when tournament reporters share them those reading the accounts unsurprisingly respond with doubts about the accuracy of the reports.

I’m remembering writing a post here six summers ago from the 2009 World Series of Poker, one titled “Seeing Is Believing,” in which I discussed this very phenomenon -- that is, having to report on hands in which the action is so strange it necessarily threatens credibility.

Was the Clay-Webster hand -- one of the most famous from the game’s first 100 years -- misreported? Some think so.

Stop! Thief! Who, Me?

Had a good weekend, a lot of it occupied with reporting on PokerStars’ WCOOP and following the World Series of Poker Europe coverage over on PokerNews. Both of those series are coming close to concluding, with the last two events of WCOOP ending today, and the WSOPE Main Event finishing up tomorrow.

Didn’t spend the entire weekend in front of the computer. I did get out and exercise some. Am back to running again, usually just 2-3 miles at a time. I also had one other item on my “to do list” for the weekend -- grocery shopping. So that got me out of the house, too.

I went to get groceries on Sunday afternoon, having finally given up on my miserable Carolina Panthers, who couldn’t even compete with the also pretty darned miserable Bengals yesterday. Ended up being a lengthy, cart-filling trip, as we were in need of just about everything. So I’d been there probably close to an hour when a humorous incident arose.

By then I had made it through all but a couple of aisles, and found myself there in the frozen foods section trying to decide what prepared lunches might serve Vera Valmore well during the coming week. A number of tables in the center of the aisle plus a couple of other shoppers made it a little difficult to negotiate the space, so I’d stepped away from cart for a moment to gather a couple of items. When I got back, I noticed a large, elderly woman with a cart blocking the end of the aisle, so I whipped it around and went back out in the other direction.

A couple of minutes later I was standing in front of the eggs, and had just grabbed a carton to place in my cart when I noticed a carton already sitting there atop the rest of the items. “Hello?” came a woman’s voice, and I looked up to see the lady from before heading in my direction, walking behind a full cart.

I instantly realized what had happened. We’d swapped carts, and in fact both of us had added a couple of items before noticing. We shared a laugh while sorting things out, and soon all was well again.

Something vaguely uncanny about that sort of mix-up. I’m sure you’ve been there, say, when you head back out into a poorly-lit parking lot and try your key in a vehicle with a similar shape and/or color to yours and realize it isn’t your car. You suddenly become aware of yourself in a different way, imagining how you might look to others.

“It’s not what it looks like!” you might think to yourself. “I’m not really a thief!”

No one is looking (hopefully). But you instinctively try with your body language to communicate the idea that it was an honest mistake. You’re a trustworthy person, not at all the sort who deliberately tries to take what doesn’t belong to you.

Since most of my waking hours have been taken up with poker lately, I couldn’t help but think how this sort of consciousness of how others perceive you comes and goes at the poker table. At least for me, anyway. The best players are always attuned to such, though I imagine for most of us (like me) thoughts about how others see our actions are only intermittent, coming and going in relation to the plays we’re making.

Sometimes this happens to me when I’ve made a bluff -- often on the river -- and I instantly realize only after placing the bet how unlikely it is that my “story” of the hand is going to be believed.

Usually the formula creating that situation begins with some preflop aggression from me, followed by some bit of faltering between preflop and the river -- say, a check on the turn that betrays the weakness of my hand. Then comes the river, and a circumstance in which the only way I can possibly win the pot is to bet my opponent off the hand.

Then I choose what feels like the wrong amount. Or perhaps I time my bet in such a way that makes it seem more obvious I don’t have the goods. In any event, it is usually only after I’ve made the bet that I’m saying to myself some variation of “ooh... bad,” and think there’s little chance that my desire not to be considered a “thief” is going to be believed.

It’s that “hand in the cookie jar” moment -- like looking down and realizing you’re standing behind someone else’s cart.

“It’s not what it looks like!” you think. But there you are.

We’ll see how many bluffs get picked off at today’s WSOPE Main Event, where they are playing down to the final table. I believe there will be some delayed coverage online both today and tomorrow -- check out the ESPN poker page for information on that.

Will also be following that WCOOP Main Event closely, too, as I’ll be live blogging the sucker with F-Train. Check in over at the PokerStars blog for that, if yr curious.

Picking Out a Bluff

“Bluff is the essence of poker,” writes David Spanier at the start of his 1977 collection of essays Total Poker (reviewed here). “It is lurking in every single hand of the game. Has he or hasn’t he got what he says he’s got?”

Bluffing indeed separates poker from other card games, and as Spanier suggests is for some the tell-tale feature that defines poker. In other words, it ain’t “poker” if you cannot pretend to have something other than what you have -- and, perhaps, win by doing so. Like the dog on the left there in C.M. Coolidge’s “A Bold Bluff” is trying to do in one of Coolidge’s “Dogs Playing Poker” series (which you can read more about here). In fact, one finds in some early references to poker the game actually being called “bluff” -- a nod to the poker’s most salient characteristic.

So the word “bluff” being used to indicate someone trying to represent a hand other than the one he or she is holding has a long, long history -- extending back almost as far as does the word “poker.” But the word itself was around before poker was, having other meanings.

The Oxford English Dictionary introduces “bluff” as a “a nautical word of uncertain origin” that once indicated “a broad flattened front,” although could be used when describing a number of possible objects, including part of a ship, a shore or coast-line “presenting a bold and almost perpendicular front,” or even a person’s face or forehead. From there the word took on figurative meanings as well, suggesting someone standing firm (e.g., “he stood bluff”) or being notably direct or blunt in one’s manner.

The word turns up in a couple of other contexts as well prior to becoming part of the vocabulary of poker. Stemming from that reference to the look of a shore or coast-line, the term starts being used to refer to any “cliff or headland with a broad precipitous face.” Among the representative OED quotes is one by Washington Irving noting “the wild and picturesque bluffs” as part of his description of a landscape. From that usage come even further references to river banks or any steep incline.

According to America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America by Allan Metcalf and David K. Barnhart, it is this topographical meaning of the word that got picked up and transferred over to poker. “Since a bluff puts up a high imposing front,” write the authors, “someone or something that put on a show of intimidation was [said to be] bluffing, a use attested as early as 1839.” The authors note that it was only a few years before that the first instances of the word “poker” turn up in the U.S.

There are other explanations for the word’s origin that have challenged that one. Another less prominant usage refers to “a blinker for a horse” -- that is some sort of cover for the eyes (also called “blinders”), say for horses drawing a carriage to keep them from getting distracted and running about. The OED says that appears to have led to a slang usage of “bluff” to mean “a false excuse intended to blindfold or hoodwink,” a connotation which then got picked up with reference to card games.

However, “the etymology [here] is quite unknown” says the dictionary, as that particular meaning “does not appear to have any possible connexion with BLUFF... [and] is probably one of numerous cant terms... which arose between the Restoration and the reign of Queen Anne” -- that is, the late 17th and early 18th centuries (well before poker came around). “It looks as if recent users have imagined a connexion,” adds the OED, making that explanation seem even more dubious.

Sounds as though the connection to an imposing looking cliff or steep hill is the one that has been given the most credence. That one does evoke that other, commonly known meaning of “bluff” still used today, making it seem even more persuasive.

But I can’t help wondering if that’s really the origin of the term. It’s not that it sounds too good to be true, but not good enough. Then again, I suppose that’s why the story is somewhat believable. So I guess I’ll believe it.

I don’t have enough information to challenge it, anyway. Not even a bluff-catcher.

The Unwanted Call (On Bluffing)

Was playing a bit yesterday (my usual pot-limit Omaha game, $50 buy-in) when I was interrupted by a phone call. The land line. Basically no one calls the land line other than telemarketers or perhaps the dentist reminding me of an appointment. I answered, though didn’t interrupt my playing to do so.

“Hello?” Nearly ten seconds pass. Then the recording starts, an excited voice saying, with urgency...

“Don’t hang up!”

You can guess what happened next.

For the next few hands I found myself wondering what percentage of those who hear that greeting actually follow its directive and continue to listen. Has to be mighty small, I thought. What a poor strategy.

After a little while I realized that at one of the two tables I had going I had fallen into an interesting bit of cagey back-and-forthing with another player. We’d bet each other out of a few hands, and by the way he was playing I could tell he probably wasn’t always waiting for a hand to place his bets. I knew I wasn’t. I’d bluffed him out of a couple of medium-sized pots, and, like I say, I’m sure he probably had succeeded in doing the same to me.

There are some who never play PLO or who perhaps are novice players who do not realize how big of a role bluffing plays in the game. Believing that someone always must have the nuts, some feel bluffing is rarely (or never) a viable option.

But that is wrong, of course. There are many, many situations in PLO that call for bluffing, and indeed, if one doesn’t realize that, one is either going to lose consistently or (perhaps, if one is patient enough, and sufficiently lucky) win at very, very slow clip. As David Spanier writes in the opening line of his 1977 book Total Poker, “Bluff is the essence of poker.” (More on Spanier’s book here.)

The art of bluffing is complex, to be sure, and aside from determining when the circumstances are correct for bluffing, sizing one’s bets successfully is of crucial importance. In pot-limit games, you have a predetermined range of possible bets from which to choose, from the minimum (one big blind) to the maximum (the size of the pot). The fact is, bluffs come in all possible sizes. Whatever is the right amount to achieve your goal -- i.e., to get the other player to fold the better hand -- is obviously determined by a host of factors.

That little interruption got me thinking how in certain situations, bluffs tend to operate a lot like that phone call. A limped pot. Flop comes , an early position player bets pot, and the button just calls. The turn is the . The early position player again bets pot, and the button again calls. The river is the . The early position player checks, and the button bets just under half the pot.

Because of several factors, including the pair’s history playing together, the early position player folds his flopped middle set. The button scoops the pot with -- nothing but a busted straight draw. The early position player saw that “value bet” on the river and heard “Don’t hang up!” Then he did what most do when hearing that. He hung up.

Of course, at these modest limits, many tend not to hang up with their flopped set in that situation. So you recalibrate the message, trying to size the bet in such a way so as to encourage the response you desire. Probably best to keep the bluffs on the small side and the bets with real hands bigger, if you can manage it. But like I say, bluffs necessarily come in all sizes, shaped according to the circumstances.

Indeed, bluffing helps remind us, as Spanier says in his elaboration on the subject, “there is really no such thing as a good hand in poker, only good situations.”

Maybe some telemarketer will figure out a different way to keep the suckers on the line, perhaps by calling out “Hang up the phone immediately!” Like a wild, incongruous pot-sized river shove, that.

Who could resist the call?

Life’s a Bluff

Had a couple of funny hands come up day before yesterday at my usual PLO game ($25 max.). Funny for me, anyway. (Warning -- brag post coming. Or self-implicating donkey post -- you decide.)

On the first, I was in the cutoff holding . The player under the gun raised pot to $0.85, and it folded to me. I called, the button folded, and both blinds called as well. Pot $3.25 (after rake). The flop came . Both blinds checked, and the preflop raiser without hesitation raised pot.

Now I hadn’t seen this fella raise before the flop a single time in the sixty-odd hands I’d played with him, and his very quick flop raise with an ace on board signalled pretty loudly what he had.

The flop was fairly intriguing for me, too, of course. There were something like 14 cards that would give me a nut straight (any 3, 4, 5, or 10), plus six more that would give me a less-than-nut straight (any 8 or 9). Of course, I had to eliminate six of those as “outs” because of the possible flush.

There was enough there to keep me interested, though, so I called the bet, and was relieved to see both blinds fold. Pot $9.45. The turn was the , and again the UTG player quickly bet pot. I’m realizing now that not only do I have my straight outs, but it might not be too bad if a spade were to come on the end, either, as my opponent clearly seems worried about that prospect. I called, making the pot $28 or so, and sure enough the river was the . My opponent instantly checked.

I had $15.90 left. I’d missed all my draws, but was almost 100% sure my opponent was sitting there with a set of aces and no flush. I was somewhat less sure, though, whether he’d fold his set.

That’s a big problem in these low stakes games, of course. This seemed a great place to bluff -- a bet would be a most reasonable conclusion to the “story” I’d been telling (that I was a flush-chasing dummy with little appreciation of pot odds). But would he be able to follow that story? Or even if he did, would he know to fold?

I didn’t take all this time to decide. For the story to make sense, I had to act quickly, and so bet my remaining stack with the same swiftness he’d been demonstrating with his flop and turn bets.

When he paused, I knew he didn’t have the flush. Then he typed “moeon” -- an attempt at “moron,” I think. He took a second to compose himself, then press his caps lock key in order to type “FK IN DK.” He then folded.

As I waited for the chips to slide my way, I readied the mouse to click “show.” Unfortunately my opponent had already left the table when I flashed my nine-high. No one else typed anything in response. However (and this is the second funny hand), I did get a very loose call down a few hands later when I’d picked up A-A-x-x, flopped a set, and had a dude with K-K-x-x somehow think he was good.

Speaking of getting something for nothing, the guys at Life’s a Bluff are running a little contest. In their latest “Random Questions” interview with Jeff Madsen, a woman appears briefly during the middle, interrupting (and participating in) the interview. Anyone who can identify the woman will win a free copy of Tom Schneider’s Oops! I Won Too Much Money, courtesy of Life’s a Bluff.

You can watch the video down on the right-hand column -- just click to play, or click twice to get to the larger YouTube version. Then, if you can identify the mystery woman, you can head over to the Life’s a Bluff forums to the contest thread for further details.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go see if I can enrage anymore low limit PLOers.

The Burnt Orange Heresy, or a Lesson in How to Bluff

When it comes to bluffing, pros often describe the need to “sell a story” about a hand. For the bluff to be successful, your opponent has to interpret your bet as not violating the logic of previous action (of that particular hand or even of how you’ve played earlier hands). If the bet doesn’t fit with what has gone before, the bluff is that less likely to work. For example, say you’re in a limit game and it folds around to the cutoff who raises. The button and SB both fold to you in the big blind where you’ve been dealt . You call and the flop comes . You bet your nut flush draw, your opponent raises, and you call. The turn is the . You check and he checks. The river is the . You check and he bets.

Now you’re reasonably certain the deuce didn’t help him. He represented an ace on the flop, but then checked behind on the turn, thereby allowing you a free card that might complete all sorts of draws. With any sort of hand at all, he should have bet. Even if he had the absolute nuts on the turn -- i.e., J8 (an unlikely hand with which to preraise) -- he’s still mistaken to allow you a free look at the river. All of which is to say the river bet looks mighty sketchy and probably deserves to be called here. Of course, he could still have a number of hands that beat you (e.g., KK, QQ, JJ, AT, 99, etc.). Even so -- his “story” doesn’t add up, so if he is bluffing, you’re not buying it.

One encounters a lot of bluffing in hard-boiled fiction. For example, Charles Willeford’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, a 1971 novel about an art critic interested in furthering his career by any means necessary, is a book that in many ways is all about bluffing. Willeford wrote two dozen or so novels from the 50s to the 80s, the best probably being Cockfighter (1962) which was made into a curious, largely unseen film in the early 70s. (Two other novels, Miami Blues and The Woman Chaser, were adapted for the screen in the 1990s.) Like other hard-boiled authors, Willeford’s fiction often explores those existential questions that haunt all of us now and again. One frequently finds in Willeford’s novels characters who are convinced that life is without any real meaning, but who nevertheless find reasons to behave in certain ways and do certain things -- and, most importantly, to believe in those actions in such a way as to motivate them to act (and even realize a kind of compromised pleasure or happiness from performing such actions).

In The Burnt Orange Heresy, the critic -- James Figueras -- gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to interview a reclusive French “Nihilist surrealist” named Jacques Debierue. A collector tells Figueras where he can find Debierue, asking only one thing in return for the information -- that Figueras steal one of Debierue’s paintings for him. In fact, thanks to a variety of circumstances (e.g., a fire that destroyed much of his work), not a single one of Debierue’s paintings is known to exist; his reputation as an artist is entirely due to earlier critics’ interpretations of his work over the years. Figueras agrees to steal the painting, knowing that if he can interview Debierue and see some of his work, he could then write an article that would firmly establish his own international reputation as an art critic.

What follows is a gripping, dense plot that includes several twists readers won’t necessarily anticipate. In order to execute his plan, Figueras ends up having to bluff several people -- his girlfriend, the art collector, Debierue, among others. In the end, the novel puts forth the idea that all art is in a way a kind of bluff. As is art criticism. And everything else, really.

Figueras fits right in with other highly skeptical -- even existential -- first-person narrators of hard-boiled fiction like James M. Cain’s Frank Chambers (from The Postman Always Rings Twice) or Jim Thompson’s Lou Ford (from The Killer Inside Me). Because these characters tell their own stories, their authors are particularly challenged to try to justify to the reader both their (often reprehensible) actions and their decision to talk about those actions. Willeford does a great job here with The Burnt Orange Heresy. We buy what Figueras is selling us. As do the other characters. (Even if it turns out they shouldn’t have.)

Image: Charles Willeford, The Burnt Orange Heresy (1971), Amazon.