Kicking Myself (Rather Than Letting Someone Else Kick)

NFL Football kicked off last night. You’re asking if I am I ready for some football? Yes, please. Lots.

As I did last year, I joined a pool again this time around in which we pick winners for all the games (straight up, not against the spread). No fantasy football stuff for me, I’m afraid. Never did get into that whole phenomenon, and I still can’t quite figure out how it can be enjoyable to watch games pulling for particular players to perform rather than teams to win or lose. But lots of people do.

I managed to pick New Orleans to beat Minnesota last night. The Saints won 14-9, meaning I begin my year of picking games 1-0. Just 255 games to go, I believe.

I did notice that the line for the game -- at least when I checked it yesterday -- had New Orleans favored by six points. And I also noticed how the N.O. kicker, Garrett Hartley, missed a couple of field goals, including a chip shot from 32 yards midway through the fourth quarter, meaning those who bet on the Saints versus the spread lost their bets. And those who took the Vikings and the points were winners.

The second missed field goal -- the one that would have pushed the lead beyond the point spread -- reminded me of that helpless feeling I tend to associate with betting on sports. You can educate yourself, studying trends and weighing probabilities with a careful eye before placing your wagers. But in the end, others are gonna decide your fate. Every single time.

In poker, we’re similarly subject to forces outside of our control, but we’re usually given lots of opportunities to decide how much or how little we want to subject ourselves to those forces. That’s one way of describing the difference, anyway.

For example, yesterday I jumped into an $8.80 satellite to one of the WCOOP events on PokerStars in which I came up short. As happens in these things, I made a key decision at the end that ultimately affected my result -- in this case, negatively. And while I fell victim to an unfortunate card falling, I still felt as though I had something to do with how things turned out.

The satellite was for today’s Event No. 16, the $215 buy-in six-handed pot-limit Omaha event. (See the full WCOOP schedule here). The tourney was set up as a six-handed turbo (five-minute levels) and was actually a rebuy, too, although I managed to chip up enough during the rebuy period to avoid having to do so. I didn’t take the add on, either, meaning I was only in for the original $8.80. Forty players entered, and with the rebuys and addons that ended up meaning the top four finishers would get spots in the event, with fifth-place getting a decent payday (like $180 or something) as well.

I bobbed and weaved my way into the final nine with a below average stack, then won a couple of pots after that to sit with 15,885 chips -- fourth out of the remaining nine, I believe. At the time, I had the biggest stack at my four-handed table, with the others having 12,625, 6,500, and 3,400. Looking back, I’m thinking it might well have been time to put my head in the turtle shell and tighten up, but that isn’t what happened.

I picked up under the gun and raised pot to 1,750, half-anticipating a possible showdown with one of the shorties. The one with 3,400 was on the button and (strangely) just called the raise. The SB folded, but then the big blind -- with 12,625 to start -- decided to reraise to 7,250.

I could well have let go here. I am capable of folding aces preflop in PLO, which in some cases can be warranted, especially if they aren’t suited or have any other big cards to go with them. I did have that small diamond draw, but really this wasn’t such a great A-A-x-x hand. Right or wrong, I went for it, reraising and we ended up having a three-way, all-in situation. The short stack had and the larger stack in the BB had .

I glanced at all three hands and decided I liked mine best, and in fact, according to Two Dimes, I’m 51% to win here. But I was hardly feeling comfortable.

The flop was decent -- . I was still ahead and still a slight favorite. But the turn was the -- the case king! (ack!) -- giving my bigger-stacked opponent a set, and the on the river sealed it. That knocked me back to just 3,200 or so, and it wasn’t long before I was all in against two players with a marginal hand and got bounced in seventh place.

Was kicking myself afterwards over it, but I can’t say I felt nearly as helpless about it as I would have if I’d lost a bundle thanks to a player missing a short field goal late in the game as happened last night. After all, I made the call, one of many decisions I made during the course of the tourney. Wasn’t like I just sat there and let it happen without me.

Gonna go study the Sunday schedule now to see if I can keep up my streak. Meanwhile, I have a new piece up over on Betfair called “A Game You Cannot Quit,” if you’re looking for more reading material. Am kind of curious to get feedback on that one, actually.

Enjoy your weekend, all!

Finding the Right Angle

So much talk of late in the poker world about “angle shooting” and all of the fuzziness that surrounds many of the rules of the game. Not to mention even-harder-to-define things like “sportsmanship,” “etiquette,” and the like with regard to poker.

I saw that Prahlad Friedman-Ted Bort hand on ESPN last week just like most of you did, the one from Day 2b of the Main Event. (If not, you can see it here -- go to the 10-minute mark.) That was the hand in which the freestyle-rappin’, freethrow-shootin’ Friedman clearly called of his entire stack to Barking Man Bort’s all-in river shove before the floor person had finished counting down the clock on him. Yet for some reason Friedman’s hand was declared dead, anyway.

Bort tabled his cards, Friedman saw he was beat and mucked, having been improbably afforded a second tourney life. And then (as they say), hilarity ensued.

Over on Two Plus Two much energy has been devoted over the past week to characterizing Friedman’s action as falling into that nebulous category of “angle shooting.” Seems pretty clear, though, that if this were angle shooting, it was a pretty extraordinary, “perfect storm”-type scenario in which to pull off such a ruse.

As far as this case goes, I fall on the side of those who do not believe Friedman did anything particularly egregious or intentional here, but rather was simply the very fortunate beneficiary of a pretty obviously bad call.

The situation recalled for me that bad call made in the should-have-been-perfect game pitched by Armando Galarraga for the Detroit Tigers against Cleveland back in early June. Indeed, I’ve seen others bringing up that example, too, in the context of discussing the mistake at the WSOP.

After retiring 26 straight batters, Galarraga appeared to have successfully recorded the last out in a bang-bang play at first base, but umpire Jim Jones -- perhaps having had a bad angle on the play, or just suffering from a momentary lapse of some sort -- botched the call, declaring the runner safe.

I don’t know about you, but I found that story almost unbearable to read about and watch. Indeed just going back and looking at a report on it today made me a little queasy.

I love sports, especially for all of the drama they can produce. But I get no joy out of watching people fail. And I instinctively recoil at seeing a mistake occur when the stakes are so friggin’ high, as this one did.

After the game, Joyce admitted he’d blown the call. Galarraga was incredibly sympathetic to Joyce’s situation. He’d just been on a thrilling three-hour quest for perfection, and now was doing a great job showing the world that he understood that as humans we ain’t perfect.

In the locker room after the game, a reporter informed Galarraga that Joyce had said he’d missed the call and was apologizing for doing so. “Tell him no problem,” was Galarraga’s response. Then he added with a smile: “I should probably talk to him. It will be better.” The two of them did subsequently get together, Joyce apologized directly to the young pitcher, and Galarraga assured him there were no hard feelings.

As sick-making as watching the bad call can be (for those of us who are baseball fans, anyway), Galarraga’s response was about as inspiring as it gets -- one of those special moments of sportsmanship that make us love silly games like baseball all over again.

Going back to the Friedman-Bort hand, a mistake was obviously made. And the stakes were pretty damn high. But that’s how it goes sometimes, when humans are involved. And while I’m not saying forgiveness is always warranted when mistakes occur, it often should be considered as a possible angle to take afterwards.

Especially when it’s games we’re talking about.

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!

Multiple Tables, Multiple Selves

Haven’t been playing quite as much here during the first part of September as I did last month when I made Gold Star over on PokerStars. Was a little burned out, to be honest, after putting in so many hands to get the necessary VPPs (VIP Player Points). Have just sat down for brief sessions here and there so far this month (i.e., 100-200 hands), which have always been preferable to me.

During August I experimented some with playing three and four tables, but mostly stuck to two-tabling as has been my preference pretty much since I began playing online. Was sitting at two tables yesterday and once again briefly experienced a phenomenon that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, something I imagine is probably familiar to anyone who routinely multitables.

I had opened two tables of my regular six-handed pot-limit Omaha game. Within a few orbits on each I was essentially even -- perhaps up a few bucks -- having more than doubled my starting stack on one while losing my stack and having to rebuy on the other.

On the table where things were going well, I’d chipped up not with a single big hand but by winning several small- or medium-sized pots. I was raising from late position a lot, often forcing folds either before or on the flop, and generally encountering little resistance from what seemed to be tight-passive opponents.

On the table where I’d lost my starting stack, I’d run into a check-raise the first time I tried to c-bet a flop, then lost some more on a failed bluff. Soon I was down to less than half my buy-in, at which point I normally top off rather than try to play with a short stack. But I picked up A-A-x-x and ended up getting all of what I had left in the middle. Was up against two opponents and lost, and so had to rebuy.

The latter table featured what seemed to me a couple of decent players, so the combination of uncooperative cards and my opponents made things difficult for me. And, I’ll add, kind of created an image -- both to my opponents and to myself -- that I wasn’t such a strong player. Meanwhile, on the former table I had both confidence and what appeared some wariness of me and my bets from the other players.

There I was -- same username, same icon on both tables. But two very different players.

I continued to play, and realized soon enough that as hands went by I was further building on those two disparate images at each of my tables. On the good table, I kept adding to my stack, raising and pushing the action in ways that were continuing to be profitable. Meanwhile, on the bad table, I became passive, limping into pots when I perhaps should’ve raised, folding in situations when I perhaps should’ve called, and so forth. I wasn’t losing more, but I didn’t feel as though I was doing what was necessary to put myself in situations where I could win, either.

Thus the phenomenon -- perhaps unique to the two-tabler, although I suppose those who play more tables probably experience some variation of it, too, -- of playing as two separate, very different types of players at once. Ever have that happen to you?

Had a moment yesterday when I played two hands almost simultaneously that seemed to highlight the contrast most vividly. I’ll start with the good.

Hand began with the UTG player limping. The next player folded, and I limped as well from the cutoff with . Could’ve raised, but I’d just open-raised the previous hand from the button. Also I’d just as soon see a flop with this one before proceeding, and didn’t mind a multi-way pot, either. All of which is to say I had conscious reasons for my play (which I couldn’t really say was the case at the other table).

The button called, the SB folded, and the BB checked, so there were four of us in the hand when the flop came .

It checked to me, and I unhesitatingly bet half the pot. Sometimes I’ll check here; sometimes I’ll bet more. Here, half the pot felt right. The button thought a moment, then called, and the others got out. The turn was the , meaning my nut flush was still the nuts. Again, I bet half the pot, and this time my opponent called more quickly. The river was the . I waited several seconds, then bet the full pot, hoping my overbet would look suspect. My opponent instacalled, and the hand history showed he had -- he’d turned a straight, and somehow thought it might be good.

He actually typed “gh” afterwards, adding “thought was a bluff.” Even if he hadn’t called my river push, I’d have been reasonably happy with how I played the hand, given that all my plays were made with confidence and with a clear idea what I was trying to accomplish.

Meanwhile, on the second table, I was in another hand in which I’d found myself looking at a very favorable flop. But here I was a different player, drifting with doubt rather than proceeding with purpose.

In this one I was in the big blind. The UTG player raised the pot, and it folded back to me holding . A hand with some potential, though also one that could get me into trouble, especially from out of position. I called the raise, and the flop came .

Decent flop, eh? Probably should be betting here, yes? But I checked. I think I might’ve thought my opponent would continuation bet this dry-looking flop and so was considering a check-raise, but to tell the truth I don’t know if I even had that plan fully in mind. In fact, to be utterly honest, I hadn’t even noticed the deuce when I checked (not that it mattered a great deal here, although hitting sets with both pairs is less favorable as it takes away outs to improve).

In any case, my opponent checked behind, and the turn brought the .

Fearing the possibility that my opponent just turned a better set, I checked again. He bet two-thirds of the pot, and I called, having little idea where I stood, but reluctant to let go of my hand. The river then brought the , giving me jacks full. I checked again, my opponent quickly bet half the pot, and I called. He showed for the better full house and claimed the pot.

Unfortunate he’d draw out like that, but I absolutely invited it to happen. I could’ve still won a pot there -- his river bet would’ve been consistent with trip aces, I think -- but the result doesn’t really matter. I was playing poorly, with much less resolve than I had at the other table.

Just recognizing that fact helped me a little, actually, and I did manage to recover somewhat and ultimately play a few decent hands on my table of trouble before ending the session. Funny how this image thing works, though -- both on others and on oneself. And how easy it is to slip in and out of various “characters” or player types at the tables, sometimes even inhabiting more than one at the same time.