The Hangover’s Game of Chicken

Well behind the crowd, Vera Valmore and I finally got around to watching The Hangover this week. Kind of surprising we hadn’t caught it yet, given how we both generally like these over-the-top kinds of comedies. Indeed, a lot of time when we make it to the theater it is to kick back and enjoy something like The Hangover rather than to be challenged too greatly by more intellectually-demanding fare.

That said, The Hangover is a fairly clever film, particularly in its unusual plotting whereby the story moves ahead yet also looks back pretty much throughout. As those of you who’ve seen it know -- and even those who haven’t probably do, too -- the main characters’ bachelor party turns into a night of mayhem that none can remember afterwards, and so the final two-thirds of film involves them trying to piece together what happened during those hours they all blacked out.

Lots of grins throughout, and the Las Vegas setting made it more fun given the amount of time we’ve both spent in Sin City over the last few years. The “wolfpack” speech by Alan (Zach Galifianakis) was a definite highlight, as was the tiger song performed by Stu (Ed Helms).

Something friends of ours had drawn our attention to before viewing was the apparent non sequitur of the chicken. While all of the story’s considerable complications seem reasonably resolved by The Hangover’s conclusion, no real explanation ever comes for the fact that when the fellas wake up in their Caesars Palace suite following their wild night there’s a chicken conspicuously present.

Even stranger, the guys never seem concerned to figure out why the chicken is there, instead content just to stumble over it repeatedly while they work on other puzzles. Of course, they might be forgiven by the fact that there are a number of other issues that seem more urgent, including the additional presence of a tiger and a baby in the suite, as well as the absence of their friend, the groom-to-be.

Vera and I talked about the chicken some afterwards, and I floated the idea that rather than representing a “mistake” in the plotting, its presence actually served to reinforce the idea that the rest of the film’s many loose ends had been tied. Not so much a MacGuffin -- i.e., a plot element that is also ambiguous but more integral to driving the action -- but really just a superfluous, non-integrated detail that reminds us how just about every other detail has significance. Just part of the overall game of concentration being played with the audience.

That response might be a little on the high-falutin’ side, but you get the point. It makes me think of how in poker some value can be created by making a non-characteristic or erratic-seeming play early in a session. Say you call a raise from out of position with a lousy hand, perhaps even give up another bet by the river, then showdown your trash as your opponent wins a small pot. Everyone pegs you as a noob with little understanding of hand values or the importance of position, then pay you off repeatedly when you subsequently play your usual solid game.

Of course, there we might say the poorly-played hand isn’t really like the chicken, because it is in fact integrated into the “plot” you’re creating during the early part or “exposition” of your session. Even so, it is similar insofar as the “failure” represented by the poorly-played hand helps make the “success” of the rest of your session seem that much more impressive. (And perhaps even more profitable.)

Pulling off such a move can be easier said than done, though. It is hard to play a hand badly deliberately. In fact, I’d suggest that usually when this sort of scenario develops it is because we’ve genuinely screwed up a hand early on, then settled down afterwards.

Anyhow, to get back to The Hangover, I admit I may be giving more attention to the silly chicken than is warranted. Although a bit of searching online reveals a lot of theories -- some considerably more abstract and involved than this one -- regarding it.

If I am going overboard here though, well, that’s okay. I’ll just have to be a one-man wolfpack on this one.

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.